Catch-up

Our friends' little boy is still in hospital. They've moved him to a central London one where he's been in an isolation room, so he won't pick up any germs from wards or patients, and they have tested him for just about everything, including Weill's disease and leukaemia but still can't find out what is wrong. He's all right for an hour or so, then suddenly his temperature whooshes up to 41C (106F) and he flops. He's got no appetite, he's in pain when he walks and they just don't know what's causing it. He's only two, poor little thing.

They're letting him come home tonight but he has to go back in on Monday for more tests. His dad has been spending all night at the hospital while his mum takes the three-year-old and the eight-month-old home, then comes back the next day. The two oldest boys are with a relative. We're all praying it's just a strange virus which will wear off. He's been given heavy doses of antibiotics but they haven't worked. His poor parents are worried sick, as are we.

My first ever jazz piano lesson which took place in the kitchen of the local church, where they have an old upright piano, consisted of being given scales and chords to learn - which I can't do till I buy a keyboard. I bitterly regret having given my Technics digital piano away to a junior school in Highgate. It would have come in handy now. I never really got on with it. It didn't sound in tune, though when I took it back to the shop for testing, their instruments said it was OK and the engineer said it must be my ears, not the keyboard!

Our neighbour who had the near-fatal motorbike accident at the end of Feb has been allowed out of Stoke Mandeville spinal injuries clinic for the weekend. He came home on day release last Saturday and said he was in the strange position of being the most badly injured, but least disabled, person there. He had far more fractures and internal injuries than everyone else, but the spinal cord wasn't damaged so he won't be confined to a wheelchair like most of the others. He is learning to walk on a frame and crutches (the latter being difficult as he can't use his arms very well yet as his shoulders were badly affected) and was looking very well. His ribs were so badly broken that his whole ribcage has shifted to the left and he has a huge lump on his side. He counts himself as extremely fortunate and says he isn't in a lot of pain.

It was funny last night. They tried to get Chi Mimi to come home but she wasn't having any and leaped out of her mum's arms and ran through the hedge to our other neighbour's garden (the 97-year-old who IS out of hospital now!). She must have been lured back eventually as she didn't come in last night, but when our neighbours went out to visit his elderly dad (who doesn't recognise him anyway as he has Alzheimers very badly and is in a secure ward as he kept beating up the other patients and escaping!), she crept back here very quietly and we found her asleep in her cardboard box, tucked away at the back almost invisible, with no paws or tail sticking out for a change. I don't think she wants to be found!

I have given up on a late holiday in the sun and am now planning a trip to Liverpool to see the Magritte exhibition before it closes, and a visit to my sister's in Patterdale, a replacement for the one I had to cancel when I was ill and on antibiotics a few weeks ago. What is it about this area? Is there some strange miasma in the air? I have never known so much illness as I have since I came here, what with Mr G's brain haemorrhage and strokes, and the problems that have befallen friends and neighbours - far more than I have mentioned; I've just highlighted the most serious ones. Perhaps I'd better get out before it gets me!!!