tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37400848.post-89146260199701995122008-05-13T14:23:00.005+01:002008-05-13T20:47:39.650+01:002008-05-13T20:47:39.650+01:00OK I am blaming the goldfish. My seven-year-old woke up about 6.30am and started puking. "Ah, the dawn chorus, " I thought. I was up anyway. I could not sleep last night waiting for someone to start retching (my five-year-old was sent home from school yesterday because he also felt ill.) It was not too bad, the puking only lasted till about 10.30am. I think it was the careful way I medicated with <a href="http://www.lucozade.com/index.html">Lucozade</a>. My husband is away - naturally. The children are sick - of course he is not here. He has some biological impulse to get on a train - I think he must be able to smell the germs on their hair. Still, I did not have to cope alone - help arrived mid morning and I eventually managed three whole hours of work. I even thought I might escape out to some fundraiser at the local nursery which has been arranged for weeks and which I was supposed to provide the quiches for. The only problem was my help got sick just before I managed to slide out the door and had to call her own father to drive her home. Now I too am feeling sick. I hope it is not what killed the <a href="http://www.wifeinthenorth.com/2008/04/something-fishy_28.html">goldfish</a> - we buried one under the rose bush having kept his corpse for a while in the freezer hoping for a scientific breakthrough. About a week later, the second one died. We have not got round to burying him yet - he is in an <a href="http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/100002971.html">Anthisan</a> box, bottom shelf. The third one is still with us (in the aquarium that is, rather than the ice tray.) I am beginning to wonder whether it is something which has leapt across the species divide - you read about this sort of thing all the time. Like <a href="http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/">avian flu </a>- with more scales and fewer feathers. If so, my prospects of survival cannot be good.wife in the northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15227214647512546906noreply@blogger.com