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Just returned from a blissful week in the south of france in our 'van', although getting there was quite a thing!

Prior to setting off (1 week) I took Violet to the homeopath to help to clear the persistent 'frog in her throat' and the small cluster of tiny warts that had developed. After an hour of very careful questioning about her mood, behavior, food choices etc we were sent off with 5 bags of tiny pills (by the way food choices were stinky cheese, cucumber and sweets mainly).

Over the next few days what happened to the wart can only be described as 'the nanny mcphee effect'; in other words this tiny (barely there really) wart grew bigger and bigger and bigger. It was above her eye so having been pretty much invisible it was now there for all to see, the size of a small pea! I was pretty horrified at the speed of growth and could not help but worry about the effects of this growth on her mental and emotional well-being. Violet seemed pretty non plus about the whole thing and after all daddy had said ' you are beautiful with or without a wart' - so all was ok in her world.

I should add, for anyone who still believes that homeopathy does not work I have photographic documented evidence that it does, at least, make warts grow (very large and very quickly apparently).
I agree that this is not everyones idea of a 'cure', however the way I believe this works is that it is getting rid of inherited or acquired viruses or other nasties by expelling them out of the body. By day 5 I was hoping that the expulsion wasn't going to last too long and whichever ancestor she had inherited the wart virus from, wasn't from the middle ages and covered in the things! Lets hope the frog in the throat doesn't amount to anything more than a bit of phlegm! I will continue with the wart later.

Generally we don't fly much, it's not particularly out of virtue, more my husbands hate of air travel. I do, however occasionally find myself feeling virtuous about our minimal carbon footprint (in the flying stakes at least). Strangely this year, just as air travel has become a complete mare we seem to have had several flights booked. We arrived at the airport dutifully some hours prior to our departure time, the moaning had already begun from the husband. Kids fine! To cut a long and tedious story very short, despite the fact that we were not flying BA and the dust had blown over days ago - we had failed to remember the French Air traffic controllers love of striking on a bank holiday and our flight was cancelled - but only after 5 hrs at the airport .

Wart is still growing.

We collected our luggage and headed back out of departure and joined the end of the Easyjet line of 150 people! Everyone was manically trying to get tickets themselves on their phones but the general bad news was that there were no seats available for 3 days. Don't forget BA are on strike and it's a bank holiday! Not much point in waiting in line to be told that news then!

Husband looks at 3 very dejected girls; "I'm not not going" I said with that voice that he knows means he has to save the situation. "We can't go home" say the girls, "we will have to drive". So drive we did, or should I say husband did. All through the night arriving in The South of France in time for lunch with our friends. From then on things got a whole lot better.

Over the next few days the wart did get bigger, but then a funny thing happened; it dried up and fell off!!

We went to markets and brought olives and honey and sumac, which is a spice that I am normally found searching the rows of Waitrose for. Sumac features quite often in my new cook book 'Plenty' by Ottelenghi with which I am obsessed right now.

We visited a restaurant mentioned in Plenty called Grain de Sel in the lovely (not so undiscovered) town of Cogolin, Lily ate a delicious salad, a version of which I will put in my summer news letter. We were all so relaxed that Maggie our youngest companion (nearly 2), decided to take all her clothes off and cool herself down by pressing her tummy onto the skirting board (apparently she had seen daddy do this at a party once). The food was delicious and I recommend anyone passing that way to make a visit. It's off the main square in a side road and run by a husband and wife. Good luck to them.

We are back in England, lots of my patients are pregnant, which is wonderful. Other species have also been baby-making; a whole load of moth have reproduced in our house and they are literally everywhere. As well as re-claiming our house back from the moth we now have to reclaim our flights/car hire and alternative travel from Easy jet (oh joy). But the wart has gone and we all have sun tans, just in time for the school photo- don't call me vain!