Getting to know the A&Es of London

About three hours ago, kids were in bed, dishes were done, and I was just sidling up to our iMac for a quick recap of our relatively uneventful weekend on this blog... when a piercing shriek erupted from Parker's room. Although we've gotten quite good at ignoring the sound of crying moaning/complaining/children at night, this one sounded a little different. Parker rarely gets too fussed about anything, and in his hollering we started to think something might really be wrong. As he writhed and convulsed in Karen's arms, we agreed that it was unusual/scary enough to merit a visit to our local emergency room. Which required finding finding out where our local ER ('A&E' in the local lingo) actually is located (Hampstead, not far), calling a taxi, strapping the howling baby Howell into the Ergo (forward facing) and hopping in. It all happened quite quickly...

...and what do you know, in highly predictable manner, Parker screamed his head off for about 30 seconds in the cab, then got quiet for a minute or so, then started looking around with a fascinated look of 'hold on, this is kind of cool, I'm out on the town with Dad' expression, and showed no signs of any discomfort or distress. From then on, and throughout our 45 minute wait at the A&E, he was back to his normal smiley self, cooing, looking around, reaching for buttons to push (which is not really a good idea in a hospital). When the nurse told me there was a 3 hour wait to be seen by a pediatrician and that my son did indeed seem to be pretty ok, I shrugged my shoulders, hopped back into another minicab, came home and put Parker to bed. Go figure. Since I can't ask him what that was all about -- and indeed the guy is showing no signs of a desire to speak anytime soon outside of grunts and a few spare words ('mama', 'dada', 'dadie' (Sadie), 'baba' (bottle), 'brush') -- it will remain a mystery. In any case given that this was his second visit, he seems eager to get to know the A&Es of London.

And while we're on the topic... I must say I have been impressed by Britain's National Health Service in these two experiences, where in both cases the hospitals seemed to be reasonably well run and the doctors professional. The main thing that strikes an American is the lack of any attempt to charge you for visiting (no billing info taken, they do not even ask for ID, just a name and address). There is something that seems 'right' about such a system, although I know NHS has plenty of its own financial problems. In any case... here's hoping they guy sleeps till morning. 

So any other news will be omitted, except to say that we're feeling rather exhausted with it all, but little by little are making some inroads into feeling at home here. The local Swiss Cottage leisure centre, which we joined this week, has a great gym (with drop off daycare!) that we plan on making a regular part of our weekend routine. And we still love our place: here's a little video tour of our digs.