To explain why things have been fairly quiet on the site lately: our boy caught ‘hand-foot-and-mouth disease’. Sounds scary, but it’s nothing to do with bovine foot-and-mouth. It’s a version of coxsackie virus (A16) that has a particularly un-lovely pathology: blisters on the hands, feet and in the mouth.

Kids are fantastic little things when they’re on form. Great fun to be around and hugely entertaining. But it is their innocence and lack of reasoning power that really is their downfall when they are hungry, sore, and tired. Poor little guy was hungry as anything, yet putting anything anywhere near his mouth caused excruciating pain. For three days. We managed to spoon-feed him a couple of bottles of formula, but apart from that, all we could offer was distraction and sleep. Nasty shit.

Also bad (but not as nasty), is the fact that I appear to have caught the damn coxsackie. At least with adult reasoning power I can understand to avoid hot drinks, and only eat soft food. Doesn’t make it hugely less painful though. I’ve only got about 5 little welts on my hands, but they hurt like rope burn whenever I touch anything. Damn virii are strange little buggers aren’t they? As Stu said, you’ve got to admire an organism that is contagious several days before you see any symptoms.