Chicken Pox - how we managed

• Alternate baths of bicarbonate of soda (two tablespoons) and oats in a muslin (thank goodness for all those Liz Earle cloths).
• Calpol for the first three days, Piriton Syrup after that.
• Calamine cream - soooo much easier than the lotion of my childhood.
• Fireman Sam on the television - apparently there are 29 episodes of the new version and I have only two more to see to have a full house. (My favourite character is Dilys Price for her muddling of simple phrases : "oooh, it's so aromatic out here tonight" and calling a dream catcher "a cream snatcher").
• Keeping Scarlett in one cotton nightdress for the entire time so that nothing rubbed. I overcame my horror of such slovernly behaviour by thinking it was probably so caked in calamine cream that it was working like a sunsuit.
• Remembering that it is usually a textbook virus and will start to improve around day 5. Sure enough today, Day Six, she is all scabs and the really nasty spots are purple, not red.