The Dead Sea and a trip to the Arab Medical Centre

As we ventured towards the Dead Sea in a convoy of the vermillion Chevy and the Glammy's 4 x 4, the temperature crept up as we snaked down to the lowest place on earth. The Glammy had roped her charming and dashing Palestinian boyfriend into chauffering the mini sheikhs and the Glammy down there, as she's nervous of the mad driving on the roads here. The Movenpick hotel was recommended to us as one of the best places to stay, so we checked in there. The Lozenge wasn't sure about it all to start with, and as we sat waiting in the heat for our room key he piped up over a bright green drink: 'I don't want to be thitting here with all the flies drinking apple jooth.' But he rallied as he, Rashimi and the Glammy piled into one room, with us next door. It was a luxury to hear all the squeaking and shrieking and pattering about from next door and to be able to leave it all in her capable hands.

The dead sea spreads like a pool of blue oil between the banks of Jordan and the West Bank. Its level has been in decline for the last 30 years because water supplies in this region are at such a premium, the Jordan River is no longer the fast flowing and wide resource you read about in the bible. Environmentalists and the Jordanian government are in discussion about how to save the sea - one idea being a canal from the Red Sea to resupply the Dead Sea. But no one can decide how hazardous this intervention would be. So as yet, nothing is being done.

To sit and watch the twinkling lights of Jerusalem on top of the hill on the other side of the water is beautiful yet un-nerving - so close and yet as good as inaccessible for most Palestinians living here in Jordan. We spent the time messing about in the swimming pools, covering ourselves in grey mud from the sea bottom, allowing it to dry, then washing it off to reveal skin as smooth as Rashimi's inner thigh; and trying to swim on our tummies only to be flipped back over onto our backs as the salt content is so high you are an equivalent human cork on the water surface. We wondered if that was the reality behind Jesus walking on the water.

Within the grounds of the hotel there is an olive tree which is 2000 years old, and we stood by it as we watched a Jordanian wedding party dance to a band of local bagpipes. I wondered what the tree had seen and heard in all this time, and how many people were managing to have wedding parties in Syria right now.

On the second morning, we got a call from the Glammy at 6am from the next door room saying the Lozenge had fallen out of bed and was bleeding. I went round to find his pillow looking like a sheep had been butchered on it halal-style. He'd split open his chin on the hard floor when he fell. So the Glammy called the doctor and a small incident turned into a kind of comedy crime scene. If it hadn't involved Laurie and all the blood I'd have howling with laughter. The Glammy was wearing pyjamas with a yellow cat's eye on each bosom and nose and whiskers around the tummy area, so Rashimi was clambering all over her making miaowing noises. My pyjamas were a little more sensible, but still not the best attire to sit in a room with a Jordanian male doctor and two security guards who were trying to make me sign forms about the accident to cover themselves in case we took them to court. The doctor put on some squeaky latex gloves and tried to approach the Lozenge to look at the chin. The Lozenge screamed and wailed and clambered all over me, clinging to my neck and covering me in blood. I don't think the doctor had had much experience with children as he started to make little kissing noises as you might to get your cat in the box at the vet. This approach was not going to wash with the Lozenge and we'd have been there all morning, so instead, having used Rashimi's squidgy knee as the stunt limb, I managed to put a plaster on L's chin to stop the bleeding and the Doctor advised us to go to hospital in Amman and get it stitched.

The Arab Medical Centre in Amman has got to be the cleanest and most efficient hospital I've ever been to. Within 5 minutes of arriving, the poor Lozenge was being swaddled for the first time since he was 4 months old. It took me, a hairy, gruff male nurse and a less hairy Philipina assistant to hold him down as the doctor injected the gash a few times with anaesthetic and deftly sewed five immaculate stitches. The Lozenge was thrashing and howling and the gruff male nurse was shouting 'khalas!' (enough!). Meanwhile, I remembered it was Easter Day and spoke in a contintuous monologue with practically no breaths taken, that we would have an easter egg hunt when we got back to the house and I described in increasingly shrill tones, all the different types of bunnies and chocolate we would hide and find. It was horrible, but within 15 minutes the Lozenge had a neatly stitched chin, and we were able to go home and begin the choccy eating marathon…

Later, J and I took the boys for a juice at the ice cream parlour, feeling relieved that this had all happened while Umm and Abu Lucy were in town. It has been a much needed cushion sharing our lives with them, and now they've seen a bit of our reality, it's like a cork has been put in our little bottle of life, and we feel we're afloat all of a sudden, after a couple of months of what felt like sinking and bobbing to the surface at alternate intervals.

On the way back home we got talking to some men and women with their children, sitting around outside a large, barracks-like building near our street. As we had suspected they are Syrian, camping out in a disused UN building. We've been watching them for the last few weeks as they've moved mattresses in there, and hung washing lines on the balconies which flap in the wind, bowed with children's clothes. As the camps on the border are filling up, many Syrian refugees are coming into the city to camp in empty buildings with their families.