WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CHILD IS ILL

Waiting for a kid to get over an illness is a bit like waiting for a BT engineer who said he would come at 8am but actually comes at 5.30pm the following day. You take the day off, you pace, you worry, you get frustrated, you watch TV, you flick through magazines and you look out of the window and think 'GOSH I REALLY WISH I COULD GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE BEFORE I DIE.'

My child isn't very well. Nothing serious  - just a non-specific and nasty winter virus of the kind most people get just before Christmas, the kind that makes mince pies and stuffing look as appetising as poo. As I write this, he's watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon and looking woeful. At 4 am he needed water, at 5 am he needed water, and at 6 am he woke up crying and dizzy with a temperature similar to the Earth's Core. Then we watched a Japanese cartoon called Monsuno, which is the shittiest programme EVER. After that there's been more telly, books, writing, a nap and some DS. Lots of moaning and wet flannels and untouched toast. We've been housebound so long I'm starting to feel like Grandma Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. What is the world like out there? Does it have many shiny things?

Of course, it could be a lot worse, and for many families it really is. This is just a standard issue ailment, so I can't imagine what it's like to contend with a long term illness. When your kid is ill, even with something boring, it feels horrible. I hate it. It's like you're hanging around waiting for an unpleasant invasive procedure sometime in in the not-too-distant future, like a colonoscopy or a smear test. You feel a nagging stress that no number of magazines about Anne Hathaway's vagina can quell. You can't relax, day or night, for fear of being woken up by a crying, overheating lump of unassailable distress. You can't detach yourself, because they are you, except you feel perfectly healthy, and you'd quite like to do something other than offer hugs and dispense Calpol, like go to the pub, or do a human pyramid, or ride a motorbike through a circle of fire. You are the opposite of Monsuno. You don't have monster power in your hand, and you don't control the battle. You have no power, and you can't even convert into a tarantula/wasp/turtle at the touch of a button, which quite frankly sucks.

All you can do is wait. Wait for them to get well, and go back to normal, so you can shout at them about leaving things on the floor and tear your hair out and write moany arsed blogs about how they don't behave themselves. I cannot wait. In the meantime, could someone go out and get me a Dominos? Ta.