March 26: The fear

I am making friends with the lady across the road. She has spotted my bump. She is Spanish and very nice (she has already offered-up her boyfriend to drive me to Wales if I'm stuck for a mid-labour chauffeur which I greatly appreciate, especially as he's never met me). She also has an extremely cute two-year old with curly blond hair, big blue eyes and a penchant for smily silence (bi-lingual children can sometimes be slow at talking apparently). The other day, we stood chatting in the middle of our very quiet, dead-end road. At one point, her buggy flipped over in the wind, hurtling blue-eyes backwards. Unharmed, she let him free to run around. Two minutes later, he disappeared under a neighbour's car as if he were a mechanic looking for rusty bodywork. I literally had to heave him out by his ankles. I do not think we will be very good together. While we stand around chatting, our children will be rolling spliffs and hot-wiring passing motorbikes.
Normally, I don't like other people's children. For him, I make an exception as he is so very lovely. Or I did until today.
Spanish mother spotted me working from home and brought him round. He was ill, a temperature of 38, full of snot; the nursery had refused to take him (can they do that?) I tried to be kind, to think, 'children do get ill and full of snot, it is not a big thing, Bump will no doubt get ill and full of snot and be repulsive at some point too.' Blue-eyes half eats a biscuit, wipes his green, slimy, sticky hands on my laptop, wipes them on my sofa, sneezes, dribbles on the floor. Spanish mother cleans up after her ill little boy, follows him around, removes the worst of the muck but I am still mildly revolted. I think I have a disorder - snot and stickiness OCD. After they leave, I want to bleach my house. I open the windows to let out the 'ill-child smell'. I wet-wipe my laptop, scrub my table, wipe my floor and sofa. I think: 'What am I going to do? I will soon have to spend time with other children, be them full of snot or not.' Do you think I can never invite them to my house? Ever? Can I always just meet people in the park? I think about installing a disinfectant spray, like in aeroplanes. Or body suits like forensic experts wear so no bodily fluids can escape. Or better still, one of those foot and mouth troughs for when they come through the door. Here little Johnny, come to aunty half-baked, you like being scoured with Domestos until your eyes bleed, don't you?