Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
They were the only ones keen to venture outside - the builders had, at some point, downed
tools and hadn't been seen for a fortnight, and also it seemed that Samuel hadn't been out for
months either. He had been on a school trip at the end of March where the whole class went
to Île d'Oléron for a week, from which most of them returned with some kind of virus render-
ing them all bedridden and exhausted, or 'teenage' as it used to be called. Our doctor wasn't
happy.
In the continuing efforts to improve my French it was decided that I would take Samuel to
see the doctor, which inspired no-one with confidence and irritated the doctor even more than
usual. A confirmed and openly honest misanthrope, it appears that one of his few pleasures in
life is the occasional visit from Natalie, where they can just chat about horses and paddocks
and the like. When I turn up, he looks me up and down, rolls his eyes at what I'm wearing,
angrily remembers my 'unmanly' request for a vasectomy and can barely look me in the eye
after that. He's an old-fashioned doctor and therefore it was something of a surprise when,
while examining Samuel, he declared that school trips should be banned. That generation of
adult normally mock the mollycoddled kids of today and their weak antibodies, stressing the
importance of dust and muck in their diet in order to build up an effective immune system.
Not this doctor, 'They should be kept indoors,' he said, clearly not wanting the business.
School trips, he declared, are basically a petri dish of germs and it's no wonder most children
come back ill, especially with meningitis, he whispered menacingly while poking a massive
cotton bud down poor Samuel's throat. Various blood tests, swab tests and a lot of pok-
ing about later and it was decided that Samuel had
Staphylococcus aureus
throat carriage,
something so serious that not only does it not have a catchy shortened name but a lorry-load
of antibiotics was needed, lots of rest and Samuel needed to be quarantined. In other words,
stay in bed, don't talk to anyone and just pop some pills; this hardly constituted a massive
change in behaviour for Samuel who had taken to spending almost all of his time in his room
anyway, voraciously watching any film that came his way and eschewing daylight like an al-
bino owl.
Not that there seemed to be much daylight to enjoy - it was just heavy dark clouds followed
by wind and rain. The swimming pool, which we had prepared earlier than any previous year,
lay there mocking us and in between storms Maurice would run out and check the temperat-
ure.
'It's twenty-one!' he'd declare. 'It's never going to be ready in time.'
Maurice's birthday was coming up and we desperately needed the weather to improve or we
would have a dozen six-year-old boys running around the house, causing mayhem and noise,
leaving some things lying around and breaking other things. It would be carnage. I had lost
money by cancelling gigs, Pierrot's vet bills were mounting up, I had to bite the financial bul-
let and put the pool heater on and then hope for the rain to stop. If not, Pierrot wouldn't be the
only one in crisis.
