Warming Up

I have been looking forward to taking Phoebe to some Fringe shows. We started with familiar territory, the Monksi Mouse disco, which is on in St George’s Square at 11am (not sure if it’s every day). We’ve been before and it’s a fun hour of dancing, jumping and crawling around. I tried my best to join in, but was pretty knackered from having pushed my daughter in her pram up and down the hills of  Edinburgh. 

We’d dressed Phoebe as a bumble bee for the occasion, but she was annoyed by her deely-boppers, so I wore them instead. Phoebe seemed suitably embarrassed by my dad dancing, but we had fun in the conga line. It’s a fun show to be involved with if you’ve got a kid. And if you haven’t got a kid, then it’s probably inadvisable to attend. People will (correctly) think you’re weird.

Macbeth clearly had never been to the Edinburgh Fringe, because every day here is fair and foul. I wore my coat to keep off the rain, but by the time we were at the venue the sun was shining and ridiculously hot and then once we were out of the show, drizzle drove us to get lunch nearby. I was really enjoying the family time, even though it was a struggle to push the pram back through the Edinburgh crowds.

I’d wanted to take Phoebe to the playground next to our house, but it was raining again, so we watched TV. But then the sun came out and I was pleased to have the chance to check out the facilities on our doorstep. Phoebe had a lot of fun on a little bicycle roundabout that kids turned themselves by pedalling, and then went on a slide. I was scared to let her go up on the climbing frame, which was high and looked a bit dangerous. So I spun her on the roundabout again. She than ran off towards the climbing frame, but at full pelt tripped and cracked her head against a metal steering wheel underneath the slide. The other parents went “oooo”, having been there themselves and said “That was a a bad one.” I have been here before too. She seems to like to do this kind of stuff when I am in solo charge. Luckily she wasn’t knocked out and was crying, which is a good sign. I picked her up and took her to the bench to check her forehead. It seemed OK initially, but the small mark ballooned up in front of my eyes to make a little purple egg on her bonce.

She wanted to go home, but she was talking and walking fine so I wasn’t overly concerned to begin with, but then the shock of it all was bad for me too. I took her back to her mum, who correctly determined that we had to take Phoebe to hospital. I rang a cab and a very nice lady on the other end informed us we’d need to go to Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children. Which is lucky because I was going to take her to the Edinburgh Hospital for Well Children, which they probably don’t bother staffing.

It was a nerve-wracking ride. Phoebe seemed lucid and talkative, but she kept on saying “Bye bye doggy”, which made sense when she’d just seen a dog outside our flat, but seemed weird outside John Lewis (but then my wife spotted a picture of a dog in the window).

The staff at the hospital were amazing and we were seen very quickly indeed and reassured that the injury was external and extremely unlikely to have done any real damage. I did get a bit wet-eyed as we sat waiting, the shock finally hitting home. This time it wasn’t really my fault (like it was when I encouraged her to put a bucket on her head and run around), but it was still horrible to witness and even worse to think of the possible consequences. Meanwhile Phoebe was having a great time drawing pictures and showing them to the little girl next to her.

Having being reassured and warned about danger signs to look out for we were able to leave pretty quickly. Catie took Phoebe home and I walked over to the Pleasance for my show.

It was good for a Saturday and numbers were pretty high (approaching 300) given it was the first full price day and I cut some bits, but the show was still longer. For some reason I found myself swearing a lot more than usual, but it was a spirited performance, probably heightened by my need to work out the shock of earlier. I had been powerfully tired beforehand.

I got home to see the results of the 100 metre race. I reckon I could run 100 metres in under 10 seconds if I put my mind to it. Never tried, mate. Not that desperate for attention.