Here's my daughter, sometime around 1984, putting all the expression she can muster into reading her younger brother a bedtime story - or is she just sneezing?
It made them both smile anyway.
They didn't sleep together but another night (note the change of nightclothes) they'd both fallen asleep in one bed and it would have been up to Daddy to lift the visitor back into his/her own bed. I notice my daughter's favourite doll, Peter, was also exhausted.
By 1988 we'd moved house and I recognise this as my son's room. They were acting outs some sort of play and Peter the doll got in on the act again, along with big doll Sally, which I'd made for my daughter one Christmas.
This week's Sepia Saturday prompt was a sick boy in bed, surrounded by his favourite toys. It was actually an advert for insurance, but it reminded me very much of one of my favourite poems by Robert Louis Stevenson; 'The Land of Counterpane', from 'A Child's Garden of Verses'. I remember that when I was sick, as a child, I would have a tray on which to do my jigsaw puzzles or draw with my crayons or play with my paper dolls, Spirograph, or Fuzzy Felt.
When I was sick and lay a-bed,I had two pillows at my head,And all my toys beside me layTo keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or soI watched my leaden soldiers go,With different uniforms and drills,Among the bed-clothes, through the hills.
And sometimes sent my ships in fleetsAll up and down among the sheets;Or brought my trees and houses out,And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and stillThat sits upon the pillow-hill,And sees before him, dale and plainThe pleasant Land of Counterpane.
Don't forget to visit all the other bedridden participants of this week's Sepia Saturday. You'll find them a real tonic.