Lousy news from seat 8C...

We are on a crowded aeroplane, recently landed after a 4 hour flight, in those first few minutes after coming to a halt - the point when the seat belt light has gone off and everybody has stood up, but nobody can get out. Instead everybody surges forward, hungry for space, desperate to be out of this unnatural flying tin can and back on solid ground where the air doesn't smell so much of socks and boredom. The people in the window seats, trapped in place, frown anxiously because they want to stand up but can't without bashing their heads on the overhead lockers. There is much aggressive arranging of hand baggage and general tutting.
In the seat behind me, Eldest yawns, stretches and looks around, bemused at all the people who have magically appeared in the aisle beside her.
"Hello, sweetie," I say. "How are you feeling?"
"My head itches" she says.
"You've probably slept on it awkwardly."
"No," she says breezily. "I think I have headlice."
The people nearest us, crammed stupidly close together - and thus able to hear everything but unable to move away -  laugh with a gentle insincerity. They are mildly amused and mildly concerned, in about equal measure.
"You do not have headlice..." says her mother automatically. But we are both thinking about the text we recently received from school notifying us of an outbreak of headlice in her class. (Warnings of childhood parasite infections via SMS are apparently standard practice in a lot of UK educational establishments these days. I know -  how lucky we all are, eh? What a time to be alive...)
I fix my best fake smile in place and glance around at my fellow passengers. I decide I will make a bit of a joke of it all.
"Can't you speak a bit louder, next time?" I say to Eldest, putting on a hideous 'ha ha, kids say the funniest things, eh?' tone for the benefit of our audience. "The people at the back of the plane can't hear you..."
There are some wry smiles from the crowd.
Eldest looks puzzled. The she stands on her seat, faces the back of the place, and shouts:
"MY HEAD ITCHES. I THINK I HAVE GOT HEADLICE. ."
There is a pause. People further down the plane, hearing this news for the first time, laugh gently. The people immediately around us, I notice, do not laugh nearly as much this time round.
"SHE REALLY DOESN'T..." calls my wife reassuringly down the body of the aircraft,
"YES, WE ARE ALL VERY CLEAN AND PARASITE-FREE...." I add.
"HEADLICE!" calls Youngest, not wanting to be left out.
The women next to me starts to involuntarily scratch at the back of her head.
There is long queue at passport control. A lot of people glare at us while we all stand in it.

Butt-flies, gi-ants and hungry caterpillars

And so, on a blustery and wet bank Holiday Monday, to Butterfly World, newly opened for the Summer season. Their website explained very carefully that only phase one (of three) of the build was complete, so my expectations were duly curtailed ("No, kids, I'm afraid the giant tropical biodome will not be ready - but where it will stand there is a large chalk outline of a butterfly on the ground that you can...look at"), but even so, I was kind of hoping to see, well, a butterfly or two. That seems reasonable, no?
It's not that I'm a huge butterfly fan, or anything, but when an attraction goes to all the trouble of putting an insect so prominently in their name, you do kind of expect a few of them to be knocking about. Sadly, I saw none. I am certain they were there: there was a tropical greenhouse to go into, which under the circumstances it would have been surprising if it contained, say, lizards - but there was a queue, and my need to see butterflies is not as great as my need not to stand out in intermittent drizzle for 45 minutes. And there was plenty else to see, after all.
"There are no butt-flies here..." says Youngest, shivering at my side as we gaze up at the 50ft tall sculpture of an ant that stands a short walk from the cafe.
"No..." I agree, thinking that in this wind they wouldn't have a prayer anyway, they'd all be blown out to sea. "Not yet, anyway. Maybe we'll see some later."
"There was a butt-fly in our garden..." says Youngest.
"Yes," I agree, the sad truth being that the only butterfly we have seen so far today was the one we encountered on the path while walking from our house to the car. And that one was dead.

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