The exploded finger

I complain about the school run. A lot. It's groundhog day. Every week ten, boring, slow return eight-mile journeys in my little blue VW Polo with two moaning, poking, hair-pulling boys. We leave the house in the morning looking very smart, hair did, shoelaces tied and shirts tucked in. By the time we arrive the boys inevitably look like they've been dragged through a hedge, hair ruffled, puffy eyed and pink cheeked as though they've been thoroughly roughed up. I've tried everything to stop them squabbling in the car. It's a right flippin' pain in the arse.

School-run selfie time

There's two possible routes to school. We can either join thousands of commuters on the busy city circular at the risk of traffic jams and road-rage or we can take the 'new road'; a deserted three-mile stretch of new road through an unbuilt housing estate with a total of 40 speed bumps along it. The lesser of two evils is the ring-road, purely because my Polo's suspension won't survive 160 daily speed bumps.

So here we are again (don't worry, I'm not typing - I have a voice recorder on my new phone) on the return trip from school along the ring-road. To distract from the usual WW3 fallout in the car, I've decided to have a pleasant chat with Richard while Lyall sits in the back with his headphones on, listening to Cardi B's only track without swear words in it. I thought I'd share our chat with you here.

"How was your day then Rich?"

"Well, I got up, and then I thought about putting on my light but I wanted to try to find my pants in the dark so..."

"No what I mean is how was your day at school?"

"Well. Daddy?"

"Yes, babe?"

"Well when we did our clarinet lesson I was moving the two tables together and then Rudy pushed the tables in and my finger got trapped and it really hurt."

"Oh no Rich is it ok?"

"Yeah but then after when I was putting something in the bin my finger exploded it did."

"Exploded??" I turned the radio down and looked at Richard

"Yeah well kind of, I have a letter from the teacher."

"Let's have a look then Rich"

Richard presented a bruised (but definitely not exploded) finger with a garfield plaster on it.

"It doesn't look too bad now but blood went literally everywhere like even on the carpet and then I sucked all the blood off it 'cos I like the taste of blood I do."

"Oh right well you'd probably like black pudding then Ritchie do you know what that is?"

"No? Is it like Christmas pudding?"

"Well not really, boyo. It's kinda like a sausage made out of blood."

"No way. Is it actually?"

"Yeah! Do you know they eat it for breakfast in the Beefeater pub around the corner."

"No way. Is it for vampires?"

"I don't think you get vampires here. Well anyway where's this letter about your exploded finger?"

Richard unzips his school bag and retrieves a screwed up piece of white paper.

"It's here look, Daddy."

"Oh goodness. It must have been really bad if your teacher wrote to me about it!"

Sure enough, the teacher has filled out an actual accident form for Richard's exploded finger. Apparently after the Garfield plaster was dispensed the teacher kept a close eye on Richard for the rest of the day and should I need further details I must contact the teacher.

To be honest, he seems fine. I don't think I'll bother the teacher. When we got home we took the plaster off (with an extraordinary amount of wincing from Rich) only to find absolutely nothing there.

"It's really swolled up, Daddy though..." says Richard.

"Hmmm. You'll survive, babe."