Why I might move to Dubai

For what is possibly the first time this year I have had a day off. I feel like the scullery maid. But I guarantee Eliza would not have had as good a time of it as me, because today I have roamed London with Oo.

Oo has travelled from Dubai where she now lives with husband, child and strange cat. She is a woman who lives her life so brilliantly precipitous, she is forever skittering on the edge of disaster and triumph. Yet this shows just how ambitious are her endeavours.

She would probably kick me for claiming that. OK, I am sure that in her life, like in mine, somedays we struggle to fall out of bed alive. But Oo, I say, at least when you stand upright, you are commanding stars. I am just mopping up sick.

Well we do what women should do when they are let loose in the big city. We exhaust every shoe shop we can find, hang out in the very fine Natural Shoe Store where there exist the most comfortable foot licking shoes on the planet, and then we eat, drink and are merry in bistros and cafes. All day long.



And after a day with Oo, I might just forget everything about the dark side, and up sticks to Dubai.

Rain and shine

Rain rain rain rain rain. That stops everyone going out, so Dig and the children stay irritable at home.

Hahahah. I don't. I go out. With Oo. Shopping. I am a Proper Girl. And I am doing Proper Girly Things like drinking coffee and complaining about the cake in John Lewis.

Well, Oo complains. I don't. I am just grateful. It is free, I tell Oo, because this is the voucher given to me nearly two years ago when a member of staff saw this down-at-heel mother of triplets. She took pity on the stains from the weeping. It's why I don't wear mascara anymore. She gave me a voucher for two cups of coffee and two slabs of cake. I didn't like to point out to that kind shop assistant that I never have time to go to John Lewis coffee shop and, worse, I didn't have any girl friends to go to John Lewis coffee shop with, except for one who lives in Dubai.

Anyway, today Grit is a Proper Girl, even though she has never watched Sex and the City and is not actually sure what Proper Girls do. Hey, I remind Oo, the year Shark, Tiger and Squirrel were wrenched from my wretched body, Big Brother started on TV. I was so cut off from society you had to explain to me what it was, because I never understood what people were talking about. That's what motherhood did for me. It started off as a sort of a prison sentence where the guards would dribble and squeal and slurp and sleep and poop all day and all night while I watched over them shouting She smiled! and Dig would grunt, She burped.

But this is now, and the results of a proper girly afternoon out are to look at clothes, complain about the state of undress in the youth of today, and purchase some brown facial fluid in a bottle, which Oo will probably have to explain to me about. There are, of course, other expenditures, which I'm going to keep quiet about.

The afternoon is also gratifyingly disastrous, because this is Oo after all, and involves several John Lewis staff at closing time scouring every shop floor looking for a Debenhams shirt.

And I do not know whether this is the mark of a Proper Girl, but there is my complete gratitude that on this rare occasion, the person I am with shares my understandings, consoles me about life, says on balance I am right to eat crisps, and does not interrupt to shout poopy head, or to make demands for cheesy rice, toast, and where is the leg of the doll because I said I would glue it on. No, they just made me feel like today, the sun came out.

Fun at the farm

Because our lovely visitor Oo spends her common hours surrounded by Gulf sunshine and sand, the Grit family takes her off to the farm to be surrounded by English drizzle and mud.

This, of course, counts as part of our home education. And of this is am mostly proud and need to show off. So I am moved to pronounce to Oo that if we hear any more crap in the newspapers about kids not knowing where their food comes from, I may be moved to write a letter to the Times. And this shows how much a friend is Oo, because even though I have made her suffer, covered her in mud in a field and caused her to stink of beetroot and onion, she agrees.

Organise the diary, Grit

Is it August 1st? Good, because this afternoon Oo from Dubai arrives to stay. I can now legitimately embark on three riotous days of girly living. That means handbag disaster, cosmetics expenditure and bathroom squealing. All of those I hope to be doing shortly.

But this is a busy day for other reasons, so better leave time for some planning. Like this morning, when Dig cruises past the PGL For Sale website and clicks the Go button. Within twenty minutes Squirrel is booked into another week of a boarding adventure holiday in Wales. That's lucky. She can't do the coming week because Monday to Friday I am ferrying her backwards and forwards to the lake where she is on a paddle sports course, learning how to throw herself in from a kayak. When she does go to Wales we'd better make that Saturday dash and book another Travelodge a week later. My confirming our attendance at the local bat walk pales in comparison.

As it does against Dig reemerging from his office to say that now he has got Squirrel in Wales, he has also contrived to get Aunty Dee down from Northumberland to look after Tiger and Shark, because he has booked flights for the both of us to escape on a two-day visit to Cairo, return first class.

He only slightly mars that last dramatic gesture by saying he needs to use some air miles and Cairo is off season at 40 degrees centigrade, so the hotel is cheap.

Grit is now occupied with the diary, humbly apologising to the environment and will be found later today in the bathroom, squealing.

Visit Oo

I visit Oo. She is going off to live in the Middle east where the climate is better and the money is higher. Of course Hubby and Son are going too, so all the Oo family will be missing from my life in the UK, which makes me very sad indeed and very happy for them all at the same time.

I tell Oo to blog. Her life is lived in a different sphere from mine, and reading about it would be both illuminating and incomprehensible. I cannot imagine how circumstances here at the Pile might arise that led me to visit A&E at 3 o'clock in the morning with a broken nose; or how I might conduct a battle with a council over a lamp-post; or how I could spend several days and several hundred pounds trying to get a cat in a box, but these things happen in Oo's life, usually on a daily basis.

And for that at least I'm going to miss Oo and family. And say a big thank you for your generosity, wit and grand sparkle. And put us on the visit list for 2008.

An excellent day

Oo, Hubby and Son come round to make the day. Oo is amazing, and if you ever meet her, you can tell her I said so. Hubby is important in making things, and it's not just a mess, like Dig. He makes wonderful buildings happen, and probably some not-so-wonderful ones too, but hey-ho, we've tried to work with builders in the cellar conversion, and it's not easy. Son is gifted, and goes to a posh school for specially gifted children. One day he will be a famous musician, composing music for film and theatre and creative events I can't dream of, and you'll be humming his songs down the high street. And don't forget, you read it here first.

Anyway, Oo, Hubby and Son bring round lots of food to eat, because they are like that. Generous, kind, considerate. Not like Grit who emerges at someone's house thinking 'Oh bum. I can't go in empty handed like last time. And the time before that. And all last year as well. ' Then I can usually find some Tesco value apple juice that's only a day or two past its sell by date and which has been hanging out in the car in case of emergency. If I'm lucky, I'll find a half-pack of ginger nuts too. And if I'm really organised or want to impress, I'll have the shopping in the back. Only I know that a gift of six tins of Tesco value red kidney beans does look a bit odd, and possibly not generous at all.

So Oo, Hubby, and Son come round to make the day. And amongst the bags of lovely food that Oo, Hubby, and Son brings, there are tortilla chips.

Tortilla chips. The words are rolling around my mind and tongue. I am salivating at the words. Tor-tee-ah chips. Did you hear that delicious pop on the words 'chips'? The word starts so delicately doesn't it, with a little chi sound, and builds up to a soft and tender moment of silence then, before the 'p', when you're almost voiceless in delight. And if anything can be more delightful, there it is, the little pop of the 'p' and the sigh of the 's'.

Now, you have probably guessed. I love tor-tee-ah chips. If the wall paper was made of them I'd eat it. Which is why I am not allowed to buy tortilla chips. Not ever. Just take one, and that's the end. Because if I do, I have to eat them all. Not just one packet, but every packet. And there'd be no stopping me, either. I would soon have to be rushed to hospital with Tortilla chip OD.

And Oo, Hubby and Son bring themselves, lots of lovely food, and tortilla chips. Three bags of them. Three lovely bags. Oo, Hubby and Son, you are welcome here anytime.

And not just for the tortilla chips.

Honest.

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day, apparently.

I have two cards, each decorated with scrunched up tissue paper to resemble flowers. Both are cut out in the shape of the word MUM. This makes them look like the design of a floral tribute for the deceased. Quite frankly, they are horrible, and remind me of nothing but funeral flowers and the day we cremated our mother. This card design is the brainchild of Art Teech, and has done nothing to improve my judgment of her.

Intrigingly, we can only find two cards, although three were painfully made. As usual, Squirrel has lost hers, or put it somewhere, and can't remember where. She's always defensive about this, and says that squirrels do not forget where they put their acorns; the magpies take them. I don't put too much effort into looking for it, and she doesn't think it's worth the effort either.

Then Dig telephones. He's away, lecturing on commas. He says that first class on BA is better than business class, because they have the good years on the wines, and follows it up with what a tough life it can be when there's no one to greet you at the hotel. Anyway, he doesn't wish me happy Mother's Day, and by then I've forgotten, or put the crematorium out of my mind.

The day's slipping by, unregarded, when Oo rings up and sings 'Happy Mother's Day' in a big, bright, cheery voice. Oo is brilliant, and has style, and does not do things by halves. And she is the only person I know who has more bizarre disasters befall her than me.

Oo tells me she's sitting in a cafe, having left home for the morning. She's ripped up her Mother's Day flowers. She says she felt it was her privilege, having bought them for herself the day before.

Now I can't really explain Oo, because I feel she should do that herself, if she ever had a mind. But I would love to read Oo's blog. It would be a different order of magnitude from Grit's, I can tell you. Where our car breaks down, Oo's car blows up. While we deal with an irritating can opener, Oo's tennant is smashing up her house. While we sulk about the local school, Oo gets a place at one of the UK's leading institutions, marches in, and complains. The woman definitely has style. And as she describes her latest disaster, and we laugh, it's a tonic, and I start to feel less funerial.

So I start to cheer up a lot after Oo's call, and make Mother's Day fruit salad with mango. I put on Cuban dance music and get the children to dance around the kitchen with grapes on their heads. In the evening we do special things, like setting the table with the best place mats and lighting the candles. When the fruit salad comes out, the children think Mother's Day must be very special indeed. And they're right, it is now.

Thank you Oo for redeeming the day! (And please blog!)

A momentous day

What an achievement. We have made and posted birthday cards in the same day.

Let me explain the ground rules about any activity in a household of triplets. The first rule is there must be something for everyone to do. The second rule is that all the tasks must be of equal importance.

This isn't easy. Washing broccoli. This has to be split into a multi-part activity: several before chopping the heads off, and some more after. Other people sometimes do not appreciate this complexity. Two years ago me and the kids went to Dorset to live in a tent with Oo and son, and the triplets were keen to help. There clearly wasn't much for them to do in the five hours it took Oo to put up the tent, with me hovering about offering to hit things with a mallet. There wasn't much to do about the beds either, since two blow-up mattresses hadn't occupied anyone that long. The sleeping bags had already been put in their holders and pulled out again, so we'd exhausted that. It had to be cooking the food. And there was broccoli.

Oo said she would go and wash the broccoli. 'Stop!' I cried. 'Let Squirrel hold the broccoli on the way to the tap. Let Shark turn on the tap. Then Squirrel passes the broccoli to Tiger, who will hold the broccoli under the running water. Then Tiger will pass the broccoli to Shark who can also wash the broccoli. Then Shark passes the broccoli to Squirrel who can wash the broccoli too. Then Tiger can turn the tap off. Let Shark carry the broccoli back. But she must pass it to Tiger to place on the table, where it's going to be chopped. Now, let me tell you about how to chop off the heads...' I could see Oo's eyes had glazed over. But life with triplets is like that.

So making and posting birthday cards in the same day is a wonderful achievement. Think of the paper that has to be fetched, the felt-tips you might pick up and take for granted, the glue that everyone wants to pour, the spatulas to carry, the glittery sticky-on things you might keep in a drawer. They all have to be brought out, and everyone wants to do it. Don't forget the envelopes, the stamps, and the journeys to and from the post box.

The journeys have to be planned, meticulously, and in advance of doing anything. So everything takes three times the hours. For example, we have to walk through doors, and that's usually not fair, because Squirrel was first last time. Mostly because she's always leaving this family, but anyway, it must be fair. We debate who will open the door on the way out, who will be first to walk through the door, who will close the door, who gets to choose the way to the post office, and who gets to walk first down the pavement and hold a hand to cross the road.

It may seem laborious, and you're probably thinking 'Just go to the Post Office!' but think how you would cope if you said that to three little girls, all of whom want to be first. There'd be a shocked silence. Then the screaming, pushing, running about and crying would start, as everyone tried to be first at everything. Soon enough the weapons would come out. A cuddly puffin might look cute, but you know about it when you get a battering with it. Then you'd think, 'Thank goodness it's the puffin and not the lollypop sticks they've sharpened into spears'. Without the planning and organisation, you're looking at two hours to wind up and calm down, and foolishly you might have shouted the threat of 'Put the Puffin down or You don't go to the Post Office at all!'

Now, making and posting the birthday cards in the same day. What an achievement.

Happy Birthday Luna!