Knebworth

Tra la la! We're all out for a home ed trip to Knebworth, where we have a jolly super time with Am and Jol and lots of folks we know. This is a tip-top day and I've not a complaint against it.

Except that I am made to sit on the little train and pretend I am aged five again, which I try and do quite gamely. I would sit with Shark, but she is in a strop about a stick, and so spends her time in another carriage trying not to enjoy herself at all.

And I do feel a bit grumpy about having to go round the house. I do not do tours of rich houses very well. I do not know what they are for, neither the house nor the country gentry who live in them. I have a few tendenceies towards the common folk, thanks to my background and the family history down the mines, and am therefore not well disposed to the ruling classes.

Also, although I do not bear grudges, we got thrown out of a National Trust propery six and a half years ago when Tiger got too close to a mirror. The fact that she was some meters from it was not significant, apparently. She was still too close. Well that did it. I haven't been round anywhere since.

Now I obviously don't want this to become a grump about the National Trust, which has been very good to us, apart from confiscating our cards and a tennis ball, that is. And picking a fight with us down the temple gardens. Now I come to think of it, all those incidents were at Stowe Gardens. Maybe it's the staff.

Perhaps that's what it is at the Knebworth house tour. It's the staff. A lovely lady shows us round and not once did she tell us off.

The lovely lady never once complained that we weren't listening, that we weren't looking, or that we were too close, too crowded, too far apart or too talkative. She did not complain that we were leaning, holding, pointing, or looking up when we should be looking down. It's surprising, isn't it, that Grit and all the little junior Grits should be told off for doing these things, but we have. Especially mummy Grit, leaning against signs that say Do Not Lean Here. And last week, sitting under the sign that says No Picnics with a flask of green tea and a cheese sandwich.

Anyway, lovely lady at Knebworth told us off not once. Not a single instance, in fact.

And I ended up enjoying myself. Even though, like Shark, I didn't want to. And I think that points to a moral. If everyone is just nice to each other, no-one has to grump and rant and complain about anything. In fact Grit's day wouldn't need to exist.

Well, only a bit.