A fire, a mars bar, and a punch up.

To the British Library for the Magnificent Maps exhibition. Go. It is fantastic for pervynerdies like me who want our kicks paper based, vellum rich, decorative gilded, pretty pictured, tiny lettered and splashing with sea monsters. Niche market, I know, but it's free.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger gave it 9 out of 10, promised they would draw maps of the garden so I can call it an education, and asked to come back. Then the fire alarm went off.

We do not have a good strike rate with those. I now add it to my list which includes the hairdressers, the London Aquarium, the gym, the Royal Institution and the posh hotel somewhere up north which was my fault.


Anyway, fire alarms can be very sociable events, can't they? All the sad looking people outside. I bet marriages have been made and divorces begun in these foot shuffling minutes wondering if we are going to be burned to death, blown up, or let back into the shop. Lucky for us we meet up with chums outside, decide to abandon maps altogether, and go off to drink coffee before catching the train home.

At the station, there is a bit of a disaster when Dig appears waving one of these.


He says it is all my fault and I haven't brought his children up properly. He says they have never eaten a Mars Bar. I very much doubt that actually, but they know how to play one parent off against another and they all look intently at the said dog chocolate wrapped in plastic and claim daddy is right. They have never ever, ever, ever seen one in their lives ever before. Honestly.

Ha! Well I've got a flanking manoeuvre to outwit you little grits because daddy need not go back into chocolate shop of hell and buy two more because in my handbag is a KNIFE. I brandish it here for all the security guards in England to see and they can come and arrest me right now this instant.


I am riding on the edge of danger. I am a woman with a killer instinct. I have an intuitive sense that I would need to slice up a Mars Bar into equal bits on a station platform.


Lucky I nicked that wood picnic knife from Woburn.




Now there is just the punch up to go, which, after the sniff of Mars Bar, is enough to set things off nicely on the way home. There is a bit of finger pointing and accusatory You looking at me? before the pushing, shoving, lapel grabbing and slapping begins. You'll notice on the crowded train that no-one sits next to the gritlets. Not even us.






Fortunately the punch up is good natured and there are no metal bars, rocks, puffins or spears to launch. Further, we have not been burned to death, arrested for carrying knives, begun a bitter divorce, vomited with brown lard overload, or informed that as all the trains are cancelled, the taxi fare home is £160.

All things considered, a very successful day out. With maps.