Burnt Toast

You need to read the previous posting before starting on this one.

At one-o-clock this morning we awoke to the smell of burning toast, again. Given our recent experience, the first move was to open the window and check out our neighbours down the street. Medical staff were visiting them at the time, so we assumed (for just a second) that they were having toast. Now, if you had seen the kitchen that I saw, you would definitely not stop for a snack.

So who was burning the toast this time? We could see nothing out front or out back. Perhaps we should check our own kitchen to see that nothing had been left on?

Gingerly, I crept downstairs and found a youth in my kitchen, calmly cooking himself breakfast. At least we weren't being robbed and my first instinct was sympathy, rather than anger.

I must have been half asleep because it took a minute to dawn on me that the youth in question was our son Dan who has Angelman syndrome and serious learning difficulties.  I would trust him in a kitchen in the same way that I would trust an arsonist in a hay barn; ie not at all. He was forcing slices of bread and cheese into a toaster while snarfing bananas and un-cooked porridge oats using alternate hands.

You may laugh, (I was hoping you would) but when you add that he has type-one diabetes, it gets a bit serious; we had no idea how much he had  eaten but we took a blood test and he was still within the acceptable limit, so we returned to our normal routine; mild panic. Amazingly, Dan went back to sleep as though nothing had happened.

Fast-foreword to dawn, today. Dan had a very early start with breakfast and kids TV and then checked out the news on his ipod, just like any other morning. We always start his school-day routine at 7.30 so he is ready for his taxi by 8.30; only this morning I was to be interviewed by the BBC at exactly 8.30.

Johnny Dee from the BBC arrived at 8.15 in his radio van; parked in front of Dave's house next door and cranked up the mast of his transmitter. At this point a lot of neighbours went on line to pay their TV license, I guess.

Johnny and I found that we couldn't get a signal in the back garden and needed to do the show from the roadside out front so we moved, made contact with the BBC and waited on stand-by. Then Dan's taxi arrived and Richard the taxi man recognised Johnny from his stage act. A conversation ensued. Then, blow me, neighbour Dave came out of his house and chatted with Johnny about the news that the station was broadcasting a recipe for making custard pies. They were also asking listeners to name candidates to be "pied". Of course, Rupert Murdoch was high on the list.

Then we were on air to talk about butterflies for two whole minutes. As soon as we came off the line we made a second live broadcast via the BBC Peterborough station, then finally, with everything settled down, we recorded a longer broadcast for use later in the day. Breathlessley I noted that it was still only 9 am and we had a full day ahead of us.

Happily, we were still not burnt toast.