Bookmark and Share

Sunday 28th November 2021

6936/19856

I was a podcast widower again and Catie was off to Salford with the Drunk Women, which meant not just a whole day of solo parenting, but also a night and I have to get them ready for school tomorrow too. It’s all stuff I’ve done before, but rarely alone and rarely for a full 24 hour period. I was looking forward to it though. Mum is the sensible one so this would be like three kids going wild, but one of them has a credit card. Lucky I did as we were going to Willows to see Santa, make teddy bears and ginger bread men and though we’d paid up front (and also pay membership), they’d found lots of ways to get extra cash out of us.
A sleigh ride to see Santa is one of my earliest memories - it took place in a department store somewhere near York (or possibly Loughborough) so it can’t have been a real sleigh ride, but it is in my memory - I was caught up in the magic. I think I got a plastic barbers set on that occasion. I don’t know where it is now, but it will no doubt exist on this planet in some form long after I am forgotten.
Anyway the kids are just at the right ages for this. The older one is asking tricky questions which suggest that next year or the year after she’ll have seen through the ruse, but the little one is 100% into it (though believes our bearded friend Jevan in the real Santa). They wanted loads of photos, even of us just queuing, though there were lots of things to look at and they seemed glad to meet Santa and didn’t notice that there were about 8 doors they could have gone through, each with a Santa behind them. We did some official photos - which of course, you have to buy and they got a token to go and choose anything they wanted from Santa’s toy shop, which had an incredible range of reasonably classy tat on hand. They both chose bulky items that I knew I’d have to carry around for the rest of the day. It was good. I think they will remember it. And we have the photos so they won’t be allowed to forget.
As we queued for the photos a man came up to say hello, saying he’d seen me around in Hitchin and liked my stuff. He then said that he’d been in the grotto. Had we just met Santa in real life? He looked very different out of the red cloak and beard.
We then went to build a bear - again included in the cost, but with outfit and sound box as an extra, that the kids talked me into. Building a bear involved putting stuffing and a little heart into a bear (and a sound box for us), which was a bit less involved than I’d imagined. 
It was cold outside but we did some skating inside and went to soft play (I risked letting them out of my sight) and I went to the loo and asked if the kids needed to go. They said they didn’t, but five minutes later Phoebe was desperate so we had to go again and then ten minutes later Ernie was desperate (I managed to find a tree for him to go behind rather than haul us and all our stuff to the loos for a third time. We went to make a gingerbread man and have our lunch. We’d done pretty well and Phoebe and me were ready to go home, but Ernie wanted to do more.
We spotted a reindeer ride (a mechanical thing) and queued in the cold, my arms full of junk. There were two spots left when we got near the front but the family in front had three kids so we took the back tow reindeer. The student running the ride lifted Ernie up on to the reindeer, but in doing so (and I was talking to Phoebe at the time) somehow cracked Ernie’s head on the pointy bit of roofing above the ride. Ernie cried, but a quick look at his head didn’t seem to show any damage and he went on the ride, crying all the way. The man who’d whacked him looked a bit sheepish and asked if there was anything he could do as we left, but aside from not smashing my son’s head into the ceiling I didn’t really think there was much he could do now. 
Ernie was still very teary and I was annoyed that he’d got hurt in such an avoidable way, especially when I was in solo care and it had gone relatively well up til now. You can’t account for a stranger smashing your kid into a ceiling.
They both went on a climbing thing, but Ernie, still crying, got stuck and I had to help him down. I decided that it was time to go, but I needed the loo this time, so we went back to our favourite place. It was only now that I noticed a bit of blood in Ernie’s hair. It hadn’t just been a little bump, it had actually broken skin. No wonder he was so upset.
We were right by the first aid and a nice mum went to find a member of staff for us, who cleaned up the wound. It wasn’t the worst but a bit of skin had been taken off and it’s pretty unsettling to see your child bleeding. He was being pretty brave now, whilst his sister was imagining his death with some glee and getting bored at having to wait around. 
Obviously a head injury is always a bit of a worry and the staff member no doubt had half an eye on the fact that this was an employee’s fault. She said that she didn’t think we’d have to go to hospital, but obviously I should keep an eye on Ernie and check for dizziness and him going limp and all that stuff. 
I’d so nearly got through a brilliant day, all on my own, and then this had happened and it wasn’t even my fault. It was so unfair.
And also sad that my son had been injured.
I cleaned him again when we got home and there was still a tiny bit of blood and I was in two minds about what to do. But he was happy by now and running around and acting like a normal Ernie (which is quite like someone with a brain injury). I was in a bit of shock myself and got a bit weepy about my boy being hurt like this. And whilst I made the decision to stay home, I knew I had a night ahead of me of worrying that I’d made the wrong choice and have him slip into a coma or whatever…..
I checked on him a lot. He told me he was dizzy before bed and then laughed and said he was joking. And I didn’t really know if he was or not. 
I knew my wife would have gone to A and E, but was 90% confident I’d made the right call. But the 10% made me feel a bit sick and though the stress of the day saw me conking out at about 8.30pm, when I woke up after midnight I couldn’t really sleep. But Ernie got through the night, even if I came out of it in a bit of a state.
Being a parent is a wonderful mixture of caramel and faeces - I guess the caramel slightly improves the shit, but the shit does rather tend to dominate the caramel.
Guess which bit the kids will remember from today - oh Hell it might be Santa. Ernie was excitedly telling everyone at school about him on Monday morning (maybe the brain damage made him forget the trauma).


Bookmark and Share



Can I Have My Ball Back? The book Buy here
See RHLSTP on tour Guests and ticket links here
Help us make more podcasts by becoming a badger You get loads of extras if you do.
Or you can support us via Acast Plus Join here
Subscribe to Rich's Newsletter:

  

 Subscribe    Unsubscribe