good and not so good

I went to London today for another look at the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern, this time with my mother and my nephew.  He is just coming up to eight, and so far has a true artist's eye, and I was pleased that the chap on the door of the exhibition gave us each a booklet, without quibbling about whether a child would want one.  As we walked around I realised that the smaller and more detailed pictures were hung inconveniently high up from the viewpoint of a seven year old.  He seemed to like them anyway, though he got more immediately excited about a large abstract expressionist painting in the permanent collection that we passed by afterwards.

Children that age have minds like sponges, so the more decent stuff they can see, the better.  You notice language being absorbed at a rate of knots as well, my nephew quizzing me about any new words or unfamiliar uses of old ones, then trying them out himself later in the conversation. Today's new use was 'flooding' to mean the tide is coming in, rather than water in all the wrong places as seen on TV, but when over tea back at my parents' house he picked up on 'bunfight', my mother took him home before I could explain it.  Probably just as well.  It sits well enough in the vocabulary of a slightly old fashioned and eccentric aunt, but might not be the thing for a small boy who doesn't want to court social ostracism in the playground.

It was a relief to make it safely to London and back without my faint suspicion that I might be going down with something turning into a certainty.  For several days now I have been intermittently hit by the feeling that I was really not awfully well, accompanied by occasional headaches and spells of nausea.  As this has persisted even on days when I haven't touched a drop, I don't think it's a simple case of over-indulgence.  Getting home tonight, I discovered the Systems Administrator has now got the same thing, only worse.  If cardunculus disappears from the blogosphere for a day or two, that'll be the reason.  It is a most inconvenient time to go down with a bug, just as the New Year is starting, and I am supposed to be organising myself and deciding what I am going to Do Next.

To anybody I have seen in the past four or five days, may I say that I have tried as hard as I could not to breathe on you, and have been washing my hands like crazy at every available opportunity.  If I have given you the lurgi then sorry about that.