Devenish

Saturday day-trip to Awaji-shima: in retrospect, he wasn't looking too well! Sick infectious child? Have to work? No available family members? Who you gonna call? — Kupu Kupu When we were living in the UK, one of us would probably have had to cancel classes. Even here, this is normally what we would do, but this week—exam week—is different: both Ayumi and I really have to turn up for work. So when, at 2am on Saturday morning, I was told by the duty doctor at the 24-hour children’s clinic in HAT Kobe, that Justin had Influenza A—the result from an on-site diagnostic test that took 10 minutes—and that he wouldn’t be allowed to return to nursery for at least five days, I was stumped. But Ayumi had the answer: at least, the Internet did, and she found it. By lunchtime on Sunday, she had contacted a local nursery/hospital (hospital/nursery?), had made an appointment on line, had taken Justin over for a preliminary assessment, and booked him in to this special nurse...

Click for Justin on New Year's Eve Generally, I try these days to separate my posts: Devenish (this blog) for family-related material; Inishmacsaint , for other writing. But time constraints—as well as the subject matter of this post—force me to merge and be done with it. If you only want to read family news, look away now; the same applies if you don't like opinion pieces informed by personal details. It's Friday afternoon, and I've allocated just one hour for this piece, so the results may be patchy and loose-ended... Over the last few weeks, especially since the school shootings in Newtown, CT, I've been continually troubled by some aspects of that particular tragedy that seem to have gone unreported and so un-discussed. No, that's wrong, for it is the reporting itself, and the associated commentary, which bothers me as much as the deaths of so many children. What upsets me is what seems to be a kind of pressure for moral equilibrium in many people...