The first thing I heard was a worrying thunk thunk thunk, and then a muted ‘ow’. My son had tumbled down the last few steps into a friend’s garden and microseconds later came an ear-splitting yell. I scooped him into my arms and prodded his body to make sure all of it was acceptably solid. An initial scout around the vital parts reassured me that nothing had been crushed or mangled, save for an oozing indentation on his lip, now filling up with blood like the bilge well of a 19th-century whaling ship.
I brought him inside where he deposited a lasagne’s worth of snotty gore on to my shoulder. I placed my hands either side of his face to inspect his lip. It looked a little swollen, but, thankfully, nothing else was damaged aside from his confidence in vertical navigation.
