This was Joey on Monday night… leaving the hospital. Where they’d just applied a few steri-strips to his head. I could’a done that. But Joey was kept waiting for 4 hours and I’d have made him wait for 5. Just because. So the local hospital got the job. And not the neatest job I’ve ever seen either. I know, they have to check after a head wound for possible concussion. But as he was chatting happily and generally fine, other than the blood and the hole, its safe to eliminate that, I reckon. And after head-gate 1, when he split open the other side of his forehead one friday night during dinner, Mel actually went and bought some special glue. Like Superglue… ok, it is superglue, but its sterile and has anti-bacterials in it. So you buy it from the chemist instead of the builders’ merchants and it cost 14 times as much. We call it ‘Joey glue’ because he’s Joey and as such needs to give blood once a month. To the pavement, the playground, the park, the kitchen floor… because its what little boys do. Lila never did it; she never identified as a little boy. So she rarely goes looking for hard, pointed surfaces to bang her head against.

Tomorrow we’re going to Ischia. Ischia? Yeah, its a little island off the bay of Naples, just past Capri. There’s a wedding. No idea whose but what the hell; food, drink, dancing, possibly a rabbi, how can you go wrong? We gatecrash a destination wedding every month. Just go anywhere nice and there’s bound to be a someone tying the knot, ok, may have to give the rabbi bit a miss sometimes but that’s the story of my life, avoiding rabbis wherever possible. Except for the 2 who’ll be going to this wedding because they’re the groom’s cousins.

But I’ve never been to Ischia. Who the f*** has? You have to take a boat from Naples to get there, and as my over-60 tube pass doesn’t take me to Naples, its just one more lost opportunity. Until tomorrow! Yet Naples would seem, by reports, to be Italy’s ‘crime central’. Don’t carry money, valuables, small children, cameras; don’t speak with a foreign accent (but all Italians do, I don’t get that bit) and avoid ‘scammers’. Which, after reading for a bit, you realise is absolutely any local.

Which really, is my normal policy. Anyone who sounds like they weren’t born within the M25 should be avoided at all costs, run from, beaten or murdered.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx