Vomit

Squirrel started it. We arrive at the art and craft session with the Teech who tells everyone what to do and no messing. Just as Squirrel's completed carving some lines over her polystyrene block, she vomits on it. The art Teech doesn't notice. Neither do I, actually. It's my day for tea and coffee and biscuits. So I'm trudging down the road looking for a shop that might sell me a carton of milk.

I'm not sure how long Squirrel stands there, pale faced and weak-legged, her hands covering her vomit-art, before Shark sees something's up and comes to the kitchens to find me. I've been thrashing around with teabags and mugs and have the only day when the big kettle thing doesn't work. 'It's never stopped working before' says Paula, who's come out of the office to look at it. I look at it as well. I am of the Eeyore philospohy of life. It's my day to do tea and coffee and biscuits. Expect the worst.

'Mummy, Squirrel wants you,' says Shark in a weeny voice that doesn't have much urgency about it. Well, I'm glad to escape looking at the kettle thing that doesn't work so leg it while I have the chance. Then there's a lot of ooh ooh ooh while I flap about Squirrel, ushering her into the ladies and clearing up vomit. Teech helps quite a bit at that point, so momentarily she doesn't sound like Hitler. She will again later.

By the time we get home, Squirrel has vomited some more in the car, into a recycling bag I've suspended from the seats. This was a good plan until I discovered that it's got holes to stop babies putting it over their heads and suffocating themselves.

Then Shark joins her sister. At first I think it's some strange twinny-thing with sympathetic brain waves and 'I know what you're thinking and we don't have to talk, unless of course it's in our strange twinny language'. That sort of thing. But they've never shown that much sympathy before, so perhaps it really is just lots of vomit.

And there is lots of it. All afternoon and all evening. From both of them. We have three sick buckets on the go and I use a full bottle of disinfectant. Tiger is utterly bored, not having any sisters to torture, so there's only one answer. The TV. We watch the Blue Planet, Matilda, Land Before Time, Earth Story. In fact we notch up our entire month's average viewing in one go.

Now the night to get through. The night light's stopped working, and so has the monitor. Dig's taken to his bed with a headache, and I'm feeling sick. Now, in Eeyore's philosophy, 'Visualise a thunderstorm. It's just what would happen.'