Richard Hearn is itching to be germ free

The Boy and Youngest™ have both just had chickenpox. It cleverly managed to straddle the entire Easter holidays, and was the Easter gift that kept on giving. Just as The Boy was starting to feel himself again, Youngest™’s first spot appeared.

It’s horrible when your child is ill. With chickenpox, you’re trying to explain things will get better, less itchy etc, but a few days is a lifetime to The Boy and Youngest™. You want to have the illness for them.

You’ve also got to administer the medication, both internal and external. Internal medication wasn’t too difficult. As parents we had a medication chart to ensure our own amateur nursing handover included the midnight Calpol, but our main problem was that Youngest™ wanted a dose of The Boy’s medication when he was perfectly well. The external medication was trickier. I wouldn’t say the calamine lotion worked too well. A teaspoon worth of it went on The Boy and he made such a fuss that even ninety minutes later it was like putting Long John Silver to bed. (Not the parrot, let me stress, just the stiff leg that The Boy dragged up the stairs in an amateur dramatic fashion.)

It has left us – and particularly my wife – going a bit stir crazy. I remember having chickenpox myself at the age of 27 – I’ve quite literally got the scars to prove it. I ended up looking like something out of a sci-fi film, no, not Barbarella, but one of the aliens out of V. However, in some ways I look back on it fondly. Quarantined in a Hove flat, I read Fermat’s Last Theorem, a great popular maths book. Yes, I know how exciting that sounds, but as this was pre-parenthood, I could lie on the sofa guilt-free with a cast-iron medical excuse for not having
to leave the house. A spotty bliss.

Back to the present, and itchy and scratchy take turns in either sitting on the sofa feeling unwell, or wanting to race around and play. This mismatch of moods causes a certain amount of tug-of-war. Each time we’d just about distracted Youngest™ into forgetting he was unwell, The Boy would pipe up “Are you itchy? Chickenpox is itchy, isn’t it?”
Now that’s entertainment.