So mum and Kev are fine, but still in hospital. Having found (2 days it took) that he doesn’t have an infection, which they suspected, the poor fella is in fact a little jaundiced, as are loads of babies, so they’re keeping him (and mum, obvs) there longer to check. Which is not pleasing mum much cos she misses Lila, but Kev really doesn’t seem that bothered at all about it. Boys! So we borrowed Lila for the day yesterday.

And we went to a Garden Centre. To address the terrible problem of ‘box hedge caterpillars’. A blight on the entire landscape of fancy-schmancy London garden designs. Because everyone put in little ‘box hedges’ a few years back, it was almost compulsory, and this year they’re all being, quite literally, eaten alive by farkin’ caterpillars. They’re moth caterpillars, rather than butterfly ones. Which you can easily tell because… the gardener told me. Which makes the prospect of instigating their collective deaths a little more palatable. Not that I want to eat them. Though people do.

The Garden Centre is a massive one. With lots and lots of garden ‘toys’ and ornaments and… shit. And Lila loved it, running around playing with all this fantastically bright and lovely stuff. But not once did she ask for anything. To keep. To take home. She played with it, ok, sometimes she destroyed it, but she put it back and moved on. I was impressed. When I was a kid I wanted everything and made loads of noise when told that I couldn’t keep the extendable, 25 horse-power hedge trimmer, or the set of 12 carving knives for just £19.99!!! that they were judged by adults to be ‘inappropriate for a 2 year old’. But Lila was content to look, certainly touch, but then put the insecticide bottles and garden shears back from where she’d taken them. I was impressed.

But then, by the check-out, there were a few ‘items’. And Lila picked up a little cylinder of transparent plastic (we all love plastic in our family) filled with ‘flying saucer’ sweets. Those disgusting rice-paper shells filled with ‘sherbet’ (sugar), which we all loved as kids (and some of us still do). But Lila has never seen one. No idea what they are. Yet she ‘knew’. She held it up to me and said ‘want dat’. WELL YOU AIN’T GETTIN ‘DAT’!! I decided in an uncharacteristic moment of good-grand parenting sensibility. Though mainly because her mother would have killed me. I did have a momentary vision of a lovely ‘bonding moment’ with me and my babe at the kitchen table working our way systematically through the entire tub… but NO!!! I can be the tough sensible one at times, ya know. Just not very often. But how did Lila ‘know’?

Saw Rocketman last night, the Elton John biopic. Amazing. Truly outstanding production done in a fantastically different way. Quite brilliant. Even stayed awake all the way through. Which, after a day of Lila mania, is something.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx