Forget about the market (day 1)

Mama stands all day at her craft stall, selling lovelylicious notebooks - which I would happily describe to you in intimate detail until your ears fall off - but her achievement is of no significance today.

It is that time of year when Smalltown disgorges onto the streets in its wicker-and-fire festival.

Newcomers, you may see this in terms of its sinisterness and perversion. And I could not explain otherwise, really, because no-one round here knows why. Like all fine local traditions, it just is.

Fetch Edward Woodward. His time is come.

It is not a fish corpse, it is a pink dolphin

It's that time of year again.

When we local inhabitants of Smalltown perform our annual ritual.

We decorate our front gardens with home-made models. Then we all troop round, meeting the neighbours, signing each other's petitions, sharing gossip about the local council, and expressing our wonder at the well-made constructions of Worzel Gummidge, Bill and Ben, and Postman Pat.

Then we have tea and cakes in the community orchard.

It's a local event for local people.

It all went off reasonably well.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger engaged in the enterprise with their usual enthusiasm. It is such an opportunity to show to our neighbours the contributions of the home educated children who live here! Tiger stuck two bits of cardboard onto my extendable ceiling duster, called it a toucan, and shoved it in the hedge where fortunately no-one could see it.

Squirrel spent several hours minutely painting paper butterflies, then hung them in a tree. I spent a good while hunting. After she pointed them out to me, I photographed them using the camera's helpful double-zoom function.

 And then there was Shark's contribution to the entertainment. She carefully laid it on the doorstep.

I looked at it, and hopefully asked, was the bloodied corpse of a dolphin stabbed by a spear part of her campaign to encourage all the happy passers-by to double-check their tuna tins for the dolphin-friendly logo?

'No', she answered, looking at me as if I was demented. 'It is a pink dolphin.'

Oh. I looked at it again, in a new light!

Trying for all the world not to see a fish corpse lolling against the door, laid out on a blood-splattered ocean.

I failed, but I kept that to myself, and said it was very nice. It is too, if you repeat to yourself that it is not a fish corpse, it is a pink dolphin.

Education, everywhere

Look! I have taken the little grits to Church!

We pass through the lit up entrance door and are not struck down for our godless ways by the Victorian archangels carved into the porch, so there is enough welcome and mercy here for us foolish sinners after all.

But like most of the rest of you however, I'm not coming here for worship, or for a service.

The thing about churches is, they make great community halls where your local independent cinema group can dust off the 1951 Alastair Sim version of Scrooge, crank up the old projector, and screen this fine black and white film alongside servings of mulled wine and platters of Co-op mince pies.

Personally, I think cinema is a fine use for a church, and is at least one means of embedding the little grits into our local history, culture and community without actually doing the God bit.

Oh yes, and I'm also ticking the boxes for literature and film studies.

Stranger, don't 'ee come into town on thissum night

The Smalltown procession.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have made lanterns to walk the walk. I paid for them to attend the workshop this year, so off-loading me from the actual lantern-making job. It's better for everyone concerned. With me they get last-minute frenzied shouting and some thrashing about with a hair dryer and Copydex while sprawled over the kitchen table and positioned under a gigantic fish. By the time the procession starts, someone's usually in tears. I didn't think I could withstand the dramatic tension of it all this year, so it was worth the fiver for the workshop fee.

Anyway, here are the photos of the actual event. It all looks normal to me, processing round the streets following a giant cat in a top hat and a robot with a slightly disconcerting grin. The town's inhabitants take to this ritual wicker-and-tissue-paper-fest with great enthusiasm, making double decker buses, space rockets, wolves, something that looks like a medical experiment and, from the House of Grit, a type of shark or whale or whatever. I forget. Not having to care about the precision placement of willow on a dorsel fin was just another reason why the preparation was totally worth a fiver.

Legally, this does it for Wednesday

 

Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act states your parental duty is to equip Tinkertop with an efficient and suitable education. 

How would you define efficient or suitable? 

Round here today, I'm defining efficient as taking the quickest, most expedient, and cheapest route to an end. Which means I take Shark, Squirrel and Tiger along to a community hall to thrash about in a Willow Withie Workshop with tissue paper, masking tape, and glue. I'm given a discount on the basis that triplets share. See? Quick, simple, and a bargain.

And suitable? I'm defining this to mean Shark, Squirrel and Tiger must have the cultural understanding to fit into, take part in, and help grow the life of a community in which they are a part. 

Then we can give a big happy legal tick here with the Willow Withie Workshop. Because this is in preparation for the event, taking place in a short time, when our local community comes together, out and about on the streets, in a night-time outdoor ceremony involving candles and twisted wicker. 

(I merely recommend strangers don't come into town on that day.)

The fun never ends

The annual Smalltown celebration. Inexplicable to anyone who doesn't live here.

Basically, it's the happy seasonal opportunity to explore your alter ego via old newspapers and the embarrassing contents of your wardrobe. Some of us do that everyday. But the idea is, once a year, we all do it together. You make your dummy, sit it on your hedge, prop it on your door step, hang it from a tree, or dump it in the gutters, then all the neighbours walk round, point, and laugh.

It's not much, but it's all we've got.

Well, I was too busy this year, so I left the household entry to the kids. They came up with Life in the Jurassic Swamp. Shark took 200 pictures of her ichthyosaurus in a range of subtle poses and said the battery ran out when she tried to take pictures of anyone else's endeavour.

It was probably just as well. She observed how this year a great many stuffed heads were drinking heavily from gin bottles, there were three hangings, and one was shoved face first in a post box.

Smalltown Tax

Emerge this morning to find the Smalltown Tax is due. This is a regular payment we have to make.

Look on the upside. We have a large garden where the kids can scream I hate you, and a beautifully commanding proper-built house with a heavy wooden kitchen door that sounds like a thunderclap when you slam it.

We couldn't afford this type of luxury close to London. So we are here, located in rural edge small town, rubbing alongside traditional working class, middle class Victorianophiles, Bangladeshi restaurateurs, and newly arrived incomers, who probably can't wait to get out thanks to the vagaries of the Friday night tax system.

The Smalltown Tax, for those happy folk who never have to pay it, can take any number of forms: broken wing mirrors where drunken kids run down the middle of the road after midnight with outstretched bottles and metal bars; dented car bonnets and car roofs where the kids run over the vehicles (they usually get off when they meet the line of white vans); knife-attacked car tyres (see photo); and the occasional broken kitchen window, garden theft, or simply having your car written off as the police chase the forced marriage kidnappers (our unforgettably large 2006 tax bill).

In this list I count only those that involve depressing discovery, a day's inconvenience, and repair costs at the local garage.

I do not count the extraordinary taxes (murder, arson, muggings), nor the ordinary taxes, such as feelings of revulsion at having to clear up the wee from the Saturday night drunk in the lobby; misery at clocking the teenage hooker who mistakes my home for the den three doors down; depression at having to walk past the house where the druggies hang out; and irritation when the local youth cycle down the back alleys bombing the gardens with eggs because, apparently, this is all the fun you can have in Smalltown.

For me, after limping to the garage on three tyres, an hour's wait (and eighty quid tax), it's a dreary local tax, and all I can hope is that I don't get another one in quick succession.

More importantly, I spend the rest of the afternoon doing the real emotional and financial work. That is, the horse shop, equipping the newly horse-struck Squirrel for her week's residential fun with a stinking great mare (cost to my bank balance, hundreds, and all taxes to my soul, extracted).

Life in a local town. Probably the same all over the world.

I'm beginning to muse about living life in two Small Towns: one in the middle of England and the other at the edge of an island in the South China Sea.


Yes, I miss my English Small Town with the random shouting and pointless violence. Here we have community events and free tea for visitors on the basketball court.


I miss the people of my English Small Town too. The expats on the island are some compensation, but not much. There's no brawling in the streets or beating up of pensioners. They're mostly well-behaved types come for the money and life experience. They're having a party today thanks to the Multicultural Melting Pot Festival, but it finishes promptly at 8pm so the cleaning ladies can come round.

Apart from the difference between violent and soulless, I'd say that the lack of car traffic on the island, due to the total absence of road, is the biggest difference between the two towns. At home in dear old Blighty, we can have car crime and traffic accidents any day of the week. They barely register on the local consciousness.

In this island life, you sometimes have to step off the path while a village vehicle passes by. They're the little motors that look like golf buggies. Anything is carried on the back of the village vehicles, which I guess is very similar to what you carry around the local town in the boot of a Honda Civic. Suitcases, soil, fish, concrete mix.

But there are similarities in any local life, aren't there? Dog poo and litter are things we both share. Although on the island I have seen a bloke lay down a little tissue just at the spot where his dog was about to concern itself with its business. Practical problem solving is just about the same as any local town.


And here, everyone's got a job to do, just like home. On the island, it's fishing, selling stuff, walking about the streets barefoot looking like a throwback to 1966, it's better than nothing. At home there's local work to be done too, like littering, painting vulgarities on brick walls, staggering home drunk at 2am, and chucking eggs at windows. I sort of miss complaining about the empty beer cans thrown over the garden wall. Here I can complain about the price of breakfast cereal.

I'm not sure what makes for more satisfying living on the island, apart from the fact that there's no Tesco, Sainsbury's or Asda. We also don't have arsonists, overt drug use, random mugging. But we do have pollution, cartels, and appalling waste. But then, every so often, the town is treated to a lion dance.



The kids get a ride on a sampan too. They can't have that in England. Someone would have set it on fire.


Of course I've been asked, what is most satisfying about living on the island? That is hard to answer. It might be the weather, which is sub tropical sunny. But there is nothing much to complain about on a crystal clear winter English day.

Then I thought, when I'm in Suffolk there's no piped gas. There isn't any here, either. But we have gas in bottles. Hey! We're one up on Suffolk!

In this town, eccentricity is normal

I forgot to mention. Yesterday, before we left the house to blunder about Ashridge woods holding a converted schoolhouse birdbox, we hoisted a home made Sphinx on top of the hedge.

It joins the mermaid on the doorstep. I forgot to photograph her. She's not exactly an unusual sight. She's over here if you're desperate.

This particular doorstep mermaid is not a stranger in this house. When she's not squatting on the toilet in the office she's taken herself off to the spare bedroom where she's spent her time sagging against the wall.

I don't know what happened to the others. One seems only to have the tail left, so I guess someone dismembered her, possibly with an old pair of scissors. The other one disappeared completely.

It is all in aid, of course, for Smalltown's annual walk. Smalltown is an industrial town, known amongst people who know these things, for its connections to railways and Victorian industry. So what does the local town events committee naturally put on?

The autumn scarecrow walk.

Tears, tears, tears

Because Tiger shot off in the garden last night to collect her bike for cycling to the Co-op with daddy Dig, and found her bike, stolen.

Tiger's bike should be leaning against the wall under the shade of a sprawling fig tree. Along with the old purple-framed, spiky saddle, boneshaker of a bike me and Dig have wobbled about on all summer. Both were missing. The back gate was open.

I guess whoever took the bikes needed some late night transport. They would have been able to see the bikes through a gap in the gate caused by a missing wooden panel. Incidentally, that's the same wooden panel that Mr Pod upstairs has been routinely kicking in morningtimes, and I have been routinely hammering back on, nighttimes.

That's the neighbourhood for you.

Tiger is inconsolable. I have sticky-taped guilt-inducing messages on the back gate, we have trolled around the backstreets looking for the dumped remains of her precious bike, and we have visited the local police station to report it lost. Lost, rather than stolen, because I think there's more chance of it being found like that, and we don't need a crime reference number for the insurance. All our bikes come from freecycle or the local tip, and we just do them up with oil, inner tubes and washing up liquid, then mostly we can wobble down the road and back.

I've spent the evening on freecycle and Bumblebee and said we will do all we can, because tears alone don't bring things back.

But Tiger has gone to bed feeling the worst thing in the world is other people, and I raise my eyes to the sky and think we've just got off lightly in Smalltown.

But it's not surprising my hair is turning grey

So I'm getting ready for bed, in the upstairs bathroom brushing my teeth, trying not to remove what's left of the enamel, concentrating on making sure the teeth in my head at the age of 99 are mine and not plastic, when I hear a blast of noise from the street below - like kids WHOOPING and SCREAMING - which is not particularly strange given that it's 10.30ish at night. But it is strange I hear some kid shout SHE'S GOING TO BLOW!

Now naturally curious about these late night impromptu street parties hosted by teen gangs here in Smalltown, I go to the window to look out with my toothbrush stuck in my face and my mouth full of Colgate foam and I see a lot of small bright fires blazing over the tarmac. One fire is under the wheel of a parked car and some kid is pumping his foot up and down on that blaze like he's trying to kick the fire out, but he's not having any luck with that because fire and rubber like each other very much and no Nike trainer is coming between that embrace.

The kid does what any responsible young adult does in our society, and runs off, with three other kids, away down the street whooping and calling. And Grit does what any responsible old adult does, tosses the toothbrush on the floor, runs down two flights of stairs to the kitchen, grabs a flower vase, chucks the flowers out, runs outside and throws the water over the fire and ppffff, out it fizzles.

Just as I stand there in the middle of the road, holding a flower vase, staring at the tyre, a vehicle screeches to a halt by me, a young man jumps out and shouts That's my car! What the hell's happening? Grit, with her mouth full of toothpaste foam, puts up a forefinger by way of suggesting Could you wait one moment please? and goes and spits in the hedge.

From that point life becomes slightly more surreal but involves the young man chasing four teenagers, a stand off down the back lane and Grit phoning the police. Over the next hour I have to hang round street corners half undressed with toothpaste dribble down my chin. It almost beats the time I stood in the business district with a plastic bag on my head thanks to a fire alarm at the hairdressers.

But I would say that it is an appropriate ending to a day here at the Pile. We have been guided by madness all day long, possibly a form of post-gooseberry disorder. Squirrel has declared she is writing a book and is copying out someone else's book as an expedient and quick way of doing it. Shark has wailed she now needs a pet so badly she has gone out and caught greenfly in a jar and is now looking after them with an intensity that will make them wish they were dead. Tiger, not to be outdone, has manoeuvred a reluctant slug into a marmalade jar and demanded I give up my organic lettuce to feed him and, by the way, his name is Nutmeg.

Given this daily environment and the routine state of Smalltown, it is surprising that I am as normal as I am.

I can ignore it for only so long

I give in. I must recognise this irritating stuff, although I have tried to ignore it.

Today, it is very annoying. It stops me going out and doing things. We have to stay at home. Here, I am forced to read Horse Pie. I take my revenge. I make everyone watch Simon Schama and the Reformation.


Here's a back lane in Smalltown. It is enough of a hazard normally, what with staggering down there avoiding the sewage and dead dogs and bypassing the knife fights. And I only want a bottle of beer from the Co op. But after a day at home with the little grits, Simon Schama and the Pie, make that two.


I mean, it was alright when it started, last week. At 6am, I knew something had happened because the road was deathly quiet. It was like Smalltown packed up the veneer of industry for the day. After breakfast, the roads filled up with the neighbours, pelting each other with snowballs. The Evangelical Christians and Fundamentalist Muslims were out there in happy alliance lobbing snowmen heads at each other. The Marxist co-operative was not involved of course. They were off up the park fashioning snow workers and making igloos.

But now look. After the cavorting about, the news has changed. Now the snow is not fun anymore. It is the apocalypse, for us all. And I will die in an avalanche if I attempt to buy beer.


And so it's Friday. Grimly Grit has had enough of crunching about all week with cold toes. She has had enough of children shedding gloves all over the floor asking is there another pair and have we got another carrot. She has had enough of listening to the end of the world on the BBC. And the music workshop at the library was cancelled, because today they closed down the ruddy library.

Bring on a plague of locusts and give us all some light relief.

Just once more at the local museum

Here we are, wondering if we can get in without paying at the local museum on the night of the Victorian Christmas celebration. You think that's mean? Well here's a confession. We've not paid all year.

But of course I have an excuse.

Eight years ago I blundered through the door (sideways) pushing triplets in the widest buggy known to humankind, and demanded of the old lady custodian propped against the museum desk that she sell me an annual pass, right there and then, otherwise I'd be paying several hundred pounds in entrance fees.

This demonstrates these twin qualities of grit. Naivety and stupidity. Annual pass? flaps the old lady. I don't know anything about an annual pass! Is there an annual pass?

Grit is determined that if there isn't one, there soon will be. She has promised herself she will get out of the house every ruddy day. It is either that, or die, walled up behind 20,000 used nappies. The local museum is one of those out-of-the-house destinations. Five minutes by car or a twenty minute walk. Ideal for a despairing woman unsure of her own sanity and three small beings who don't give a toss where they are, so long as they can feed, sleep and burp. And it's either once a week touring the local museum, or going crazy and offering the walls another slice of raspberry cheesecake.

But this is a local museum you understand, with six visitors a year and a school party come July. Such items of paperwork as Application for an annual pass do not exist. Until Grit arrives to torture the old lady by waving babies at her and threatening to cry hysterically unless she can come once a week to look meaningfully at a Victorian shovel.

Six weeks after this demonstration of need, I receive in the post a laboriously typed bit of paperwork to which I add a cheque. In return I receive a small card. Museum Entrance Ticket 001.

Now I did renew that annual ticket every year. 002. 003. And so on. I am pleased to have done so. Under its new director the local museum is going from strength to strength and no longer is it a display of three shovels in a barn. Now it has a mocked up Victorian street and wheelwright and pharmacy and everything.

The gritlets have grown up with the confidence of running straight in, and the old lady just waved us through and no longer bothered to look at the card. She sort of assumed we still had one. And we did. Until the last one expired. And we had every intention of replacing it. But things take a while round here.

Well today it's the Victorian Christmas celebration, when we can drink mulled wine and Tiger can show off her skills with a Victorian hoop. And we are left with the slightly awkward situation that we will turn up at the desk and the old lady will try and wave us through.

Because we are not quite that mean, we will offer to renew our annual pass tonight. Even though we know the old lady will be so busy she won't be able to deal with the paperwork right there and then, and will wave us through, and we will promise to her that we will pop back and buy our pass when she's not so busy and she can find the form.

And we will, too. Honestly.

Serious stuff

It's not all rollicking laughter here you know. Some days there is home education to be done.

I would like home education to stop messing about and mean order. That would be safe and secure. I might do home ed by nailing Shark's clothes to the kitchen chairs and shoving spelling worksheets under her nose. This would feel like control. I would like this feeling. It would be good.

Unfortunately, things do not work like that on most days. OK then, no day I have ever lived with these three small creatures blasted from planet GB2735637 and deposited in my body by evil aliens, no day has ever felt safe, secure, and in control.

Today home education is like every day of home education. It means knowing life and everything in it is way out of control. So let's find some way of making the tiniest bit of sense of all that crazy, scary, disempowering and intimidating chaos.

I have no inner resources, no inherent streak of discipline, no ability to cohere a single strand of educational thought and keep it there. So I immediately look outside to this messed up world I live in, and I grab onto a happening bit of it, and I try and make some sort of order from that for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Some might say we have a useful expression for that. It is clutching at straws.

Today there is a lantern festival in Smalltown. This is the day when all the dysfunctional families, weirdos, crazies, sad hippies, delinquents, misfits and recovering Jehovah's witnesses take to the town streets after dark, bang drums, and wave lanterns made with tissue paper. See? You thought your town was strange. Try this local back and beyond of England.

Now in this home educating world of ours, I think surely, the ideal thing to do would be to find out about festivals of light all around the world, then help the children each make their lantern and let them lead us to the market square in the dark and plunging temperatures to join in the annual procession round Smalltown.

Of course it doesn't go to plan. I cannot find the festival of bloody light book so sod that. Then there is a big fight over some Copydex glue, three sheets of tissue paper and a picture of a turtle. After three hours, with one offspring in tears, one sick, and one screaming choice obscenities involving bottoms, I feel that despair, or hanging myself from the hallway banisters might be a good solution.


But I'm not giving up. Because this is one of my mottoes. Never give up. Along with Let not great ambition overshadow small success. I don't mind admitting that I found this one in a fortune cookie.

So I keep going. I can shout, reason, complain, use logic, argue, throw myself on the ground weeping Pity poor mama! but eventually I get right through to the bitter end, which is two and a half lanterns, two children on a walk with daddy headed to the start of the lantern parade, and Shark screaming her face off in the schoolroom because the turtle's got no light on its head.

And at this point I finally feel some authority. Some control. Because I march right up to Shark's tissue paper turtle, grab a torch, a six foot beanpole from the garden and a metre of masking tape and I sort out the ruddy turtle-light problem. Now or never. I hand the lantern to Shark and say The parade of town weirdos starts in five minutes. Are we joining daddy and your sisters and all the other dysfunctions, or are we staying here in the schoolroom to cry?

I am so proud of that moment of authority and control. Because out of this chaos and mess and disorder comes three little girls, each with a lantern made out of tissue paper, glue, beanpole and torchlight, walking proudly, side by side, with all the crazies in town.

By these things, we learn

We truss up three mermaids and skewer them to the ground in the front garden. This might seem an ordinary day here at the Pile. It is like our other achievements. Went to the woods and built a shelter for a four-inch sheep. Spent two hours hunting a monk in a field. Learned how Vikings cut off feet. But this particular home education project is a very big thing.

Because, for the first time in the history of home education management at the Pile, the stuffed mermaids project is achieved without argument, violence, threats of police, social services or a pointed finger toward the school gates. Indeed I do not have to squash any resistance, dispute, quarrel or rebellion from any quarter at any time. At all.

And here is the result of our week's happy consensus and, dare I write it, sustained enthusiasm.



I know they do not look much, these strange and lumpy fish creatures. They won't be snapped up by Madame Tussaud's for their very realistic touring mermaid display, nor will Disney come knocking clutching a million dollars to have our beautiful mer creatures in the trailer of Little Mermaid VI. But I treasure our mermaids as if they were a fraction of that value. Because here at the Pile these lustrous and exquisite beauties are the result of several hours attentive, quiet study. First the decision making and research, then the drawings, discussions, design and technology, the maths, materials science, and production. Heck, with that lot, even the little dollies join in. (Or at least two of them. I haven't seen the third since she was strung up on the zip wire.)



I may never be able to part with these big and gorgeous ladies. That is going to be a tadge of an inconvenience when a visitor needs to use the office bathroom and must manhandle mermaid 2 from her squatting position on the toilet because really, there is nowhere else to stuff her. But these mermaids show me that it can be done. Co-operation, agreement and happy construction of a family project. (OK, nearly a complete family. It is without Dig, who is in Canada. Not that he would have easily agreed anyway to sew his own merman.)

There have been days in the past when I thought I could not continue with home education, let alone triplets. I can immolate myself in the market square any day of the week, and some days it would not have been half so bad as squeezing three arguing beings into a small car for an expensive lesson that I have paid for and that they wanted yesterday, but today, right now, they do not want. At any price.

Over the past few years I have had to learn to negotiate, listen, side-step, argue; I have had to carefully select and organise lessons and outings; to plan rewards and incentives, delights and dinner, sometimes five times a day if necessary. Well, today it is all worth it. This project has required everyone to listen, work together, present a point of view, and accept limitations. We had to tell Squirrel with five minutes to go and without modelling wire that her mermaid could not hold up sea shells because her arms would collapse. And that had to be accepted, and it was, gracefully. I have known professional teams of people less able to cope with such news.

So when these mermaids sit in the front garden, and the Gritlets process for three hours around Smalltown comparing scarecrows on the Annual Scarecrow Walk, then I get to sigh and reflect on what a journey we have come, and how some days even though I have felt like this,


I can take a big sigh, slap myself on the back with a tea towel, and shout out that lesson I am learning in life. And that is, Never give up.

A spot of DIY

Dig observes the deteriorating domestic situation and, with a beady eye on the likely cost of divorce, mends this:


Mending the door into the yard by applying two large hinges has been on the list since Saturday 2nd June when it fell off and hit me on the head.

And the first thing that some passing teenager does on passing the newly restored door is to try and kick it in.

This is the town where I live

The kids have pen pals! Yee-haw! People who actually have written! Yes! That's right! Like they have an expectation that the Grit and Dig family combo at the Pile are civilized people who know how to hold a crayon the right way round! Get to it Squirrel! Let's go!

Grit is full of enthusiasm because now we have to write a letter back. Squirrel looks doubtful, like any crayon-pal might want to inspect under her bed, and trawl through her treasures.

'No', I reassure her, 'They do not want to know what is in your treasure box under the bed. Even though I know that is where you put Shark's bed knobs, thank you very much. The whole world does not want to know that you pilfered the knobs, or that's where you're hiding them. In fact', I add menacingly, 'if you keep nicking Shark's bed knobs, I will tell everyone where you keep them stashed. OK?'

Squirrel thinks about this and looks as if a deal might be on the table. I reckon with a brain like hers she's either going to become a lawyer or join the criminal underworld as a stasher of stolen goods. It's 50/50 right now.

Squirrel says that she will write a letter so long as it is on her terms. 'OK' I add, confident that I can swing the contents so that she does not blab about Dig wandering about without his trousers, or Grit managing to knock herself senseless by throwing the tea-tin lid at her head yesterday. We don't want the world knowing the sort of chaos that goes on round here.

Anyway, Squirrel commands the camera and marches off down the back lane. She says she wants to photograph the skips at the back of the Co-op because you pass those on the short cut home after mummy buys beer, and people might like to know that.

'I think they do not' I say decisively. 'They want to know the English spring daffodils are out. Look, photograph the lovely daffodils'. Squirrel compromises and takes a picture of a house which is not ours. The people inside are looking at us through the curtains. Now we're for it. I give Squirrel a shove to get her moving before she photographs their dog shit as well.

'Look here!' I shout encouragingly, 'Can you see the delightful 19th century Victorian features around the square! How truly amazing to think that these delightful features are over one hundred years old!' I sound like Loyd Grossman on a Through the Keyhole special. In fact I think I might claim that when Squirrel starts photographing front doors. I take the camera off her before she gets us both banged up for intent to burgle.

But there are successes, even though I lose the battle over the porch hood. I eliminate the photograph of the bank where Squirrel keeps her savings (£12.56), and I get her to photograph the Church and not the drunk. She won't take a picture of the library, nor of the place where she takes her ballet class; these I think will make us look erudite and accomplished, but she's having none of it, so we compromise on a disused bath house.

And by this evening we have one letter, barely legible, plus photographs of the town square, a historic building or two, our front door, and a satisfied Squirrel who says she thinks her handwriting is getting better, and it doesn't matter that the g's are all the wrong way round.

I agree, and give Squirrel a hug. I am considering this day one of achievement. Only two more to go, and we get to try a trip to the post office.

All worn out. Me and the fridge

Grit is tired out. She has had tip-top quality chat time with Jol. Six hours of it! Can you believe jaws can chat-chat-chat that long? This fine record was achieved down at the local indoor play centre where Squirrel, Shark and Tiger intermittently played and fought over who was next in the rota to go off to the carousel with Am. So really it is not about children playing so that their mummies can engage in tip-top chat. No, not at all. It is all about ensuring the effective socialisation of the home educated child. Really. Honestly.

Anyway, Grit is all chit-chatted out and now totally empty of anything interesting because it has all been said. A bit like this.

Hello hello hello

Grit gets a letter from the police. They're complaining about the state of the car. Not the fact that the wheels have no tread on them, mind. No, not that. About the state of the interior. Apparently, with the stuff that's routinely left inside my vehicle, I might attract car burglers.

For example, Grit thinks, Burglar Bill might see the old coat that belongs to Shark which has paint down one sleeve. Then he'll think 'Aha! That's a tenner down the Dog and Bone for me tonight!' Or the local dodger might eye-spy the broken wicker cassette box, out of which spills the Once Upon a Time audio cassettes that cost ten pence at Hitchin Scouts. Or perhaps Jungle Jingles with Bill Oddie catches his eye, and he'll have those broken cassettes down the Sunday car boot quicker than you can say farkin ell. Tell you what, when we're down there, we'll pay the bloke a fiver to get them back.

So what else will we find down the car boot sale? I'll do an inventory now to assist the police. There are three car seats, covered in a variety of stains. These are distinguishable by the fact that there are no covers on the arm rests because Shark, Squirrel and Tiger ripped them off some time ago and used them as weapons on the AI(M). They were confiscated shortly afterwards and taken down the tip just outside Hexham.

Or there's brochures from National Trust, English Heritage, and sundry tourist sites up and down the country. Most of these we've no intention of visiting, we just like collecting the brochures. Four copies of each brochure, usually. We justify theft on this scale by saying one day we might pass Tintagel Old Post Office or the Farne Islands and need to check opening times. Perhaps the local dodger will collect them up from the footwell, glove compartment and out from behind the flap that hangs down on a broken bracket to screen mummy Grit's scowling face from the autumn sunshine.

While he's at it, Burglar Bill might make away with the emergency bottle of Dettol. And the ice skating gloves and spare knickers we carry about just in case. Ditto socks, tissues, and strange scraps of fabric that look suspiciously like they've been cut from someone's clothing.

Then, of course, there's the assortment of toys. The pencil sharpener shaped like a horse. A plastic ball, joke glasses, bits from a K'nex set, and a confiscated woolly elephant.

On the back shelf there's more to attract the eye. There's the French folders, with Elle est grande spilling out above a crayoned picture of a fat lady. I bet that's worth a few bob. As are the plastic bags in case Squirrel is sick. And the variety of sticks, conkers, leaves and confiscated natural found items that are bundled into the back of the car because otherwise we can't go home.

There. That about wraps up the inventory. Not counting, of course, the moulding banana skins, squashed fruit juice cartons, green sandwich ends and ground up biscuits that are living forever in the upholstery.

Or, of course, Burglar Bill might take one look at the above and think, 'Poor cow. She's obviously got a right load of messy arses to deal with. I'll slip a fiver through the open window to put towards the valet. No, wait a minute. Make that a tenner, and I'll just open the driver door, 'cos tell you what, it's never locked.'

Whoopee

Never say things don't happen here in Smalltown.

'On the 28th October, we are having a special lift celebration. The Community Centre finally has a lift to allow access to the upstairs floor for the less able-bodied. In celebration we are naming it the Angel Lift and inviting members of the public to see the lift in action and experience our special lift music. You can also get involved in devising a performance with the lift, or just sit back and watch. Entry is only 50p for children and £1 for adults. 11am to 2pm each day.'