Not a lot of options

Travel to the wondrous Suffolk, where the wide fields washed in white may seduce me, but the prompt cold note securely pinned to the chest of drawers certainly doesn't.

Like the tolling of the heavy bell the thickly penned letters set out my clearing duties and remind me why venturing to this part of the country now brings its own set of hazards, disturbances, and miseries.

Put simply, the knot in the Suffolk family dislikes me, my home educating choice, my uncivilised children, my forthright being and my odd way of living. There is nothing I can do to redeem the relationship. My uncontrolled hair, my inappropriate choice of everything, and the way I wear that bling belt suitable for a 14-year old, these all disturb more than can be said. Essentially, I am not in order, full stop. I should behave better.

Strangely, I completely agree with all her observations about the messy hair, messy life, and foolish bling. After then, we part. These half-complete frayed bits of me, these spontaneous wanderings and my noisy announcements might upset her, but I have to make them delight me. I must enjoy my uncontrollable hair! Fuck it, I like my dramatic reenactments! Yes, I thrill to my bling! In truth, I would like nothing better than to find the opportunities for dressing and behaving inappropriately in my way more often. Joy in life would come from these wayward motes.

We will never see eye-to-eye. She has already departed the house ahead of my arrival, ensuring she never has to clap eyes on me nor see my foul brood ever again. On the kitchen calender, a black border confirms the dates of my arrival and departure, like a heavy box over the days I am here.

Maybe I should admire the way she puts her principles into action. By packing her bag in preparation at our visit, she's not putting up and shutting up, like I thought we all had to do from time to time with extended family members. 

But the chill of it means she turns my family visit into a problem and makes me feel awkward in knowing what household disruption I prompt; the circumstance she creates works against me seeing people I love, prevents me staying over more than a night, stops me enjoying my fields, and puts a halt on me gratifying my flung-off desires to trek about a wintered Anglia. All of it makes me feel the full frontal gloom of not being liked. What she doesn't get, not at all, is that my inappropriate life and non-normal choice doesn't necessarily result in a foolhardy irresponsibility.

What do you other home-educating rejected types do, when you are faced with such undisguised  disapproval of your choices and your lives? Can you ever reach their heads or hearts?

I don't know. I can't make it any better.

Hmph. May as well make it worse.

Here's her stuffed pussy, Grimalkin. Its fur is peeling off, I'm sure from over-stroking.

A little knowledge

Evidence, once again, that the gritlets leave the house to grunt at other human beings apart from me. Today they are out, having fun with corpses.

I keep telling Squirrel it is copse, but she's having none of it. I've given in gracefully, and corpse it is. So here are the gritlets, having fun with corpses, Texas Chainsaw style.

I am told, by the papa of the gang, that everything went well. No actual human limbs were severed, although quite a few thickety sprigs met their end. All the experimental junior woodsfolk were placed under the watchful eye of a he-giant, a Hercules of the woods, who could do proper grunting and cutting with long saws. He prevented each of the juniors from dismembering themselves or anyone else on their first corpsing experiment.

I'm not convinced no other dark work was afoot. It looks to me like Shark has begun to know the supreme power that can shudder through the body when wielding a pair of heavy slicing clippers and a shining sharp-toothed saw. I'll take no chances. After this first blooding with bark and block, I resolve now to nightly lock the garage door, and keep my hedge clippers under closer watch.

Please get the evening done quickly

We amuse ourselves in our anti-social, marginalised, home-educating hovel in the dark hours of All Hallows Eve - this glorious multi-million dollar festival - by doing the opposite of the rest of you in merry consumer England. That is, shunning the get-up in a bedsheet, avoiding all trick-or-treating, not answering the door, hiding in the kitchen with a couple of carved out melons, and spurning all Haribo, symbol of the festival and the devil's work. Yes, I know, Agent orange, chemical biohazard, and cow hoof has to go somewhere. But it doesn't mean we have to go face down on it in a plastic bucket.

And of course you will have spotted the concessions to the wicked joy that is Hallowe'en thanks to my melons.

I would really, really, really like to say I made Squirrel and Tiger carve out Honeydew melons in my miserly spirit of teaching not-Hallowe'en, but I did not. Tesco ran out of pumpkins. Anyway, melons work just as well, if not better. We can eat the insides of a melon without being guiltily pressed into pumpkin soup, which means we also avoid messing about in the dark with a saucepan and a hand-held blender, and no mass clear-up of pumpkin guts from the kitchen walls when I get the angle of the blender wrong.

Now hope all the Saints rise again when you look upon something truly horrible.

It is a wooden cat. Dig brought it home from Mexico a few years ago when pressing urgencies drove him to take a small holiday looking at temples. It scares me witless. I have nightmares it will come alive and chew my living corpse. Yes, I know, also irrational, given that it has never yet shown signs of animation and a mouse has nibbled one of its ears, but still, look at the dreadful growl on that grim mouth. The cat is evil, I tell you, evil.

If I do not rise tomorrow, then know that no saint protected me, Hallowe'en is all true, the cat got me in the night, and we should have eaten the Haribo.

Debagged at the final hour

A quiet day.

But reader, do you find, in the aftermath of bloody battle, a subdued state is not unusual? In the wake of war, there is a quiet time for mending discord.

It is so here. The sibling rivals remain busy, each to their own, carefully watching their borders, looking to their territorial gains, and seeking minor opportunity to define their powers, maybe in more moral composure than before.

No-one wants another war before each has secured the advantage from the last.

It is a good time for me to strike.

Being a shifty sort of character with a secret admiration for Richard III, I must catch this state, and take advantage. I can even tell myself, as a home educating parent, that it is my moral duty to be crafty in how I go about wrestling something that resembles an education.

First, I lure all parties to my interests with bait. Chocolate-sprinkled vanilla cake and chocolate milkshake for breakfast.

With the siblings all arranged about the table, slurping and watching each other, I spring on them a paragraph about Picasso with ten edits to make.

This establishes something to the day, like an expectation of study. From this point I have the advantage. Out comes a guessing game of chemical symbols, quickly followed - when it becomes unstable thanks to an issue with who discovered Magnesium - by the BBC iPlayer. Here we are all bonded with the amusing diversion of people in the eighteenth century electrocuting each other, for fun.

In time, Shark slopes off to read, Squirrel goes about her quiet affairs (mashing up copies of the South China Morning Post for purpose-who-knows-what), and Tiger takes to her computer with determined tapping of her mouse.

I have the upper hand, yet not once have I used veiled threat. This is good. From this point, mastery of the entire day could be mine, fashioned to my educational goals, so long as I am not caught celebrating victory too early, and I remain diffident in the afternoon discussions about spellings for baboon, tortoise and using.

By tea-time, the first real and potentially threatening interactions of the day are taking place with the game of Owl and Mouse.*

Yet even here, I win! I twist daddy Dig's conference call to my advantage. I say the owls must be quiet, or the people in South Africa will hear only frenzied and blood-curdling screams and this would destroy daddy's reputation as builder of global harmony. A pizza reward would be off the agenda.

At last I can bring a proper gravitas to complete our quiet, studious day with an edited reading of our shared book, Wild Swans.

Perhaps then it is my mistake, to explain how skillful and superior manoeuvring by more intelligent and knowing peoples can easily take advantage of war; how discord can be so easily exploited to pick off factions and rebuild new orders; how those new orders are always more suited to the interests of the new, more powerful overlord.

But I am almost assured now of an easy coast towards a quiet bedtime. I merely need to keep one eye on the perils of the evening. Experience tells me, after a long and study-filled day, these tired hours can be the point when resentments erupt.

I can afford to relax with at least one gin and tonic, as the children entertain themselves, stitching and stuffing vampire bats which they secure in the window grills, chatting easily together on the mastery of their craft. The solidarity of the triplets returns. Their ability to reflect on their separate states and their united powers, their demonstration of quiet bond and mutual support, is all a sight to see.

Six knowing eyes then turn in unity to scrutinise me. They require only a small amount more black fabric which they have eye-spied me wearing in the form of an old pair of flapping John Rocha trousers.

Reader, I can say no more. Except I have learned again that education is power, and it is perilous.

Given the terms unanimously laid before me, and the solidarity shown by the opposition, I considered it totally in my interests to yield.



* The Owl and Mouse game is the one where there is a Mummy owl and a Daddy owl and they must work together to catch the mouse. If they are successful, they can beat the shit out of it before dragging it home for supper. This game is usually popular with two of the triplets at any one time. I have never known it to have a good ending.

So there's a lesson

Yesterday I am discovered, by Mick the neighbour. Passing, he glances up at me. I am draped sad and exhausted over a garden wall, pathetically tugging at an ivy trunk as thick as a builder's biceps.

'Do you need any help?' he calls.

Of course I imagine I am very English about this offer of help. I muster up what I think passes as a smile and I whimper, 'That's very kind of you but I'm doing fine'.

I do not know why I say this. I am caked in ivy dust, layered two inches in insect corpse and am a woman in defeat.

But even at this stage it is impossible for me to accept any offer of help. I do not know why. I do not know whether being a home educator is something to do with the mix. We certainly become very self-reliant types. Maybe it is because whatever I need to do, I can usually do it. I have lifted concrete, laid paths, built brick walls, cooked dinners, taught river erosion, painted walls and made clothes. (Sometimes on the same day.) Or perhaps I am so much on my own I just assume I am beyond the point of all help, probably with anything, least of all an ivy tree and a blocked gutter.

Indeed I will have a go at almost anything on the assumption that no-one else is going to do it, so better get on with it. Only electricity defeats me on the grounds that I cannot pick it up and handle it without having my hair stand on end. (Household finance also has the same impact.)

Well today I have my lesson. I am atop the wall again hacking feebly at the embrace of ivy arms, and Mick cycles by, stops his bike, and says, 'I'll be back in five minutes with my big clipper'.

Moments later he returns with he-man clippers and rubber gloves and he's up the ladder and into the gutter with the ivy. Three hours later and we've achieved more than I would singly have done in three months. The devil twine is eliminated from wall, gutter, wood, tile, and flashing, and I need not wake in Hong Kong at 2am worrying about another season's green and woody growth clutching the fabric of my home to slow but inevitable destruction.

I am utterly grateful to Mick, grateful not only for the he-man clippers up the ladder, but for ignoring me a little and bringing his benevolence to my house.

And I am chastened. I am not about to trade in independence and armour for helplessness and vulnerability, but I recognise that it should have limits, this permanent assumption of self-reliance. I should know when to stop and say, Yes, I could do with some help, thanks.

For once, not me up the ladder.

But I do turn into an Edwardian candelabra at midnight

Dig is all up for attending this year's ball at Oxford.

I include these photos for the benefit of passing American readers.




Why we are going, do not ask. It is inexplicable to me.

But tonight we dump the kids with Aunty Dee who trailed us yesterday on our halting journey down England's main drain otherwise called the M1.

Yesterday, the amiable aunty took Shark out of our equation. Today she is sleeping with the mice, mould and spiders in the cellar (how well we treat the relatives!) but with the sole purpose to give us parent people some time out.

Maybe she has caught wind of something final, like Dig is whisking me away to say, now he has had time to think about it, divorce is a good idea, but just one thing: would I stay on to do the laundry? That would be helpful.

That matter aside, and on the Oxford issue instead, be less than impressed.

A college administrative assistant (who probably should know better) put me on the graduate invite list, possibly by accident. At Oxford I merely did a Jeffrey Archer; I slipped round the back door of the august institution to crawl out a year later with the ignominy of a vocational qualification (aka PGCE) and I have been on the invite list ever since. Unlike him, I play the connection down, and I never go, if only to spare the blushes of Fellows.

But tonight Dig, who has far more claim to these events than me, has something in his bonnet and wishes to go.

Easy-going Grit (yes! I am! it is true!) thus complies. But what do you expect that I go along and pick a fight with a bouncer, true gutter girl that I am?

The problem I have is that someone is apparently keeping their eye on me, because I have, in a crowd composed mostly of foreign graduates and a few gently moulding academics, craftily managed to get my ungainly mitts round a glass bottle. (Wine, not beer, if anyone is alarmed.)

A glass bottle in my hands is not allowed. (Do not mention the bottles all the waiters have been swinging round.) I may be aged over fifty, have had three kids wrenched from my bowels, suffered enough indignities and disgraces to make you put your fingers over your eyes, and be old enough to be the bouncer's mum, but from all this life experience it must be assumed I have neither learned nor grown, not one jot.

I must not be trusted, perhaps for fear that with my age, experience and disposition I go berserk, glass the aging historian propped next to me and I swing the fragmented bottle round my head while dancing naked in the quad.

So the glass bottle is removed and I am given the dregs in a plastic cup. A PLASTIC CUP. Yes, dear Americans, I may be standing at an Oxford ball and be dressed in designer Marella, but I can only drink from plastic.

Well of course this sets me off. I hunt down King Bouncer and discover that to have this legitimate authority to remove glass from old ladies I have to pay two hundred and fifty pounds every three years to the Security Industry Authority run by the Home Office. Once I am in charge of putting a team together to bounce the venue I can more or less choose who I would like - maybe a few pals - and they can eye-spy glass bottles clutched in the claws of dodgy old birds like me and act appropriately in the interests of health and safety of you all.

Suffice to say it did not all end too well, but at least from the evening I managed to gain a gentleman to accompany me back at 3am to the hotel, so I can reassure any concerned reader that I never glassed the historian, never danced naked in the quad, am not returning to prison, have no black eye, nor am yet irrevocably divorced.

Just in time came the Rainbow Warrior

After yesterday, I need another young man with another conviction. The sort I'm looking for is a good-looking activist with a beautiful sunbeaten face, a seductive accent, and strong hands. They would do.

Fortunately, Greenpeace has taken over Pier 2 and is inviting the public on board the Rainbow Warrior. Not the first Rainbow Warrior blown up by the French secret service, obviously. That one is at the bottom of the sea off New Zealand.

This is Rainbow Warrior II, soon to be replaced by Rainbow Warrior III. This is an opportunity to say goodbye. Well, it's about farewell tours, and a promotional voyage to encourage membership and raise awareness about the earth, air and ocean, and how corporates, politicians and industrialists usually try and do what they like.

What Greenpeace does, as everyone knows, is try to stop them and piss them off. In the Greenpeace way I think that's called positive change through action.




Let's face it, they've got their work cut out round here. Hong Kong is now a colony of China and I wonder what real decision-making power Donald Tsang holds in the hierarchy with Beijing on the subject of nuclear power. But I applaud Greenpeace for having a go. Better than shutting up and saying nothing.



Educationally, it's an excellent counterbalance to yesterday. Simply at the level of a contrast between resources and technologies.


It's true, the knobs and anchors aren't as impressive, which you'd expect, given that the USS Halsey is funded by government and Greenpeace is funded by Joe Public and another hundred dollars from my purse.



But look here, when we get to the subject of conviction, the freedom fish fighter is happy.


Anyway, the tour does exactly what I needed it to do. Sends us off into discussions about conflicts of agendas, and the rewards and hazards of following through with your beliefs. Call it an education. Hopefully it all makes the kids think, which is my first reason to be here.

Not just for me to catch a few more eyefulls of dashing, young, spirited men. No. Not that at all. Honest.

I don't get invites like this every day

Like this one. Do you want to take a tour of the Destroyer USS Halsey, anchored in Hong Kong waters?


Straight away, I say NO.

NO WAY are we touring anything called a DESTROYER. Kids, we stand firm on our PRINCIPLES. My position is here in black and white. Our presence on board might suggest we are somehow implicitly endorsing all US military strategy; that we give our personal sanction to the covert actions of America which probably help sustain indefensible states around the world; that the very presence of our toes on deck might somehow be taken as tacit approval of US operations which protect American investments and armaments trade most likely to the detriment of civilian lives and hungry kids; and that we all adore Mickey Mouse when, in fact WE DO NOT.

NO. WE ARE NOT GOING.

But damn, I am one nosy parker.

And this is an education.

Within seconds of that thought, the invitation to tour a US missile destroyer is completely irresistible. To get on board I must grab a fellow home educator's computer to sign ourselves up, and PDQ before the afternoon deadline expires.

So that's what I do. Which is how we find ourselves led under the skin of the USS Halsey.


Okay, I admit. It was one of the most interesting tours I have taken in a while. Not only for the talk about the big gun, missile launchers, control room, and sight of the folding helicopter. (Did you know they fold up? Helicopters fold up! It's amazing, right! But they do!)

The reason why the tour was so engaging was the crew. The crew on board were faultlessly straightforward, welcoming, humorous, acknowledging of questions, patient and thoughtful. Real people, in fact.

Damn. Not for one moment did any one of our touring crew come over as automatons, two dimensional robots, cardboard cut outs and parrots for US agendas. They expressed hesitancies, considerations and smiles. Damn damn damn. It is easier to be principled when humans do not mess up the black and white.

But then something even worse happened. They showed how fantastically trusting they were.

Get this. They let two dozen wide-eyed kids loose in a deck filled with LEVERS BUTTONS KNOBS DIALS AND SWITCHES.


Would you do that? Would you allow a single trigger-happy, curious kid with itching fingers in firing range of a control panel that could have been lifted straight from a Game Boy testing factory?

Seriously, as a grown adult, I was having difficulty controlling my impulse in front of a single lever with the caption SD768 OFF/ON.




That was one pretty amazing tour. Was it a charm offensive? Very likely. Did it work? Hmm. But to save my fragile principles, I'm calling it all an education. Yes, it led to an interesting discussion with the kids about balances of power, war, politics and conviction. That maybe left our principles intact. No way do we endorse the killing of civilians, the destruction of cities, nor the culture of warmongering for the selling of arms.

And I am sure to forget just how handsome was that young sailor. The one who made me wish I was aged twenty and had no principles at all.

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.

Planning, doing, achieving

We are preparing for the arrival of Aunty Dee. Her presence seems weeks away, but if we don't get on with it, she will be here and staring mournfully at the state of the floor wondering what possessed her to travel several thousand miles to be asked to sleep there.

For the arrival, we must:

1. Buy a bed. This will involve Ikea. Me and Dig will stare glumly at furniture that we don't want and don't like while the kids run around in delight and tot up forty thousand dollars on pink plastic wall lights and furry flower rugs. Forced into making a decision on the bed because time is running out, we will put it to the Squirrel test. She is the only one who can be bribed to test each display bed in store as if it was her very own. In five minutes we can apply the equivalent of five years regarding durability and resistance to glue, scissors, footprints, and a cuddly platypus called Platty.

2. Look at the washing machine. The one in the cupboard that I have never used. It is time. Aunty Dee might have underwear that she does not want to see on a Facebook page set up by the local laundry woman who posts pictures of our smalls for the merriment of three million Hong Kong Chinese. To approach the washing machine I first slap on rubber gloves, and press its buttons with the end of a wooden stick. This is sensible. I have been electrocuted and I am not having that experience again.

3. Put up hooks. Behind doors, on walls, in cupboards, in hall. All kid coats, bags, hats and towels permanently live on the floor. Either buy hooks or charge entrance fees. We might be an early work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

4. Put it off for as long as possible, and maybe until she is on the airport bus to Central, but eventually squirt blue, white and green fluids around, hoping that by their very presence the collections of moulds, dirts and unidentifiable marks will simply get up and go without the aid of cloths, brushes, or me.

5. Strap the broom onto the handle. It came off after the kids took it to the roof and used it as a pole vault.

6. Find some miracle cure for the ongoing curtain problem. Honestly, these curtain tracks are rubbish. Sticky tape, string, and staring at them in a menacing manner are no solutions.

7. Resolve to sweep the floor every day. Yes, I will do that. No I won't. Yes I will. Could we hire a maid for two weeks?

8. Be resourceful with cardboard boxes. These inexplicably mount up against the walls. I fancy they appear overnight, almost as if brought by fairies. I have an aversion to throwing them out in case I can build a table from them. I am sure I once saw a craft book about making attractive furniture from cardboard. I would very much like to have a go. The fairies are trying to show me the way.

9. Make Dig do stuff. I don't know. Just help. I have run out of all strategies, like self piteously saying I do it all, when this is clearly not true and I do none of it.

10. Buy place mats for the dining table. For the last two months I have employed sections of beach mats and pieces of cardboard because somehow buying place mats was like making a commitment to living here. I deny it, but I cannot expose Aunty Dee to a piece of cut up beach mat stuck together with dried alphabet pasta. Let us not forget what is her main employment.*

* Social worker.

Making this year's Christmas cards, gawdelpus

And you, if we make the post office this year.

Typhoon Megi

Typhoon Megi passed us by.

There we were, lashing down the furniture, taking our cue from the local restaurant. In a quiet time, the staff steadied step ladders under the ceiling fans, wrapped up the blades in black plastic, and strapped them to the roof joists with red nylon rope.

The tree cutters were out in force this week too; lopping off overhanging branches and cutting back the green twines, all along the routes that might speed the island's little emergency vehicle that has space for a driver and a stretcher.

All around the island there has been activity and anticipation of one sort or another; the office workers who work on Hong Kong Island but live out here, disconnected from sky rise blocks and overhead walkways, who still plough their way off the ferries at predictable times, have been full of the coming storm. Listen to them and all the talk has been, When will it hit us? Thousands of people have been evacuated south from here. Will there be flooding? Will it break on Friday? Friday would be good I hear, because at Typhoon warning 8, all the offices shut down, the workers are sent home, and everything fastened up. We've been at warning 3 all week. There are no numbers 4 to 7.

But, all week, while we've heard rumours of a 500-mile wide impact zone, and glimpsed photographs of the torn apart Philippines, with its bashed up roads and swept away cars, here in Hong Kong we've had a simple breeze; indistinguishable from the normal tropical wind that ruffles your hair and flaps the washing. On Tuesday, it rose, and we all looked to the doors. The landlord hastened round, wound back the awnings and secured them to sturdy metal frames with yards of cord. Then he said everything would be alright if we locked up and sat tight.

The loss of our awnings left us exposed only to the fierce sun which the next day penetrated the tops of our heads as we sat outside to eat breakfast and muse over how many tins we had to stock in the cupboards. We drew out extra housekeeping and bought tinned fruit.

But the winds didn't come. By Thursday, there was rebellious talk that it would miss us completely. The Hong Kong Observatory played it cool, said little, drew 6-hour pictures of the typhoon's track without much comment. We chased the typhoon on blogs and news sites in cyber space.

By Friday, still nothing. An irresponsible part of me was a little disappointed. Everyone remembered the night of the tropical storm when the lightening flash was so strong and long it lit up the sky like a flashbulb someone couldn't turn off. From a guarding place at the window, Dig conveyed reports of branches blasted by wind and turned out to the rain like broken elbows and knees threw into a torrent. I sat on the bed and gave Tiger a cuddle while Shark and Squirrel gripped the duvet.

But now, nothing. All typhoon warnings, off. Hong Kong is missed. The restaurant unwrapped the ceiling fans and set them whirring as normal. The office workers tutted. We resolved to call the landlord to have the awning put back, so we could sit and gobble up tinned fruit salad outside all week. Then we walked through the normal everyday of the local town to stare at the TV screen in the vegetable shop and watch, instead, what a typhoon does when it meets tree, and road, and house.

Hong Kong Wetlands

A few days ago, we visited an area of the natural wetlands left apart in Hong Kong and made accessible to the public. It was a pre-arranged visit with a local home education group. We missed the time for the meeting. I have no excuse, beyond the fact that I manage triplets before breakfast and, even ten years on, have a chronic sense of how much time an argument over three pairs of the same size shoes can take.

But we got there in the end. We usually do, steaming and breathless, and with a fresh squabble brewing at the back.

To calm us all down, even though Dig started to pick a fight with the ticket seller over the five application forms needed for a six-month pass, the Chinese authorities had dealt a stunning blow for natural causes: an enormous steel and glass building with fantastic light and sound theatrical galleries straddling over the wetlands, an alligator in a glass surround and, before us, a set of pre-organised, informational loaded boardwalks, suitable for leading group parties across the natural diversity that is lakes, pools, mangroves and mudponds.

Discontent at something and everything was murmuring already. Foolishly, I tried to pour soothing oil over the rumbling in the family party, and said I expected we would bump into our education group at some point. Even though we were late to arrive, and must set off adventuring alone, I can see that the Hong Kong wetlands park is not a place where you can become lost. You simply follow the given routes.

Of course you can't please everyone. Dig said he was disappointed. He wanted to photograph wilderness, sea edge, wading birds, and lapping estuary waters.

Not in this zone. This orderly education site is at the edge of a world protected wetland. Access stops here. We can only stand at a viewing platform and point to where we can't see: somewhere over there, in that direction of China, where migrating birds come and holiday.

I console Dig and say there must be a protected site, and quite frankly, in China that seems pretty rare. If they don't fence off that area, there's nowhere else for those battered birds to land in safety, recover from their flight, and chatter about the journey back again. They need that unhuman site to be there, or they die.

Right too, I tell the children, who are now complaining that nothing is ever fair. To enter further into bird land, we have to apply for group visits and no children under 12. Unkind, says Shark, pointing at herself. I look at her, and think briefly she's right. But the argument escalates - the one about which way to go - and the fingers point at each other, the feet descend firmly, the voices rise, and we all become intemperate while not walking anywhere. Then I think that excluding children from a world protected wetland site is a fair policy after all.

So here are some photos of the Hong Kong Wetlands before the family outing became irredeemable and went bellyup.


I recommend you visit, if you're passing through. Even though you won't hurl yourself into the wild, wild, wilderness, you get a managed slice of it, and you can gain an education via the extensive information panels on birds, shoreline, mangrove, water crops, lakes, streams and rivers. If you miss seeing the actual kingfishers and otter poo, the Hong Kong authorities kindly supply concrete replicas, which you can examine under pretend telescopes from the safety of your boardwalk.


And the fact that we missed our group was probably for the best.

The argument over which pre-managed boardwalk we should take transmuted into who has the right to read a brochure first and which shade belonged to whom.

Then it all went to a territory beyond the point of no return, and certainly lost us our weekly ice cream, when it ended in two resounding slaps from one sister to another. One ran off and sat in a boil of furious misery at the discovery centre, Dig took himself off to a bird hide, and I sat down and crossed my arms in a sulk that nobody works harder to bring a discordant family together than me, and look where it got me.

When we did locate our education group - as they were just about to make the journey home - the prime culprit slunk off to contemplate the proper way to resolve arguments and consider the icecreamless perils of physical violence. The other two just looked miserable, and I couldn't really advance our cause by admitting why, or by consoling the organiser that we could have made the group all the more burdensome, by turning up on time.

Some information, I do not share

I take Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to the dentist.

Of course I do not tell them they are going. This is a strategy I have. It is the only strategy I have.

Forewarning them - trying to make a routine dental check-up sound like a normal thing to do - well, let's just say I tried already. I tried for their previous six-month check up.

Announcing Tra la lalala! Nothing to bother about! Just made you an appointment with the dentist! To a pair of my child ears those words are exactly the same as: I know you thought you could trust me - your mother! - but I just sold you to an international body parts smuggler who wants to extract your liver while you are alive. Oh yes, while he does it, he wants to see you roast over a fire.

That sounds exactly the same, doesn't it? Which is why I no longer announce the terrible fate that awaits. Because the child who hears that information must writhe down the walk of terror, (also known at Constable Street), towards the dreaded circle of hell (also known as the dental surgery), into the clutches of the foul-faced knife-stabbing liver-trading demon who dwells there (also known as Mrs Boscovitch, age 53) and yet they have a whole six weeks to contemplate that dreadful end.

The reality doesn't intrude one bit on their brains in this whole six weeks of anticipation. That Mrs Boscovitch is so sweet and kind and gentle, that I have asked her to be my mum. That she's not even dressed up as a demon or a witch! How kind can these dentists be? She'll make the dental chair go bumpety bump to make you laugh. And then she'll twirl that tiny mirror round so smooth and gentle you may be in danger of crunching on it, thinking it is dinner. Afterwards, she will declare your teeth tiptopticketyboo and recommend an electric tooth brush.

There is no point telling them anything. So five minutes before we depart I let them in on the reason why they must wear knickers and shoes this morning. Before the horror hits their sound box I promise them a detour past the bookshop on the way home. Then I only have to deal with four minutes fifty five seconds of banister hanging and a bit of howling on Constable Street.

Sorted.

In recovery

Thanks to yesterday's marathon seven hour drive. One side of my body remains paralysed with motorway. The spasms on the other side I attribute to the 110% industrial strength coffee backing up in my arteries.

Consequently I do nothing more than alternatively slump and twitch myself around the house. Occasionally I drape my barely coherent carcass over a variety of household goods and kitchen furnitures. That process is called pretending to do stuff and look like I care.

It can account for the fact that my online chronicle of survival will today display only a collection of kid tennis shoes.


I have turfed these out a cupboard, abandoned them on a carpet, and left them there, where everyone can use them to trip over.

For one fleeting moment I fancied I might compose a blog entry about the hazards of sorting out a matching pair of tennis shoes when you have three kids with identity issues, the same shoe size, and two minutes to go before the tennis lessons start.

But then I realised the post-M42 traumatic stress had begun so I went to lie down instead.

Life moves quick

I knew it: Those kids have been hiding those pesky unicorns around this house. Even after I said NO MORE UNICORNS IN THIS HOUSE. I know it because I found two of them in cahoots at the bottom of the laundry basket. I know who put them there. She thinks 'Ha! That's a place she never goes!' Well kid, you didn't think it through. I am your mother. That puts me one step ahead. ALWAYS.

I found it: Under your bed? A carefully moulded selection of dust balls, sticky taped together with a label that reads 'New Zealand'. ...Three headless Barbies tied together round a teapot. ...And the last will and testament of a unicorn. Yup. The unicorn leaves all his worldly goods to a bat. Cheapskate. He could've left me the magic hoof.

And then I went out and said it: 'Look sonny, you're working the tea cup carousel for toddlers. And that's not appropriate. For crying out loud, look what you're doing. You're collecting money from the mothers of babies and toddlers. What? My problem? You're the one wearing the t-shirt that says, 'ReadthiswhileIcheckoutyourtits'.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Alice

At first everything starts OK for her. She stands windswept on Dunstable Downs. Here she is, simply abused by flowers who are spoiling for a fight.


I know that feeling. I now have a natural wariness of flowers. Once I walked all around this town pursued by a two-foot flower. It was smashed on Tixylix, yelling curses at passing traffic, and punching me in the kidneys.

In fact, I have distinct memories of being beaten up by an assortment of mice, rabbits, cats, and a truck. In public, this is not very dignified.

But I have found that after entering the other side of the looking glass, anything can happen, truly. I have just been fortunate not to have been stabbed.

Here is Alice under assault by people who look identical. At this point, while she tries to make sense of incomprehensible languages and expressions of mind-altering grudges, she is probably wondering helplessly what happened to her life.

Alice, I understand. Confusingly, these identical mutants are simultaneously the best of friends and the worst of enemies. And wars can be indeed started over bent rattles.


Soon all Alice's understanding of a normal life among normal people will have been replaced by a warped and twisted world. One where you keep soil in the freezer because it is nice to look at.

But there is more. So much more. Next, the guilt will kick in. The rejections. The miseries. The night terrors, the deprivation, isolation, and the overwhelming problem of how to go to the shops and buy food.

It would not be unreasonable if Alice's entire psychological defence system broke down at that point and she went slightly bonkers.

Then even this will be normal.


On that day, I calmly confiscated the lances. Then I told the horses not to pour oil down the toilet. It is a mistaken horse belief that one litre of vegetable oil equates to a bucket of horse wee.

Alice, at least you were able to come out from behind the looking glass, and return to your normal life.


You were lucky. Some of us are still in here.

Oh no! It's our local hairdresser!

How do I know?

1. They are deluded. Advertising themselves as Celebrity Stylists when they are in a back street of a small town. The only close shave they made to fame is making everyone round here walk with the same mullet. It looks like a regional crime wave.

2. They dress like streetwalkers. Black string vest, white bra, fake tan, and plastic glitter belt 50p from the market. It's not a good look on a woman aged 58. It's not a good look on anyone. Possibly an LA starlet, because the look can carry a gutter. But when it walks you to the cash till? Seriously, you feel you got robbed by a hooker.

3. They act like society needs them. This is piteous, really. So let us help make them special. Turn up late for your appointment. They love it. Now they have the chance to be important! (Guide to being important? Rap six-inch multicoloured painted fingernails on formica desk while murmuring mmmmmm. Flick hair while clicking pointlessly on a mouse and looking vacantly at blank computer screen.)

4. The stylists are particularly dim. Especially Beryl. (Stage name: Berillia.) She has one GNVQ level 96 in Hair and Beauty. I do not knock it. She is happy with this level of achievement. Even if it is a bit like thinking a Big Mac is a qualification in Nutrition.

5. They don't speak in joined-up words. Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for Socratic philosophy from my hairdresser! Of course not! Not even long chained utterances! That would blow their fuses. Round here we listen to yeah... yeah... yeah... gonna... hmm... yeah... like... like... yeah. Could explain why Melvyn Bragg's not your customer, ladies.

6. They sound like they don't know what they're doing. Have they ever done this hair cutting thing before? I swear, here's the exchange I overheard.

Customer (C). Berillia (B).
C: I'd like it a bit more fashionable than it is now.
B: Yeah... yeah... yeah. Um... Um... Right... Yeah.
Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it?

7. They are high on aerosol. They spray enough of that ozone-killing junk into the room, it makes your hair want to crawl out of your scalp in submission, lay on your lap and scream. Not only are their brains affected by that PCP crap; it also makes them witter on about boyfriends in high-pitched squeaky voices. After half an hour you start to hallucinate along with them and imagine you are surrounded by millions of garroted mice dressed like hookers. And they are all waving scissors, dangerously.

8. They make a big thing out of the hierarchy. The Receptionist can only take your coat and walk you over to the Junior Shampooist. She will pass you on to the Deputy Senior Stylist. She will make a big play about consulting with the Queen of the Blower. This is all a cover. It's just a pretence to make it look like there was some training so they can justify the hundred quid they're about to rip out your bank account.

9. They speak to you like you are aged five. And a slow learner. Maybe they should offer balloons for everyone to hold. Oh, and by the way, everything is a personal favour. Just for her. So, Can you, um, sit, sit, yeah, straight? Like, yeah, JUST FOR ME? What is the matter with them? Are they high? (See 7.)

10. They have made-up names. Example: Raquelia and Sextuginia. (Really, they are called Janice and Sandra.) This is not to suggest they are airheadedbimbos useful for sex. No. Of course not. They are trying to make themselves sound exotic and interesting. When they have travelled as far as Butlins and have a boyfriend who owns a pitbull.

Good grief, did I already reach ten? I'm only warming up. I could go on. Ladies, I meant it when I said I would never bring my children to this salon again. EVER.

Forty-seven different ways to die while pond dipping

Gawdhelpus. If yesterday wasn't bad enough, what with the killers that lie waiting for us down the local spoil heap, then I get another ear hole full of it today.

I take the kids off to a pond dipping session run by our local parks department. Normally I won't say a dickey bird against them, they are so lovely and kind and tolerant to the mad people.

But the leader turns up today without pots, without field guides, without pencils, papers, clipboards, or sense of audience.

We get a ten minute health and safety list of how dangerous we are about to become while holding a net on a stick.

Because did you know? You could trip over an old bicycle hidden in the reeds, or drown in a puddle, or be knocked unconscious, or be infested with rat wee, or swallow pond water without thinking, or be splashed in any number of ways into open wounds that are pouring with blood, or slip on mud, or fall over each other, or have someone's eye out and they would be blind and fall into the pond and be licked by rats and we would all DIE.

All this could indeed happen. But the twelve adults looking on would DO NOTHING because by then we have all decided to take up occupations as murderers and gone stalking people to kidnap and shove in car boots.

That could happen too.

Or we could bloody well get on with it, go pond dipping, then come home and order the field guides ourselves over the internet.

PS. We found a newt.