That child is an absolute lunatic. My small one, Mini Seymour.
After closely scrutinising her over the Easter break, I have come to the conclusion that she is in fact part-leprechaun. And a feral one at that.
She eats her fingers all the time. Not just her nails – they are down to the quick. She has now moved on to her actual digits.
She likes to walk barefoot on the rubble pile.
She won’t brush her hair.
She a wind-up merchant.
She sings her way out of trouble and then she wails like a banshee.
Last Thursday, in preparation for our guests, I was tidying The Shed. Mini, meanwhile, was digging up the lawn and making mud pies just outdide the door. Then she promptly marched inside, hoisted her feet into the newly-cleaned sink to wash the mess off, and trailed mud all over the laminate floor.
On Easter Monday, she jumped barefoot into our boggy ditch, then requested baby wipes to clean them. Er – no madam! Wipe them on the grass. Like feral things do.
Every evening before bed, she descends into tears about whatever may be troubling her – and then repeatedly asks me to “sort out” her ears and her verrucas, as if these are somehow part of the normal bedtime routine, like lullabies and Horlicks. I tell her that her verrucas are all better now, and the only reason she can’t see this is because her feet are so filthy from being in the ditch that she can’t appreciate the progress we have made with the Bazuka.
As for her ears? That child can hear her name muttered from six miles away and the only hearing loss she suffers from is selective. But ears and verrucas do seem to appease her when she is ululating about missing her best good friend Maggie (who has moved to pastures new), or how unfair life is in general.
I find her up trees. She gets scars on her face, and grunions between her toes. The child has hair that goes in all directions, and she simply cannot stay clean for more than thirty-nine seconds.
This last week, though, Mini Seymour has been quiet, and non-confrontational. She hasn’t climbed any trees, nor acquired any scars. She has remained still, and hasn’t eaten me out of house and home. Because this week, she has been struck down with a horrible bug, rendering her bent double, pumping her little right leg to work the remains of the bile out of her shrivelled stomach every hour, or whenever she even sniffed at something consumable. Poor girl! I am sure she has lost weight. Her sturdy small frame now looks a lot less so, and she is rather pale.
But over the last twenty-four hours, she has rallied. She’s now back to normal, hollering out directions and orders like a compact Boudicca as I push her around in an old Phil and Teds buggy. She’s back to winding her siblings up, with a devilish grin on her cheeky little face.
Tomorrow, I shall take her to Ye Olde Sweet Shoppe – this is now “a thing”. (We’ve done it twice – but that was enough for her declare it as a sacred ritual.) Once she is over an illness, but still duly observing the 48 hour rule at school, we go to the bonbon centre of the world (in Steyning) and tempt her taste buds with their never-ending selection of tubs and jars, full of glorious joojubes, lollies, floral tips and liquorices. I allow her to choose what she desires – within reason, of course, and thus her confinement is at an end.
And I can go out running again!
Mini Seymour’s “Ear and Verruca Kit” as laid out for me, by her, last week.
(I’m not really sure what she expected me to do…)
0 Comments