And a good time was had by nearly all, in Gloucester

It starts here, and thanks to breakfast, Premier Inn totally wins. Tiger is gleeful. Last time we stayed in a Travelodge I force fed her cornflakes with a fork at 7.25am and she's never forgiven me. Shark is simply licking her lips at the sight of the Sunday morning spread which, coming down to £2.50 each - and I haven't had any hand in the preparation, cooking or presentation, and do not have to wash up - means that by 9.05am my first preference is to come and live here forever.

If staying in a Premier Inn with their delicious breakfast wasn't simply the best start to a budget day out in Gloucester, we then hoof it over here, to the cathedral


where I am delighted to find the tomb of Edward II


who gets my vote as the most entertaining and pointless king Britain has ever had, possibly until we arrive at Charles III.


From there it's over to Gloucester docks


where we take to the National Waterways Museum to continue an educational day and find out about the history of the canals in England.*


* Actually, read there, 'play with the toddler water table until we are forcibly removed from it yelling like an albatross because the woman from reception will come round with the keys to lock up. You can tell by the sour look of misery on her face she has been on reception all day putting up with this sort of customer when she should by rights be sat at home in front of half a roast Sunday cow'.

Sometimes Dig speaks a lot of sense

I need to sort this problem.

This weekend it's Squirrel's turn to throw herself about on a cliff side and I must transport her there, and bring her home again.

That's not the problem.

The problem is, I would like to stay overnight somewhere en route so that we experience the fantastic countryside that is England.

When Dig is here, and we move around the country depositing children, Dig needs a shower, clean sheets, a flushing toilet, lights that turn on at a light switch, and walls. By those facts, we overnight in a Travelodge. We do not stay in a tent.

But Dig is not here.

And we have a tent.

At this point, it is Michelle's fault.

She put the idea in my head because she has a tent. And she has fun in her tent. You need only to read her blog to realise she has fun in that tent. And it is the sort of fun that I would like. I want fun in a tent. Like Michelle.

But we have a tent.

And Dig is not here.

Solution. Take the tent and the children and go and put up that tent in a field and overnight there, and then we are free to do what we want and go where we please and it will be like Mr Polly all over again except this time the drama will be played out with a happy Grit and her charming children skipping in the countryside.

Problem. I do not know how to put up the ruddy tent. It is like no tent I have seen in my life. I cannot find the instructions. I would carry it up to the field and have a go there but it is throwing it down with rain.

Solution. Try and work out how to put up the tent from first principles IN THE BEDROOM.*

* Do NOT try this at home. Putting up a tent in a bedroom is a totally stupid idea. It does not work. It has no chance of working. The tent will lie in a crumpled up heap all over the floor while you cry.

Update: I have not booked a Travelodge. No. I am made of stronger stuff than to give in.

I have booked a room at a Premier Inn instead.

Living the high life

We're staying the night in the Bradford Travelodge, off the A647.

This is not an accident. I have planned it. In fact two months ago I pinned Dig down on a diary date for this outing. Dig is driving us here, which I am sure he likes very much. He can pretend he is a pilot. Boys like that sort of thing. Next time I could get him a special hat to wear. It would say World's Best Pilot, or something like that.

You see, I suspect Dig is bored with the perpetual round that is Mumbai, Stockholm, Milan and Shanghai. I could be clever, and take advantage of this global ennui, to show him a few things about top quality UK travel with Grit and the Gritlets. We could seduce him with the delights of travelling with your family. By this cunning route, I might encourage him to travel more with us. I would like that.

I could, for example, take advantage of the fact that he is strapped into the driver's seat and I could narrate the many places of interest in the UK that we are passing, while he is driving at 80mph for three hours along the motorway. I bet British Airways doesn't do that while jetting between Germany and Japan. In fact, I have a Reader's Digest book about interesting towns and villages. I could read from that. Or there is the inflight entertainment. Listening to Matilda at top whack because it stops the screaming is certainly an insight into Grit's life of five-star luxury travel. And who needs the trolly dolly, when there is the eye-candy called Grit sitting next to you? Except for the bit between junctions 15 and 21 where I fell asleep over the Reader's Digest, lost control of my neck muscles and did some dribbling and snorting.

Well anyway, here we are at the Bradford Travelodge. We arrive hungry, hot, exhausted and needing a big cry. I bet Dig feels like a big cry too. I am sympathetic. Travel does this to people. Squirrel is having an extra loud howl, because of what I'm not sure, but suspect it is called Empty Tummy. She wipes a teary face with a grubby hand, speckled in Co-op teacake crumbs, the Co-op teacake hastily thrown over the back seat as a smart bit of inflight catering service while navigating around a Bradford industrial estate.

Squirrel says she is leaving this family as she stands howling in the car park where they are charging us £3 to park the car. £3! Can you believe that! They didn't mention this on the website. Well, I tell Dig, this is one of the hazards of travel. Unexpected taxes. I know that normally when he is about on Business class, or First class if he gets bumped, he does not pay, but I have no money on me, so it's quite lucky he's here.

Then I tell Squirrel it's time to stop crying. Not only do we want to show daddy Dig what a good time he can have with us on our five-star family travel, we will soon put Plan A into action.

At this point, let me say that I know about the eccentricities of travel. Places like the Fairlawn Hotel in Calcutta get a pretty good press. I have even stayed there myself and been horribly sick, but do you know, there is something comforting about having your accommodation exactly the same no matter where you are? And Travelodge is exactly the same. There is always a big girl on reception who stares past you with complete uninterest. If I appear with six eyeballs on springs and be bright green, freshly beamed down from Planet Neuron Minor, she would stare past my left ear, just the same. She would utter the welcoming monotone yeah, we need a mobile number even though I suspect they do not and Travelodge are just stealing my phone number so they can inundate me with texts selling me an off-peak room at Scotch Corner.

I'm sure the Bradford Travelodge reception experience fits very nicely with Dig's life about the globe. I bet he's been in classier places and got the same treatment. And then there's the room, lacking in extra towels, sheets, bedding, even though I've clearly booked family rooms and for more than one person! So off I go and collect the bedding myself from the linen room which is open. You see, you might pay a lot to do that elsewhere.

You can probably guess, I am a fan of Travelodge hotels. The freedom they offer us! We can have the arguments days in advance over who is going to sleep on the pull-out bed; who gets the sofa bed, and which way round their head should go. We can argue over which order everyone has the bathroom.

Then there's breakfast to look forward to. We can argue for hours about that. Cereal is pretty controversial stuff around here, I can tell you, and on this topic there's no lack of political conversation, so Dig will feel at home. I bet Dig can barely contain himself. I'm sure I can see him stuffing his knuckles into his mouth right now. In the morning, Mummy Grit will bring in the plastic bowls, long-life milk and packet of cornflakes from the car and then look in her picnic hamper to discover she has brought forks again by accident. Never mind. You can spear the cornflakes and drink the milk, Chinese style. There you go. We could be in Beijing.

Now I've got distracted by the wonder of it all. Back to Plan A. This is when we dump the bags, argue about the arguments, climb into the car and drive back down the A-road to the nearest chippy. Here, we eat big bags of steaming chips in the car. And everytime, I tell Dig, would you believe, our view is different! First it was the Oxford ring road. Then it was a housing estate somewhere outside Shrewsbury, and this time we're outside a mosque! We arrive at sundown, so we can covertly watch the hastening men patter up the road, tunics flowing. And in the chip shop, the chips are expertly lifted, shook and flipped into a polystyrene tray while Bollywood music plays and a small girl, barely out of toddlerdom, with an armful of bracelets, stares open mouthed and unblinking at Shark, Tiger and Squirrel as if she had never seen the like. There you go, I nudge Dig, we could be back in Dhaka or Delhi. And I'm sure this culinary experience matches that time in Moscow when they force-fed you Cough balls and Cheese.

I think, when I whisper sweet good night, and Dig finally goes to sleep, that he is impressed by Grit's exotic and exciting life. I am sure the stifled sobs are just homesickness. He may even tell Sweden he cannot make it now. He might tell them he is going to spend his future travelling career on the motorway Travelodges of England, enjoying this special time travelling with his family.

Oh, and there is a point to all Grit's globe trotting, apart from a brave attempt to show Dig a good time. It is that tomorrow we are visiting the National Media Museum, for the betterment of the children's education.

Setting off for PGL

It is a bright and breezy day. But it's still April, so we can look out for showers and judge the distance should we need to run. It's cold enough too, with a sharp icicle wind, for the cherry tree to be wrapping up its blossom for another week.

Mothers of school children in the county next to us will be coiling warm scarves and bright woolly coats about their youngest children and carefully depositing them beyond school gates that lock at lunchtime; until the time these small adventurers are to be picked up again by an attendant adult, they will be watched and supervised; they will be steered in this direction for that lesson, this space for that play, here for dinner, there for collecting coats and going home. Going home. To safety.

And mummy Grit, the irresponsible, no-good mummy, will be taking her smallest and most tender offshoot up into the rolling hills of Shropshire, tipping her out into a wind-blasted field and abandoning her, to be battered, bruised, assaulted and thrown off a cliff.

Those thoughts, and others, worse yet, are the thoughts that are gnawing at me as I drive the long journey to a Travelodge off the A49 north of Shrewsbury. I have already settled in my mind that Squirrel's adventure holiday is all a disaster. We may not even get there. We shall probably be incinerated in a bizarre accident north of Birmingham involving a gasoline tanker and an ice-cream van. We shall be hurtled to our deaths from the heights of a freak tornado. We will die from hypothermia after becoming grid-locked on the M1 overnight because the car has broken down. And I will deserve it all, because I am the sort of wretched mother who abandons her Squirrel to maniacs in fields and PE teachers who have no souls.

By the time we reach Shrewsbury I am barely able to breathe. I tell Shark, Squirrel and Tiger that they had better look after me because I may pass out. Squirrel suggests eating chips, and Tiger says this is a good idea because she is hungry. Shark suggests that after everyone has eaten chips they could go to bed. She says that when the lights go off I could hide in the toilet again and drink beer. I say that is probably the best thought anyone has given me all day, and so I do that.

And tomorrow I abandon Squirrel to her fate.

Was that a difficult few days ahead?

Dig has had enough of Squirrel shouting 'I'm leaving this family'. He is calling her bluff because he has booked her in, for three days, here. And Squirrel starts her big adventure this coming Friday.

Since the news exploded at 10.02 this morning, Squirrel has rocketed to cloud nine. She is at my elbow every fifteen minutes tugging my sleeve and begging to pack. Shark's jaw dropped at the news before she reassembled her thoughts and demanded seven days on a water sports holiday, with snorkeling. Then in less time than I can take an inbreath, Tiger staked her claim for a week at the local stables on the basis that if Squirrel can go, so can she.

Grit, reaching for an early morning brandy, would prefer a bit more bomb damage all round. And probably a few months warning, so she can steady her nerves properly. After all, this is the first time I'll ever be parted from my little Squirrel for more than a few hours at a stretch. I have never done an overnight watch without her presence, breathing deeply and snuffling sometimes, wrapped up in her pink fairy cotton duvet in the room close to mine. I can check on her at midnight and know in the darkness she is safe.

Then Dig turns to me and says, as if by the way, he is leaving on Tuesday because he has to talk to important people in the South, and he'll be back Saturday. That leaves me to take Shark, Tiger and Squirrel on a three hour drive to the adventure location, drop Squirrel off, then drive home with the other two, try not to weep so hard and better book a Travelodge for Thursday night because otherwise everyone has to get up Friday morning at 5.30am. Don't forget to sort out her bedding and here's the telephone number.

And I'm telling Squirrel I am very happy too and she will have a lovely time.

Missed day

I miss things today. Here's some things I miss.

• I miss taking Tiger, Shark and Squirrel to an event with the parks department. I could kick myself for this. And I do, for a good ten minutes on my left ankle, shouting 'Take that! It's what you asked for and you deserve it!' I think I might be a bit unhinged during that process but I feel better afterwards, so who cares.

• I have two hours free today and what do I do? The washing up. Therefore I miss an opportunity to go to the opticians and get new glasses. I have lost two pairs of glasses in the last month and am now reliant on the free pair. I managed to wangle the free pair out of Vision Express two years ago by having a breakdown in the shop, whereupon they gave me a pair of glasses to get rid of me. Anyway they're my last pair. They're scratched, so if I look through the right lens it's very foggy. Also the arm has broken on the right-hand side so I have bound it with sellotape, Jack Duckworth style.

• I also miss the opportunity afforded by free time to attack my head with a bottle of colouring fluid. This is getting urgent.

• And while I'm on the subject of missed opportunities, I'll add that today I missed going to Hastings to see the battle reenactment on Senlac Hill. Actually, I miss this every year because we live miles from Hastings and I would have to organise a stop over. This remains an annual ambition and fits into my home-ed Travelodge fantasy. I stayed for a week near Hastings two years ago with the kids and it was jolly good fun. We were in a freezing caravan in the middle of the field. Every time I turned the heating on, the lights went off. This was a bit inconvenient when the field frosted. We missed the battle reenactment too because we visited in February and the battle is in October.

• Since the house is full of noise and argument I miss people today who do not scream but are quiet and comforting and say 'It'll all come out in the wash'. I don't know what that means but that's what my mum used to say.
  

Looking back, I suppose that what I've missed today wasn't that important in the scale of things. And if it was, it'll probably come out in the wash.

A trip to Oxford

Here's a rare picture of Grit, so treasure it. Squirrel, Tiger and Shark are asleep in the sofa bed, double bed and pull-out. Grit's in the bathroom as the only place left to drink a beer with the light on. And the Travelodge Hotel on the Woodstock Road in Oxford is where Grit, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are staying tonight.

Dig, meanwhile, is staying in the posh hotel in Oxford, eating posh food, drinking posh wine, and being feted by posh people who dress nice, don't scream that they hate the world and everybody in it, and who use a knife and fork properly and not as weapons with which to attack their dining partners.

Staying in the Woodstock Road Travelodge while Dig does important things down the road all seemed like a good idea when I embarked on it. You see it's part of my long-held fantasy of travelling about trouble-free in home ed happiness, searching out art galleries, museums, science parks and gardens all over England. In this fantasy, me, Squirrel, Tiger and Shark stay overnight cheaply and simply in a Travelodge family room, see the wondrous sights, and come home again. A simple vision for a simple life. The Woodstock Road Travelodge is our first experiment.

I cannot say that so far it has gone particularly well. Despite explaining to Elizabeth Hurley at least forty times yesterday that the Grit and Dig family is out tonight, she has affected total surprise at our departure this morning and asked what should she do for dinner.

On the journey here, Tiger has been complaining and angry about having to sit in the car, be near a sister, look out of the window, listen to a story, be taken to a Roman villa site and, she says, being forced to look at a horse when it's not fair because Shark saw it first and Shark does everything first so why should she because there is no point.

Then it gets worse. Once we drop Dig off we attempt to visit a local wildlife park. I get to the pay booth and Tiger's angry complaints have descended into a screaming fit, so I turn away with apologies and pull into a lay-by so that Tiger can jump out of the car and kick her car seat to bits.

Once Tiger's calmed down enough we get back to the Travelodge and I drop the keys down the toilet. I have to scoop them out with my hand because the coat hangers are locked onto the wardrobe rail. At least this makes the big fight about the toy unicorns, which get banned from the room and imprisoned in the car, less of a torture than it otherwise might have appeared.

Then tonight Mummy Grit offers Squirrel, Shark and Tiger a drive into Oxford to get some chips. For the first ten minutes in the car, all goes well. Then somewhere approaching Carfax, Tiger's rage returns with a vengeance and she threatens to smash the car windows in while kicking me as I'm driving, thus forcing Mummy Grit to do an emergency stop, stick all the hazards on, and burst into tears.

When I've composed myself enough to move away from the traffic lights where I've stalled to a hazardous halt, I drive on to find a chippie. I take Squirrel and Shark inside with me, and suffer the suspicious questioning of fryer Rocky who is probably alarmed by the sight of a dishevelled, disoriented woman towing two anxious-looking children about at 8 o'clock at night while a third child appears to be locked in the car, screaming. In truth I have left Tiger in the car either to smash her way out or calm down. Fortunately, she chooses the latter and, along with her sisters, is equipped with a comforting bag of hot chips for the journey back to the room.

Unfortunately, because I'm disoriented, I have no idea where I am. This is pretty good going as I lived in Oxford for a year, but at the moment total memory loss seems to be par for the course: yesterday I lost a piece of the oven. Anyway, I reason we are somewhere in the centre of Oxford and will get out. We do get out. But not before I have driven almost a full circuit round the Oxford ring road looking for the Woodstock Road Travelodge.

And there you have it. I'm sitting in the bathroom, drinking beer while the kids are all asleep, and decide to photograph the moment. And if you are wondering where Grit is sitting since there are not usually chairs in bathrooms in your average Travelodge hotel, you are right.