C'est la vie en rose

Hartley’s fever broke at around two this morning and Bruce and I did a sleepy high-five in the dark before settling back into a fitful sleep. At about four, Hartley woke again, this time in tears. His little head began another slow burn, and by eight o’clock, his fever was back in full force. We called the NHS help line, and the person on the other end of the phone said some vague things about Swine Flu before referring us to an emergency clinic in Crouch End.

We bundled up our little boo and rushed him down there, only to find that the doctor seemed relatively unconcerned, even after he misunderstood that his fever had only come on in the last few days and not weeks as he’d imagined. We’ve had a trip to Paris planned for ages, and as it’s coming up tomorrow, we were certain we’d have to cancel. But the doctor wrote us up a prescription for antibiotics just in case we needed a Plan B, and told us to have a nice time.

So the rest of the day has passed in a flurry of activity - not only in preparing to leave for Paris, but in getting my application together for my leave to remain, as my visa runs out soon and we have to pop it in the mail the day after we get back. In addition to proof of having passed my Life in the UK test* and upward of eight hundred pounds, we also need to provide several documents demonstrating that we’ve been cohabitating for the last two years. One would think a marriage certificate would suffice, but one would be sorely misguided in that thinking.

If you’re well acquainted with the pair of us in real life, you will know what our organisational skills are like. They are like someone carefully filed every single letter, bill, receipt or notification in a well-ordered cabinet, in a well-ordered study, and then lobbed a Moltov cockatil into the midst of all that order. And then rubbed their hands together and said, Okay, now where did I put that Council Tax bill from 2006? I tell you, trying to gather the supporting documentation whilst force-feeding our screaming, choking infant his thrice-daily antibiotics has been fun. Great fun.

But although we are closer to fleeing the country in distress than setting out on a great adventure at this point, I have high hopes that tomorrow Hartley’s fever will have disappeared, and that we’ll be able to pull off this packing/leaving the house stint within the first few hours of waking. Or at least I’m folding dresses, t-shirts and baby blankets like that’s what I think. Going through the motions of belief is half the battle.

If anyone reading has ever done Paris on a budget and with an infant, your ideas on some baby-friendly sights and activities would be greatly appreciated. We haven’t exactly had time to do our research.

A tout a l’heur!


*I think I could probably wring a whole new post out of that experience, and will probably try at some point this month.