At two twenty-eight in the morning precisely I was awakened by Cream Cake, Cream Cracker, Cheese Cake the sweet little terrier belonging to Hayley (but very much mine while I’m here and Hayley is away on a “pampering” few days with her sister and mother). Obviously, I hadn’t given Cheese Cake enough to eat at dinner time and perhaps he wanted to know that I was there for him; anyway, I didn’t mind getting up and seeing to him but I couldn’t get back to sleep. Cream Cracker dozed off on the sofa in the covered verandah whilst I lay fully awake in my king-sized bed – only a screened door was between us.

I decided that it was the pain in my second toe on the left foot (the one that had been pierced by a thorny bougainvillea stem through my rubber thong sandal earlier in the day) which was keeping me awake. I reached down and felt my toe – yes it was swollen. Now here in Australia you have to be careful in the heat with infections, so with this very much in mind I delved my hand into the top drawer of my bedside cabinet and felt around for the tube of tea-tree cream, which I had used with lavender stew to make a toothpaste concoction at bedtime (forgot the Colgate). After fumbling around in the dark for some time I eventually came across the familiar tube, squeezed out a small portion and rubbed it into the affected area.

“Perhaps I haven’t put on enough,” I thought to myself and I imagined my foot getting redder and bigger, and then blacker… and finally having my foot cut off, all for want of a larger dose of tea-tree cream.

On this occasion I squeezed out a much more generous measure and made an effort to rub the cream over and in-between each toe, and all the top half of the infected foot.The cream was soothing but still I couldn’t sleep.

Instead of counting sheep I envisaged the faces of several of the children with whom I went to primary school – in Grade 1 at Manly West! There was Kim McIntyre with baby teeth, ringlets and bows (I even took note of her pretty check dress); Erena Samootan – short fair hair and dark Russian eyes (in a plain check dress – no shoes); Clare Huckfeldt – pretty, blonde and blue-eyed (plain green pinafore dress and white blouse). Then there were the boys: Darrel Stone – olive skin, big brown eyes and black hair; Robert Rutledge – fair skin, red lips, dark hair and very skinny; Peter Carney – blonde, pink and stupid-looking; Larry Street (or was it Jimmy Street?) – skinny, freckly, blue veins and with an ability to bite his own toenails (ah, toenails!)…. and so on. Mr Mitchell came into my mind and I fell to sleep marvelling that I saw him in relation to my five-year-old self (although he hadn’t been my teacher in Grade1).

At seven o’clock in the morning I awoke and looked at the time on my mobile. Also on the top of the bedside table was a blue and yellow tube of sunscreen factor 30+. I was about to wonder where it had come from when I realised… By pure good chance my second toe hasn’t developed gangrene just yet – or sunburn for that matter!