Bloody vampires

We’ve just spent a week cooped up indoors, all five of us and the dog, while rain of apocalyptic proportions made dents in the pavement outside.
The kids where off school for a full week for the May Day bank holiday. That was seven whole days, or 168 hours if you like, or even 10,080 minutes that we had to entertain two high-energy kids within the confines of our house.
We had planned to go places and do stuff (that doesn’t cost money) but every day we woke up and looked out at a monsoon. Every day we were rained out and stayed in.
After day one the kids were at each other’s throats – there were several calls for brother disownment; the air was filled with screaming and threats to man and teddy.
By day three the husband wanted to get rid of the dog. He had taken to eating the legs of the dining room chairs out of sheer boredom and barking at his own reflection in the patio doors – the dog, you understand not the husband, the husband only barks at other dogs.
On day five the sun eventually shone and we all came down with cabin fever, or some similar yucky virus. Because we had been sat in front of Sky News for 120 hours we were convinced we all had piggy flu without the fun of a sunny holiday, which would have really rounded off a rubbish week. Alas no we didn’t, but two of us did have to visit the emergency doctors, which at least got us out of the house. We spent the next two days lying around the living room shouting insults at each other and coughing.
It is nothing short of a miracle that we have survived this week of hell with our sanity uncompromised. If this is a taster of what we laughingly refer to as our summer will bring then God help us.
Vampires were big news in our house this week. Daniel was told by a school friend that they climb up under your duvet at night and drain your body of blood, which I suppose is a fair and adequate job description.
Daniel was an unbeliever until he asked his dad to clarify what a vampire was.
“What’s a vampire?” shouts Daniel from his bed one night.
“It’s a zombie who sucks your blood out,” shouts Daddy from downstairs, “Now go to sleep,”. The two boys were both downstairs wailing within three seconds.
“How do they suck your blood,” asks Daniel the next day. “Do they have special holes in their teeth?”
“No, no, no,” says Daddy, trying to be all informative and put the child right, “why would they need holes in their teeth? They bite your neck and drink your blood.”
“Aaggghhhhhhh!” says Daniel.
Now anyone knocks at the door it’s the vampires calling, a noise from upstairs is the vampires climbing in through the windows. When I did a quick ‘tidy up’ of Daniel’s toys before friends called (I piled them all into his wardrobe and closed the door) and they all crashed out in the middle of the night it was the vampires coming to get him.
Bloody vampires. It was the husband who started all this so he’ll have to get up on the roof with the yard brush and whack any creatures of the night who happen to swoop by.