We have progress! Well I found the video remote at least giving us a full compliment. Embarassingly it was sitting on the bedside cabinet upstairs brazenly in full view while we assumed it was for the video in the bedroom. We don't use either machine that often any more and less so the one upstairs so the actual remote for that was tucked away in a drawer batteryless like its oppo. It seems there main function is now to provide batteries for something we use more often, so no doubt the two new Energizers I put in the newly found remote will bide their time for a few weeks until we need to operate a new toy for Bethany.
   My voice is getting rougher so that Helen did not recognize me when I just phoned her. She had texted this morning asking after Bethany but my phone wouldn't let me text - not just not sending them but not even writing or drafting them (I managed to put my message as a template but it wasn't fooled) - so I rang her when I got back from work. Momentarily forgetting I was landline to landline not mobile to mobile so that she would not know who was calling I was taken aback when she asked who I was. I like to think that I now sound deep and sexy like Barry White or Mariella Frostrup and went around work singing the opening line to "Wanderin' Star" last night. This one line served it's purpose for the, admittedly, not very funny joke and also proved convenient not being able to recall any more of the song.
   Bethany is still not herself although her temperature seemed more stable today as we have her pumped full of drugs. She is refusing to go to sleep and is getting to be a bit of a bugger to get down - those first six months or so when she slept like a dream were too good to be true afterall and I suppose this is when you start earning your parent proficiency badges.