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The cold stopped out washing machine working, but the village was a winter wonderland with frozen fractals all around. I looked out of the bathroom window to see that the cold had turned my rose leaves into cacti.
If I was a poet then that would be the first line of a poem. But I’m not and I can’t think of anything to rhyme with cacti, so I’m fucked.
Everyone was still some degree of unwell. Ernie was the most well, after recovering from his tonsillitis. I would very much have liked to go to bed all day, but I was the next well. Catie still couldn’t really talk and Phoebe kept on crashing every time she looked like she might be improving. We were meant to be going to lunch with the inlaws and then on to a pantomime, but it didn’t seem too likely that any of us would make it.
In the end Ernie and me attempted to go to the panto, but as with our recent experience at the movie of Matilda the Musical the loud music made him anxious and even though the panto was full of pirates he couldn’t get on board and I had to take him home. Leaving his uncle and partner and grandparents watching a pantomime without any kids with them. They seemed to be enjoying it though. It was a nice mixture of child friendly stuff and very rude jokes that only the parents would (or should) get. The same central cast as last year too, I think, so they had a nice rapport and some fun in jokes.
But I was whisked away after about twenty minutes, so I don’t know how it turned out. The tickets had been a gift from Uncle Duncan, so two went unused and two went barely used, which is a shame. But with the number of kids who I’ve heard of going down with nasty bugs this week it was astonishing that there was anyone in the audience.
On the way back to the car Ernie observed all the dead leaves on the floor and asked where they went. I said someone would sweep them up and he commented that would take a lot of time. He thought one person did all the leaves in the world. What a chump! Though I suppose Santa delivers all those presents alone, so maybe he’s not so dumb after all. But it was a reminder of how new the world is to this little boy. He’s been here five years, but his brain is now grown enough to start looking at bigger questions. Questions that we forget all about as adults. How weird is it that suddenly all the leaves fall off the trees and just lie rotting on the ground? It’s really weird. And yet we get so used to it that we forget to even notice them. But he made me notice them, and the leaves were fucking everywhere.
He might be scared of a pantomime, like some kind of a Morris Mitchener (hey maybe I should sue the theatre for emotional distress- can’t remember how it worked out for Morris aside from being mocked on a largely forgotten TV show and that still manage to dog him his whole life - and at least Ernie was scared of pirates, not fairies), but he’s a little philosopher-explorer, discovering things we have already found, but have forgotten were there. If I didn't have these little observers with me I don't think I'd have noticed the rose cactus. And that's going to be the first line of a poem that will be as well loved as the one about the wandering man who compares himself to a cloud.
Poems are fucking stupid.
And who does clear up all those leaves? I did most of the ones in the back garden, but that’s hardly any of the total.
