Octogenarians Provide Natural Childcare Solution for Spent Parents in Current Harsh Climate, Thanks to NHS

As any parent of an ebullient 18 month old will tell you, the sort of weather we're having at the moment is crap for kids. The combination of snow, rain and freezing temperatures makes it a mission to venture outside for more than 5 minutes. When you do, you're obliged to dress your progeny in an all-in-one fat suit, which makes them too hot and very prone to falling over. So, you spend a lot of time indoors.

Problematically, studies* show that infants exhibit similar behaviour to battery chickens (e.g. pecking off their own feet, hurling their faeces around, mange, not tasting as good as free-range children etc) when restricted to the confines of the parental home for extended periods. So, as a parent, you are driven to finding places that replicate all the fun of the outside world...but indoors!

This is where doctor's surgeries come into their own as a cheap (well, free, as long as the NHS stays public) and safe alternative to soft play centres. Yesterday, I took my son to the doctor's for the first time. He had woken up with a temperature and one eye resolutely glued shut by his own ocular snot.

Being a contrary little tyke, his symptoms vanish as soon as we approach the surgery door. He bounds into the waiting room in rude health, emitting enough energy to light the whole street. The doctor is the standard hour behind with his appointments. My heart sinks - "he's going to go mental, cooped up in this drab, monochrome cell of a room", I think. The little fella is quick to make the place his own though. The waiting room has the magical combination of battered but functioning toys and indulgent octogenarians, also waiting an eternity to be seen and delighted to kill a bit of time by cooing at a toddler. Before I know it, he is off ramming a broken fire engine repeatedly into the foot of a grateful old timer.

I start to leaf tiredly through an old Sunday supplement. I notice that if you hold a picture of Eddie Izzard upside-down, he looks like Jack Bauer from "24". Further on in the same magazine, I find a picture of the actual Jack Bauer, flip it upside-down and discover that it looks not like Eddie Izzard but more Timothy Spall. I haven't had this much fun in ages. The combination of fatigue and boredom has put me into an almost stoned state of relaxation. I start to wonder who Barack Obama would look like upside down? Judith Chalmers? I'm having "me time".

"Die!!!!" I'm jogged from my reverie by this shrill, harrowing cry. I turn around and the little fella is "playing" with an antique of a woman, who looks like she's got about 3 days to live. "Die!!!", he yells at her again. I can only hope she's deaf as a post. I should say that "Die" is his word for "thanks". Slightly inappropriate, you might think, but he normally delivers it in such a soft, lilting way that it sounds quite beautiful or, at least, Welsh. So excited is he to be in the doctor's surgery that he's yelling everything, but even when it's such a blatantly upsetting word as "Die", nobody seems to mind. They're bored and just happy to be alive, ironically. He's full of beans and loving the attention; for one hour only, everyone's a winner.

The appointment itself is a non-event. He's fine and we're in and out of the doctor's office before you can say "staphylococcus aureus". With more forecasts of snow and heavy rain though, we'll be back time and time again, thanks Aneurin Bevan.

*"Infant behavioural patterns: the effects thereon of strict confinement" Prof L Diddy, 2009