One of those days....

It started badly.
Children on a go slow, J on a go slower, me not 100% and alternately nagging, chivvying and shouting like a banshee.
Got into car and headed for school.
Tyre blew out sending car skidding off track and into a wall.

We're all fine, car is a mess but I guess a £150 insurance excess is the same for a bad scratch or for 2 new panels, a door handle,  bumper touch up and refix and a mangled alloy wheel.
Oh and I'll have to pay for a new tyre as that bit is wear and tear which isn't covered apparently.
If I'd lied and said that the wall did that too it might have been covered. Oh well honesty is the best policy and all that.

So I waited for the AA while J walked the boys to school - late of course. And then I phoned the insurance company.

And then I took Ben to the dentist - the only part of my plan for the day that came off, crossing off an appointment that would otherwise have been done with two newborns in tow - and he did really well. Our dentists are fab, their children's specialists and there is no sense of it being a potentially scary experience at all.
Which, as some of you may know, is no mean feat when it comes to Ben. At 3 he's had dreadful trouble with his teeth. He had to have 4 removed under general anaesthetic in August - decay caused by some combination of probable coeliac status (like me, and my mum, and cousin), chicken pox while the enamel on his teeth ought to have been developing and the fact that he was breastfed at night  (though the evidence suggests this is the least likely cause).  We agonised over the decision, but it was the right thing to do and his health and eating improved beyond measure almost immediately.
Anyway he's doing just fine, no further decay and we'll keep having the fluoride stuff painted on his teeth every 4-6 months.

Fron the dentist we went to the Bodyshop to have the car damage assessed. Which was fine in itself, the guys at the garage were charming and helpful and obliging. Leaving however was another story.

Guernsey roads are narrow and winding, when they need to work on, or under, them, they close them. The road the bodyshop is on was closed at one end and while it's so narrow it's usually one way it was therefore 2 way from the other end. It was impossible to turn my car the right way out of the lane, it was almost impossible to turn the wrong way. The men digging up the road directed me to go the wrong way up to the closed end and then turn round - now I'd had to do this on the way in, and it wasn't easy and involved turning in a wet, muddy, uneven field. The men insisted on giving me, contradictory: "Right hand down, full lock now, now the other way" type directions and frankly after the day I'd had and in all honesty with my movement severely restricted by the lack of proper gap between bump and steering wheel I simply couldn't do it. And I sat in the car in the middle of the road and sobbed.

At that point an unlikely knight in shining armour appeared in the shape of one of the guys from the bodyshop who had realised I'd have trouble and jogged up to help. He offered to get the car out of the tough bit and did it for me. I could have kissed him.

So I didn't get my bedroom sorted and ready for building the cot at the weekend. I did check the carseat on the buggy though and there's definitely room for both babies that way.

GTT tomorrow, that has to be a better day? Please?