'It fell off in my hand!' says one of my sons, bringing our floor brush to me in two bits ('Erm, I'd sort of been leaning on it, and I was really comfy, then it kind of broke and I nearly fell on my BAD ARM....'

'It just broke!' my kids chorus when I open the case of my (admittedly old and knackered) sax and find it lying there in a billion pieces.

Things 'just break' around here. It's amazing - as if there's some other force at work. One time, J's favourite jeans SHREDDED THEMSELVES with a pair of scissors. It's amazing what they can do with denim these days.

xx

Agh.... so I FORCE one of my sons out for a cycle even though he'd rather stay home and be glued to Runescape on the PC. And next thing, I'm being summonsed back from the park by J, announcing that our boy fell off his bike and is about to be taken by ambulance to hospital.

You know what? There are far worse things than a broken arm but I never imagined quite how the accident would alter the family dynamics. On a practical level, injured son is spending vast amounts of time at home, and therefore so are his brother and sis, unless J is home at the time. Which makes everyone feel very trapped and a bit grrrr....

I also suspect that they are a tad jealous over all the attention he's getting. One evening I took to waggling his x-ray print-outs in their faces and shrieking, 'Look! Look what happened to your brother! How would YOU feel if your bone had popped out?' Am not proud of that. Have probably mentally scarred them. Anyway, fingers crossed the cast comes off on Monday, just in time for our hols in France. Cast is now a grubby, manky old thing and not the 'badge of honour' people said it would be. My son hates it.

AND SO TO WORK...
I have (ha!) three days to finish a draft of new book before our school summer hols start here in Scotland. Which is obviously not going to happen unless I come over all Barbara Cartland and dictate it to a 'secretary'. Self-imposed deadlines can be great booster and motivator but can also send you into despair, so I think I'll conveniently forget about this one and blame my son for breaking his arm!

It never would have happened if he'd stayed in and played on the computer, like I said he should.

xx