Diagnosis

OK, Tiger has mumps. She comes downstairs looking like a hamster that's had a particularly good night developing the nut storage system.

Quick as a flash I'm on the phone to our local surgery and extract a home visit on the basis that I am disabled. Actually I am not, but you try hoisting sickly, awkward and asleep triplets into a car and getting them to a health centre in under ten minutes. And there's not exactly a lot of help here, unless I kidnap the milkman. Dig, of course, is not here because when these things happen, he never is. So for that holy grail of doctor's appointments, I qualify.

And for the rest of the day I am Nurse Grit. I pump Tiger full of pink fluid. Shark I don't have to do anything with because she's asleep. Squirrel I suspect is OK but she declares herself sick in sympathy and I tell her she might be really very ill, and the best thing is to lie down and try some reading because reading books about wombats makes you better.

Now with a quiet day punctuated only by groaning, snoring, the dribble of pink fluid and Squirrel asking whether she should get out of bed yet to run about the house dressed as a fairy, I can do the ill thing that I never managed to do yesterday and hit the manuka honey.