We are currently car-less. Dinesh, our driver, waited until after our trip down the muddy hairpin bends in the pouring rain on Sunday to tell us that the brakes are shot. And there's a leak in the fuel tank. And the oil tank too. So I had to pick the girls up from school by taxi (no seat belts, natch; luckily, thanks to cows, dogs and lack of pavements, the traffic is pretty slow and congested so I think they would survive a prang). 

Whilst the girls were at school this morning I went on a little organised trip round our local hospitals, just to see where we'd go if something happened. They actually weren't nearly as scary as I'd thought - not much more dilapidated than your average NHS hospital can be. And I saw people actually cleaning the floor with what certainly smelled like disinfectant. Apparently, in terms of the clinical side, they are pretty good, it's just the other stuff which can be lacking, such as screens for privacy etc. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the twins (who both seem blissfully unaware of their physical limitations and attempt stupidly ambitious physical feats at the drop of a hat) manage to stay out of hospital for the next two years. Son is thankfully somewhat more cautious, although I can imagine him thinking about something very interesting (the other day at breakfast he asked, "Mummy, what happened before the Big Bang", for example) and walking out in front of a big truck/rickshaw/cow.

The one worrying thing was at the hospital closest to us we were shown the 'disaster point', where we should muster post-earthquake, which got me thinking about the whole horrendous natural disaster thing all over again. I spoke to the doctor about it all, whose son is in the Twins' pre-school class, and she was distinctly un-reassuring, saying that after having seen photos of the recent chinese earthquake she thinks we're basically done for. Good oh!