Author: alex

Had Lizzie, David and Tom over for dinner on Friday. Isa made another of these (pictured) amazing dhoklas and a spicy tamarindy broth to have with it.

Oh yes.

Belated post from last year.

We went for a walk over to the BMX tracks at the far side of the common on New Year’s Eve. The sun was setting and allowed this (hideously underexposed and massively post-filtered) shot.

Saturday started with a trip to the cinema to see Epic (which is highly recommended). We went to a 10:20 showing which was subject to Cineworld’s kid’s deal, which meant we got in for £1.50. Family goes to the cinema for six quid: quite something.

We cycled there, having found a good route that got into the industrial estate from the back, thus avoiding hitting any main roads. Most satisfactory. Michelle (our current Swiss lodger) came with us. She bought popcorn for the kids — two small pocorns for £8. It’s the only thing she’s found, she said, that is more expensive here than in Switzerland.

Back via Sainsbury’s where we picked up some things for Sunday’s meal. Then delicious indian scrambled eggs for lunch. Then Andy popped in briefly for a chat. Then I pootled off to the allotment while Isa made dinner and the kids played.

I forget exactly, but I expect Neve played inside some saga based around her family of dolls and babies while Lola built a mansion for her new tiny toys.

Dinner was ragu with brown rice with a courgette curry.

All sounds quite pleasant, and it was, but Isa and I were both pretty ragged and effort was required not to dissolve into stressed niggliness.

Sunday. Mike and Tina due at midday. All very exciting as it’s a few years since we’ve seen them. Isa was up for nipping down to Fulbourne for the car boot sale as soon as we got up; so we did. It was a lovely warm morning (we’ve had the first proper summer for years, don’t you know. And, apparently, this August may be the hottest on record for 100s of years. I think July was the same. Thank goodness, it was all getting too dismal…)

Anyway, car boot was notable because we found a fondue set and Michelle was planning to cook us fondue that very evening. Amazing. And it’s a lovely 70s thing for which Isa paid £2.

Mike and Tina turned up at 12:30 and we had lunch, then wandered to the allotments, then had tea and dinner. Tina is pregnant! 6 months gone, so she had a lovely little bump. Our girls (and we) were very excited.

Right. I may come back to this later. I hope so, as the style is appalling and it could do at the very least with some subediting. But it’s better actually to get some stuff blogged than to worry about the stylistic niceties of it all…

Our palatial converted threshing barn in Peterstow, near Ross-on-Wye where we stayed for a week with Mum and Dad and Tom, Esther, Grace, and Lily May. A beautiful location with stunning views over the Herefordshire and, in the distance, Welsh hills and a wood in front of the house that was the home of at least one buzzard. And a chiffchaff that spent the entire week chiff-chaffing away but which I never managed to spot.
The bank holiday weekend was superb — beautiful, hot, sunny weather and we spent most of Saturday, Sunday and Monday staying pretty close to home: playing in the garden, walking to the local church (St Dubricius, with Anglo Saxon origins, a lovely pipe organ, and pretty frescos), nipping out with Dad to a local car boot sale, popping round to the local hotel for their Bank Holiday fun day, and having the special afternoon party to celebrate Mum and Dad’s 70th birthdays.
The days following the BH were somewhat cooler and overcast and meant we tended to play in the garden a little less. We pieced together the 1000-piece jigsaw Dad had brought, made yummy food in the enormous but pretty badly-equipped kitchen (luckily, we had brought a lot of stuff ready-made, and kept the rest pretty simple).

Tom knew someone in Herefordshire who generously lent me a guitar and Tom and I put down a version of GI Blues using Logic on his laptop. He had his snare and kick pedal and some cymbals. You can hear the result on soundcloud.

We did a couple of day-trips in the gloomier weather. One to Symonds Yat, where we saw, in the distance, though the drizzle, a pair of breeding Peregrine falcons; and another to a minature steam railway/adventure park in the Forest of Dean where dad, of course, knew the owner, or manager, or something.

So, last entry was Feb 20 and here we are in July. Tsk! In the interests of at least keeping a vague tab on progress, herewith a quick rundown of major events.

• Cut down the hawthorn (ie, severely pollarded) behind the back fence
• Took off the old back door, removed frame and brickwork above. Sawed wall back to worksurface depth. Deplastered other wall; replastered ceiling.
• Neve was four. She had her party in the Cheeky Monkey Barm.
• It was very cold.
• We went to Italy for Easter. It was also chilly for the time of year there.
• It was very cold on our return.
• We went to Herefordshire to celebrate my parents’ 70th birthdays
• We went to Branscombe to celebrate Esme Seren’s naming
• Lola was seven
• Lola got a little bunny, Twinkle

Is something Lola has grown very fond of since I’ve been home and she left in Italy. I called her first, the morning after my return–she’d spent the night “alone” at Nonna’s as Mum and Neve were in hospital (“hostable”, as Lola has passibly now stopped saying). I asked how how she’d been and she told me how she’d been a little bit tearful on the way back from the airport but that Stefi had been there and made her feel better. (Stefi had stayed for the night, sleeping with Lola in Nonna’s bed.) Then she said something like, “now that I’m remembering it, I’m feeling a little bit tearful again,” which I found very affecting.

Lola went on to ask me how things were in Cambridge and we talked a bit about the allotment. She suggested that water and food might help the beleaguered tomatoes. After a while, we started saying our goodbyes, and then, just before she went, Lola said, “Oh, Dad, can you tell me your telephone number?”. So I gave her my number and she took it down and then read it back to me and then asked how to spell “phone” and “number”. She asked when she could call me and I think I said anytime tomorrow and we rang off.

Since when, she has been calling me every day and we’ve chatted in what feels like a very grown-up way. Which, as well as the lack of hpysical context, makes the squeeky voice sound particualrly and incongruously squeeky.

This is the happy ending to this entry, which you may want to read first.

I spoke to Isa last night and she filled in the rest of the story which, as well as I remember, was this. The staff throughout the stay were fantastic. Three nurses attended on Neve while they waited for theatre, they painted her nails, played with her, got her paper and paint. Neve was calm and happy. Even on the table surrounded by doctors and nurses (and Isa) only the wiggling of her feet betrayed a little nervousness. They gave her gas and blissed her out and then she had the general and was wheeled in. dThe operation went smoothly and she came out within an hour and she and Isa were put in a room in paediatric. Isa was told she could share the (good sized) bed with Neve, or she could sleep in the armchair. Isa shared the bed with Neve and dozed while Neve slept. A cot was wheeled in in the early hours and a new patient and parent joined the room.

Neve and Isa slept on until they were woken by the beeping of the drip trolley, which had detected the end of its contents. Neve opened her eyes and said, “that’s a lovely cot isn’t it Mummy? Is it for little Nevey?” and then turned and went back to sleep. When she woke later she was happy and singy and spent a lovely day in a calm, air-conditioned room with good neighbours, TV, and lovely attentive staff. All the family came to visit during the day They wanted Neve to stay another night and Isa would have done so happily if it weren’t for Lola. So she signed Neve out and went off home, stopping at the gelateria to pick up Lola.

It was super-hot and super-humid and the house was full of relatives, doubly-excited due to Selena and Alvise’s return from honeymoon. Isa shut the door on them and watched a DVD with the kids.

Neve ate, sang and played as usual, showing no sign of discomfort. They had dinner and then had a long bath (a special treat as it had been showers only up to that point) and by the time they’d finished that the family had all gone except for Selena and Alvise and they had a chilled-out time with them chatting about the honeymoon and playing with the cinderella and Snow White dolls which they brought back for the girls.

Neve went happily to bed with Lola in Nonna’s room (where Lola had slept the previous night with Stefi). Which is something we could have tried earlier — there are possibly fewer mosquitoes there. Anyway, Neve slept soundly and seems to have come out of the experience as the same oh-so-very-happy-and-chirpy girl she was before. 🙂

The coin that Neve swallowed turned out to be a five cent piece as opposed to the one euro she claimed she’d ingested.

Yes, it was horrible and it went a bit like this. Yesterday, after lunch, Isa and I collapsed on the sofa to watch the rest of The Artist while the kids were in bed starting their afternoon nap. I was packed and ready to go and catch my 22:30 flight for which I’d need to leave the house at 8pm. We were tired and emotional, looking forward to a quick siesta as well. Lola and Neve were not settling down. Laughter and chat was getting louder and then took on a more plaintive tone. I went in to tell them to quiet down and found Neve standing near the door and Lola in bed. Neve was a bit distressed and Lola told me she’d swallowed a coin. We quickly took Neve into the kitchen to asses her. She was upset and crying and obviously in some discomfort. There was a brief period (a few seconds) of gagging but she started to settle down quite quickly and was able to drink some rice milk. As she could breath OK and could swallow her drink, we assumed that she swallowed the coin and that we would have to wait for it to be excreted. (A check with Google and BMJ resources confirmed that no internention was recommended in these cases and that the coin would make its way out in one to four weeks.) I calmed Isa, who was wondering about taking her to A&E, and we decided to keep her at home. As she was still pretty sleepy, we put her back to bed and she slept. We went in after twenty minutes and she was sleeping peacefully, so Isa and I went for a quick nap, too.

Within an hour of falling asleep, I woke to find Isa gone and the sound of Neve crying inconsolably with discomfort. I was exhausted and couldn’t wake easily. As such, I was far from a calming influence when I went into the kitchen to find Nonna calling a doctor and a very distressed Isa with an equally distressed Neve. Neve was drooling a fair bit and crying in pain — the kind of locked-in crying that is extremely hard to read and communicate through. I was slow and silent, not properly on-line; Isa was high-speed and panicked. It’s a common response and hard for us to overcome. But we did and within 15 minutes were on our way to Pronto Socorso with Claudio. Neve didn’t want to go and was screaming, “No! No!” as we drove off–though she had calmed down by the time we reached the end of the drive. At this point, our working assumption was that she had bruised or scratched her throat and that this was the cause of the distress.

We got to PS between six-thirty and seven. (A very impressive PS with an enclosed ramp leading right to the door for drop off, continuing down to the car park. The building was extremely clean, air-conditioned, and with an impressive traige system linked to large LCS screens around the waiting areas.) A couple of fantastic male nurses took our details initially and tended to agree that the coin would be in her stomach (as she had no trouble breathing) and we would just have to wait for it to come out. They put us in line for a paediatric doctor, giving us a “green” label. After about a half-hour wait, Isa, Neve and I were called through to see the doctor. The nurse and doctor were also both lovely. We had a quick chat and the doctor agreed it was probably in her stomach. The nurse had a child who had also swalled a coin, and that had been expelled naturally. The doctor, who looked to be in his twenties and also spoke some English, wanted to feel Neve’s stomch but Neve got very distreed and wouldn’t let him. No worries, said the doctor and sent us off for a routine X-ray.

More waiting in Radiography and then I stayed outside while Isa went in with Neve. More waitng and then the doors opened and I found out that the coin was in fact stuck right at the top of her throat. I asked the radiographer if it was in the oesophagus or the trachea, and he said you couldn’t tell from the X-ray–it seemed to be around epiglottis height–but that he expected the oesophagus as there were no respitory symptoms.

Yet more waiting in Radiography, during which the lovely triage nurse happened past and stopped briefly to chat. He’d heard about the X-ray result and said he’d try to get something for Neve to play with. He came back in a couple of minutes with a couple of plastic figurines for her–a princess and a little dog. Neve was delighted and played with them until the nurse came to take us back to the doctor. She was making up stories and songs for them, running around and singing: it was great to see, though I had to ask her not to jump up and down as I was worried she’d dislodge the coin.

By the time the doctor spoke to us it was nearly eight and I was getting pretty anxious about having to leave to catch my flight. I wanted to wait to see what they planned to do before I left. The doctor said that they would get a specialist up to use a short tube to look down her throat and, assuming there were no complications, to pull the coin out (jaws on the end of an endoscpe, I guess). Maybe, he said, a gastroenterologist would be required to take a deeper look.

So I took a difficult and tearful goodbye of Isa and Neve and went to find Claudio. We got home just after half-eight. I was anxious. All the family were there. I rushed around double-checking my bags, packing the stuff that was in the fridge, trying to grab a few mouthfuls of food, and trying to explain all that was going on. Lola, thankfully, was very happy and playing with Stefi. Isa rang and said that they were going to give Neve a general anaesthetic and try to remove the coin, and that she would be kept in for two days. While attempting to digest this, I jumped in the car with Renzo, Stefi and Lola and we set off to the airport.

I explained what was happening to Lola and she understood and was happy that everything was OK. I checked in my bag and joined the queue for security, chatting to Lola all the while. I asked Stefi if she or Giada could stay with Lola that night, as it might be hard for her with just Nonna. As the queue receded, I said my goodbyes. Lola went off looking a bit folorn and I carried on through the system. After security had discovered it was only cibo in my hand luggage (the jokey lady telling me what a feast they’d have had with all the cheese and salami and coffee), I joined a long queue for gate four. Which I where I was still at twenty past nine to say that Neve had gone into theatre. By ten o’clock, we’d gone through customs and I was sitting waiting at the gate when the text came through to say the coin was out without complication and that Neve was out and sleeping.

That’s what that smell is, said Neve, as we cycled up to Volpago del Montello at 07:30 this morning, having got up early to avoid the heat.

We went up the Via Sambugo and then Via Antiga. Past the quarry, dodging the water squirters watering the maize fields. Past run-down farms and ageing dogs, roadside shrines and basking dragonflies. Over the canal and on down towards the Montello. The heat was rising as we hit Volpago at 08:30 so we stopped for a quick breakfast at the first bar we found (which, unfortunately, produced cappucini alla Inglese along with some rather dubious pastries) and then headed home down the same route.