Arriba! Arriba! Ándale!

Okay! This home education malarky? Okay!

Thanks for asking.

It's just ...well ...next time, please don't assume I teach. Look, my Big Grits are now aged 15. They jolly well teach themselves. They do learny-stuff by their own endeavours; they work out what to know, and how to shake it down in a language that an examiner will tick a box for.

Anyway, my little gribblehoofs busted me when they were aged about 9. I failed their primitive area maths questions! But then, I did teach them life's most useful lesson. It's no use asking your mother. Find out for yourself.

Take it all as living breathing proof that home ed works. The kids must do things for themselves: we can help only with Lingua Latina (aged 95) and Sam Martell. (Shark now allows me to tell you she got A grade in IGCSE Physics this year.)

Ah yes! The children! Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. My experiments! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Well, Shark has set her course for Life Domination. Having ticked Physics, sorted a newspaper delivery job, joined the Sea Cadets, learned how to cook 150 different bread types, and taken a course in Marine Engineering, she is now studying sea maps and has plans to build her own boat. At this point, I understand it is my job to close my mouth and hand out cash.

Squirrel lives in a faraway dimension where everything else makes sense. Squirrel is Shark's identical twin and her binary opposite.

While Shark purposefully handles the family laundry, Squirrel watches dust fall through sunlight. Shark marches off to source ingredients for her new-found bread recipe while Squirrel examines soil. This week, Shark learned how to handle herself on a sail, while Squirrel built a fifteen-foot articulated dragon.

I think no further explanation is needed, except to tell you my fears were unfounded, and four children could indeed hoist a fifteen-foot articulating dragon out of my house. Squirrel may arrive for a Theatre Props or Fine Art instruction near you in due course.

Tiger? Tiger is a swot for Latin, Anglo-Saxon grammar, and I'm damned if I can find a teacher of Ancient Greek.

PUBLIC APPEAL: If you know of, or you are, a teacher of Ancient Greek, please talk to me.

Apart from swotting (making dragons, sub-aqua diving, climbing, joining the stitch 'n' bitchers, taking up with the local park rangers, helping make a panto, and - joy of joys - running in teen spirit about the Wild Woods with The Wide Games Crowd), since my last missive, we have galloped through the following:

British Museum Celts exhibition; to the cinema for Fassbender in Macbeth, girl power with Suffragette, and fun with The Martian.

Live screenings of Our Lord Cumberbatch as Hamlet, the RSC's Henry V, the ENO's Mikado.

To the Globe and Sam Wannamaker theatre for Richard II and The Odyssey: Missing, Presumed Dead by Simon Armitage (I still love him, even though he spoke to me with cold, dead eyes).

Then chuck in Glyndebourne's touring production of Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (I hope you're impressed I typed that from scratch).

And! We did a family team challenge which involved driving a car with a bucket of water strapped to the bonnet. (I say family. Dig was away and Tiger wouldn't join, on the grounds, It Is Silly.)

Somewhere in this, we all went to Mexico. I would tell you more, except it was werk-related and Dig says I ought not to blab about clients on a public blog.

But it wasn't all werk! Have photos! Templo Mayor, Anthropology Museum, to the Belle Arts for Diego Rivera, a couple of hours on the canals (thanks, Shark), Teotihuacan, and Shark cooking us cactus for dinner.

Speaking of clients, one of my finest moments happened recently when I was asked if I 'take part in the sex industry' thanks to my preference for leather.

Just to reassure everyone, I did not go to Mexico looking for work as a hooker. I just dress like that.

Impasse at Fiddleford Manor

It has a roof.

A very fine roof, since no-one's looking.

I don't know why, but we have a major family fall out here, perhaps caused by the fact our excursion is over and we all are bound home, or possibly because she has elbows, or maybe the five-hour journey and the way the rain is tipping down, then the Great Expectations story disk ended with three hours to go, or perhaps because I unwisely tell everyone our next stop is Hungerford when the mass slaughter changed British firearms law in the 1980s. I distinctly remember it because I coincidentally drove to Hungerford that very week to interview a marketing manager at a software company.

At everyone's sullen and miserable face I regret it all, because no-one at this moment needs to know about these damaged bits of our humanities; we need to know what ancient, settled places remarkably exist in these areas of outstanding natural beauty, still here, still standing, because we all care. If only we could see it through the drizzle.

And I have no idea what caused the argument in the first place except she has elbows, but only I really looked at the roof.

Final day of the visit

Travelling Aunty leaves Hong Kong today, bound for Northumberland.

It sets her off into sorrowful remembrance. Or maybe trepidation. Her facial expression looks remarkably the same when she contrasts the memory of sunshine temperatures in the Philippines with the expectation of snow-locked moors of Northumberland and a central heating system that doesn't work properly.

Tiger is beside herself with envy. Aunty Dee is going home. To England. This fact prompts Tiger to spend a morning growling and muttering at her computer screen, vengefully stabbing the keyboard. Going home can't come soon enough, and she's now counting the days to our own departure in March.

Squirrel watches packing proceedings with her detached air. These events are all happening out of her control. Later she'll be upset and slam doors. That will mark the loss of a precious aunty who can actually knit and seems to enjoy watching dolly fashion shows. But for now, Squirrel quietly assists in the to-ing and fro-ing to the post office, sending the holiday cards back to an office in Prudhoe. Everyone agrees the postal system can sometimes defy time. Magically the cards can arrive at work desks quicker than the person who sent them.

Shark is sparked into a fury of action in the kitchen. She wanted Aunty Dee to squeeze in one last cultural experience of Hong Kong. A journey by sampan. But the only sampan experience we can organise in time is the crossing between Hong Kong Island and the South of Lamma Island. That means crossing the East Lamma Shipping Channel. This route is the passage of the heaviest container vessels in the world, and one of the busiest sea ways in Asia, active every day of the week. A sampan is like a miniature rowing boat. Dig explains the usual terms of travel insurance and remarks how there isn't time to enjoy a hospital experience, so Shark is asked to cook cake instead.

She does that vigorously, bashing flour and beating eggs, clattering about the kitchen and warding off incomers, until she has created chocolate mousse, cinnamon biscuits, spicy cake and bread dough which we don't have time to cook. The time for departure is upon us, so our Travelling Aunty is hurriedly fed cake with a squashed mousse top and bundled out the door with her unfinished Sudoko puzzles and a flurry of farewells. Dig accompanies her to the airport, just to ensure she catches the right plane to the right place.

I put the house back to the pre-visiting order, wrapping laundry and rearranging furniture. Shark looks glumly at her uncooked bread dough, Squirrel sorrowfully slinks up to her room, and Tiger beams. Next month I'll be packing up our bedrolls, too.

Dig's day

Took family to Philippines. Hired car and driver to detour to Taal Volcano. Boat transferred to Puerto Galera as requested.

Priorities: contact Sweden before 10pm HK time. Arrange contract with Brazil.

See? That would be it, if this was dig's day. If it was grit's day, it would be,

Cebu Pacific Airlines? Do they seriously think selling you life insurance for the duration of the flight helps you feel confident?

And the way the crew demand that you all sing? Something should be done to stop it. Enforced choirs of Gloria Gaynor at 20,000 feet is not 'happy food for the soul'. But at least they didn't make us clap and cheer when the pilot landed, like they did on the flight with Air Portugal. As if it was important to mark the day he got it right.

I thought the transport horror had finished until we got in the car, where the driver said 'My daddy, he is in heaven', laughed like a wild man, and plunged us down the side of the volcano while the windscreen was totally obscured with a swinging painting of Christ. I spent the rest of the journey trying to figure out which side of the road this country drives on.

But I have to say, this boat business works well. I'm not sure about the wisdom of splattering 'God bless our trip' in front of the steering wheel. And I don't understand how the driver can see anything when he sits at the back wearing sunglasses with his feet up, but Dig says that man up front in the tee-shirt is lookout, so they probably have hand signals.

Then we arrive and I have to say, the Philippines? It's like paradise. So what is the matter with Kid A? Why is she so bloody miserable? Is it necessary that within two hours I am held hostage by some sodding tomato sauce? There was nothing wrong with it. I wouldn't have weakened like Dig, with an emergency cheese pizza.

And Kid B forgot her swimming costume. Typical. How many times did I say it's a beach holiday?

Kid C is a paragon of virtue of course, considering this trip is mainly for her. All the obvious delight is doing no good for sisterly love.

Aunty Dee? Same as ever. You can take the girl out of Morpeth but you can't take Morpeth out of the girl. She claims 'Mindoro Island is just like Northumberland. But with more sun'.

I shall leave the day's diary here, but I will end on dig's day, with

She wants photos of the boat to Mindoro Island. I don't know why. I mean, it's not like they're providing an income stream.

Friends like these

Our good friend Rachel arrives in town! This is great news! And we find so many ways to welcome her!

Like, ignore her completely. When we have done that, then hastily arranged to meet up, Ace Tour Guide Grit welcomes her with great ceremony! Mostly by wearing dark glasses and jumping out from behind a pillar where she has been lurking incognito.

But from then on, it is a whirlwind day!

First, frog marching the innocent and obliging visitor round the old pot museum while the Ace Tour Guide delivers a lecture on glazing.

The Grit itinerary next causes our happy, long-suffering friend to be assaulted with a near-dead turtle, then led on a hopeless and misconceived tour of the back streets of Hong Kong markets.

Here, with increasing alarm, the Ace Tour Guide realises she is unable to navigate her way out of the stalls selling sex aids, assortments of plastic penises, strange unknowable things, thongs and vibrators. (Not that I took more than fleeting note of all of those.)

To complete this fantastic tour, the rapidly wilting, possibly silently despairing, but always agreeable and kind Rachel is dragged off to a backstreet Indian restaurant, from where she is thrown to scowling triplets, fleeced by a Mong Kok stallholder, then bundled into a taxi with a touching memento of her day (a $3 rabbit, dead).

Really, it is not the way it should go!

If we were to properly measure our delight in seeing Rachel drop from the sky, and honour her amiable and agreeable nature, she should be welcomed with singing flutes and dancing lions, transported on a night-time harbour trip, banqueted as guest of honour at the Shangri La, then given a gift bag from Shanghai Tang.

This would reflect our enjoyment when receiving visitors from other worlds! But no. There are firmer connections, for the gentle Rachel is now part of the wider Grit network of far-flung friends and thus can be treated with casual hellos and comfortable see you laters. Which, in a way, is even more delightful than the lions.

Of course, if you, like the lovely Rachel, are passing through Hong Kong, you are welcome to enjoy one of Grit's Fantastic Ace Tour Guides too. (I think we have been there before.)

Now available to known and friendly bloggers!

(However, please do not inform me of your travel plans through Hong Kong if you are an insane, knife-wielding murderer whose prime ambition is to scatter my limbs in Victoria Harbour.)

Corinium Museum

I rather fancy doing this. A tour of local English museums. If anyone would like to fork out a squillion quid for a local museum fanatic to wander freely about our beautiful countryside, chatting to old ladies guarding our national treasures - collections of old spoons, broken saucers, rusted farm machinery with bits dropped off, signed photographs of Wilfred Pickles - then I am the woman for the job.

Of course I have to deal with one issue immediately. Class. Some local museums know they are in locations that are distinctly up-market, and have to behave accordingly.

Take the Cotswolds. It's so upscale, it brings out in me the side of the family we never mention. But I can feel myself turning into a Revolutionary Marxist just walking down the High Street, and this is only Cirencester.

Admittedly, within ten minutes of this fancy town, I'm feeling a bit bolshy. I get scowled at by a yachting type in a Cirencester car park for my new sin (I don't know, parking the car?); the council considers 20p in exchange for my wee is not exorbitant; the heel of my shoe is levered off by a Cirencester grate (they would say, all the fault of my thick ankles); and I then suffer a self-inflicted wound when I drop a lump of Tesco value coleslaw straight into the left cup of my bra.

In that state, (disgruntled, full-bladdered, limping, bosoms whiffing of vinegar) I set off with three gritlets following the discreet wrought iron signage to Corinium Museum, through the tasteful colour coordinated streets of Cirencester.


I ask Tiger if she can eye-spy any female not wearing a linen mix. After five minutes she gives in. I tell Squirrel, if you see any man wearing a vest, shout. And to Shark, I say, can you spot a plastic handbag? Apart from mine?

Well, now you get the idea about Grit's day out to Corinium Museum. It's located in a very up-market traditional and stylish place where radical has barely touched. It has an image to maintain; one that likes to say, We transcend the local. We are groomed for higher states.

Welcome, Grit.

Corinium Museum is entirely in keeping with its surroundings. Stone carved letters and discreet beige titles nailed to a beige stone background is, indeed, so discreet that I stand in front of the sodding building and can barely make the words out. The rules of sartorial elegance can clearly be applied to buildings as well as the inhabitants of Cirencester.


Inside, behind the ticket desk, there is an old lady. Of course there is. This is all part of local museum culture, and I defy you to find a muscly young man with tongue stud and facial tattoo.

The old lady is pretty much in keeping with the tone of Cirencester and charges me seven quid for a guidebook coming in at 3.50. She claims this is an accident, but it seems to me entirely fitting. Everything in the Cotswolds assumes a genteel status and is naturally twice the cover price.

Once inside, the museum has no intention of letting you forget that Cirencester was the second largest town in Roman Britain. It still enjoys this status, greatly ennobled by Cotswold stone and nearby David Bullingdon Club, so as you tour round, behave yourself.

But from here on, I think you must visit. First because if anyone wants any more fantastic insight into the class and culture of Britain as demonstrated through its local museumery, then I want a contract, and second, because whatever you read about Corinium Museum on the reviews sites, they are mostly true.

It has an excellent presentation of prehistoric to Roman finds, plus informative arrangements, clear interpretations, supportive visuals and strong presentation of key exhibits making it utterly suitable for the Mummy Grit School of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, and the Grit Education Method which is, basically, talk about stuff.

So yes, of course avoid the school tours because they are a nightmare anywhere, but otherwise, apart from missing out the v. important referencing of Cotswolds middle to upper class, the reviewers on trip adviser are right. (Although I suspect one of the contributors is the very professional and presentation-savvy curator.)

See? They may be Roman but they are still old spoons.

The Festival of History

Wherever we are in the world, on this weekend we have to be north of Northampton for this. Find me there next year, 2012. The event is an essential part of my annual experience. It is about as perfect an English day out as you can get.

See?


It is fantastically English and I love it. There is a lot of dressing up, sitting down, arguing with Squirrel about the lemon curd or the strawberry jam, then there is queuing in the rain, fussing, drinking warm beer, spilling cups of tea, and making observations about bottoms, cod pieces and the weather.


With a bit of Richard III thrown in.


And some medievals. Plague, probably.


And at the end of the day, with the griblets clutching their treasure (signed copy of Michelle Paver's Wolf or something) and me clutching mine (Lemon curd), we can go happy home. For today, we have seen history.

Missing voice

I love the tones and timbres of voices. But those voices are missing from this record of home ed life, aren't they? I sometimes feel their absence, keenly.

I think, as I tap away about the day, this is the moment I should describe that person in this conversation; tell you what words there were, how they were said.

But I stop myself. I haven't been kind enough to ask, is it okay if I blab on my blog what you said? Maybe you won't mind if I mock it a tiny bit as well?

Or there are people I meet, listen, and I think, that is your story to tell, not mine. It is so personal and true and wise from the heart, it is not for me to say.

There are moments too where I am so pussyfootingly discreet - get me! - that I don't think an old beat up hippie blog is a fair and level place to put another human voice, one who never agreed exposure, to the casual gaze of any curious passer by. (How generous and gracious am I!)

I'm not sure which category this gentleman fits in today. The one in the floppy hat. With the purple feather.


Maybe none of them. Maybe I'm sensitive to the commerce of the voice. This gentleman sells his research, commentary and thoughts on a history tour of Lyme Regis. I'd tell you what he said, because it was fascinating and engaging, but that would rather undermine his work and all his effort.

So I'll have to leave you to imagine the voice of the gentleman in the floppy hat. Even though I'd very much like to say how he spoke with expression, gently and respectfully, carefully and emotionally, as if the Lyme executions from three hundred years ago touched him personally, and as wryly as if that young rascal Henry Fielding could still be spotted on the High Street, looking to snatch the object of his desire, Sarah Andrew.

I'll have to say instead, if you want to hear him tell you stories of how life is, then you must simply go along, book yourself a tour, and listen.

Enigmatic picture, not of a well, simply to make you keen to go and find out.

Showing our true selves at Brownsea Island

Here's an oddity. Brownsea Island. With castle. Strange place.

It's one of those islands off Dorset that the wealthy have simply bought and sold to each other, probably with small change, in much the same casual way that I buy secondhand books.

What they've bought and sold has been for centuries the home of hermits, a site of royal defences, and the tucked-away private playground for MPs (how surprising).

Without intention, each successive private owner has helped turn Brownsea Island into a nature haven. Apart from the MPs, it has been owned by art collectors, merchants, bankrupts, and the socially phobic.

The last owner, Mary Bonham-Christie, found it the perfect place to express herself. She turned out the farm herds to roam free, so I guess she qualifies as a member of ALF before ALF was invented. When she died in 1961, this rich person's play island was part of a death duty deal, so the nation had to stump up the cash to buy it.

So now this private island is ours, courtesy of the National Trust.

Nowadays, it is maintained as a nature reserve. No cars. No bikes. No shops (except the sacred commerce of the NT tea rooms). No paddling round the lagoon, either. The Dorset Wildlife Trust kick you out on behalf of those very scary terns with the very sharp beaks that look like kitchen knives.

Oddly enough, the island still brings out the character of people.

The Baden-Powell fans use it as a place of pilgrimage. They show how they are eager to develop their service, high ideals and fellowship by means of tracking each other, making mattresses out of ferns, and pretending to hunt whales in Poole harbour. The nature huggers meanwhile touch their inner spirits (or argue about the ice-cream) through the many quiet shaded strolls. And with no regular evening access for the public (the last boat out is 5pm), the squirrels enjoy it as a rest home. (Reds only. The greys haven't yet invented aqualungs.)

But, as the island does belong to us all ordinary folk of the nation, I had the bright idea of accidentally-on-purpose missing the last boat out.

I discovered that if you want to stay over as a tourist on Brownsea Island, you mostly can't. If you are scouting in an organised manner they allow you, so long as you promise to ibdibdob and woggle. You can stay in the castle only if you work for John Lewis and join their five-year waiting list for the cheap hotel rooms, or you could try the NT cottage if 2K is a reasonable holiday rate. What you can't do very easily is blag a free night out from the nation by claiming you have a dodgy leg and can't run for the boat.

Tiger helpfully pointed out I was probably not the first person to try that, and the NT were probably used to that sort of nonsense.

But as I say, the island sort of invited it. The place seemed to bring out something in us all. Squirrel and Tiger rolled around delighting in everything: woodland, wetland, heath, beach, and world war two crater aka the dragonfly pond, showing their true characters as generous, inspired and sympathetic to the world about them. Shark, showing how she is honourable, principled and committed, added that the best way to stay here would be work as a warden to improve their wetland and harbour conservation.

Of me, I like to think it revealed my little sparkle too. An unscrupulous weasel worder trying to freeload off the nation to bag a gratis night's stay surrounded by some very pretty scenery.

The geology must pause at Kimmeridge bay

I can tell. The gritlets are starting to feel the strain of geology.

Really, I find that extraordinary, given that this is beautiful Kimmeridge bay. And the Purbecks! My goodness, Eden fell down here and no-one told me.


I think I could go on with my geology tour. Yes, my knees are becoming quite sore, what with the kneeling on rocks to scrutinise beaches, and my back is probably broken, thanks to the megaliths that Squirrel drops casually into my handbag as she passes.

But Shark is pissed off. She realises there are people at Kimmeridge bay who will run kayaking and snorkeling sessions, and I have miserably failed to organise something for her. She snaps that this is a marine reserve and what else did I expect? She wants to see it.

Now she's not forgiving me. Look, here she is in the marine centre, and she's not talking to me.


I say what I always say. Where ever you visit, you should depart leaving something undone. Not your trouser zip or shoelace, obviously. I mean something by which you can think how better you can approach this place in future years. Except Weymouth. Just avoid that place altogether, that's my advice.

Shark ignores me and slopes off to sulkily adopt the rockpooling and geology postures we know so well.




Tiger is becoming fatigued with geology, and so gives up on the fossil hunting to amuse herself inflating a plastic glove to gesture in rude and deniable fashion to other holidaymakers.


Squirrel? There aren't any pictures of her, thanks to the stomping off routine. I merely said you cannot dig up the cliffs here, they are protected. And no, I am not putting that boulder in my handbag. Then off she went, with as much stomping off as you can do over a boil of slimy seaweed. (Memo: do not smile at an outraged Squirrel with no balance.)

So I give in. About 3pm I take everyone over to Corfe Castle to cheer up.


Castles are always guaranteed to raise a laugh. Especially when we can imagine the sieges, poisoned wells, projected sheep carcasses, murder holes and battering rams.





I say yes, on the remaining days of our week, we'll visit Brownsea Island, which is on everyone's list of places to enjoy, and we'll take the history tour of Lyme Regis with a quick turn round Blackbury iron age camp.

I think I have to give up the very opposite tips of our geology tour, Old Harry and Exmouth, but they'll stay. And I should always leave something undone. (Not belt buckles or bra straps, as I said.)

Driving after the god called Education

I am invited to feel guilty. About many things probably, but especially how I am burning up the planet via the Gritmobile.

No. I won't feel guilty. Not for our access to this coastline in this snippet of time; the moment I can snatch before I lose this country again.

Anyway, guilt is a feeling I do not do a lot of. Neither guilt, nor regret - the real hard-core wounding, chew-my own-lips-off regret. Not much of that, either.

Not necessarily because I have sailed through life making choices which are fantastically blameless and am now an all round twoshoes-goodsome type, no.

Probably because I am a battered old crone. I am old enough to have made mistakes enough. They have forced certain reconciliations with myself. I come to a quiet forgiving truce with my bright and dark parts; a settlement which allows me to venture out to explore the world everyday, feeling more or less intact.

I avoid being paralysed by guilt and regret. I take opportunities as and when they arise. I do not beat myself up. I balance imperatives, priorities and desires. I make shifty compromises. I stay sane. And sometimes it all leads to the Gritmobile teetering precariously on an eroding cliff edge.

I console myself. If things go really badly, the Gritmobile plunges over the cliff, and the world goes up in a puff of smoke, I can always rely on being English. For most disasters, I have a script: I know how to bumble on, make the best of things, say nevermind couldbeworse putthekettleon.

Now, having unwisely blurted out my failings and inadequacies, here's today's drive-fest along the south coast, burning up your planet.

(And if there was a frequent and reliable shuttle bus, picking up and dropping down we happy tourists strung out along this remarkable coastline, I'd probably take it: driving is quite tiring and I cannot stop for a refreshing beer, half-way through.)

First stop: the RSPB Reserve at Weymouth.
I'm sorry, Weymouth, I never want to come here again, ever.
Your town is horrible. I couldn't wait to get out.

(The Weymouth Tourist Board is of course welcome to put us up in five-star accommodation
and show me a good time, if only to prove me wrong.)

Third stop: English Heritage, Portland Castle.
Brilliant, as all English Heritage is.

See? The EH audio guides are fantastic.


You're wondering what happened to the Second stop aren't you?
Weymouth was so horrible, I had to pull into a layby for a cry.



Fourth stop: Chesil beach.


This place is not on Planet Earth.


You must turn left at Zelta-Minor and avoid the asteroid.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger found Earth rubbish on it though.
They politely endured the boring pointless lecture on Portland Limestone
(which forms an admirable curve at the end of Chesil beach)
then set to, building ships to sail across the Atlantic.

Fifth stop: Lulworth Cove.
Exhibition centre, ice cream shop and geology, all rolled into one.

I think someone will ride a Geography GCSE.
Then I can drive about the countryside looking at landscape while I burn up your planet.
And I can shift some of the blame to the educational enterprises supported by government.

Sixth stop: Durdle Door. Unavoidable limestone arch.
You cannot look at Lulworth Cove, then not go over the hill for this.

Now, let's drive back to the site for a nicecupoftea (while the planet dies a little bit more).