Homeward bound

Going home today. This is made easier by the fact that I have got Finn to come round at ten in the morning to get us out. I have told him to glower, especially at Shark, and to cross his arms and tap his foot. This should do the trick. I have warned that if he does not come round to shoo us out, then we may stay, possibly forever, since it is much easier to live in a cottage with no belongings than a house full of treasures as diverse as six broken computers and a life-size wombat with suspiciously believable fur.

And, I promised on the other side of the cottage door yesterday, we can visit Wroxeter on the way home. This will be fun. This will be brilliant. Wroxeter, I tell Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, is a big city abandoned by the Romans and not lived in since, so there is bound to be Roman treasure about and, who knows, it could be us that finds it.

A cross-looking foot-tapping man and the promise of illegal digging of some gravel in a field is a combination that is clearly too good to resist. Tiger, Shark and Squirrel pack up their belongings without resistance or argument and are sitting in the car ready to go by 10.17.

This is an excellent start, and I congratulate everyone before setting off. And when we get to Wroxeter I give myself a big kick in the shin because in winter Wroxeter is shut on Tuesdays.

So off we go to Ironbridge again with our newly acquired family pass to have an argument round the back of Abraham Darby's furnace and to drag our feet in the museum about the History of Iron. For added convenience the science exploration bit is shut until 2008.

And after that, there's nowhere to go on a freezing cold shut Tuesday but home. Where I discover I've left the heating on for the last three days. So at least it's nice and warm even though I've single-handedly managed to trash the environment in my absence.

A so-so day, I'd say.

English Heritage says...

Beeston Castle is very pretty. English Heritage says there are incredible views over eight counties.

I'm sure the other tourists exploring Beeston Castle today would like to concentrate on those incredible views. Especially the gentleman with the video recorder capturing the panoramic views. Unfortunately, Shark had a sneezing fit, so the following exchange will now be heard forever:

Shark! Stop sneezing!
I can't! (sneeze)
Have you got a tissue?
(sneeze) No!
Oh Bugger. I've got this bit of toilet paper, use that.
(sneeze sneeze)
Oh no! Look at all the snot! There's miles of it! Hanging out like string! Oh (expletive removed) it's soaked the toilet paper!
(sneeze sneeze sneeze)

English Heritage also says there are acres of unspoilt woodland trails to explore. Now I apologise to everyone going up to Beeston Castle in the next few years because I deposited two sheets of toilet paper covered in Shark snot in the undergrowth on the way down. I tried to do this discreetly, obviously, since litter louting doesn't come easily. But be kind in your judgement. Would you put two pieces of toilet paper soaked in the hanging variety of Shark snot into your coat pocket?

English Heritage also says there's plenty of wild life to see. That'll be Tiger, then, in the car park, throwing a fit because Squirrel saw the gate first.

Contrast and compare

Dig texts me. He says he is in Yemen and it is beautiful. I say we have been on the A5115 and it is so-so.

Then he says that the flight into Yemen was lovely too. You get to go through the mountains at high altitude and see all the gorges. I say that is nothing. We have been on the Chester Park and Ride and you get to see the home improvement shop just off the ring road.

Dig is clearly impressed. He is trying a bit of oneupmanship on me now. He says the buildings in the old city of San'a' are magical. I snort. I tell Dig that we are actually, right this moment, standing in the Roman ampitheatre at Chester which has a footbridge built on it and a road going round the other bit. Beat that.

Dig is fuming. He says he has drunk ginger tea with Yemeni honey. I say we have some cheese sandwiches which have gone slightly stale.

I can see Dig is losing this. He says it has been sunny and warm and he has been in his shirtsleeves. Pah! I cry! That is nothing! The sky here is the colour of my dishcloth water and we have been freezing cold all day long!

And then, says Dig, I have given my lecture and everyone now thinks commas are important.

I can only swell with success. I tell him that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have been filmed in the high street by a BBC camera man with their fingers all over an ice sculpture until Squirrel stuck her fingers up her nose.

I win.

Late arrival

Tra la la! Off we go to Cheshire! Clever Grit has acquired an 8-disc story with a run time of 8 hours. This should guarantee a trip to Cheshire without screaming, fighting, kicking, or Tiger making threats to leave the car while travelling at 70 mph on the M54.

First stop, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. This is an educational trip after all. So we're going to stop here to learn about iron and iron-y things to do with coke and coal and things like that. As I know nothing about iron or iron-y things then this experience will be ideal family education.

In fact it is an ideal family experience, sadly without Dig who is up a mountain. We press all the buttons, spend hours hogging the interactive computer screens so that no-one else gets a go, no matter how long they stand behind us and tut, then we watch the video three times round, do all the rubbings and puzzles, and laboriously stand around questioning, arguing and debating every minor thing including why the signs are put this way and not that way and why Squirrel is allowed to watch the video again when Tiger is not. Three hours later I get fleeced for £2.25 in the gift shop for a glass dolphin, butterfly, and glow-in-the-dark frog.

When we've had a family learning experience and I have learned about coke but not why it is different from coal, and chanted Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution until I am told off by Shark, we all clamber back into the car and I realise I do not know where I am going. Because for possibly the first time since booking the cottage I actually read the printed details. It's basically called The Cottage and its address seems to be sadly lacking, bar the village name. And the village is somewhere in Cheshire.

Now I've overlooked this lack of address in the belief that we have a post code, and that'll do nicely for the lady Sat nav. But it won't, will it? Because some post codes simply get you to a bit of tarmac in the middle of nowhere, at which point lady Sat nav rather smugly repeats over and over again 'You have reached your destination' while Grit is parked on the verge sobbing with the map book open on her lap, traffic hurtling past in the dark and Tiger shouting 'Can't we get a move on?'

It is just as well that Grit has A level geography because she needs it now. We have driven around for a miserable hour trying to find any road that leads to a village which doesn't seem to exist on any local signs, so I try and work out where to site a village from first principles. I work out drainage, hillsides and farm access and decide it really must be down that little right turn that looks suspiciously so much like the entrance to a field.

Well just a bit longer and a bit more work and I find the little village that's got no sign and I find the house where Finn lives.

Finn is the gentleman I've spoken to on the phone, several times now, and he's hiring out The Cottage to us. Apparently The Cottage is round the back of his big house. There is Finn now, lying on the floor in the dining room while I'm standing at the big front door, banging on it. I can see him lying on the dining room floor, through the huge picture windows, and am thinking that I really hope Finn is not dead from a heart attack brought on by the emotional stress of dealing with that woman arriving, two hours after she said, with the screaming triplets who can't find her way out of his neighbour's field in the dark.

But no. After a few minutes Finn springs up, and after a few minutes more we're in The Cottage, with Tiger complaining that she doesn't like the tapestries and Squirrel saying she's not sleeping on that, and Shark asking is there pasta for dinner.

And I can at last open a bottle of beer in celebration of our safe arrival.

Drastic action

Right. That's it. I've been driven bonkers by the sight of the bicycling Santa and Dig texting me that Yemen is very nice at this time of year.

I've booked a cottage for three nights in Cheshire and we're driving up tomorrow. Off to pack. No. Off to remove the toothpaste from Squirrel before she packs it without the cap on. Then removing all unicorns from the luggage, laying down the law about wearing knickers in winter and remembering to print out the information about the cottage that's been booked from Saturday to Tuesday. Otherwise I won't know where I'm going.