The youngest child has been sick all week. Yesterday morning he dragged himself out of bed at the crack of dawn to go to a 9 o’clock lecture on the Ottoman Empire. Term is over but this lecture had been deferred. I suggested he skip it but he said that he thought he would be the only person there (so it proved) and he did not want the lecturer to have turned up for nothing. Very virtuous.
Today I got a text from Mr. Waffle saying that the student was quite sick in bed. The Ottoman Empire may have claimed its last victim.