Of toe nails and slime

I've just been reminded of something that happened whilst we were on holiday in July. Have you ever been in a situation where your brain just doesn't compute and you can't make any sense of what you're hearing? That's what happened to me.

We'd been out on an excursion, which would have meant a four or five a.m. alarm call, a five hour (full on) session with our guide and back to the hotel before lunch. In the afternoon we'd settled ourselves under our favourite tree by the pool, books and iPods at the ready, brains disengaged and total sun block dutifully smeared. My mind was doing that fluffy thing it does on holiday - "what do I need next, iced coffee, food, sleep or a swim?" Basically I was in somewhere that isn't home, limbo, heaven. Then I heard a little voice next to me say, "this nail varnish is crap." I know I heard it, I also know the voice was P's but it didn't compute. I summoned up the energy to open my eyes and glance sideways, and sure enough P was fiddling with his feet. My brain did that fluffy thing again. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and tried to focus on the sound the water was making lapping at the sides of the pool. Useless. "What did you just say" I asked, and looked again to my side. Sure enough he was still looking at his feet when he repeated, "I said this nail varnish is crap, it's all coming off." My brain decided it couldn't make any sense of this so turned to mashed potato and slowly switched off just to be safe.

A couple of weeks later we were back home and I was chatting to a friend, Jenny. It turns out that P went to Jenny for a pedicure before we went on holiday and she put (god only knows why) sun protection on his toe nails. No, it wasn't nail polish after all, but I'm still having problems getting to grips with sun protection for toe nails. What's all that about!

The reason I was reminded of this happened this evening. P came home from work and told me a colleague announced today that she had to leave work immediately. "She is pregnant and the doctor has told her to have total rest during the pregnancy because she's already lost one baby through an ectoplasmic pregnancy." EWWWWWWWWWW!