'Good honest fumbling people caught up in tiny tragedies'

I don't know whether you've ever seen the film, Woman in a Dressing Gown. I saw it, aged about ten. I remember nothing about the affair with Sylvia Sims, so don't ask. I just remember the total futility of that central wifely role.

It was all doomed, doomed from the start. I remember wishing she'd never married at all, but instead drove a white two-seater while wearing a turban. Then she could drive downhill, fast, on hairpin bends. Occasionally she could go swimming for lengthy periods underwater, like Marina in Stingray. Except Woman in a Turban would talk while swimming, because mute is irritating. Watery mute is a sea version of Skippy.

But apart from wanting life to be so different for Woman in a Dressing Gown, what struck me was that every way she tried to get herself out of the mess, it came ready attached to a big sign, reading FAIL.

I feel like that. Even though we take the most fantastic geology walk across Burnham Beeches. It's led by someone who actually knows what they're talking about, and who gets the kids measuring the height of the water table. Look!


In home education terms, it's a complete and total success, and my only regret is not keeping a geologist in a cupboard. I can get them out whenever I want. They would be available whenever I needed to demonstrate the creation of an orogenic wedge.

Anyway, I end up hoping no-one notices at Burnham Beeches, because sometimes I'm walking in a funny striding way, and sometimes I'm furtively clasping at my groin to stop my trousers falling off.

I haven't worn this particular pair since last year. All the others are irredeemable, in the wash. So I drag them out the back of the wardrobe, put them on, and they don't fit. Or rather they do, so long as I like wearing a gastric band on the outside. Clearly, I have a magic wardrobe which shrinks all my clothes. But I'm not giving up. I'm bloody wearing the things now. More than anything.

So I do the sensible thing and cut the waistband at the seams and breathe again. But when I walk the jeans fall off. Apparently they need a waistband to stop them sliding down the enormity of arse I carry around like a spare mountain slope. But string comes in very handy, doesn't it?

Well that's a good start. I put some icing on the fashion statement by dribbling breakfast blueberry juice down my left bosom. That would be alright I think, because there isn't time to change and I can hide it. Yesterday I bought a fab-antas-tic coat at New Look, the epitome of all that is brilliant (and cheap) in high street fashion!

I get the coat out the bag, pull the label off, slip it on, and it looks FAB-ANTAS-TIC!

Except for the heavy weight and curious rattling noise at the back of my neck. What can that be? Oh. It's the shop guard. The enormous circular disk that shop owners pin to clothing. The one that indicates to everyone that this particular desirable garment? You nicked it.

So I try and hit the security pin with a hammer to smack the ruddy thing off. Only it won't come off.

So here I am, we're late for leaving and people are yelling at me. Dig is striding about because I am a nuisance. The kids are hollering and screaming. And I am Woman in a Dressing Gown. On my hands and knees on the kitchen floor, my trousers held up with string, blueberry juice sloshing around in my bra, bludgeoning a coat with a hammer.

But I am Grit. I can only conclude that the geology with hydrology walk round Burnham Beeches was a total and fantastic success. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger learnt a brainfull of inspiring rock, water and wood stuff. My trousers stayed up, although I rattled a bit. And Dig never succumbed to the itch to push me into the lake by-accident-on-purpose and run off with Sylvia Sims.