I have all the help I need, thanks

I am entering a week of mostly domestic labours. I must make the house fit for purpose while we are away. That means, write obsessive notes about the heating systems, install a drainpipe in the kitchen, provide the telephone number for the local police station, and cut back the ivy that is heading its way towards the kitchen window at an alarming rate.

None of this will be any help for the poor sods who must occupy this house while we are away. They will merely look at the boiler suspiciously and wait for the tap to explode, but all my hard work makes me feel better.

However, my labours are made a tad more difficult this week because I have all three children at home.

Recently, I have got away lightly. Squirrel has been on her residential horse week at the local stables; Shark has been throwing herself about tree-tops in Wiltshire with PGL; and Tiger, I am shortly to give away to a lady who lives in a lake. (Okay then, Allie the watersports teacher. Stage II windsurfing course.)

But with one child always away, it has meant a relatively quiet time for me. Twins amuse each other, or they are fuming so hard in mutual telepathic hatred that they separate as far as possible apart. In either case, I have a quiet house.

This week, all three of my lovely kids are together. So I must perform drainpipe fixture and ivy surgery and be a referee.

At this point, please don't say, Grit, ask them to help you!

Having competitive triplets helping out is usually no help at all. My preferred strategy is to manoeuvre them as far away from me as possible, so I have at least a fighting chance of finishing the job I started.

If I don't do this, I find the following happens. Despite the fact that we have an engagingly diverse house with many secret holes and corners where people can hide away, all the kids magically seek each other out and must occupy the exact same space as everyone else.

Worse, at some point, the entire ugly crowd of them will cluster around my parent body. Do you find this? You could have acres, but the offspring will find your old worn out torso, then need to occupy the precise space your bum needs by health and safety legislation to navigate the turning circle in the smallest angle of the entire house, i.e. between the fridge and the washing machine, or the cooker and the chopping board.

So all four of us wedge ourselves there. In a shape roughly 12ins x 12ins. Elbowing each other in the face while I am trying to stick a drain pipe under the boiler.

I will intermittently lose my temper and yell Maths! or Spelling! This ensures everyone suddenly scarpers and everything goes quiet. But it is a temporary solution. Within the hour the magnets in their noses start working again, and they find each other, and me, and come and stand exactly where I am standing with a drainpipe, then they will complain that I am standing in their way.

Well, today I make it hard for them.


I tell everyone we are going to do some maths. Then I quickly climb up this shonky ladder which I have wedged up on a bit of wood in a wobbly yard, and I start wielding a rusty saw and begin a stream of unseemly sweaty cursing.

It is not too long before the fear of maths wears off, and a curious child wanders into view.


She asks what I am doing up a ladder swearing into the street while waving a saw menacingly at the neighbours.

Personally, I think it is obvious. This machine is going at full pelt ...


... and there is a lot less of this stuff crawling all over the garage.


Then she asks, is there anything she can do? After ten minutes lengthy instruction while I become irritable because there are only two buttons on the shredder and I promise it will not electrocute anyone, she begins to feed into it ivy strands at a snail's rate of one twig every five minutes.

Then the other two appear. One starts complaining that I am in her way because she wants to play where my ladder stands, and the other starts up a campaign for ivy rights. Within minutes they have the bright idea of taking the sawn branches off me to build unicorn hatching grounds all over the garden table, thus creating a second domestic labour for later. That one will be much harder because I will have to fight the wretched unicorns for the ivy and then try and put it into the shredder in secret. Not possible.

So this will go on. All week. Drainpipes, gutter, ivy, floorboard, you name it. Help. That's all I can say. Help.

Walking the Ridgeway

I want to walk the Ridgeway before I die. From end to end.


Where should I leave the little grits while I walk the week? Maybe I could give them away? How about various adventure holidays?

They would never want to go on the same week.


Perhaps they would walk with me?


I bet, after the first hour, Tiger would be all, How far do we have to go? and How many days?

Maybe I could leave them in Hong Kong, and sneak back here? No-one would notice I'm gone.


Or Dig could look after them! They could feast on raw potatoes. Again.


I must walk here because the chalk landscape - from White Horse Hill, round Dragon Hill, to Wayland's Smithy, is so beautiful I fall in love with it.


So I'll walk the whole. Until then, photos from the tiny slice we see today.





Oh I'd like this comfortable feeling - all pastoral historic romantic where my feet are lost in earth and my heart gone to cloud - yes, I'd like it very much, because a half hour of spiritual repose with a pretty landscape is as close to comfort as an old hippie's going to get.

But it's not going to happen, is it? It can't ever happen. Because the hard miserable grit of reality always intrudes on tranquility to make a grand depressive moment.


Which means I spent some of my time on the Ridgeway in a fight with a dog owner.


First, let me say, most of you dog owners are sensitive to these signs, and to me and mine. For which I thank you! You keep your dogs on leads or see the impact you have and keep Fido under clear control! I can see that! Country code, social responsibility, awareness of others, etc. etc. Truly. From my heart. Thank you. You have no idea what help you are. Because with my dog-phobic tribe I can reason. I can say, Look at the owner, not the dog. Do they look in control of their pet? Do they look as if they care?

But there is always one dog owner who couldn't give a toss. They stride past the 10,000 signs. Maybe they're the same person who has no voice control over their animal either, and probably thinks the signs don't relate to them, but no-one can possibly mind, because Fido wouldn't harm a fly.

Well, even there I'll give the benefit, because ignoring the rules has to be okay sometimes. And I sort of expect it from the English, with their strange subservience to rules at odds with their bolshy independent streaks.

I'd go so far as to argue how this rule-breaking behaviour is sometimes necessary. What about the Ramblers? And without the hunt saboteurs the hunting debate wouldn't have moved much. So yes, of course there is a place for poking at the status quo.

But please do it consciously - because you know what you do, want to have an impact, change the way we accept the world, push the culture on.

So what does the rule-breaking dog owner achieve today?

I have Squirrel, barely able to breathe as she flips into panic at Monster Dog hurtling straight for her; she's clinging onto my arm and sinking us both into an iron age ditch like death is nigh. And here we are on one of the most beautiful sites in all England.

I could fucking weep.

As I yell back about the dog control, yes, in a stock grazing area, after I just reassured my children, it will be okay, there are signs, and now my daughter is knee buckled in sheep shit and fear, what then for the willfully ignorant owner who watches this display of human fear and shouts back, What's the problem? He's not bothering the sheep!

THE SHEEP?

Reader, words were exchanged.

Just let us pause and be grateful that the family I married into have influenced me. My sister-in-law was raised by Quakers.

So, apart from that moment, the Ridgeway is beautiful. One day I shall walk it. Where should I leave the children?

Gentle days

It is a gentle August here, is it not? Mostly house-related and moth-obsessed.

I think this is normal for home educating types. We tend to avoid the peak season crowds of visitor attractions, the endless queues, huge motorway swells of holiday times. We wait until the schools go back. If you leave school behind come September, that's one of the first delights you'll know: freedom of space to move.

For me, it's an August of less dashing about England, much less than I anticipated, even in these final days, when I feel time run out. The children have asked to stay close to home for gardens, and toys, and books. Everyone's aware that soon enough, it all changes.

But since I am providing not much by way of amusement/education for the little grits over this long summer - except to ominously rattle an IGCSE exam syllabus in Geography in their direction - I take Tiger and Squirrel to the woods. Here they can fool about in trees and do stuff with ropes.



It leaves me free to wander off and photograph the ground.



As you can see, I take simple pleasures and am easy to keep content.




Shark is away all this week with PGL. Strange, I haven't missed her at all. With twins, the house falls quiet and I can crawl about the carpets with more ease when fewer people stand on them. Anyway, PGL are better parents than me, because they feed her pudding and are enthusiastic about zip wires.

I feel a little guilty about that last bit, so I tell Tiger and Squirrel that their rope swings are the best. And back at home, serve plum and cinnamon crumble.

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.

Photoblog: Blackberrying

One of 52 reasons the return flight to Hong Kong was set at the end of August. We must go blackberrying and make hedgerow jam. (Tiger's list of demands, numbers 26, 27.)

England needs another opinion about this

Ah, England proves it can smash up its own furniture. Not like we've ever done that before. Still, let's hope the Summer Riots 2011 move the nation on to better.

When my kids smash up stuff I take it as a sign that something's not being said, but articulated instead via gross motor activity.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger don't always know what it is, or even what triggered the final attack. When I get them in lock down and rip out an explanation, I listen to an incoherent stream of grudges, snarled resentments, self-pitying garbage, puny evasions, hollow justifications and frankly laughable moments that would suggest to any rational listener that my daughters are half-wits.

In 2004 Shark moved my toothbrush. This is why today I called her an annoying baby, slammed the door in her face, opened it again to launch a book at her head, then bash her around the face with my otter.

My fantastic parent response (comes after drink / put my head in my hands and groan) is perversely to spend more time with the alien bat monsters, listening to yet more litany of complaint.

I am sure to weasel out the following:

anxieties (e.g. the house burning down, dogs, burglars stealing the unicorns);

grudges and injustices (e.g. invasion of intellectual property rights, attack on territory, theft of objects);

feelings of not being listened to (if only);

sundry terrors of vulnerability, mortification at recent public humiliation, fears of exposure or discovery for some hidden evil (Squirrel, I know already where you stash the wretched pebble collection);

fear of powerlessness, loss of control, sorrow, solitude, and general hurt about being excluded and alone while simultaneously made to feel stupid by your own family.

Etc. Etc.

My first reaction is to remind the mini humanoids that these feelings are normal. Ten minutes in the company of our nearest and dearest can make even the most steely-hearted of us feel all of them.

But then I say what we must do is talk these feelings fully and frankly; maybe to think how to respond better the next time we are in conflict situations, better than reach for the otter.

All of that I include under the title of education. Okay, it rarely seems to work. However, I now have Miriam Stoppard (aka Tiger) who provides me with free therapy sessions.

But wait, because this is my point on a national scale! (You come here for pronouncements upon the state of society, right?)

The kids who rioted are, in part, the product of the education they have received. And what service is on offer?

Parents are urged to remove their kids from the family home asap, then order their kids in uniform, herd them down the road 30+ in a classroom, have a teacher present them with a list of things to learn that didn't come from their own interests, while the institution systematically removes their autonomy, takes away their initiative, restricts their ability to control and order their own learning, denies them self-determination, tells them they have short attention spans, then timetables it and goes at them with messages about 'raising standards'. No wonder some of them bunk off. Who wouldn't?

Meanwhile, parents are threatened with prison if they fail to support this service, punished if they take days out, and encouraged to examine their children at all times in work or play through the lens of success and failure.

That sorts the 5-7 age group.

What a miserable, unjoyful experience is on offer. A childhood where everyone is pushed about, managed, restricted, told what to do and how to do it, then tested within an inch of their lives to make sure they did it in the prescribed manner.

In many ways, I'm not surprised that the rioting behaviour of the tweenagers to young adults suddenly allowed them to feel their own power at the expense of others.

Children, especially little ones, should live in a culture where they and their parents can make choices without judgements - not the simplistic division of school or home - but in a landscape which is rich in educational scope.

We should offer kids and parents a range of environments and structures suitable for different ages, talents, and interests. Kids who are not school-room ready should not be browbeaten into that place. Kids who need space to paint, play with mud, climb trees, should be supported to do that too. As they grow, they simply should have the time to explore preferences through play, encouraged to be creative, supported to follow through their ideas, and given the space and respect to argue their points of view. All adults should listen to what the mini alien bat monsters have to say because one day they are going to be big alien bat monsters who pack a mean punch.

There, sorted. You see, in Grit's lovely world, there is a happy space for everyone (and free ice cream with vegan alternatives as required), where we all make up by talking and listening and acting on what we hear.

Now, excuse me from my national concerns. I must go break up a fight with pointed sticks and otters to force everyone down the road for their annual dental check where the dentist is sure to tell them off.

Any Old Iron

I am DANCING. Look at MY YARD. Can you see the piano? CAN YOU?


HAHAHAHA!

Two blokes with a van come down our back lane ringing a bell, singing Any Old Iron.

I sang along with them while I loaded up two beds, one tumble dryer, a drawing board and A PIANO.

I shall trade the kids in for Percy Bysshe Shelley

Last week I threw my passions into the garden to craft a space which now looks like this.


The children heard all the shovel scraping and grunting. They came out to observe the soil digging, ground flattening, wall building, fatsia bashing and table manoeuvring.

They watched my new space emerge with some suspicion. But through the day I maintained this had become my soul's yearning and my mind's vision. Live creatively! I urged. Live imaginatively! Live generously! Live boldly! Be brave, always, to put into life that which you dream!

But children have an uncomfortable way about them, do they not? They frequently miss the point and always observe the thing you would least like them to note. Oft with these perceptions they belittle the world and snatch away that to which the gentler soul aspires.

So to my visionary construction, the children now casually refer. The Gin Drinking Area.

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.

Illyria theatre & 12 ingredient cake

If Illyria plays in a garden near you, go see them. This troupe of travelling outdoor actors are so fantastically high-octane energetic, it will leave you wondering what medication are they on, and where can you get some of their stuff?

It could be the unmedicated high that comes from doing a complex job brilliantly; and they do perform this acting job, in and out of costume and character, with such pace, engagement, and simple whoosh, that you can't help but be knocked out by it. Even if Twelfth Night is very silly and pointless. They make this inconsequential pottage of a play fantastic, spirited fun.

I think, modestly, the same qualities - huge energy and enthusiasm bestowed upon nothing of significance - are delivered too, by Grit, in her fantastic Grit's! Twelfth Night Cake!

I should explain. It is becoming a sort of tradition round here. I mark each Shakespeare play with a cake.

Remember people, cake is the staple of the home educating family. It is all lessons all at once, from astronomy to zincography. Education is made easy with cake. You can explain anything with cake if you have a mind. Maths, French, Philosophy, Obscure histories of the print process, Shakespeare.

Romeo and Juliet themes are easy. Heart-shaped seductions, poured over with the poison of bittersweet-lemonsugar. (Or rum, if it's my slice.) Hamlet cake? Coffin shaped, iced black and sprinkled with flowers; slice it open to ooze out the strawberry jam. The Tempest cake will be similarly straightforward. When we see that play, I will conjure up a mash of confection, mix it all up, and blast it with stormy cocoa powder before casting a spell over the lot and sticking in some sparklers.

The Twelfth Night cake is a touch more difficult. It is a play about turning the rules upside down, subverting order and allowing the opposite to be true.

Thus for Grit's! Twelfth Night Cake! I have taken ideas of good judgement in all matters cake-related and turned them upside down.

Yes! This is it, Grit's! Twelfth Night Cake! in the actual process of bad judgement composition. Looking much, indeed, as if the dog had vomited amongst the Teflon.


There are twelve ingredients in Grit's! Twelfth Night Cake! I make the children guess what they are while they munch away and watch the play.








Just like the play, in Grit's! Twelfth Night Cake! there are some great bits and some frankly dodgy bits and a few moments of WTF.* But Grit, like Illyria, delivers the entire with energetic! spirited! enthusiastic! fun.**

*sugar, fat, eggs, flour, chocolate chips, sesame seeds, peanuts, orange peel, nectarine, raisin, date, coconut.

**Tiger disagrees. She says cake stew is not fun. Quit messing. Next time, just leave in the chocolate.

More horse related woe

Here it is. The daughter thief. Snatching fresh victims! Whinnying with mockery to trample on my pain. What torture this is to me. The daughter thief has won! It eats all my money, steals all my daughters, disdains my cares and leaves hoof prints on my soul.

You, you dreaded horse - how I resent your charms and secret powers - you have now stolen away not one of my daughters but two of my cherished daughters! Can the pain end here!

Tiger, her heart was stolen so long ago. I, foolish parent, in a moment of weakness, hoisted the four-year old girl children over the saddle edge 'to get a better view'.

Oh stupid, unwise folly filled parent! I had no better view of the future! I did not forsee that horse will seize this moment, capture the youthful spirit and never return her to my mortal concerns! From then on, it has been, on Tiger's lips, all horsehorsehorse!

Tiger, I have wrestled with my heart. I have had no choice but to watch you slip to worldofhorse. There is no guard I can raise against it.

But Squirrel! Noooooo! One week living with the stables, while mama vainly seeks to justify this on the basis of some educational mishmashery nonsense, now she is taken too!




It is all woe to me now. WOEOWOWOWOEOEOEOW.

These, to my eyes, now become instruments of torture...


And this, the power I have left to resist.


Oh fishies, be friends to me! I have but one daughter left! Do not let my fin-turned daughter Shark be lured from your watery grip!

Vinyl floor Wednesday

Do you know how difficult it is to buy a piece of crappy vinyl; 4x2, totally black and costing less than twenty quid?

It is so difficult that I spend all day trying to do it. CarpetRite have an enormous laugh at my expense, as does CarpetsRite4You, RiteCarpetRiteout, RiteupyourCarpet, and RiteCarpetBastards.

One of that lot tells me offcuts are thrown away. But I only want an offcut. I don't want it fitted, for goodness sake! That would be a step too far. Or at least I think it is.

And that's my other problem. Is it me, or does something happen to your brain too when you pass between the automatic doors of the complete retail flooring solution?

After ten seconds I suffer from Total Vague Syndrome. I can barely recall why I came in. I could be persuaded of anything. That I want my vinyl pink, fitted, and vajazzled. The store assistant nods. He could be from the Village of the Damned.

Then I begin to stare alongside him, without purpose to muse aloud if carpet will be the answer to a problem I can't recall and could carpet in a kitchen work? If I vacuum it every day and give my life and soul to the carpet, but remember the kitchen carpet in Northumberland?

You see? My thoughts wander in no good direction since it is six years since we sold the house in Northumberland. Or is it five.

To spare you more ordeal and because now you would rather be watching Deal or No Deal, I shall be brief and tell you that I did, after five hours staring, acquire an offcut of vinyl from RiteCarpetPalaver.

But by then I was totally brain dead and forgot the reason why I was living as well as the measurements so handed over twenty quid for 3x1 in black and silver.

I apologise to any reader coming to grit's day hoping to be shown a good time.
But look at my vinyl.

Stinky carpet Tuesday

Do not mess with me. I am one strong kick-ass woman. I will have you by the medallion and upend you in your rose border before you have time to readjust your tufts.

And those were the final words the carpet heard before I sawed it into twenty-four pieces and dumped it in the tip.

Playdate

From which I draw yet another astonishing, earth shattering deduction.


When I talk I don't need to write.