Happy birthday

12.00 noon. We are due at Moonshine's birthday party at 2pm. Perfect. We can just fit in a lesson on Telling the time. This lesson starts in answer to Tiger's question Are we late yet? We spend so long working out what the time actually is, that by the time Tiger does manage to tell the time, we are late.

1.30pm. In the car, we try a geography lesson in map reading. Mummy Grit has even equipped everyone with a map to read in the car. If only she had got the map right this would have been excellent. In fact getting the map wrong doesn't matter because everyone is too excited and forgets that this is actually our life skills lesson and not just a birthday party where we turn up with junk from the charity shop, eat rubbish, cry, and be ordered home.

2.00pm. Phew! We make the party! On time! Thank goodness mummy Grit did not pass the speed detector van like that time when she was zooming to Northampton to install an art display and got clocked at 76 mph in a 60 zone. Anyway, there is a comfort eating here. There are crisps. This is very good. We are not allowed crisps at home. I could do a lesson on potatoes next week if I slip a couple of packets of crisps into my bag while no-one is watching.

2.30pm. The next lesson! Citizenship. This translates as pass the parcel and musical chairs. It also can be interpreted as putting a balloon up your dress and running about the room screaming. These are the sorts of lessons I like and the sort of team building games we excel at. I celebrate with a prolonged dip into the cheese and onion crisp bowl.

Shark needs to have more practice in citizenship, clearly, because there is a bit of squaring up over who gets to sit on the penultimate chair for musical chairs. Then Shark smartly shoves the birthday girl out the way and parks her bum solidly on the chair. But in these strange party days everyone's a winner, so a bewildered Moonshine is palmed off with a bag of chocolate. The game proceeds to its bitter end with a triumphant Shark, probably getting to the point of sweetie sugar overload where combustion is inevitable. I take solace in fat-reduced plain crisps with just a little salt.

3.00pm. I could make a lesson out of this tea time assortment if I were so moved. It is a haphazard of jumbled up jelly, pink ice-cream, fairy cake, more cake, crisps and cake. Grit tut tuts and stuffs her mouth full because we are not allowed any of this stuff at home.

3.30pm. Grit stops thinking about home education altogether because her brain is now taken over by Walkers. She hovers about the crisp bowls, pretending to help clear up. Actually she is stuffing as many salt and vinegar crisps down her throat as time will allow or before she is caught and all the bowls removed.

4.15pm. The party girls are bundled off home. Wonderfully, no-one has burst into tears or disgraced themselves. Success! Grit has become aware of watchful eyes however as she tried to sneak off with the last bag of cheese and onion.

5.00pm. Grit says that was a very good birthday party and wasn't it clever to get all the party goers to make their own little bags in which to collect prizes, cake, and mummy Grit's stolen bags of crisps? Shark agrees, and I say I might use that idea of making our own party bags if we hold a party. Shark agrees again, adding it would be a very good idea even if a mummy Grit party wasn't very well organised.

And because life is full of small ironies as well as crisps, today is also Dig's birthday. But he is celebrating his birthday elsewhere.

Happy birthday, Dig. I shall open the last bag of salt and vinegar in honour.