Accidents Can Happen!

 

Hello everyone,

Kerry phoned me to tell me that Roman has had his first accident today, he rolled forward and bumped his nose leaving a little graze.  She said he`s fine despite crying his eyes out at first, like I told her that was the first of many.  From what I remember of my two as young children, Kerry cut her head open on a sideboard when she was two and she had to have several stitches.  Not that she cried for more than a couple of minutes despite her white blond hair being covered in blood.  Jim took her to hospital as I was due to have Daniel at any moment.  When they got back she was so proud of her stitches and couldn`t wait to show me and tell me what a good girl she`d been at the hospital.  Also the day she came back from the doctor after having the stitches removed, she tripped over the front door step and pushed her top tooth through her bottom lip leaving her with a scar that is still there today.  As for Daniel`s accidents.... I could write a book about them, he has had so many so I`ll shorten it to a couple of chapters....no not really, just the one series of incidents that happened just before and during a weeks holiday to Cornwall.

Daniel was always a very cheerful and engaging child, everybody loved him despite and because of his being, well Daniel, the cheekiest child to walk the planet, I say walk, more like hop, skip and most often trip!  The time in question was a holiday in Mullion, a particularly spectacular part of Cornwall when he was five years old.  There were lots of open spaces for a lively child to play safely in, what on earth could go wrong?  Hmm...what indeed!

Unbeknown to us it already had started to go wrong.  Daniel had been complaining of a sore knee, nothing unusual there for him, it did look a bit red on the journey there but I didn`t read much into it.  If you knew him the way we did you`d understand why.  On arrival everything was fine, the children went and explored the caravan site and played with other children on holiday there.  Later in the evening we went to the club on the site and Daniel was limping a bit, again nothing to concern us with.  But when we left the club later that evening he said it was hurting him to walk and when we got back to the van I found out why.  His knee was very red and swollen and it didn`t look right at all, we decided rightly or wrongly to wait until morning and then find the nearest doctor.  Our site was miles from civilization and the reception area was closed for the night.  Come morning Daniel`s knee had turned purple and was swollen further up his leg.  We rushed to find the nearest doctor armed only with an address, and after driving around tiny country lanes for what seemed forever we found this lovely young doctor.  It turned out that there was a small stone trapped inside the knee and it had caused an infection to spread and was travelling rapidly up his leg.  He was very close to having blood poisoning and needed an immediate antibiotic injection...phew.... What a relief that he got the right treatment when he did, who knows what might have happened?  We left there with a bottle of oral antibiotics and Dan`s leg strapped up with orders that it wasn`t to be got wet...hmmm  right!  This was my son and heir that he was talking about, not your average child.  That night Daniel woke up screaming that he`d been stung by a bee, don`t be silly says Mum it was only a dream.  Guess what I found dead on the floor next morning?  A couple of days later while walking along a seafront when Daniel ran ahead, he had chosen the very moment when a large wave came over the top of the sea wall completely soaking him, bad leg as well!  Could anything else happen?  You bet it did.  After the sea wall incident everywhere we went I held on to him as tightly as possible without cutting off his blood supply so I thought the walk along the cliff would be incident free.  The cliffs there were almost 400 ft high, so we kept to the path and obviously didn`t go near the edge, that is until Dan broke away from me and ran over to see what was over the top!  It was like being frozen in time with my little boy waving to me with the sign warning of the danger right behind him.  I didn`t scream or even raise my voice, I think I was too scared which was just as well.  I just asked him nicely to come back and he did just that with a huge grin on his face.  I just picked him up and cuddled him eventhough I felt like shaking him. 

I will never forget that `holiday` and even though the rest of the week (2 days!) passed without incident I felt I needed to get home to have a rest.  But then of course we had to take Daniel home with us.  The poor child being a victim of  Murphy`s law when if it can happen, it will happen...and it did, time and time again...lol!

I`m going now after that long-winded entry, I just hope i didn`t send you all to sleep...lol!  I`m not finished though because here is today`s Ghost story.............

 

 

CARDIFF CASTLE
South Glamorgan
Wales

Some might say that if a resident of a castle has never experienced any phenomena then it is unlikely to be haunted. This is, of course, untrue for the individual might not be attuned to the haunting for some years and then suddenly see the ghost which has been in the building for decades Derek Edwards the custodian of Cardiff Castle in 1975 experienced his first encounter with one of the ghosts after only twelve months working there. He was clearing up after a civic luncheon in the dining room when he noticed the figure of a man in the doorway at the other end of the hall. Mystified, he walked towards the stranger, 'Can I help you Sir?'. The man turned, but as did so the shape and faded away. His children and friend staying with them claimed that they had seen a man looking at them in the bedroom and shortly afterwards poltergeist activity was experiences. Doors were locked by the unseen force, a wardrobe moved and the dog went berserk.

The second Marquess of Bute died in what is now a small chapel behind the library and it is here that the ghost of a man in a long cloak has also been seen, In January, 1977 Mr. Keith Carton of Birmingham visited the castle and was told by the custodian that a year earlier a young couple had told him a strange incident that they had experienced when passing through the door of the chapel. ` A tall man in a cloak pushed past them in a great hurry and when I mentioned it to the chief architect the following day she appeared somewhat disconcerted. That morning she had been standing at the top of the stairway and on turning to her right witnessed a tall figure in a red cloak. The man seemed to be scowling at her and then vanished`. His appearance was identical to the portrait of the second Marquess of Bute whose portrait hangs on a nearby wall.