AFTER a lovely afternoon blackberry picking I came home to find the Teen, holding an ice pack over her eye, her friends looking on in consternation.

The giant toddlers had been left alone for an hour and in that time had managed to turn my front room into a bomb site during a “play fight” in which my poor little girl had suffered a bruised eye – 24 hours before a summer ball.

I just don’t understand. How can they go from comparing shoes and hairstyles one minute to a three-year-old-style wrestling match the next?

Anyway, it was an accident, and when I checked for damage, the bruising seemed superficial. Her eyeball was not hanging out, the Teen told me her vision was not impaired and her pupils were of normal proportions.

She didn’t think there was permanent damage, a view echoed by her granddad, who walked into the pandemonium on the hunt for the “whizzing machine” (remote control) which had gone missing during the incident, so I decided that we did not need to head to casualty.

I am very conscious about wasting the time of my local A&E department since rushing the then child there to remove a grain of sand. Oh, and there was the time I rushed myself there after a pearl stud got lodged in my right ear lobe. So I gave her some more ice cubes and some ibuprofen.

However, at lunch time the following day, the school matron called urging me to take the Teen to the eye hospital as she was complaining of strain.

Feeling terrible that I had not insisted on going the night before, I downed -tools and hot-footed it to the hospital where her eye was tested and checked for a good two hours. Thankfully all was fine.

Then came the summer ball, and I spent another two hours covering up her black eye.

“Mum,” she said. “How will I do my make-up when you die”?

Leaving aside the casual contemplation of my demise, I told her that she’d be able to do her own by that time. I can only hope that by then she may also have outgrown the need for play-fighting.

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