Lila was sent home from ‘school’ on Tuesday. Selling drugs behind the pram-sheds. Singing football songs in prayers. She beat up a little boy who stole her Lego; she used the Ben Stokes ‘self defence’ plea but to no avail. Ok, she had a temperature. A hot one. That’s the real reason. And she’s been poorly since, poor little thing. So the world’s ‘most perfect baby’ (well, MY world’s most perfect baby) who never wakes up in the night, who never cries, moans or does anything that isn’t ‘perfect’ (most of the time), other than make more mess that 65,000 football fans, was seriously ‘under the weather’ for our weekly Lila day. She went to bed in our house, as usual, about 7. Then woke up at 9, not usual. Went back to sleep, we continued with our bridge game, but not for long. Until she became really unhappy, needed much more attention and bridge had to be abandoned for sustained child-care. And that’s how the night continued. Up, down, asleep, crying, more sleep, more waking. Very un-Lila.

But she’s small. When adults get flu they feel deathly, horrible, ill, rotten. And they understand what’s happening. Poor little Lila lacks such experience and understanding (even though she’s fucking BRILLIANT). So she just carries on as usual until it doesn’t work. Its hard to understand illness in all its cause and effect when you can’t even put your socks on.

(PS. The drug she would have been selling at school was Calpol.)

And speaking of temperatures, I’ve heard that the sun gets even than hotter that Lila-with-an-infection. Wow. I’ve never taken its temperature but ‘hotter-than-hell!!!!’ goes nowhere near close enough for our own Sun. And now we’re gonna fly there. I’m guessing that the Parker solar probe is likely to be unmanned. As where its going, a mere 3.83 million miles from the sun’s surface (which is just about ‘the house next door’ in universe terms) reaches temperatures of 1.66 million degrees Celsius. That’s really hot. Hotter than Oxford Street last week and that was REALLY hot. It makes you wonder what kind of wood they’re gonna use for the space ship with all that heat flying around. I mean; Icarus went there a couple thousand years ago, but the wax holding his wings on melted. Bummer. And he hadn’t got off the ground in Crete when that happened. (Loser).

So this probe will tell us lots about our Sun, which is fab. But the amazing thing is that due to some very clever people, the instruments inside the probe, even right there in the Corona, will remain at 29.4 degrees. How can they do that? 1.66 million degrees outside and 29.4 inside. Yet they can’t even PUT AIR CONDITIONING IN FUCKING TUBE TRAINS!!!!

I think some research needs to be redirected from the wonderfully theoretically informative to the more pragmatic and realistic domains.

Happy Friday

A xxxx