Cultural experience number one

Well, here I am happily discussing with Dig what interesting English cultural experiences the Grit family can provide for our new German Sasha and she there she goes and provides one of her own.

Locking herself in her room and jamming the door shut so that she can't get out for twelve hours was not the cultural experience under discussion, however.

The first I hear of the lock-up is when a plaintive Sasha voice calls me from the cellar bedroom at 9.15 when all the little Grits are wondering where Sasha is for breakfast. So I go down to the bedroom; through the door I hear the sad voice say that last night the door was closed about ten o'clock and then about midnight, it wouldn't open. Sasha, I say, did you lock the door? I cannot believe she needs telling to turn a key in the lock, so think this one's unlikely, but I think that with Sasha, it's probably better to ask.

There's a lot of toing and froing at this point while all the junior Grits run up and down the stairs to look at Sasha's locked door and suggest not very useful things like pushing sliced bread under the door. Why would Sasha want a white slice under the door? I ask. She might be hungry, suggests Tiger. This is probable, I reckon. I wonder whether she's desperate for the toilet, and then remember that Sasha doesn't use the toilet, so we should have a few more hours to think it out before there might be anything resembling an emergency.

Then Dig gets involved. Dig is much more useful than the junior Grits. Dig suggests Sasha climbs out of the window.

This sounds straightforward. Sasha just has to open the window, Dig lowers down a ladder and up she comes. Sasha's bedroom is the converted cellar, and so the Velux windows are a little above ground level, opening into the yard.

Now the yard is a particularly horrible place to land. The yard is crammed full of junk that we can't move out to the tip because the gate fell off last month and we can't get the stuff out unless I carry it through the house. A disused kitchen bin full of rainwater, a broken toilet pump and cracked plastic garden furniture is just for starters. You can see why it's not been done. So first Dig does some yard clearance. Then we get the ladder out.

Sasha has managed to open a window in her prison cell but it's the window furthest away from us. Dig is confounded. 'This window!' he starts to shout. 'We are here! This window!' Clearly Sasha needs quite a few explicit instructions about this type of procedure. Perhaps she's not done it before. But, I reckon, she'll probably get used to this lifestyle after a few days.

Well, we do get Sasha out, stumbling into a yard filled with broken furniture and toilet parts. So I'm calling that cultural experience number one.

Welcome to the Grit and Dig household, Sasha.