Shiners and Fairy Wings

My Oldest Friend has been here with her family. We never went to the same school but my Dad was her family doctor and we remember each other from Brownies and Speech and Drama classes, awkward girls reciting exam pieces with exaggerated inflection. Later came tennis coaching, discos in the village hall and 18th birthday parties of mutual friends. Then, quite by chance we both applied for the same Oxford College. I had taken a year off to teach in Africa but when I got there she was established, welcomed me in and introduced her friends. Two Essex comprehensive girls from the same village, there was an instant bond.

My Friend married an Australian and they head ‘home’ for a holiday with their three children every two years. So stopping off in Hong Kong is their logical choice and our great good fortune. I tell our youngest that her Godmother is coming to stay and she tells me she will have wings and a magic wand.

I am at the arrivals gate at Hong Kong International Airport when my husband calls to say our 3 year old has slipped off a chair, bashed her head and has a cut above her eye. Should he take her to A&E? Why does this always happen on Friday nights?

The difference from A&E at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital on a Friday night, however, is that there isn’t a crowd of drunkards with mashed faces feeling sorry for themselves in the waiting area and she is seen instantly. The only wait is when the duty doctor says he doesn’t want to operate himself, thinks a general anaesthetic might be required and calls a consultant plastic surgeon away from his Friday night dinner. This is reported to me by phone in the car as I drive our guests back from the airport. Just how big is this little cut above the eye, I begin to wonder.

All three of our boys have had spells in A&E, usually on Friday nights. They have been glued, stitched and steri-stripped back together with or without local anaesthesia and all have the scars to show for it. On one occasion after a fall I had to restrain our second son while his head was stitched up and his four year old brother looked on in horror so I don’t envy my husband’s role. We all hope he can dissuade the doctor from a general as that will mean an overnight stay for one of us when, let’s be honest, we’d rather be catching up with our friends.

We are just starting supper when they arrive home.
I was very brave. I didn’t cry, says the three year old.
She screamed blue murder, says my husband. All is well and I am secretly glad that Hong Kong feel plastic surgeons are required for little girls with gashed heads.

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We have a blast with Essex and Auz. It is not their first Hong Kong visit so we eschew the obvious sights and have a fun day at Ocean Park out with all seven children. We ride the helium balloon that rises outside our windows each and every day. We see the pandas munching their bamboo lunch, the seals performing tricks for theirs. Parents and boys ride the Raging River in their log boat while I watch them get splashed with the three little girls, my daughter and her Godsisters, as she has taken to calling them. Then we are delighted by the dolphin show before riding home on the cable car and putting seven exhausted children to bed.

Now it is our turn. We take the Star Ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui and watch the “light show” as the water front skyscrapers flash out their coloured lights and lasers across the harbour. We drink an aperitif in a swanky roof-top bar, move on to Soho to eat Manchurian food and return to Lang Kwai Fung where open fronted bars with names such as The Whisky Priest and Post 97 spill their customers out onto the streets in the warm night air. The streets are packed and wide-eyed tourists wander by, rubber necking the scantily clad beauties who stroll past in impossibly high heels while we sip cocktails and take it all in.

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By Sunday late nights and jet lag have caught up with us all. We go to rugby for the final training session of the season. Medals and player awards are given out by the England Rugby Sevens team, here in preparation for the Hong Kong Sevens next week. They sign the boys’ shirts and when I ask our eight year old whose signature he has on his back, he tells me, He said he was Jonny Wilkinson.

And suddenly it is time for our friends to leave, for the fairy Godmother to don her wings once more and fly off on the next leg of her journey. I want to hold on to them, to the laughter we have enjoyed, to that rare feeling of being with old friends with whom one shares a past, to the news they brought from London of City gloom, of still full Islington restaurants, of mutual friends and places we loved. It has all gone too fast, a fleeting relaxed moment in this edgy place. Tomorrow morning it’s business as usual; my daughter has a huge purple shiner and my guard will be back in place.