It's a dog-day afternoon as fleas hop on board

HOLIDAY DISASTERS:With the baby's brothers and JOYCE HICKEY'Ssignificant other at the Olympics, it should have been a good time to escape to the country – but an army of fleas have other ideas

HOW MANY IRISH mammies does it take to change the nappies while Baby Boy’s brothers go to the Olympics with their dad? Oh don’t mind me, I’ll sit here in the dark with the cat. And the dog. And, it transpires, with a host of other creatures: our dog, Danielle la Spanielle, becomes the hostess with the mostest, on the worst holiday I never had.

On Wednesday, the boys’ excitement is a joy. Days and sleeps have been crossed off and now they are only hours away from their London cousins, the basketball arena, the water polo and Wembley. I have taken a few days off work, so Baby Boy and I are going to visit a friend in Cork on Thursday, and another friend, who lives around the corner, has offered to mind la Spanielle, who needs a bath and clean bedding for her holiday.

In the garden, Number Two Son holds her feathery legs while I groom her. And then we see the shiny, brownish-black things tromping across her soft, pink armpit. “I know, Mum,” says Number One Son. “She must have picked up those baby beetles when she was rummaging around in the flower bed.” At the stroke of a brush, the trip to Cork with Baby Boy is rendered impossible; la Spanielle’s sojourn up the road, with a family she loves and four cats to torment, is definitely off.

Before we leave for the airport, I phone the vet. “They’re not hopping,” I say, hopefully.

“Fleas only hop on to dogs,” he says, patiently. “They’re hardly likely to leave their furry feast.”

He tells me to use the death potion; I haven’t applied it as regularly as I should have, but from now on it, too, has to be crossed off on the calendar. He also suggests I catch a few on a piece of sticky tape and bring them to the surgery to confirm their identity. In the bath, a few hundred more of them wash off her and I stick it to them. (Luckily, I put the tape into a sandwich bag because, as the undead dry out, the bag starts to hop.) The vet also advises that I hoover the house every couple of days for the next few months, to eliminate the 17 billion or so larvae that are bound to have burrowed into everything soft. “Even the teddies?” I tremble. There are a lot of teddies. “The teddies should be okay,” he sighs.

La Spanielle is not allowed upstairs but she often sleeps on the naughty step and always lurks optimistically around the stair gate, scooting up whenever she can manoeuvre it open with her muzzle. So I take no chances. The Gathering has come early.

Every cushion, every pillow, every duvet. Every loose cover, every throw, every mat. Every doggy towel and every bit of her bedding; bales of blankets, old dressing-gowns and fleeces. Collars and leads. Every thread is stockpiled by the washing machine.

The cat, Mademoiselle Tortoiseshell, stalks her superiority through the heaps. Cat fleas are different, don’t you know. (She gets dosed with the death potion, to her disgust.)

Danielle’s hostess generously offers to take her, regardless of the certainty that the dying devils will drop off around her house and probably mutate to colonise her cats, but I can’t accept. My Cork hostess offers to accommodate her too, but I refuse. Wouldn’t they be hopping mad if they were infested? Don’t mind me, I’ll sit here with the washing machine.

On Thursday, after a short and uncomfortable night, devoid of duvet and bereft of pillow, and with the curtains reeking of spray-on death potion, I beetle into the tail-end of the sale and buy a downy duvet. I cycle home past a “hop-on, hop-off” tourist bus.

On Friday, the deep-clean intensifies. I had blanked out the far-reaching incident of excitement-induced car-sickness that had occurred during our journey to the airport on Wednesday and so, two days later, I pluck up the courage to open the car. (Thankfully, the bread soda antidote rises to the occasion.)

Later, with all the windows open, I drive to the dump and pay €30 to scrap the dubious duvets and pillows, and I recycle ancient bedding that has lurked, mustily, in the hot press.

On Saturday the boys phone to tell me the queen has driven right past them on their way into the Olympic Park. I stop hoovering the garage long enough to wonder whether the royal corgis have ever been caught on the hop.

On Sunday, I am still too mired in seven circles of not-so-nonbiological Persil to accompany a friend to the Newmarket flea market. (I don’t think anyone would buy my sticky tape.)

But on the plus side, I have lifted the blanket ban and Danielle la Spanielle, calmer and unitchy, is back in her flea-free, fleece-strewn scratcher. Baby Boy has decided that babbling is better than soother-sucking, so we have long, meaningful discussions during our bouts of housework. The boys’ Olympian adventure has ended, and my Sisyphean flea circus has left town. I have returned to work. And I need a holiday.