Wild things

It's that time of year again. No, not THAT time of year, but rather the one where I start crawling around the garden taking photos of small beasties.

The usual busy run of Wednesday activities for the kids, including a mad dash to pick Katherine and friend up slightly later than planned from their art class: slightly later because of having to reconfigure the Jeep in the DIY store car park to get in the very large sheet of mirror glass we bought on a whim, without checking it would fit.

After all that excitement, we were just sitting on the terrace with a well-earned cool drink, when there came the distinct and quite unpleasant sound of a child screaming in pain... I ran to the bottom of our garden and Conor appeared, saying that Enzo, his pal from next door, had fallen out of a tree and was badly hurt. I ran in to where he was - no easy task as they were in the deepest darkest most bramble-ridden part of the wild area which lies beyond our garden. Enzo was sitting in amongst lots of fallen trees with one side of his head covered in blood. He had pretty much torn off his ear. Conor was dispatched to get Enzo's mum and I figured out how to get him out of there. I think he was a bit perplexed by my asking if his legs hurt - when to him it was perfectly obvious that it was his ear that was the problem - but I eventually got him up on his feet and had him understand that I couldn't carry him for the first bit as the branches were too low. He was very brave really, and scrambled over the fallen trees to where I could pick him up and run to look for his parents.

As is so often the case, the real crying started when he saw them. And off they went to the hospital. Later his dad came back and told us he had needed nine stitches. Poor lad.

Conor was in shock over the whole thing. Crying, couldn't eat his dinner, and didn't want to go to bed. I have to admit I was a bit as well - I think I'm quite good at coping with a crisis like that, but afterwards I just go to pieces. And endlessly go over how much worse it could have been.

The kids are now firmly banned from the wild areas outside our garden. I don't think I'll have any trouble from Conor on that rule.