Vom

Adam: "I was especially impressed that, when I clicked Oscar's seat belt in, a little piece of vom hit me in the face".

To be fair, dear Oscar had told us several times today that his tummy hurt. But he wasn't behaving like he was ill. And he ate his breakfast and lunch. So when we'd got the car packed up and had set off to deliver the twins to their parents and he complained again, C said it was because the straps on the child car seat was too tight. We'd stopped to get his coat off so they weren't so tight. Sure enough he complained again, but then joined his brother in slumber. (He'd been awake since about 4:30am.)

We'd passed the power station beside the A453 when he woke up again and were just coming up to Junction 24 on the M1 when I heard a 'hulllpph' noise. It wasn't quite the "Ralph and Huey" sound with which fans of Billy Connolly will be familiar, and there were no diced carrots, but there was copious penne pasta, pasta sauce, toast, fromage frais, and the (unfortunately named) Cheerios he had for breakfast, mushed up of course.

At the last second, I was able to turn onto the A6 instead of taking the motorway. Fortunately there's a lay-by just a little way along the road.

The until-recently alimentary material was copiously caked across Oscar's chest and lap with collateral splatting on the car seat and seat straps.

We were ill equipped for this emergency. At least there was a change of clothes in the suitcase, but no water for rinsing or washing, disposable gloves for handling chunder, spare plastic bags for smelly clothes etc. All we had for cleaning up is a pack of baby wipes.

I lifted poor Oscar out and plonked him by the side of the road. He was soaked to the skin so off came the top and vest and jogger bottoms while C found him something to wear. He was briefly a forlorn nearly naked little figure standing, in the cold, in the middle of a collage of stomach contents with traffic whizzing past.

The contents of an old bag of gardening tools were emptied into the boot and the bag requisitioned for pukey clothes. C got him into the front of the car and put some new clothes on him while I tried to clean up the seat. Without the baby wipes we'd have been stuck but they were far from effective on seatbelt webbing and in the nooks and crannies of a child car seat. I did my best, but was thankful that our rendezvous was just 30 minutes away.

Relieved of his abdominal burden Oscar was suddenly lively and cheerful. ("I saw a motorbike!") His brother slept through the whole thing.

The car seat was a write-off.