Another New Addition and Illness in Scottish Meanderings

Baby Number 17 has been born in the family - Evangeline Grace Brown - born on the 16th February. (I’m very happy to see her first name has been shortened to Eva already). Look at this head of hair :)


Proud Dad Alistair.


And that’s knocked me off my perch as first equal (with my sister) being the granny with the most grandchildren from one child in the family as this was Alistair’s fourth baby. Not all from the same mum - he has one daughter who lives in Orkney with her mum and two boys from a previous relationship who go back and fore between him and their mum. The relationship he’s in now apparently was rocky around the time his girlfriend Roz got pregnant but they worked on it so I just hope it lasts.

Mum would be rolling in her grave.

I had mentioned to Nikki at the end of last year that we were really lucky with all the kids in the family - no-one has had any major crises at all and everyone is relatively healthy. Of course now I wish I hadn’t said anything because poor wee Matt, who will be 3 in March, is going through the mill at the moment. I touched on this briefly in previous entries but I know because my entries are generally so long, things can get missed so I’ll recap.

Cat, his mum, (my brother Ian’s daughter) took him to the doctor around the 20th of December last year because he kept being sick sporadically and it wasn’t clearing up. The doctor decided to get him admitted to hospital where they did tests and got him on a drip but couldn’t find the source of the problem. He was in all through Christmas but it took until the end of December before he managed 24 hours without throwing up and he finally got home on the 30th. But threw up again on the 31st.

In the meantime, on the 4th January, Cat delivered his baby brother, Oli! All went well with the birth thank goodness.

They had an appointment back at the hospital in the first week of January for further tests for Matt and he was given a CT scan - from that they found a lump so decided to admit him to Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital on the 10th. So Cat, Mike & Matt, complete with newborn, had to up sticks and travel the 100 miles down there where Matt was given an MRI and that revealed a brain tumour :(

A few days later he got an operation lasting about 4-5 hours and that all went well - they took a biopsy but had to wait two weeks for the result of that. Matt made a good recovery from the op but then had problems with constipation and then diarrhoea. And then Cat went down with vomiting and diarrhoea. Then Mike! The only good thing about all that was that Cat was isolated from the ward to save passing anything on so it helped her get some much needed rest as she was completely exhausted at this point. Thankfully Oli was a star and just doing what newborns generally do (Mike's Mum & Dad went down with them to help with him).

They finally got home on the 25th January - luckily Ian & Margaret (Cat’s mum and dad) had come over on the 20th December for 5 days purely by chance to spend Christmas here then were supposed to be going up to Skye to spend Hogmanay there with friends. They cancelled that and stayed on to help Cat & Mike out and look after their 2 spaniels whilst they were away. They finally got back home on the 5th February after being here for 42 days longer than planned!

On the 27th January, the biopsy results came through with the unfortunate result that the tumour is malignant so will require further treatment. Apparently it’s a fairly rare one so they were told they might have to travel as far as Germany for radiotherapy! However they’ve since been informed they can get what they need in Manchester so although it’s not as bad as Germany, it’s still a major upheaval. They had to go down the week before last for a few days preparation then they go back this weekend for a couple of weeks before finally going down again for 6 weeks of radiotherapy - the dogs are being taken to relatives in the Lake District this time.

So poor Matt completely missed Christmas and will spend his 3rd birthday in March having radiotherapy in a hospital in Manchester.

I must admit I've caught myself thinking on occasion that we’re tending to produce helicopter parents nowadays who fuss at the slightest thing but thank God for that GP who sent Matt up to hospital in the first place and also a consultant who wasn’t happy with the CT scan and wanted a second opinion because that’s how the tumour was picked up (and was hopefully caught in good time).

I had literally JUST finished typing that when Nikki phoned me saying "Was it being sick that was Matt's first symptom?" I knew exactly what she meant because Ruari has been sick off and on for the past week or so - the girls had a sickness bug 2 weeks ago so we assumed he'd picked that up but then after that cleared, a few days later he was sick again but again it cleared up but he threw up on Wednesday night and was sick a couple of times yesterday as well. I think she was hoping I would say oh stop panicking whereas I was desperately trying to say (kindly) "Get off the phone and call the surgery!" (It shuts at 6 p.m. and this was 5.20 p.m.)

Obviously what happened to Matt is playing on her mind - also the fact Mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour shortly before she died. However she managed to speak to a doctor and they told her to come down straight away - checked all his vitals and nothing seems amiss so she was just told to keep an eye on him over the weekend and if anything changes she's to phone NHS 24 (24 hour service where you can get advice over the phone and be seen by a doctor at the hospital if necessary). Her friend is coming round tonight so that'll take her mind off it for a while and I'll be going out tomorrow night so that'll help as well. The girls are at their Dad's so at least she doesn't have them to see to.

Prayers, positive thoughts, whatever you can do will be much appreciated for Matt in this next trial he has to go through.


I’ve made a little progress with my New Year resolutions.

(3) Counselling
I’ve met with the Agency Manager, Christine, and we’ve set up a plan for the way forward. She acknowledges it’ll be hard for me physically but feels I’m probably more confident than I think otherwise I wouldn’t be pushing for this to happen (I’m not sure about that but I see where she’s coming from). Next step is to set up a pseudo counselling session with a member of staff there (she’s going to do this) to see if I have the stamina to sit and listen to someone for 50 minutes and do the paperwork afterwards. She doesn’t need it observed but feels it would be useful to have some feedback once it’s over in case there’s anything I need to work on.

(4) Weight
I’ve started counting calories but can’t get them under 1700 on average daily - I’m hoping that might be enough for a really slow weight loss over a period of a year.

(5) Evening Activities
I managed along to a meeting of the children’s writing group I mentioned in my last entry which was held in my city so no long drive to get there. To my dismay though, the symptoms kicked in as usual after an hour of being there although I was able to last out to the end of the meeting. However (stupidly in my opinion) this particular group are part of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and will only allow someone to come along to one meeting to see if they like it. Thereafter you have to become a member to go to further meetings. Membership is £90 a year and I’m really struggling to find out what you get for that - apart from constructive criticism of your writing from the Society and the chance to attend workshops and conferences. It seems a lot for very little.

Also unfortunately, I had a reaction the next day from being out in the evening and it was a major struggle to get through Italian and Lily’s swimming class. So at the moment that’s going to have to be a no.

As well as that, Nikki & the kids and I were out at Spectra, Aberdeen’s Festival of Light (focussing on Scotland’s coasts and waters) last Saturday evening which was an impromptu decision by her once I got out there and consisted of a good couple of hours of walking around town with the kids and the buggy. Nikki carried Ruari for most of it and I found the buggy quite helpful as it acted as a sort of walker for me :)

I was dead impressed with what was laid on - beautiful holograms played out on some of the city’s main buildings to some evocative music, some for 10 minutes at a time and all for free. There were also laser lights which the kids could fire up the building themselves and various giant octopus tentacles all over the place (which Nikki kept wanting to call testicles :)

Here's one of the slideshows - excuse Nikki & I yapping through it - I didn't think to shut up while I was taking it!


Unfortunately one of the places had long queues so we had to pass on it which was a shame because I had a look at the Council’s YouTube video of what we missed and it looked spectacular. {Janet: - I think they’re doing something similar for the Festival of Science in Edinburgh - I was hearing them talk about it on the radio today - can totally recommend it for the girls}. It was just a shame Storm Dennis was in full force as the weather was very windy, cold and wet - however we had the kids wrapped up well and they didn’t feel it. And it was a good job we went that night - the following night was the last one and they had to cancel it due to the weather :(

The kids loved it all though - even Ruari was mesmerised - and the girls were asleep within 5 minutes of getting in to their beds once we got home! Not so Ruari - he got a second wind and sat and watched The Masked Singer with us quite the thing while we had our tea. I normally stay and play Scrabble with Nikki once the kids are in bed but I was completely done in so we gave it a miss and I was home by 11.45. But not before I had woken these two Sleeping Beauties up to get to their respective beds!


Oddly I wasn’t too bad on Sunday but there seemed to be a delayed reaction because Monday was a major struggle and if the postie hadn’t rung the bell at 1.30 p.m. thereby getting me out of bed, I wouldn’t have bothered with table tennis at all! As it was I managed half an hour and that was enough.

But at least that was a couple of evening activities tried out.

I had a weird experience with that Masked Singer programme. It consists of various celebrities singing in elaborate costumes and the idea is a panel is supposed to guess who they are by their voices alone. They can be celebrities from walks of life apart from singers e.g. comedians, sports personalities etc. to try and make it difficult. Every week one of the celebrities gets unmasked until one is left as the winner. I’ve been watching it when I’ve been at Nikki’s on Saturdays and several weeks ago, while lying in bed on my phone, I clearly saw what I thought was a picture of one of the singers with her mask off. The person revealed was a young woman with red hair and I vaguely recognised her as Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud.

I couldn’t exactly remember which costume I’d seen but thought it was either The Daisy or Queen Bee - but the thing was neither of them had been unmasked yet. So I just thought I'd been on a page somewhere on my phone where someone had superimposed her face onto the mask showing a guess they’d made as she was someone folk thought could have been one of the singers. I did briefly mention it to Nikki that night but didn’t write anything down because I didn't think it meant anything.

Come the final several weeks later, Queen Bee won the competition and when she was unmasked as - drum roll - Nicola Roberts, I realised what I was looking at was exactly what I saw that morning! I’ve spent ages searching through my Internet history to see if I can find the page I thought I saw again but come up with nothing.

Cue Twilight Zone music.😱