This child bait plan is rubbish

Fule Grit takes her little grits to the farm.

She does this because she wants Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to be compliant, agreeable, sit down, and shut up. Then she can get her head around some boring typesetting work and hopefully put clothes in the washing machine.

If command and control is not taken of the laundry soon we will be chasing my trousers down the street because those beauties are now walking under their own momentum, striding round the front room and issuing death threats to the milk man.

Taking the little grits to the farm this morning is part of Grit's grand plan.

Depending on which way you look at it, it is called BRIBERY or a REWARD AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR FORTHCOMING COOPERATION, BECAUSE WHEN WE GET HOME YOU'RE PLAYING IN THE GARDEN AND LEAVING ME ALONE FOR THREE HOURS.

Either way you look at it, it is a rubbish plan.


Don't try it. It is nearly as rubbish as the world's most rubbish plan of child care dreamed up by Big Bro in desperation at 11pm while his little niece grits are boinging around the beds. That plan was, I will give you a Kit Kat if you go to sleep. That was, and still is, the winner of the world's most rubbish child control plan, bed time category.

Of course once we are at the farm, the little grits scarper into the fields. After two hours sitting alone by a wheelbarrow I'd buy a laptop there and then should anyone passing be selling one.



When the gritlets emerge they have picked the equivalent of a month's wage in strawberries, boxed them up and are marching towards the pay desk anticipating a cooking session with a strawberry tart when we get home, thank you very much.


Well the advantage of the day is quite lost. I have spent more than I earned and gone off entirely the idea of working at all.

So we invade the gooseberry fields, come home, and make gooseberry fool.

Appropriate.

Grit is very cunning

HA! I cleverly outwit the gritlets ONCE MORE! I buy a calligraphy set for £1 at the Community Charity Shop, then whisper to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger that this set is so special and important that only one person can do this activity at any one time!

Immediate brawling, squabbling and falling out. Mummy Grit imposes a timetable for calligraphic pen use. And then I say now you are medieval monkettes and you must copy out the book of your choice. I am delirious with happiness. Because the writing GOES ON ALL DAY.




I am now the proud owner of 50 sheets of handwritten pages from each little grit. BEAT THAT FOR HOME EDUCATING GUILE.

Damned by Playmobil

We are learning to live with a Roman arena in the house.

Lions are in right there now. I have forbidden them to eat Christians. On the upside the lions are being lashed to within an inch of their plastic lives by Tiger, appropriately enough, who has got one covered in a net and has a Roman gladiator stabbing at it with a spear. She has photographed the moment and is about to compose it, together with a hundred other shots of gladiators stabbing animals with spears, in a book that should be called How to Slaughter Wildlife in the Name of Sport but will probably be called something like My Roman Arena.

This bloodbath is, of course, the consequence of weak and idle parenting. This is the sort of rubbish parenting that takes feeble recourse in bribery, when we should, I know, provide firm guidelines and boundaries and whatever else they are called the moment an irritating kid comes into the office while mummy is typesetting a book on Nahuatl commas to earn a measly few quid, and will get mad if you ask her about toilet rolls again when her finger is hovering over the comma key. Then, because she is desperate, and the crying doesn't work and neither does the yelling, she will say, trying to keep a pleading note out of her voice, 'Stay out the office and you get a Roman arena'.

And I regret it. Of course I do. I may be weak but I have a super-ego parent somewhere about my personhood and I know they have a conscience.

Well, add guilt too. Because now it seems to have brought out Tiger's evil psychosis. At any moment I expect her to be taking to the garden, fashioning spears and shouting Kill! Kill! Kill! when she clocks the neighbour's cat pissing in the vegetable patch. And aside from that dilemma, I also have feet, hands, eyes, ears and a brain, and soon enough all those body parts will be bleeding with pain, thanks to my irresponsible 12-year old approach to problem-solving combined with the curse that is Playmobil.

First off, Playmobil parts disappear, don't they? And any poor gullible parents out there who have ever been conned into buying micro pieces of plastic that pass for toys but which are basically micro pieces of junk capable of making themselves invisible while simultaneously being drawn to the dust bag of vacuum cleaners, you all know what I'm talking about. But oh my god, squeals Tiger, if we cannot find the micro pink flower that just has to sit here HERE on this bush which is to be eaten by that horse, now this instant, because otherwise life is not worth living, and if mummy you sucked it up the vacuum cleaner then there'll be trouble, and it'll be BIG because I will SQUEAL and say you did that DELIBERATELY. As if I would do that, knowing what's ahead. Replace me with Hercules why don't you, and I bet he won't weep when he finds out what's under the sofa in a five-hour search for a plastic pink flower.

But if we live past the trauma of the missing Playmobil bits the size of a gnat's elbow, then we have to live with the rest of the Roman arena strewn across the house. This is not some erudite recreation to celebrate the glory that is Modern Rome. This is Mummy! Don't touch that! It must stay there one more day! Just one more day! We are playing with it! What? Not only have you not touched this particular construction for 24 hours, it is in fact a piece of plastic wall with a bit of string tied round it and a scrunched up piece of paper next to it with the word PO written on in crayon. But mummy! That is where the brave gladiator horse who has eaten the bush must shelter for the night on his way to deliver the secret message about the invasion of the watties!

For this pain and punishment, Mel is someone I get no sympathy from. She tuts at me. But why must you do eet? she says, rolling her eyes. Ze plastic rubbish is zere because you buy eet. Do not buy eet. This is because she is an uber parent with a pure and simple outlook on parenting that magically works, and not because she has a European accent. I blame her lack of comprehension on the fact that she sends all her 99 kids to school. She simply does not understand the necessities of work deadlines and hollering kids at 2 o'clock in the afternoon while you have told them to be quiet and in a blind panic equipped them with bottles of shampoo, vinegar and Teach Yourself Chemistry.

Well that is that. I am now cursed, doomed and damned. The Christians will be laughing. And I deserve it. Maybe there is a pit of Hell specially reserved for parents who bribe their kids with plastic junk. And a special section for those of us who give in to Playmobil.

And I'm sure it was not my mouth yesterday that said 'Yeah. And if you are good, I will get you the zoo.'

It is not a bribe. It is a reward.

In guilt, have started work again. This is not something I want to do. I have to, so I can buy clay. And paintbrushes, glue, felt squares, and wiggly eyes.

It's not like I get any time off, the sort of time you might get if you have to climb into a car or take a bus or hop on the bike or take the train to go to work everyday in an air-conditioned office. No. I work at home. This has several disadvantages. One of the worst is that my desk is two doors and six metres away from the kitchen table. So the kids get to wander into the office, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth; lost souls haunting the gates of damnation, pleading for orange juice, toilet paper, chalk pastels, paintbrushes, a vase to put in the flowers that just got picked. What? We haven't got any flowers, except the ruddy pansies I just planted.

After a morning of constant interruption, I'm about to snap. I started the sighing and snorting and drooping shoulders some time ago, and even though my mouth is still saying Yes? What do you want? the voice is hard and with a glittering steel edge that says If you don't get out of this office right now I shall cut off the horns from all your unicorns. Slowly.

And like all resourceful, resilient children, this means Adopt a New Technique. They creep in, rather than bounce in clutching three dead pansy heads and a big smile. They open the office door so slow and quiet I can hear the hinges breathe. Then slowly, one by one, they stand behind my chair, silently, eyes glued to the screen, mirroring mine. But they're not looking for a misplaced comma. They're waiting for a hesitant finger click of the mouse; a small sign that says, in the war, I've broken. This is the moment for someone to whisper Mummy? The toilet paper's run out.

By midday, there's only one thing to be done. Bribery. There are rules to this, and they are best followed without unnecessary ears. I wait till Dig's nowhere about and then Pssst. Tiger! Come here.

The first and most important rule is to find out what Tiger wants, more than anything in the world. Once I've got her on side I can bribe the other two with a bar of chocolate. I say Not a horse. Try something else. And she does. Second down the list is this.

OK I whisper. Here's the deal. I want two hours a day uninterrupted time in the office. If I get that, after five days you get the arena. When it arrives, tell daddy we've had it ages. Tiger nods. And keep your sisters out the office.

Deal done. So long as she doesn't grass me up, and the other two like Dairy Milk, it should be fine.