Sickness benefit

I suppose I should make a home education point rise from the sick. Okay. It is that in this off-template, non-school household, sickness can take its time.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are mostly better. I've waved buckets, twitched blankets, and offered warm water scented with honey. I guessed the vomit would exhaust itself, and it did.

Admittedly the caring maternal halo began to slip a bit mid-way through the second phase (let's say the invalids were grateful to be left alone without Nurse Grit's devotions), but the point is, I could concentrate on the sick.

I haven't lived with any pressure for them to be well before their three-day deadline is up. I haven't needed to write excuse notes, nor feel defensive when I explain how it seems to be a vomit of four days, not a convenient one. I've done no telephoning, fielded no queries from a school office, neither been frightened into pushing the kids back to the classroom regardless of whether they are well.

The gloomy pressure from the school would have weighed on me throughout. I would have needed a doctor's note because the presumption would be after three days that without official sanction, my kid is faking and I am lying.

It's all in preparation for that particular brand of office misery where people must show up at ever more ridiculous times, regardless of their own health, to show how hard they are working and how devoted they must be to the job. Or else. It's a very unattractive feature of British working life. I have seen office administrators out-do each other by alternatively boasting and whining that they have been in the office since 6am, so where were you?

I'm relieved that in my world, people can fall ill, spend time recovering, feel bleugh again, lounge all day watching movies, and the worst that can happen is that I seize the opportunity, pull down the biology books and show everyone a diagram of their intestines.