The Third Way

I subscribe to that popular and yet cock-eyed notion that everything comes in threes. OK, so possibly not everything. Socks come in pairs (although rarely stay so), also hands sadly... legs, eyes, ears, kidneys, cards when you're looking for a full house... Many things do however come in threes: book deals in airports; household Gas-Electricity-Water bills; er... er... well troubles invariably come in threes.

It's not, when something bad happens, that I stand around waiting for the next two things, however if two bad things happen, the third is inevitably ringing at the door before the first two have decently buggered off.

How it was therefore when Charlie nearly broke his arm only days after the discovery of a (gasp) verucca (the shame...) that we failed to notice his ear infection is beyond me, but there you go; we only suffered 4 nights of no sleep thinking, er, that his arm was causing an, er, fever... yes well erm.

We are nearly all better now except for the occasional need to over-react when faced with say, getting dressed or eating one's dinner ('I CAN'T put my jammies on, my ARM hurts... please can I climb up you and flip over 20 more times instead?'). It's not without it's trials, however, this recovery business.

Today he parlayed a little twinge into a post-breakfast ice-cream cone. After lunch, I had a lie-down and apparently he used his wild powers of persuasion to con his Father out of a second ice-cream. We then went to the park and, since both of us thought 'he's only had a little one at home and he's been so brave', he conned us out of a third from the ice-cream van.

He also conned us out of a third of our income at the local fun-fair, but that's another story. I rest my case.