Playing to the adult agenda

Hang on a minute. I must hoik up my purple wrinkled stockings, adjust my old lady girdle smelling of wee, and pull on my battered felt hat (but only if it's the one where the moths breed), before I publicly decry the horror that is the Global Kids Fashion Show.

It is a thoroughly bad idea. A catwalk for kids is not made good by tacking on a charitable arm and a few august institutions. It looks like they are put there to disguise the tawdry intentions of the rest and give the whole show a gloss of sanctimonious worthiness. If you want to give to charity, then do it. Don't dirty the act. If you want to support youth projects, do so. Don't besmirch the cause.

But a catwalk fashion show backed by big bucks? If anything's playing to an adult agenda, it's this. I can't think what benefits can be brought to the cultural consciousness of your average seven year old by a fashion catwalk show.

Seriously, help me out here, because I can see only the end-of-financial-year balance sheets of luxury brands, the permanent consumption required by the international rag trade, satisfaction for label-obsessed mamas, a chance to foist on kids associated and unnecessary cosmetic products, more provocative advertising opportunities in an industry that already sexualises children, and a hook for the upcoming teenage market. They can now safely arrive at young adulthood with brand recognition, consumer loyalties, and 'facebook fashion likes' conveniently in place. Your identity, neatly defined by your consumer preferences: Let's start them young!

My general objection to the whole show starts from my simple observation. Children are more than capable of dressing themselves so you put your fingers over your eyes and demand they walk ten paces ahead of you. I don't need Jean Paul Gaultier dressing up the junior Grit like a sailor-hooker-renaissance-tart-inspired by Mondrian, thank you very much. Squirrel can do that for herself in clothing three sizes too small and with holes in the backside. Why is she now to suffer an additional layer of social judgement because the holes, well, they obviously aren't Tom Ford's?

Then there is the whole dressing up business of adults foisting their design ideas to their own kids. This, quite frankly, is creepy. Yes, I admit to forcing Squirrel into what I would call 'appropriate clothing' for the funeral and the Christmas carol service, but beyond that, no thanks. I'm not feeling any need to lay out clothing for her, or construct her choices in particular colour-coordinating ways, simply so I can feel good when I clap eyes on her wobbling down the stairs in a morning.

And the muck. If I want to see kids turned out, it is to dig holes in the soil, clamber up the quarry face, play hide and seek with mama in the ditch, go plonging in puddles, then work out the best climbing tree in the district. I want kid labels which allow the models to bring their own mud, sandblasting, bloodied knees, and rips down the left leg.

With all the stupidity of spending serious money on a kid's wardrobe! Frankly, I want not to do that. I would rather chuck a load of cash in the direction of your local charity bookshop. And if I've been brain-addled enough to have paid the equivalent of a weekly wage on Squirrel's trousers, I'm going to feel as if that's an investment I need to protect. At least for the next three weeks or until she grows out of it. What a pointless investment to make.

But there's another hidden dynamic. It's the maintenance. High class clothes need high class maintenance. They need ironing, folding, de-creasing, hanging, dry cleaning, sequin ajusting, de-wrinkling, laying flat, smoothing, petting, stroking. There must be this whole domestic fetishing thing for the tag hag. Oh dear. I am not the target market for kid's fashion, am I? I last ironed something in 2007. Clothing I possess which demands ceremony is on a hiding to nothing. And shall I confess I even get a particular thrill in treating things badly? Scrumple up that crepe MaxMara dress, then shove it in the wardrobe where it can be violated by the charity scum TopShop teeshirt?

Worst of all, absolutely worst and unforgivable - wrapped up in this pseudo language of encouraging kids to find their own style - is the crime that catwalk kid fashion commits.

We are removing that lovely thing in childhood - a child's lack of self awareness; their ability to project themselves without mediating themselves, without needing to see themselves always as others see them, without needing to be aware of what they wear, which in turn requires them to exert conscious control over how they walk, sit, move, and stand. Ask any woman. Self-conscious, body-conscious fashion clothing does exactly this: it inhibits, restrains, places requirements of movement upon the wearer and tells the body how to behave.

Look at what we do. We gave up jailing kids, then slapping them to discipline and punish to make them conform to an adult world view.  Now we're finding new ways to the same end. It's just that this trend comes with the label Gaultier Junior.

I want no holes on my return

One problem has consumed me, of late. It has changed my thinking, affected what I do, driven me half-mad with suspicion. Seeking resolution, I scour internet sites after dark, taking quiet comfort from similar tales of woe.

The children are alarmed. They watch me falling to the floor at a moment's notice. But I must do it. There I can better scrutinise the underside of the upholstery. They see me stop, then climb on furniture to stare at pelmets. They hear me, mid-sentence, pause with a distant stare, to examine -

Well, there is nothing else I can do. I know they are here. They drive me to frenzied activity in bedrooms, wardrobes, cupboards, stairwells, behind curtains. I need two varieties of nozzles under the sofa.

I know it is taking a toll. Whatever their need, mother's not here. I can only hope to spare them the worst, and try not to let myself be discovered, undignified, on hands and knees, scrutinising the back of a chest of drawers. They call me to come and look at their paintings and I groan, because I am on top of the furniture with a pair of rubber gloves. When they need dinner, I am busy, furtively squeezing mops behind radiators. Probably a life with foster parents will be more rewarding than this OCD mother.

But it must be done. I am focused upon it. I must secure my borders. It is true that in the last month I have only seen two of the enemy, flopping lazily about the air as if nothing in the world could harm them. Well I can, and I have a hammer.

I would not ordinarily mention this normal domestic circumstance, because there is very little education in it. Yet it is an achievement of sorts, so in the daily diary it goes. And I think I am winning. I have shook, washed, exposed all to sunlight, scoured, wiped, vacuumed (three times over) and am turning slightly purple thanks to overdoses of oil.

But I have no idea what the children are doing. They are doing godsknowwot. These days they keep their distance from me, in the garden, probably, hiding up trees. I distinctly remember a moment when I banished them from proximity to any fabric, and they made off into the garden in a hurry, maybe in case I removed all their clothes.

Now, I must be off, to slide under their beds with a pointy vacuum cleaner nozzle and peer at their bedboards.

It is the only way, if I am to rid my house of the enemy.

Celebrate the inappropriate

I am on campaign for that. In my armoury, I have unboxed, from a recently out-turned attic, a tight-wrapping skirt that binds my knees, a sleeveless silk top cut like a corset, and a pair of velvet kitten heels with the stitching worked loose.

The children are horrified. When rustling silk announces my arrival, and I enter stumbling with a wobbly heel, Squirrel sinks her face in her hands and whispers the words 'oh no'.

Squirrel, I know that to you this undoubtedly appears as mama's new and inventive means of humiliating you in public.

To me, it is a find of pre-birth Whistles and Escada, certainly not new, and not particularly inventive. I'm doing nothing more than following the well-trodden path of late-onset womanhood: the route marked definitely inappropriate, probably irresponsible. The route that you do not identify as motherhood, and the way that miserlies and miseries, to keep us women defined on the broad path where there are pinnies and sensible shoes, might call mutton dressed as lamb.

But I've started on this late women route, wending a path down the hill and into the valley from where there's no escape, and I am determined to celebrate all that I shouldn't, so watch me go.

You, daughter, over there on the other side of this hill, are just stepping out. You will already be aware that both of us have to daily face the judgement and expectation of others.

Yes, I think you should be left alone to find your own way; to spray pink ice-cream sparkle on your fingernails and wear plimsolls good for climbing trees. That should be yours and my delight, and who's to say I won't hitch up the Escada skirt and join you, at least to the first branch.

But you won't be left alone in your innocent exploration, like I won't be left unjudged when I go out in a blaze of fashion glory c1992. But where I have a brass neck, you are more vulnerable.

Look at the quick fists of market power. They know I am a lost cause. So they will try and snatch you up, turn out your pockets, and spit you out in the High Street like every other replicant doll consuming a new wardrobe each new payday.

Holding out their hands to keep this power at bay, the dress-them-all-alike brigade urges that your daily choice of outfit should exclude your opinion and include uniform grey. That, they probably like to imagine, will keep you safe from the mistakes of your own making and the predations of others.

So, given your present choice between a rock and a hard place, learn from me. You may as well. I have experience in making people feel uncomfortable from five hundred paces.

Celebrate your own clothing choices and your not-conforming hair. Enjoy your ripped jeans and that pink blouse I'm soon to quietly remove from your options. Dress to create your who-you-are; delight and comfort in the feel of cloth and, above all, have pleasure in what you wear.

Me, I'm off down the Co-op to buy cheese. Things might get tough for you from here on. But, as I go tottering off, avoiding the tarmac pot-holes with my wobbly velvet heel, consider that I'm doing nothing more than hundreds of other women who have gone this way before me: suddenly we ladies of a certain age wake up, horror-struck that the days are growing shorter and time is gobbling itself up. Me, I catch myself worrying about my teeth and wondering whether that strange clacking going on between my thighs is the presage of the elderly. Watch out. In time, you will too.

So this could be my last hurrah for the green silk corset cut. Consider me retro, vintage chic, mutton dressed as lamb. Take your fingers from your eyes. I'm just enjoying it, so let's clap our hands and have pleasure while it lasts.

Sunday

I have suffered a slight setback in my secret plans to take North Norfolk by surprise and storm Castle Rising.

I was looking forward to that. A quick round trip; besiege a castle, sniff the salty sea air of the blown coast, and give those cheating nightingales one final, very last, ultimate, this is it chance to burst into glorious song before they all push off in June. That trip would have suited me just fine.

But then the children came over all bolshy-mouth and foot-draggy and do we have to.

Shark declared she wanted to stay at home and work on her pond. Tiger said she wanted to do some digging if Shark can dig up the garden and she can't. Then Squirrel weighed in with how they can never play in the garden, not ever, and the last time they played in the garden I said it was time to come in. That is nonsense. They spend hours out there. She has a worse memory than I do.

Of course I was outnumbered and gave in. Well, I am one smart negotiator and I have wrestled a pretty fair deal. I have provided spades and conceded the entire garden; I will stay at home for a whole week and clean out the moulded cellar; and we will go and see Castle Rising some day.

There. You better see what they did.

Shark's pond. She is extremely proud of this, and quite right too. Though I said No Fish Absolutely not. No way.


Tiger's dug up hole. She is making a Jurassic landscape and is going to fill this with dinosaurs. Don't ask. You get a thirty-minute explanation of where the mud slide will take place and where the lake will be and what time the extinction will happen when she drops a rock on it.


Squirrel. Having made her swing she has become distracted and is peering into the hedge. Looking for faeries, probably.

Me. Of course I lied. I'm not cleaning out the cellar. I crept upstairs and tried on some old clothes I found in a box. Here is the brown sueded silk number. I'm not throwing this one out. Shoulder pads are coming back.

Planning the summer wardrobe

We have been wearing the same clothes everyday since we fell off the plane last Thursday.

I am not proud. It is thanks to no one in this family having the foresight, mental agility or practical mind to actually bring any clothes with them from Hong Kong. (Although I brought home a rubber tomato, which I could count as novelty clothing if I stick it over a left nipple.)

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger brought home nothing to wear. I mean, nothing.

In one way, I am secretly proud. They filled their bags with books, books, and more books, and it proves what a fantastic educator I am. Then again, it does prove how much they ignore me. Because don't say I didn't warn them. I said (repeatedly) the clothes you left behind in England last summer will not fit your tummies now, so bring your Hong Kong stuff from H&M and do not rely on those old Adams jeans age 9, even if they were your favourites.

Now see how the mother is always proved right? Everyone rolls out of bed this morning to cram legs and arms into clothes several sizes too small. Squirrel is the only one to whom I cannot say I told you so. She has no concern at all. If she likes it, she wears it, whether the jeans are fitted for age 9 or not and whatever my eyeballs are doing. She is happy. I tell myself she is exploring the neglected kid vibe when her jeans zip doesn't pull up, the shirt sleeves are up her armpits and the back seam is entirely ripped, and she can walk four paces ahead of me on the route we take today into H&M, England.

But it is Sunday, apparently. Which means arriving to emergency clothes shop in H&M is foolish at 3.30pm. I forget these things. Nevertheless, this is a true emergency, so I do a Hong Kong clothes shopping routine which is hand out a bundle of money, say go and choose stuff and give me the receipts so I can bring back the pelmet skirt and bra tops on Monday.

Me, I am impressed by my own foresight. I dumped all my useful clothing months ago. I put into a Help the Aged sack all the size 10 clothes. Like the soft and beautiful Max Mara top (BUGGERBUGGERBUGGER), the Jean Paul Galtier trousers (BUGGERBUGGERBUGGER) and the beautiful M&S green dress that fitted like a dream (BUGGERBUGGERBUGGER). I then shoved back into my wardrobe all old clothes size 14 and up.

Of course I had the wisdom to see I would never go to Hong Kong, fall into a depression brought about by life circumstance and a homesick child, shrink two dress sizes, then come home with only a rubber tomato as covering for a size 10 pair of bosoms.

I'm now planning my own clothes shopping down the charity shop on Monday.

Of course I take the hip flask shopping

Clothes shopping with one child is a nightmare, isn't it? With two kids? Double the pain. With triplets? Pass me the aspirins and medicinal brandy.

Out of necessity, I have developed tactics to manage it all - the clothes shopping, the terrible descent into the fourth circle of high-street consumer hell, the children.

From bitter experience I have learned the golden rule. One child at a time on the clothes shopping trip. No more. Absolutely not, no way. This at least means I am not simultaneously searching for blue leggings, pink skirts and trousers with fifteen zippered pockets up both legs which serve as mobile cataloging and databasing pouches while listening to constant whining and grumbling about feet and dogs.

By employing this basic tactic I have remained sane. It has meant that I have always returned home with at least one child suitably clothed and shod, the next one inspired and attentive, the third one patient, knowing their time will come. And I have not humiliated myself with a nervous breakdown in John Lewis.

Only once has this plan failed me. In Colchester. I had all three with me then. I excuse myself there thanks to mitigating factors involving a disappeared caravan and everyone sleeping on a floor. But, in fatigue and defeat, I sailed too close to an appalling flood of unstoppable tearfulness in a horrible shop selling horrible clothing. I recall leaning against a pillar, sinking down it slowly with my hands over my face while whispering 'I shall be alright in a moment go and look at shoes'. I came to my senses some time later, reeling like a drunkard, clutching a lot of tissues and waving a blue and white chequered maternity blouse which Shark says she quite likes because it's so inexplicably roomy.

But I have to break my golden rule. It is cold here and things are desperate on the clothing front. Squirrel is filled with holes. Tiger is held up by a length of string, and Shark? Don't ask what her leggings look like.

I must supply clothing, but I have three children all at once. Worse, I cannot breezily throw plastic at the problem since I am limited to a few dollars in cash (don't get me started on HSBC). And I don't know where a one-stop shop can possibly be to sell me blue leggings, pink skirts, and jeans with squirreling pockets down both legs, sealed by zips, not buttons, to stop the treasures falling out. I can only think of one solution to this multi-dimensional problem. A multi-dimensional one. Hundreds of stops at hundreds of street outlets, handling thousands of garments freshly stitched in Shenzhen. How straightforward can that be? I mean, we are only looking at maybe fifteen billion garments. We have to only find one. Three. Make that six. In all the right sizes, shapes, and most importantly, colour.


It's not looking promising. I could put money on the experience being at least eight hours long, filled with four-way discussions, financial fretting and arguments over a dog, held in the most noisy, crowded streets on planet earth. The only strategy I have thought of (apart from to get sorting while plugged into an ipod) is to provide a constant supply of coconut buns from every Japanese bakers between Sheung Wan and Hollywood Road in the hope that I can glue up everyone's faces.


Mostly it is thanks to the extraordinary patience and good humour of two hundred backstreet market traders that we get as far as we do. One black vest and a pair of pyjama bottoms after two hours crawling between 178 traders. But I can't keep going like this. After a prolonged assault on the cheap clothing stalls of old Hong Kong I have to give up, cross my fingers, and head to H&M.

After two hours there we emerge with a bag of sundry sale items (not even tear stained) including every pair of green zippery pocketed trousers that I can find in the right size for Squirrel, plus a promise that we will try a fresh assault somewhere else for Tiger's pink skirt, and yes, Shark, we will veer past the market trader we saw in Central where you saw the blue leggings. The ones you held off making a decision about until you'd seen the other 177 market stalls first.

But I have to look on the bright side, no? Otherwise I wouldn't be grit. I have developed a new tactic for Hong Kong clothes shopping with triplets on very little money (thanks, HSBC). Head to H&M at sale time, get the kids in the changing rooms, remove all their clothes, then run off to hide among the aisles pretending to locate something in green/pink/blue.


Of course I am not doing that. I am having ten minutes peace and quiet behind the leggings with a hip flask.

Frock on, frock off

Woke this morning to the sound of pigeons scrabbling about, sliding off the roof. They do it now just to piss me off. I no longer have a fetish for the fat self-satisfied little bastards. They are probably up there now, enjoying how the roof tiles make some fantastic water slide into the blocked gutters. The more of them dead, the better.

Anyway, pigeons disturbed me. And I may have been enjoying the best erotic dream, the one with big hands and cake, before those rats with wings muscled in on the act. After that interruption, I quickly sank three pits down, to the circles of self indulgent misery sulks. Dreams are never true. Not even a bit of them.

For this miserable state of affairs, there is only one solution, and that is go to town and take my clothes off in a cupboard.

Come on girls, you all do this, so don't deny it. The first solution to a self-pitying start and a miserable love life on a failed Sunday morning is go and buy clothes you'll never wear.

But that moment is fantastic, isn't it? Metamorphosing from one identity to another. I metamorphosed from ragbag washed up beat up old hippy to washed up old hippy in ragbag beat up gear. I may even show you photos.


I like this cotton, silk and linen crumpled look. I am made the sort of free woman who strides through continents, faces frontiers, explores sensuous passions. I am woman in control, glowing, natural, shaking her free hair to the rising dawn. In a field. In my dreams I probably slept in that dew filled field. Actually, I do remember that. I did sleep in a field. I was cold and uncomfortable. It rained on me, the soil was all lumpty, and I cried.

There, I cannot even grow that metaphor nor be that dream-filled person. That's how bad things are. All is hard reality, loss and wasteland. Not even a metamorphosis in a cupboard fixes me now. So I didn't buy the look. But there's always hope, right? If you like that sort of thing. I can say, I might tomorrow. If I get cake, big hands, free spirit, linen crumple, then I might. I might.

Couldbestreamofconsciousness

It's all quickquickspeed round here.

Maybe in blur I require list of day's events. And possibly short sentencing. (Not of prison variety. Although possible.)

1. Grit has a scanner shoved up her doodah. You don't believe that is possible do you? It is a miracle of modern science. I can say the NHS is very efficient. The nurse did not tut once when Grit gripped the door frame on the way into the X-Ray suite.

Terrified is an understatement. Simply being near a door labelled with the signature of Certain Death by Spooky Invisible Forces gives me the wibbles. And then there is the joy of meeting Dr Crippen and his hideous scanner shaped like a gear stick. It is horrible and he crunches that thing about like he is rally driving a beat up old VW Polo and the gear stick is about to come off in his hand. Indeed, no-one will ever shift gear again in my vicinity without me crossing my legs, I can tell you.

2. Aunty Dee is coming to stay for her annual sleepover in the mouse bed of misery. This requires preparation. And this year I will be clever. I will tell her that we have no mice and she has false consciousness about the scratching noise. What was that Aunty Dee? Can't hear it myself. Must be your imagination. No mice whatsoever. None. None that I need to bludgeon to death with a waste bin at midnight and run from the house screaming like last time, dearest Aunty Dee.

Anyway, in preparation for her arrival, today intermittently finds me in full house fumigation mode. I have attacked two kitchen surfaces with chemical weapons. They are looking good. For all of five minutes anyhow, until the griblets come home and cover them in mud, bits of cut up paper, and foam.

3. I must look beautiful and polished and upholstered. I have 24 hours. Aunty Dee is coming to child mind because shortly I must step into Dig's world and try not to be gutter while eating shithot dinner with people who lead Britain and other upper knobs. For this, I require shoes. Three charity shops later and I have a pair of Clarks pointy toes. In black.

4. I am not with children today. You can tell. I achieve so much (see points 1,2,3). While I am productive, children go into woods and build raft. I would provide a photograph of that, but somehow Dig's hard disk went crunchycrunchywhirrdie and this is implicated in no photos for grit's day.

That is all. But I need to know what happened. And when. Not sure why.

Grit's guide to Christmas for mean parents (7): Clothing

We arrive at Grit's top tip 7! Clothing.

As I launch into my mean arts I should confess shortcomings. I am not talking naughty nighties. Nor home-made sex toys. For those, go elsewhere. Also, I mostly assume ladies here. I am ignorant of men's departments like which leg you get dressed on. But if it pleases you young man, then attend. Eddie Izzard has brought us all much good.

Anyway, ahem. Let's raise our glasses to Christmas couture on the cheap.

Charity shops are a very good idea, don't you think?

I want to thank every single one of you if you give your pre-loved clothing to charity shops. You make my day, and stop me and mine from going naked.

Most of those shops, I love. The cheaper the better. The Salvation Army on Bedford High Street I particularly recommend. On their upper sales floor, every item of clothing is priced at £1! This is excellent hunting ground. Oxfam, and the charity shops of Hitchin and St Albans, on the other hand, are priced well out of the purse of a poor gentlewoman like myself. Like, £15 for an Equation jacket! £15 Planet Earth pounds? You Hitchin people, have you money to burn? I bet you are the sort of people who pay to have your toilet flush pine.

But whatever your budget, there are clear advantages to clothing yourself and your offspring from charity shops. Particularly at party time when no-one notices what you wear, or functions where everyone wears black, or where you will end up off your face on Bolly and with someone else's sick dribbling down your back on New Year's Eve.

The first advantage to the charity shop shopper is obvious. You are doing good. And that makes you feel good about yourself, doesn't it? Now get down the charity shop, select another item of black, and feel good! Not too much black, mind. You will look like you are in a burqa, or a shroud, or you are trying to dress like a teenage goth. Add a glittery brooch or something, for goodness sake. It'll still cost less than a fiver, so you can now also feel good about your bank balance. If you go to the high street you will spend £150, see everyone else dressed in identical kit, exploit a 7-year old in a Special Economic Zone, and feel bad about your bank balance.

Another fantastic advantage to charity shops are the old women. They will iron a clean skirt and top for you and stick them on the pound rail. Selecting those items has to be more fun and cost-effective than thrashing around with an ironing board at 7am doing the job yourself. Either ironing, or lamenting how you are going to remove Nigella's chocolate puke off your bodice. And with those old ladies, you feel like you have your mother back, but without the endless complaining about your bedroom floor.

What's more, the old ladies don't mind how you earn your money when you shop. I could lie, and say I am a high class prostitute on account of my fantastic legs and 38-26-36 body. Sadly, I am 38-38-38, and earn my money doing an infrequent job that a reasonably literate monkey could perform for a minimum wage and a cup of tea. I wish it were otherwise, and I wish it were professional and had status. Truly, typesetting has no glamour. I wipe the spit of authors from my face as I sit here. Try offering my meagre wage in Harvey Nicks and see what treatment I might receive from the shop assistants there!

Anyway, the old ladies working the cash till at the RSPCA don't mind what I do. They are grateful for my pound coin on the per una jumper. Their happy response means I do not have to expose my worn face and rectangle figure to be cruelly mocked by twelve year olds in posh frock shops. Those old ladies make my shopping experience less hazardous, less scary, and less depressing. Gawd bless 'em.

I could go on, but I'm not writing a book here in praise of charity shops, jumble sales, and making your own outfit with a range of resources that include a glue gun and a pair of scissors. I'm sure by now you have lots of budget ideas. I must hope you are converted, like me, to the joy of living cheaply at one of the most expensive times of year.

If not, and you see me as I head towards you in a crowd, please wave. I will be the one who looks slightly worn, patched, and dated, because most of my wardrobe now is sourced from charity shops. I am unlikely to change. My bank balance - and my conscience - make me think that the faded look is a worthwhile and righteous appearance. Not often fashionable, but I am edging 50. At that age, I expect to grow the style that whispers mad old bag wearing purple, and wear it with the panache that I could never get muster in the 1970s with legwarmers.

(Although if I find some in a charity shop near me, I could still try.)

I think the Isle of Wight might be getting to me

Yesterday, I brought this fashion to the Isle of Wight.


Yes, that's a groundsheet, and I'm wearing it.

Of course my great fashion statement has a proper history. Me and Galliano. We both reference our work to cultural movements and historic moments.

Like, last Friday Shark and Squirrel packed their own bags, and I was too busy to check the contents.

First, I've been packing Tiger's bag for her PGL - attending to six pairs of this, three pairs of that, extra ones of the other and two pairs for wet and dry - and second, I would very much like Shark and Squirrel to live the consequences of their choices, suffer, and regret their actions.

Checklist Shark. She has brought for a cold and rainy British summertime: one cotton dress, one cotton top, two pairs of leggings, twelve books and a home made dolphin.

To her credit, Squirrel has brought a variety of clothing but, for the beautiful weather, of which there isn't any, one fancy stitch flimsy pink glitter cardigan. And no coat.

My fashion moment might just turn the course of Isle of Wight history. But I do not recommend making children responsible for their own packing. It is a crap idea, because it is mother who suffers in the end.

With clouds scudding this way and that and a will-they-won't-they? approach to rain, today I donate my woolly jumper to Squirrel and a waterproof coat to Shark, with the result that I face a future mostly freezing and wet. There is only the groundsheet left. So be nice and help me along. Call it fashionable. If Kate Moss walked down King's Road in it, you'd all be calling them rain bags and everyone would want one.

Now with Grit dressed like an abandoned tent, and two kids attired in clothing that can best be described as offering plenty of growing room, we start out on a full day of education.

We begin in Yarmouth Castle, which bears this fantastic sign:


but which also teaches us a great deal about shipwrecks in the harbour, and the history of castle design from Medieval status symbol to Tudor garrison for soldiers.


Then it's over to Shark's choice at Fort Victoria which is the Underwater Archaeology Centre and the Marine Aquarium where we snap blurred photographs of baby cuttlefish while everyone sighs aaah.


Not to waste a moment we make for the tiny planetarium and the Robert Hooke exhibition, which fires Grit up to educate everyone about how even eminent seventeenth century scientists can argue like two year olds.

Which is not what happens on the beach at Yaverland this evening, walking there spotting gatekeeper butterflies, bramble blackberries, mallows and thistles, then hunting for fossils, and making sand castles, and where, after a mostly splendid educational day out with only a small amount of rain to show off my new fashion garb, I am indulgent, even of Dolly.


I think I might be liking the Isle of Wight.

Day three: Squirrel

The most pleasurable time of all, thanks to Squirrel's can-do-any-shoe mentality and her cheery outlook on life. Her continuing resilience to anything resembling common sense in footwear is exhilarating. She dances from the shop with pretty plimsolls in pink. I leave the shop fantasising about a pair of red satin shoes sparkling with rubies. The perfect shoe shopping companion.

Day two: Tiger

Surgical removal of the Rocketdog boots that Tiger has worn continuously for three months takes most of our time at the shoe shop. At one point she refuses to be parted from them and declares she will wear them anywhere, even crossing the Sahara in temperatures of 54 degrees when she is threatened by angry camels. Finally she succumbs to a pair of sandals with flowers on them. I resolve to bury the Rocketdogs in the garden when she is asleep.

I may not have a sex life, but on the plus side...

I can tour shoe shops with triplet girls.

This is a three day process. Day One is Shark.

Shark wants blue, so that narrows things down. In fact it is the start point for some pretty intensive negotiation. Bargaining and deal broking follows. But discussing shoes for two hours with Shark is strangely rewarding. And we both try on many unsuitable shoes to much laughter and public frivolity. Pleasing.

Plastic with diamante heel?
Another pair of shoes Shark will not be wearing this summer.
Sadly they did not fit me either.

Make do and mend

I am rummaging through one of three big boxes and one cupboard we keep stuffed with fabric offcuts and old clothes.

I'd like to say this is because I am wary of spending huge amounts of money on kid's clothes, but it isn't. I did that last week.

No. This is because I did that last week. I took Shark to Gap and stocked her up with clothes for an impending clothes wearing ordeal. Today I ask her naively if she'd actually like to wear any of those expensive and delightful items we bought at great cost to our souls last week at Gap. She considers this for a moment, puts her head on one side, pulls up her top lip and says slowly Well actually mummy, like she's going to explain exactly why she cannot wear any of these items and why I will spend the rest of my days trying to persuade Squirrel and Tiger to like blue.

Stop right there I command. Tell me no more because I want to die in ignorance of what you are about to say.

Then I drag out of the cupboard an old blue cotton Laura Ashley dress, Shark's real favourite, one she wore and wore and wore until I had to hide it away where she should never find it. This dress was so thin in parts that your breath and this fabric take up the same air space.

Then I locked the door and I hacked away at this dress with scissors and needles. Two hours later I presented Shark with a skirt of this very same material gathered and trimmed, and she is now wearing that in such complete happiness and joy that I have got back to the cupboard and dragged out an old shirt and six more dresses.

And the rest of my day is spent right here.

And I must sort that paypal

Tiger has worn three drearily monotonous purple velour dresses almost constantly now for several months. When she peels those dresses off at night I stuff them at the bottom of the laundry basket so I can claim they are still in the wash. After a day or so she will drag them out in all their stinking vileness or, if I win, she will locate the two broken down tee shirts and the pink leggings with the hole in the gusset and threaten to come back later for the dresses because now she knows where I hide them.

Admittedly Tiger does not come from a family of snappy dressers. I sink to three pairs of jeans to wear in rotation, one of which I sometimes sleep in and the others which walk clockwise about the kitchen of their own accord propelled by dirt fuel and steered by ten years ingrained habit.

But we have to do something. Because soon Tiger is away to sit on the back of a horse in a field. She is to do this for an entire week of boarding and will of course be locked in with the Lucillia Hitherington-Smythes of this world who doubtless will sport the finest country jodhpurs. Unless I act quickly Tiger will wear a purple velour dress with the front still melded together from a craft activity that went badly wrong in 2006. We will be social outcasts, excluded from garden parties we are never invited to anyway and all my social dreams and aspirations of marrying Tiger off to a minor member of the aristocracy will be sunk.

But while I clothes shop with Tiger, what can I do with Shark and Squirrel?

Dig of course isn't here. That would be useful because then I would have a child minder, albeit one who doesn't budge from his office chair. Well the children don't mind about that because when they are trashing the rest of the house they can do it undisturbed.

But I have a real fear of shopping with any child of mine near me, let alone all three. I set out with a list of things I want to do and after five minutes the only thing I want to do is come home. The worst is when I took Squirrel shopping for a week's supply of groceries and came back clutching two pineapples. I think the involuntary twitching may suggest it has risen to the level of phobia.

Of course I know people do it and I do not know how. You have my total admiration. And let me say I do not mind shopping near your child, because when your child throws themselves to the floor or hangs off the rails screaming like a banshee I can step over and round them. No problem. Just if mine do it then I can use words like mortified, humiliated, never again, now we have to emigrate to escape the shame.

But urgent action is required. I cannot shop online. That would be sensible and convenient. And the paypal thing is all wonky and I do not have three weeks to fix it.

So I need to plan. If I am organised, I can do anything. First I try and minimise the number of children in my care. I dump Squirrel at her gym lesson with instructions to wait because we will be late. Then I make straight to Tesco kid's clothes department with Shark and Tiger. Tesco is ideal. Tiger, unlike Shark, will wear pink, and Tesco has a lot of pink.

Tesco's pink is heaven if you are a Tiger. If you are a Shark who has seen it last week, then it is hell and you can declare this loudly, along with expressions like Tesco pisses me off in earshot of the floor manager. I tell Shark somewhere there is a blue dress, see if you can find it. Then with only one child left I run down the aisles grabbing all the pink age 9-10 I can find.

Now fortunately Tesco do not bother with stupid limits like 4 garments in a changing room. If they did I would be writing this from a prison cell, because I stack about 30 garments into a changing room along with a Tiger before running off in panic to make sure Shark is occupied in her challenge and has not been abducted by the truancy patrol, the store detectives or a concerned adult seeking vulnerable children to console by suggesting they come outside and help find a lost kitten.

Once I snatch Shark back from the fingers of the police, wardens and crazoids from the pages of the Daily Mail, then we hang around outside the changing rooms where I intermittently shout are you alright? and hope Tiger answers and not the old lady trying on the windcheater.

Now this process of a child alone in a changing room is so open to error and fraught with tension I tap out the words on this keyboard knowing my blood pressure is rising to 4,500 over 2,100. But through much pain and misery and sacrifice on my part I have reached an accommodation. It is that I do not see Tiger getting in and out of clothes but I can see clothes that are on her or on the floor. Thus there is much shouting of are you ready yet? and banging open and shut of a changing room door over the next hour while we identify a complete range of wardrobe items suitable for sitting on the back of a horse in a field for an entire week.

Two hours later we have reached the nearest state of perfection we can attain without a bottle of brandy, and that is four pairs of identical pink trousers, three pairs of identical purple velour tracksuit bottoms, four identical pink tops and five identical white fleeces.

So now it all comes down to this.

Dig, if you are reading this blog somewhere as you wander between hotel rooms complaining about the room service, when you come home on Saturday, you had better say how lovely Tiger looks in her pink outfit and what a big thank you is owed to mama for all her hard work and that her new wardrobe is sure to fit well with Lucillia Hitherington-Smythe and that she will have a lovely time on the back of a horse in a field. Yes. You had better say that. Or I will change the locks.

A sorry tale of mud, field, indignity, and soiled grey Tesco value clothing

One of the awful things about Dig's absence is the terrible and terrifying thoughts that beset me. Like, what if some disaster were to strike?

What if I were driving Shark to the lake today for her sailing lesson and we were struck by an out of control lorry and I died and all my darling children were ambulanced to hospital, motherless and alone in all the world?

Or what if I popped down the Co-op for a bottle of beer, leaving Shark, Squirrel and Tiger glued to Night at the Museum which they think is the funniest film they have seen forever, and I never returned because some druggie outside the Co-op decided to murder me on the spot because I am carrying a bottle and it is brown and the colour brown sends him crazy because he thinks brown is a member of M15 and out to destroy him? What if that happened?

And what about the puffin? I know it sounds unlikely, but horrible things happen. Then there are the heart attacks, the electrocutions, collapsing buildings, falling trees, runaway buses, dropping down dead, all of these scenarios that, given a fraction of a second and the wrong turn, could happen, might happen.

Then I think the emergency services will have to break into the house, and what would the newspapers report? No longer Woman on toilet struck dead by puffin but Mother in drugs death traded triplets for booze.

Of course I have one safeguard against these dreadful newspaper reports that will blight the lives of my little girls forever. It is to clean the hob. Because when the police break down the door - because Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are unable to open it, driven to zomboids by watching a looped Ben Stiller - then the police will look around the kitchen and know that this mother may have been clubbed to death in a Co-op doorway by a drugged out crazy before being mangled to death and simultaneously electrocuted in a road tragic accident by a runaway train, and finally flattened by a dead puffin in a falling tree, but look at that hob. Now her children need protection for ever because that hob proves she cares.

But today none of these things happened. What did happen is that, while running across a muddy field to take this photograph ...


...without my knowledge or consent yesterday's knickers detached themselves from my trouser leg and flew out to greet the people behind me.

Why home educate? (6) Uniform

Oh dear. Daisy is aged four*. And to celebrate this momentous event let's gather all the children round at the discount store and stare at all the dreary school uniforms that £3.99 can buy, available in any colour you like so long as it is grey. Look! The label says this skirt will not crease! will not stain! Why not just paint the child directly in waterproof stain repellent then rivet on a stainless steel girder and a garage door? They don't crease either until Jessica from year 3 kicks them in.

I want to meet the person who designed the graceless grey pieces of non-folding nylon shite that passes round here for school uniform. And I want to punch them in the face. Do they wear that garbage to work? Do they get up each morning and think to themselves, hmmm, now which should I wear, the grey cardboard itchy-as-a-goat and manufactured out of tarmac? Or the grey plastic shield with the special non-folding ability that feels like all four limbs have been shoved in a waste pipe?

And what is all this stuff about dirt and stains and OHMYGOD ...PAINT! So what? Who is it that convinces parents that children should not get dirty, covered in mud, ketchup, purple paint and grass stains? Who is that person? Are they normal? Have they concreted over their own garden?

Well you can tell Grit is in a big area of contempt here. And this may be an area that she has to deal with emotionally and may resolve to do that by opening a second beer, but this minefield really pisses me off. Call me an old hippy mother who actually went to primary school wearing what she liked! And did wearing my favourite blue skirt make me significantly fail? Get bullied? Get pregnant aged 12? Become a wildly out-of-control teenager who spat at old ladies on buses? Sorry. Nope. Cramming kids in uniform when they are barely out of nappies is about none of these things, no matter what arguments are held up in favour of grey sheet metal. It is about social control.

And it's not just the grey uniform children get to wear from age 4 these days, it's the uniformity of the day. Because lunch is at this time and in this space, always. Arrival is here and now, or else. Departure is then and you'd better not be late. I don't think the Digs and Grits of this world can live like that; to have our whole day structured by what's convenient from some institution down the road. And we'd be getting constant letters. You let your daughter wear her blue leggings AGAIN! Mrs Grit, we note you are LATE again and AGAIN. GRIT! DO NOT ALLOW YOUR DAUGHTER TO WEAR THAT PINK DRESS TO THIS SCHOOL EVER AGAIN. That horrible pink dress that she loves and loves and loves so much and says it is the most comfortable thing she has ever worn, and best of all, sometimes she can run around and play and play and she forgets that she's wearing anything at all. Oh, that one.

(You may be able to tell that any temperate and restraining influence on Grit's blasphemous mouth has just left the building on a long trip. Daddy Dig, everyone wishes you were here, probably even the long suffering readers of this blog.)

* Why oh why has age four now become the default for sending the kids to school? Let's get it over and done with and hand them over at two days.

New shoes

Foolishly, I have been shopping with Squirrel. Worse, she is now wearing these.*


The moment Squirrel's radar picked up these in the ninth circle of retail hell, her body made straight for them, her face lit up and her eyes flashed MINE! MINE! MINE! On auto response, Mummy Grit's robotic hands lifted the shoes from the rack and made for her purse containing all the family silver. Even though a residue human part of her brain woke up then and started screaming BAD IDEA! BAD IDEA! BAD IDEA!

But naturally, with a mummy mashed brain now led by the sudden infatuations of an eight-year old, I ignored that voice of experience in my head, passed through the checkout, and then deposited a pair of gold glitter shoes in Squirrel's eager hands. They nearly matched the enormous beaming radiance of her smile.

This should truly be taken as evidence of that instinct we mothers are very good at, that primary instinct called self sacrifice. The type of ritual disemboweling that goes on daily round here. One more step and it will be martyrdom, and then everyone's going to hear about that.

But in this case what has been sacrificed in exchange for Squirrel's pointless new shoes is Grit's ability to think independently and reason logically, along with the good taste she is sure she once possessed, but which it is now lying in a dark cupboard somewhere, along with some size 8 clothing, several pairs of high heels and something called dignity.

If I were to let reason guide me instead of the sparkling eyes of an eight-year old, I would have explained to Squirrel calmly and rationally that these are not exactly a pair of functional winter shoes for puddling purposes and they are unlikely to see us through the next field without the glitter dropping off.

What I would have also thought, but not said, is that there is no chance I can live with both Squirrel and Tiger in a house which contains only one pair of gold glitter shoes. When Tiger sees these, I fear I am doomed.

She will instantly fall in love with them, forsake us all to get her hands on them, and my life will be leaden and unbearable until I get her down the shoe shop. For Tiger, the best expression of her identity, when it is not a pair of jodhpurs, is a party dress in pink. Crushed red velvet with satin ribbon will do, but it is not nearly as good as pink with sequins and fake diamonds. Sparkly shoes would just set off that strawberry froth a treat. And soon enough I will be beating myself up that I did not buy at least five pairs of gold glitter shoes in three different sizes to last both Squirrel and Tiger through the winter.

Well it is too late now. Squirrel is armed and dangerous with these and this morning has walked downstairs with the equivalent of a couple of grenades strapped to her feet. I gambled on Shark peering at them in disdain and declaring them ridiculous because you cannot go sailing in them, and I have won that one. Tiger took one look at them along with an inbreath and declared loudly that Squirrel has new shoes and she has no new shoes and nothing to wear on her feet. We are now a whisper away from the claim that she has never had anything to put on her feet and this is evidence that she is not wanted in this family and may have to leave it to find a family that actually cares enough about her to let her wear sparkly shoes and a pink party dress at any time of the day and night and in the bath as well, because once on, she is never taking that outfit off and may possibly rather die.

Well then a remarkable thing happened. Because as Squirrel stood there in all her morning glory we all became aware of something horrible. Squirrel had appeared in her new glitter shoes in public for the first time teamed with a pair of blue striped socks and purple leggings with a hole in the knee. This was colour torture for my eye balls. In fact I was not the only one wincing in pain at the sight of that dog's dinner. After a moment Tiger's eyes started to narrow and her lip curl, and I could see a new wave of rationality and consideration sweep in. And at that moment I was so glad that she could see those colours and feel that pain at the age of eight. It certainly was not a reaction she would have experienced aged six.

And right now I am sighing in relief. I am not saying I am saved from the demand for a second pair of gold glitter shoes. Just that, for the moment, I have a stay of execution.

*I forced Squirrel to change into white socks for this photo. Oh yes I did.
And this proves that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

In training

Human beings are amazing, are they not? Every experience they have in life is filed and stored away as a tiny memory somewhere on that enormous super-dooper computer brain. Then one day, when the need arises, out of that stored experience will burst an idea of what to do; your hidden experience guides you, even though you never had this situation before!

So mummy Grit is smart and forward thinking. She takes her babies on an army assault course. She prays that one day, should her little Squirrel, Tiger and Shark face mortal danger, locked in a burning building, forced to escape through caves, wrapped up in seaweed or having to jump from a very high up place, then somehow, because of this day's memory, they will know what to do. This life protecting experience will guide them and save them.

Of course, because this is the real world, this exercise will probably come in handy, ten years from now, when mummy Grit and daddy Dig holler Good grief! What are you wearing? You are not leaving the house looking like that! Get upstairs right now and change! Because if you attempt to step one foot out of this house we will barricade the doors and tie up the windows with ropes and bike locks!

OK Missy! You've had it. Right. Now see if you can get out of this house wearing THOSE SHOES and THAT SKIRT!

(To be repeated in 10 year's time wearing stilettos and a pelmet.)

More about leggings

I take Tiger to buy leggings, which I am told are not leggings, they are woolly tights. Well, I say to Tiger, I do not care if they are leggings, woolly tights or weasel's warmers, I need 15 pairs of them if I am not to be doing the laundry every night.

As we walk off to M&S, I force Tiger to do some maths. She can easily work out that 15 pairs is five pairs each. But I am sure there is spacial geometry involved in the location of all five pairs: one pair draped over the radiator from yesterday's wash; one pair in the laundry; one pair stinking behind the sofa where I will uncover them in a few days time; one washed and dried pair in the washed and dried basket, and one pair in everyone's bedroom, ready to be worn.

Of course, I remind Tiger as she considers the geometry, if we're going to do some work on unit cost, remember I have to shell out for a minimum of 16 pairs because leggings come in packs of two or four. And don't forget the added mathematical complications to do with colour.

For example, Tiger will wear only expensive pink leggings which come in packs of four. But one in each pack will be cream coloured. These she won't wear on account of her legs looking bandaged. So she will need two packs of four leggings to give her six pink leggings. Then Shark will wear only blue leggings. She will need three packs, but if they are on special offer I get the second pack half price so we'll take eight leggings and share her excess with Squirrel, who will wear blue but prefers stripes.

As it is, all my preparatory work on Venn diagrams is subverted. M&S don't have any leggings in the right size and colour except in black. And if there's one colour everyone's not wearing, it's black. So in goes the order for 16 pairs of leggings in various colours, arriving at the store next Wednesday.

And we're off back home, contemplating the four pairs of red leggings left over from last year, all of which have holes in them. Maybe now we'll just count the laundry costs and the days until Wednesday.