I’ve been unwell.

Well, I say I’ve been unwell but it would be more accurate to say that it has been ThePickards who have been unwell. That is, ThePickards in the sense of the family, rather than the website.

Firstly, my one year old puked up explosively on Saturday night. By Sunday night he was pretty much himself again, and we thought it was just one of those things you get with small children until…

We had to each take holiday on Monday because my mother who normally looks after the kids on a Monday was ill herself — she’s had a cough for a few weeks but she decided to add on the vomiting thing on Sunday/Monday.

Now normally I will — as any child should — attempt to wind her up, emphasising how much she’s putting us out and letting us down (which I never actually feel, given that as they are our children, they’re our responsibility, and I just appreciate the fact she’s able to look after them most Mondays and save us on nursery fees — but don’t tell her that, okay?) when she can’t look after them, but this week she sounded so feeble and pathetic I didn’t even have the heart to do that.

So I’d taken Monday morning off work, and took the kids around Newcastle, taking in the delight of Fenwicks Christmas Window at least twice.

For those of you from outside the North East, Fenwicks is a large department store in Newcastle which have had an animated display in their Northumberland Street window dating back … um … I don’t actually know when they started it, but they were certainly doing it thirty years ago when I was a nipper.

Over the years, Fenwicks have had a number of different themes, but tend to focus on “fun” rather than religious themes — although they have done the nativity in the past, they’ve also covered little green aliens (no, seriously), Santa Claus in a tropical island and this year it’s Gulliver’s travel to Lilliput.

Tremendous fun, and well done to Fenwicks for continuing the tradition year after year.

Where was I? Oh yes, spending all morning pushing the double buggy around Newcastle. So by lunchtime, I was knackered. Not that it’s a particularly heavy buggy, but believe me when you’ve been pushing it around for three hours solid you really start to notice it.

Fortunately, my wife had taken the afternoon off to look after the kids, so I just needed to meet up with her, drop the kids off and get into work for a rest. She looked a little pale when I caught up with her and said she was glad she’d taken the afternoon off because she wasn’t feeling well anyway. Although she’d have preferred it if she could have just gone for a lie down rather than needing to look after the kids.

By the time I got home, she was burning up, feeling terrible and basically just needed to be put to bed. She’d been ill herself in the afternoon, and our three year old had stood behind her, patting her on the back and rubbing her back and saying “there, there, Mammy” which made me so proud of him.

Anyway, once the kids and the wife were all safely installed in bed, I thought it was safe for me to sneak out for a quick drink with one of the lads from work, seeing as it was probably our last opportunity to get together before Christmas. I got to the pub about half eight, he arrived five minutes later, and twenty minutes after that I had a phone call saying our three-year old was now being sick.

Darn! So I quickly sorted myself out with a taxi and was home inside about twenty minutes. I took the lad downstairs on the sofa with me for half an hour to let my wife get a break — and meantime was starting to feel none too clever myself. Good job I came home really, then!

Anyway, the lad wanted to go back into bed with us, which was never going to be turned down, partly because he’d been such a good boy earlier on, and partly because he just obviously wasn’t well and wanted to be cuddled in with his parents. So we all snuggled in and went off to sleep.

Can I just say that when it comes to methods of waking people up, one thing I’d rather not try again is being woken up by a three year old vomiting over me. To be fair, it mostly went on the bed clothes, but still…

After that was cleaned up, I went downstairs to sit on the sofa because I thought I was going to throw up, and the other two went off to sleep. So I ended up nodding off on the sofa under a pile of coats, waking up every thirty minutes or so to unleash ferocious belching and almost-but-not-quite vomiting. Nice.

And then I spent most of yesterday feeling grotty (no energy, tired, lethargic) or being asleep (got up around 11am, back to sleep around 1pm, got up around 4pm, back to sleep around 7pm. Now I’ve been accused of being a lazy bugger in the past, but that’s just not like me.

But, in line with everyone else, given 24-36 hours from the onset of the symptoms, I now feel much better and I’m looking forward to getting back to work in the morning (on second thoughts, maybe that’s a sign that I’m still not 100%).

Still, better to get it all out of the way now than have that mixed in with all the other fun and mayhem on Christmas Day…