A normal Saturday

Well the day off was nice for me, but it was a usual Friday night round here. When we got back last night the police riot van is out again and I'm earwigging in the local Co-op waiting with my two pints of milk about the bloke reported with a knife. Mick says he wasn't peeling his apple with it.

Then at 6am this morning some git tried to break into the house, so Mr Pod says, who comes in as Burglar Bill is trying the front door we all share to our flats here.

I'm not sure by Mr Pod's account whether Burglar Bill had already smashed up the lobby by then, but it was certainly smashed up when I got down at 8 for the newspaper. The large mirror's all over the floor in sharp jagged pieces and my lily vase is smashed. Burglar Bill's stood on the children's basket where they keep their cloth bags for the Co-op and he's broken that too. The bottles for the recycling are rolling about the floor, and the cushions from the seat are soaked in something which might be a wine spillage from a near-empty. Or it might not be. The door handle's been pulled off and rubbish is scattered over the front garden. Mr Pod says Burglar Bill was rat-arsed, and probably won't remember anything. So I won't expect a tenner through the letter box then, by way of apology and the price of a new vase.

This is one of the penalties for living in Smalltown. We get a beautiful big house, a secret garden, the full Victorian grand scale of high ceilings, delicate fireplaces and wide wooden floorboards, and for it we pay with Burglar Bill, the riot van, and a monthly visit to the police station.

Now Grit's depressed, and about to hit the police website again to report another small incident of vandalism in just another day in Smalltown.

Grit's day off

It's another day off for Grit today. We're with Jol and Am, locked in the downstairs toilet probably, until it's time to prise Shark, Tiger and Squirrel away from Am. Even before we arrive I have to promise that we'll go again.

In the evening we're onto a disco party in the Methodist Church hall where the ladies can get tipsy on Ribena and make an exhibition of themselves on the dance floor before falling over and bursting into tears.

Fortunately I am equipped for that part of the day and have a handbag-sized bottle of wine in the car. I will smuggle it in for the disco bit and drink it from the cup on my thermos flask so that everyone thinks I am having green tea. Knowing how dreadfully wrong things sometimes go for me, I bet I get spotted and grassed up and the police will arrive along with the Methodists whose hall it is, then it won't be a day off at all, it will be a night in the police cells and the children in care.

Of course the day could go swimmingly well, and nothing goes wrong at all. In which case, it will be a lovely day. And thank you for having us, Jol and Am!

The au pair

We have a good idea. Now that we've moved all the bedrooms round in a complicated manner so that we are living across two separate flats on two different floors of our old Victorian house, we have a large room spare. For about a month it's been a playroom for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Their aeroplanes and castle are there, along with their dressing up clothes, and an old mattress for trampolining. But it would make a splendid room for an au pair during August. I can imagine it: there'd be space for a bed and study table and the en suite bathroom would help create a private space away from us all when we all become too much and au pair becomes home sick.

This isn't exactly a new idea. For the last few months Dig's been cruising about au pair websites and has even subscribed to a few. So now we have up our family profile and au pairs who may be interested send us links to their CVs. The theory is, we eye them up, make a judgement, interview and employ.

It sounds simple, huh?

The first judgement we made some time ago was that a good proportion of potential au pairs may be spammers in disguise, throwing out links to their CVs regardless of a family's profile. For example, in our profile we've written that an au pair would have to cope around triplets; please bring French, Spanish or Italian into the house; we'd prefer vegetarian, non-religious, and we don't want smokers. Because of visa requirements and our need to interview before appointment, we state we can take someone only from within Europe, and preferably within reach of an Easy jet flight. If it all goes horribly wrong they can be back home to mum within the day.

In the first batch of responses we get a half dozen links from au pairs in Mexico, three from the Philippines, a deluge from Eastern Europe, a scattering from Thailand and a ladyboy from Korea with a phobia about babies. When we get the ladyboy link I reckon someone's having a laugh. When I click through, I start to revise my opinion on that.

The second judgement we make is that a large proportion of potential au pairs do not see themselves as others do. We click through to Marlene in France who claims she's a non-smoker. There's her photograph, with a cigarette dangling from her fingertips. We click through to Angelina in Italy who claims she's a vegetarian in Section A and by Section B lists in her recent interests a meat cookery course.

Our third judgement, sadly, is that many of those who say they're interested in working with our family are simply unemployable by us. There's Beth, presently in the UK, who says she likes the sound of triplets and is an Evangelical Christian who believes it is her mission to bring all to Christ. I'm sorry? Are we likely to employ you, Beth?

Of course if we're going for unsuitable candidates we might choose Sylvia who says she's a practising nudist but for us not to worry because it doesn't get in the way of her doing the vacuuming. Or Elsie, who believes in discipline. Then there's 30-year Evie from Latvia who provides a photograph of herself wearing a Santa hat and writes 'I am in the police'. Alexia seems promising but says she'll only come over if we let her boyfriend stay. Or Clara, who wants a full salary with two zeroes at the end of each week, plus use of the family car at weekends and four days off a week to go to the gym. We could choose Stephan, of course, who says he wants to work in a family where there are no children. Or perhaps Augusta would get on well here. She says she's a perfectionist and a mess in the house gives her panic attacks.

But we've perservered. And today we're in negotiations with Sasha, who might come to see us for a day when her university exams are over. Sasha is a German native speaker who works 'in a centre where blind people help educate a dog'. So we need help with German, and she needs help with English. She may come over in April. If she does, I'll let you know. And you never know. She could be normal.

Never put soil down the toilet

Everyone's got their windows open today, enjoying the sunshine and fresh Spring wind. I've chatted to Anny, the neighbour, and Shark, Tiger and Squirrel have been playing in the garden under the trees. In the few five and ten minutes they have popped into the house to gulp down a fruit smoothie, complain about a sister, fetch a plastic bowl or have a wee, we have learned the words soil, boil, coil, foil and oil.

Shark says that the word oil is also in the word toilet. 'You are absolutely right!' I applaud. Clearly, my daughter is a genius, and may publish her first novel by age ten.

Later, when I haven't seen Tiger, Shark or Squirrel for some time, I do my rounds, just to check that Tiger isn't lying flat out dead under the blackberry brambles while Shark says 'We told her to come and get you mummy', or that Squirrel's not locked herself in the little play house at the bottom on the garden and is screaming her head off in there because she's just turned round and found the cat that someone lost last October. But nothing's wrong. Everyone's fine, making Roman cities in the mud, and populating the Circus Maximum with toy unicorns. I wave to Anny, and think what a lovely day it is; just how home education should be.

Then I come back up to the house and go into the bathroom. Now, how do I describe the scene that meets my eyes? There is no delicate way. Inside the toilet bowl there is no ceramic visible. The sides are etched in black, with what looks like unmoving rivers of black slime making no progress into the bowl. The long black chains of slime cannot make any progress because inside the bowl there is what looks like lumps of grey and brown, with tiny black seeds mounted atop. Thinking this has come out of someone's bottom, my first response is to bellow 'Oh my God!' at the top of my voice. It's as the words, 'Get a doctor!' are forming in my synapses that it dawns on me that this is not any ordinary bottom-made soil, but garden soil, complete with mud, rotted leaves and ivy seeds.

There's only one response now called for. Burst through the door into the garden in a fury, tea-towel waving, index finger out, shouting to a startled Tiger, Shark and Squirrel, 'Do not put soil in the toilet! And under no circumstances are you to experiment with toilet, soil, oil or foil!'

This is why, once a year at Christmas, we get ourselves on our best behaviour, get out the bottle of port, and invite the neighbours round. I want them to see we can be normal.

Birthday party

We've been to Hele's birthday party. This was not fun. Hele is aged fourteen and is an anorexic. She weighs 50 per cent under her body weight and had just come out of the hospital having had her organs drip fed with nutrients because she can't chew.

The first thing I noticed about Hele was not her body weight, because she was all wrapped up in layers of clothing, probably freezing to death despite the warm spring day. It was her gaze. There wasn't any of it in any focused way. She looked spaced out as if she'd been taking drugs, and so she looked off into nowhere, expressing nothing, having no feeling and no focus. Then because of her strange sliding eyes I noticed her face. The jaw bone was visible and sharp, as was her nose and the bones that emerged around her eye sockets and temples. Her thin wispy fair hair fell in straight lines about her. It looked as though some of it had fallen away. She sat, slumped in a chair and, like someone watching something horrible, I couldn't take my eyes away from her. I studied the vertebra in her neck bones and my eyes traced down to the bones making up her fingers. My eyes sought a curve in the line of her jeans. It looked as though there was nothing but a cut away shape and a shadow inside.

Perhaps I should have been respectful and not stared; I have no business in Hele's life and she may have resented the intrusion, had she noticed me gazing at her across the room. But as I watched her skeletal movements, the only emotion I felt for her was anger. I was angry that in her relentlessly selfish way she had brought this terrible happening to herself and to her family.

I watched myself, perhaps, in ten, perhaps six year's time, watching Shark, or Tiger, or Squirrel from across the dining table. I know what their excuses would be. 'I've eaten already, you didn't see.' 'I had a banana earlier and I'm not hungry now.' 'I don't need any food, I don't feel like it now, I'll eat later.' 'I don't fancy this, I'll make some soup for myself at tea.' 'I'm going out now, I'll eat while I'm out.' It would all be lies, of course, and I would know it and they would believe them. They really would eat soup at tea: hot water and a stock cube. They really would eat later: a bite of banana, spat out after seconds with the skin left on the worktop for evidence and the rest in the bin.

I was angry at Hele and angry at myself and gripped with fear for Shark and Tiger and Squirrel. So when the birthday cake came round and Hele melted away to the toilet, afraid to see the plates shared out and people eating, I made sure that Shark, Tiger and Squirrel ate every morsel, and licked the crumbs from the plate too.

Not going

Well, we're not going to the art workshop then. Although I've pleaded with the organiser, I've clearly cut no ice. There are no spaces, probably. That's probably just an excuse. The real reason is that, like dragons, there be triplets here. Triplets take up too much room and too many places. Triplets are odd. They are an eyesore. We are all strange. Nobody wants us. We are unloved. I'm going downhill fast and the only destiny I can see is to drink heavily and die in loneliness.

And I'm not going to forget how it started. When the children were born, or rather wrenched from Grit's old body which was then pushed on a trolley into the Recovery Room where it promptly succumbed to shock and didn't recover for six weeks, one of the nurses cheerily sang out 'That's it now! You won't be going anywhere with these three!'

At that point I made a resolution. I would go anywhere with these three. I got so many bees in my bonnet about it that even the bees had bonnets with bees. I was a campaigner for triplet rights. 'No child shall be denied access to anywhere' I would start off, then with a dramatic pause and a deep inbreath, 'Because she has a sister!'

The first battle was the library. Now who's in charge there? The children's section is on the first floor and the lift to all those lovely children's books is a service lift, secreted away in a dark corner. It doesn't like buggies. Buggies are too big. There is a big commanding notice to leave the buggies downstairs. This is because of the buggy wars that start when irritated mothers and screaming toddlers are elbowing each other to have a go at the lift which will cram in your big buggy but only maybe if you strap Joshua in and tilt everything to the left by 40 degrees. I think the staff probably mopped their brows with relief when it was discovered by accident that the service lift could accommodate one standard wheelchair, but no fingers on the wheels. A shopping bag dangling from the back or the side and you were out and up the stairs, matey. But a triplet buggy? No way.

So I determined as part of my campaign that we had a right to baby storytime at the library and we were bloody well going. First stop, the lift door, and a minor public demonstration. Second stop, the desk and a loud demand for help which was met, as expected, with the old lemon sucker drawing in her lips before telling me tartly that she couldn't possibly leave her rubber date-stamp and I'd have to find someone else. On that occasion I did find someone prepared to carry Shark, a bit uncomfortably at arm's length, but it got us to the first floor. Then I found I had to make a big fuss about floor cushions. Apparently the library staff keep them locked in a cupboard because the children play with the zips and that's probably a heath and safety hazard so Mrs-Make-A-Stink just leave your ruddy babies rolling about on the concrete floor. Preferably near the stairs.

But campaign on cushions aside, I felt the point about the lift was made. Nearly. After the first week, I carried two babies in car seats and one in a sling and used the stairs, loudly, on principle. On the way up I shouted to the desk staff below about how I couldn't fit in the lift. I got in everyone's way on the stairs thanks to the wide berth with a car seat in each hand, so that was a bonus.

For the next couple of years the feeling that we were a nuisance didn't really stop. The staff at the local Tesco staring at me pushing both a trolley and triplet buggy when they could have so easily helped; the bloke in the car park who pipped his horn angrily because it was taking me an age to vacate the parking space; the scowling woman who pushed us out the way, tutting loudly, on our first outing; the constant battle with doors and steps; the National Trust custodian sending us out; the shopkeeper who shouted 'Can't you leave it outside?'; the museum staff who said 'You're not bringing that in here'.

But those days are mostly behind us. Either we're no longer a nuisance, or we still are, and I don't care. Occasionally I'm reminded of our messy, sprawling status as we occupy too much space, too many places, with not enough toilets and lifts that are too small. And so it is with the art workshop. Three places in one go. That's an awful lot of places to give away to a messy family who would probably make a nuisance of themselves and look an eyesore anyway, what with the home-cut hair and the state of the mother.

There's another art workshop in a month's time. I might email the organiser and ask for three spaces; I'll start off, 'No child shall be denied access to anywhere because she has a sister!'

I might get an email back. And if she tells me to shove off I'll go into full campaign mode and get the buggy out.

Koalas do not ride on cars

I have a confession to make. When we were driving through Koala Land in Australia (we are still grateful, Aunty Dee, for posting the driving licences), we saw a lot of koalas up in the trees. I joked to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger that koalas were so lazy they sometimes dropped out of the trees onto passing cars below and, in this way, hitched a free ride. When the car passed under a low-lying eucalyptus branch, the lazy koala grabbed the branch and lifted themselves off the car. So the koala we're seeing down the road is probably the same koala we saw up the road, and this is why they're called drop bears.

Dig pulled into a layby and I got out the passenger side and, before opening the children's door, very quickly drew some smudged circles in the dusty car rooftop with my finger. As the children climbed out I shouted 'Look! Five lazy Koalas have hitched a ride on the car!' Now at this point I expected Squirrel to laugh, Shark to give me a kick, and for Tiger to shout 'Mummy rubbish!' which is what they do when they suspect me of spinning a yarn. But they didn't. They believed me. And they believed me so completely and with such delight that I couldn't then say 'Actually I'm lying my back teeth out.'

So we have come home with this belief, that five koalas hitched a ride on the car. And whenever, like today, that some poor unfortunate engages them in conversation about what did they see when they were in Australia, out comes the story that five koalas hitched a ride on our car. And I can't say over their little excited voices, 'That's rubbish! Of course I made it up!' So I say nothing. The listener looks confused, looks at them, looks at me inanely grinning, and wonders if we're all mad.

Enough is enough. I'm confessing. I made it up. Shark, Tiger and Squirrel, one day when you read this, you'll discover your mother is a fraud, a fake, a liar and a fantasist.

Anyway, I meant to say three koalas. Five could never fit on a car roof.

Work

Back at work today. First on my desk ready for typesetting is a book edited by Dr Pee.

Dr Pee is a slimy git and I have thought a lot about the best way to take revenge. I have cruised around, late at night, on revenge sites, trying to create a perfect strategy. I considered a dead fish through the post, but this would be hard on the fish. I'd have to interact with it as well, so Dig would ask, 'Why do you smell of haddock?' and then I'd have to fess up that I was posting it to Dr Pee. Dig would go bonkers and that would be that. And then what do I do with the haddock? Put in the bin? Trisha, the neighbour's cat, would think it'd died and gone to heaven come bin day. More thinking needed. And a tin of sardines didn't seem to have quite the same impact.

Then I thought Dr Pee might be a bit of a puritan, and probably properly married, so I thought about a packet of fishnet tights with a lewd message stapled to the top, delivered to his home address. But that would be revenge on his wife, and I don't want to take revenge on her. She already has to live with the slimy git and I reckon that's torture enough for anyone.

Of course any revenge strategy has to be remote. Everything's done by email or post or phone, so I never see Dr Pee. Only once. Within five minutes he could see I wasn't necessary to his peer review process and he ignored me. This is a trait I've noticed in academics. They mostly fall into two categories. Not all, of course. I believe there are some genuine, inspiring thinkers and doers who work hard at exploring their discipline and at communicating with colleagues and students. They probably never get past lecturer grade. Because to rise up the academic hierarchy, I think you have to be one of two sorts. Dr Pee is the former.

Dr Pee is an empire-builder. These people gather round them a set of sycophantic cronies and build up a complex interwoven area of study which, if they're lucky, develops into a sort of sub-discipline in its own right.

For example, Top dog 1 creates a niche area of research, and invents a few new terms along the way. Crony Dog starts to build his career about this new area, probably doing supportive research or a few menial back-office jobs to ingratiate themselves, and in this way they'll lead up to a co-publication. Crony Dog 2 sees a few advantages in this, as do Crony Dogs 3 and 4. Suddenly there's a movement, or a group, and they start to weild a bit of pressure on publishers, who, sniffing something new in the academic world, start to give in to a few demands. Top Dog is gaining a wider reputation, and more and more Crony Dogs are building their careers out of it all. Everyone jealously guards their patch. Stray onto it and it's the 'Is he one of us?' test. If you're prepared to do service, grovel appropriately, and look after Top Dog, you're in.

The second type of academic sometimes grows out of this group, or you can find them independently operating. They are vicious. They augment their own arguments by undermining the arguments of their opponents, sometimes using personal attack, snide insult and outright abuse to get there. For them, life's a battle, and they probably consider themselves to be gladiators and think the rest of us should be polishing their armour or fetching more lions. If challenged, they'll puff out and start off with huffy stuff like 'In all my 25 years of academic publishing, I have never been asked to...' what they claim they have never been asked to do is probably check their own artwork or obey the requirements for publication.

So I'm sitting here, grumbling to myself about academics and wondering how to exact revenge on Dr Pee, and not on Dr Pee's wife. Poor cow. Any revenge strategies gratefully received.

A new decision

Right. Fourteen helpings of strawberry ice cream later. I have reached a new decision. I'm going back to the gym.

This has been prompted by two events. The first is the awareness over the last 24 hours that I have eaten rather a lot of ice cream. And it has to go somewhere. I already have an enormous backside that follows me about. I get through the door first, and two minutes later it's following. I'm going to get the stairmaster onto it next week. That'll fix it. Then there's the wobbly legs. The bike's heading their way. And one of those big plastic balls they keep at the gym. That'll help with the waist which disappeared in 2000 and which was replaced by a few spare tyres sitting squashed together. It's not pretty. But it is all going to change.

The gym is a wonderful place and I love it. Getting there is difficult, because I have trouble leaving the children. I know the moment that I leave the house then Shark, Tiger and Squirrel will be running wild, neglected, unfed, turn feral, fall out, fight, drink poison, need a hospital, stab each other by accident or fall out of a window. All of these disasters would be prevented if only I had been close by. But if the only available adult apart from me is in China, or slumped in front of the computer with only a click finger on a mouse to tell me that they are still living, then I feel I cannot leave the house to go to the gym. So I don't go.

But when I can go, it is bliss. People who do not go to a gym think it is all about being body conscious, pumping up muscles, taking steriods and showing off your shorts. This is not true.

For a start, if I feel like having no exercise whatever then I lie on the exercise mats and watch the Jeremy Kyle show on trash TV. I can do some pretend cycling while I listen to 1980s music, then I can loaf around in the sauna or by the swimming pool. I get to wear an old tee shirt and battered leggings which are the height of slob fashion. The gym provides me with towels, shampoos, creams and scents and nobody takes the slightest bit of notice of me.

This is the best bit of all. Nobody bothers me. Nobody comes to check up on me or asks me what I'm up to. Nobody is shouting 'Mummy Mummy Mummy' or telling me that she's been hit by her sister with the puffin. In fact, I don't feel obliged to do anything, or speak to anyone. The only thing I reckon is not acceptable is to sit on the exercise bike set at level one in front of the Jeremy Kyle show eating a packet of crisps. But I bet if I tried it, no-one would say anything.

And on the days when a bit of gentle exercise is called for, like after fourteen helpings of strawberry ice cream, then there's the pretend bikes, the pretend rowing thing, the machine which has funny paddles for feet and feels like you might be skiing or underwater walking, the stairs which go up and up and up, the machines which have touch-screen TVs and radio access, and the big plastic balls that you can roll about on.

Well, why next week? Why not tomorrow? Well, my return to the gym will be helped by the second big event. Next week Nanjo is coming to stay. And when Nanjo comes to stay, everything becomes possible. Getting out to the gym will be stress free because Nanjo will be looking after Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Dig will be slumped in front of the computer as usual, and Nanjo will be ensuring that no-one is starved, turning feral, stabbed, shot or falling out of a window. And if this wasn't enough, she'll be doing educational activities and the children will be learning things. Bliss. So next week I'll be pretending to cycle, watching Jeremy Kyle, I won't be worried, and the backside might even shrink a bit.

Grit is on holiday

I'm taking a day off.

Actually I'm feeling a bit sick right now.

I have eaten rather a lot of ice cream, and it is time to lie down.

Ice cream

I have been into town with Tiger and she forced me to buy an ice-cream maker. She dragged me to John Lewis and marched me up the escalater. I did not even get the luxury of standing there, sagging over the handrail while I get carried upwards and can rest my ancient feet. No. I get told to get up the stairs jolly quickly or there'll be trouble.

And if that wasn't bad enough she whizzed off to the cookware department on the second floor and found the ice cream makers and refused to move. In fact she stood there and shouted loudly to the coffee demonstrating woman that she needed some help with the ice cream makers and be flipping quick about it because she has another appointment in half an hour and this time she's not going home without one.

After about five minutes of Tiger shouting and the coffee demonstrating woman looking a bit uneasy, a nice young man arrived and Grit, sorry, Tiger, demanded that he told her all about them, and what you do, and how you can make delicious chocolate ice cream, and you can use soya products too, you don't have to use any of that cow-killing stuff if you don't want. Then Tiger started drooling a bit and grabbed one in an unseemly haste, dribbling, 'It's mine and I'm going to have it. Get your hands off it.'

Within ten minutes she'd forced me to pay for it and then marched me back down the escalators to get it home. I did not even get a chance to hover about by the faux fur throws and gloat about the fact that I got a John Lewis one on ebay for a tenner, and absolutely gorgeous it is too, if only Shark would stop rolling about in it pretending to be eaten by a grizzly bear.

Now we're at home, and I'm going to give Tiger a big telling off about behaving so rudely in John Lewis, and especially about pushing in front of the old lady at the queue to pay so she could shave five minutes off the time she could get back home and unwrap her new lovely present to herself.

But first, I'm going to make ice cream.

Teachers

I'm meeting a lot of teachers at the moment, one way or another. And it's making me feel very grumpy.

I'll say two things up front. One is that I have taught, and one day will post up the stories I have about the children I met. The children were delightful, horrific, profound, naive, all on the same day and usually at the same time. The second is that I'll never return to teaching in schools. Of the teachers I meet I cannot understand why they teach in schools at all. Are they mad? loyal? desperate? caring?

If I met some of these teachers as ordinary people, I would probably think they're interesting and inspiring human beings. But the moment I know the people I'm meeting are teachers, something goes wrong in my circuitry. My hackles go up, along with my top lip, while my voice goes down and gets slower, and I growl.

The first teacher I met today was Mrs PO. She's a special needs teacher. I guessed it instantly, before anything was said. She'd grown into those rounded shoulders, the sort of shoulders that say, 'I'm not threatening; look at me. I just want you to sit near me. See me as your friend.' She said nothing (another special needs trait), evaded most eye-contact (probably in case it was going to be interpreted as confrontational) and smiled. A lot. She immediately reminded me of the special needs teacher that Jay had. Jay, aka The Dinosaur, was a kid at school who got that name for her resemblance in face and actions to, well, a dinosaur. My lasting memory of Jay is when she shouted 'I'm a dinosaur!' and threw her chair at the wall in the middle of my lesson on black civil rights. Off she went to the special needs department. Miss Pee, with the rounded shoulders and the battery-powered smile, always managed to calm her down.

Next I meet the stern Mrs Teech. Mrs 'I'm taking no nonsense from you, young lady.' She never smiled at all, but said a lot and looked intense. She also never really made eye contact. She had a way of looking at me without engaging with me. Probably because after 15 minutes I'd given her such a hard time and pissed her off so much she couldn't bear to be in the same room as me but couldn't send me out in the corridor either.

Then there was the head. I've noticed there is a breed of primary head teachers, grey-haired women, size 16 to 18, double chinned, Marks and Spencer clothing, who look like they should be something in Betterware but lost their way. I think these head teachers are made in a factory, quietly, somewhere in the country, then rolled out in container vans to schools up and down the country.

Actually, every primary head teacher I meet reminds me of Mrs A, who threw me out of her primary school two days after I'd joined. And I wasn't aged five either. I was aged twenty-eight, and I was doing an observation in her school before joining a PGCE course. Naturally, one bears grudges.

So that's three teachers I've met, and all in one day. And I think that's enough.

Now I'm going off to shout at the children, demand that Tiger puts her books away neatly, ask to see Shark's writing practice from today, and quiz Squirrel on her two times table, because she is still rubbish at it. If she doesn't get it right tomorrow, I'm keeping her in at playtime.

The Magic Kitten

I've had to read The Magic Kitten. I had to read it to the very end, even though by Chapter 6 the children were puzzled and wondering where the nasty lions had gone, and even though by Chapter 3 I couldn't stop putting on ever-more ridiculous reading voices. No, we had to finish it. I insisted.

Our verdict? It is rubbish. Penguin, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You've produced the reading equivalent of a bag of E-numbers.

Now I'm going to have a bit of a rant, so if you don't care for rants, please don't read on. But I've got to say these things. I've been set going by this utter drivel.

First E-number, inducing confusion, is the plot. It starts with the Prologue. Here we're introduced to a battle of good and evil between Prince Flame (good) and Uncle Ebony (evil).

'Oh good', all us innocent readers think. Apart from Uncle Ebony's appalling name, presumably given to try and side-step accusations of stereotyping or to disguide a lack of imagination (it fails to do either), we might, in the coming book, witness this battle of good and evil. We might be stunned by an intense tustle of wills; fatigued by a combat between magic forces we can barely sense; perhaps even see a few furry cat claw scratches between Flame and Ebony as they battle to the bloody death.

Well, do we? No. By Chapter 4, we all realise the author has tricked us and betrayed us. There's a bit of jumping about on country lanes in the dark (dramatic tension), seeing a van (spooky, obviously), turning into a cat (surreal), and taking a picture of some criminals poaching deer (the UK's top criminal minds are now shaking in their boots). What a disappointment.

The second E-number is the character of the hero, Prince Flame. In the dramatic start, Cirrus, the advisor to Prince Flame tells him, 'Go far away. Grow strong and wise. Return then, to claim the Lion Throne and rid the land from this terrible evil'.

Well, does Prince Flame fulfil this command and go to gain this strength and wisdom through his experiences in the plot? No. First up, he turns into a fluffy kitten and goes to live on a farm. Second, he does the washing up (because he is a magic cat, of course). Third, he cures the wonky leg of a horse. Fourth, he turns his keeper, Lisa, invisible. Fifth, he nicks a chocolate cake from the local shop. Sixth, he seems to turn Lisa into a cat. Seventh, he can make her finger glow. Then he pushes off back home to his kingdom (location unspecified).

Now how do any of these fulfil that promise in the Prologue? Did we follow his emotional and physical growth into a Lion leader, and see his qualities of wisdom and strength being tested? No. Actually these experiences are there merely to help get his keeper out of a spot of bother with the deer poaching.

The third E-number, inducing drowsiness and dulling of the brain, is the routine, predictable, stereotypical characterisation. We've already met Uncle Black. Sorry, Uncle Ebony. That was a warning. But when we got the Romany grandmother, Violet Wood, (Romany, note, not any common-all-garden gypsy), guess what? She lives in a proper Romany wagon, all decorated with 'fancy carving', 'red and yellow wheels' and 'shiny pots and pans' inside (seen one of those on the country lanes recently?). Granny wears a shawl and she wears hooped gold earings. Well I never would have guessed.

The fourth E-number, inducing hysteria, and a possible side-effect of fitting with laughter, is the policeman, Mike Sanders. He's an E-number all on his own. Now I've lived in a rural area. We visit family who live in a hamlet. And nowhere, not ever, have I ever seen a jolly policeman walk along a country road. Well he does in this book. He walks. Through the countryside. Now which planet does this author live on? Does she share any reality with any of us? Here comes Mike Sanders again. He's popped down to the stream now. Look, he has a twinkle in his eye when he's ticking off the local scallywag.

Fifth E-number. Language. Inducing mind-breaking tedium. If we get another twinkling eye we'll all go mad. How many times can any author use such expressions as 'with a twinkle in her eye' or 'her eyes sparkled'? My goodness, I wish my eyes could twinkle and sparkle. We all sat round practising. After five minutes we all looked like we had eye infections.

I could go on. Penguin, put up a good justification why this drivel should waste paper. Will it be economic? Or will it be that you believe this is in some way improving the reading ability of my children? How much of this stuff do parents have to put up with? I'm almost inclined to start a campaign, Adult Readers Shout Out Against Literary Crap for Children.

But the last word goes to Squirrel. 'It wasn't too good. It had a nice name and it had a nice subject but the writing was rubbish.' That's for the agent who took on Magic Kitten. Squirrel's aged seven. May she be your critic for years to come.

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day, apparently.

I have two cards, each decorated with scrunched up tissue paper to resemble flowers. Both are cut out in the shape of the word MUM. This makes them look like the design of a floral tribute for the deceased. Quite frankly, they are horrible, and remind me of nothing but funeral flowers and the day we cremated our mother. This card design is the brainchild of Art Teech, and has done nothing to improve my judgment of her.

Intrigingly, we can only find two cards, although three were painfully made. As usual, Squirrel has lost hers, or put it somewhere, and can't remember where. She's always defensive about this, and says that squirrels do not forget where they put their acorns; the magpies take them. I don't put too much effort into looking for it, and she doesn't think it's worth the effort either.

Then Dig telephones. He's away, lecturing on commas. He says that first class on BA is better than business class, because they have the good years on the wines, and follows it up with what a tough life it can be when there's no one to greet you at the hotel. Anyway, he doesn't wish me happy Mother's Day, and by then I've forgotten, or put the crematorium out of my mind.

The day's slipping by, unregarded, when Oo rings up and sings 'Happy Mother's Day' in a big, bright, cheery voice. Oo is brilliant, and has style, and does not do things by halves. And she is the only person I know who has more bizarre disasters befall her than me.

Oo tells me she's sitting in a cafe, having left home for the morning. She's ripped up her Mother's Day flowers. She says she felt it was her privilege, having bought them for herself the day before.

Now I can't really explain Oo, because I feel she should do that herself, if she ever had a mind. But I would love to read Oo's blog. It would be a different order of magnitude from Grit's, I can tell you. Where our car breaks down, Oo's car blows up. While we deal with an irritating can opener, Oo's tennant is smashing up her house. While we sulk about the local school, Oo gets a place at one of the UK's leading institutions, marches in, and complains. The woman definitely has style. And as she describes her latest disaster, and we laugh, it's a tonic, and I start to feel less funerial.

So I start to cheer up a lot after Oo's call, and make Mother's Day fruit salad with mango. I put on Cuban dance music and get the children to dance around the kitchen with grapes on their heads. In the evening we do special things, like setting the table with the best place mats and lighting the candles. When the fruit salad comes out, the children think Mother's Day must be very special indeed. And they're right, it is now.

Thank you Oo for redeeming the day! (And please blog!)

Time

I've ripped the effing clock up. I've come into the office, ripped it into bits, scattered it all over the floor and jumped up and down on it, pulling my hair out and gnashing my teeth. I would set fire to the pieces now but I'd burn down the house. Perhaps its worth it.

Sod this home education lark. We're all going back to school. I'm taking a crap job again as a crap teacher in a crap school with a crap head and I'm frog marching the kids down to the local crap sink. They'll be dressed in black and white and hate every minute of it but HA! at least they'll know what an effing minute is.

I'm feeling a bit better now. I'll explain.

Squirrel, Shark and Tiger are learning how to tell the time. Now, I accept that as a family we have a general problem with lateness. So the children are starting off with a congenital disadvantage here. Neither me or Dig can be on time, early, or in any understanding of the word, 'punctual'. It's just our predisposition. Words like 'deadline' mean 'start point for negotiation'. Expressions like 'on the dot' mean, 'we'll be fifteen minutes late'. Anyone who deals with us would be advised to lie about the start point for events. If your show starts at midday, tell us it starts at 11am. I won't mind. You are doing us a favour.

I'm not taking all the blame, mind. It's the clocks.

All the clocks in the house tell different times. I've counted them up now. We have fifteen clocks. Three are in a drawer. One of those is still ticking. Yesterday, Shark said 'There's a strange sound coming from the drawer.' So we all stand round, listening, wondering if it is a bomb. The idea that it might be a clock in a drawer doesn't occur to any of us. It crosses my mind that it might be an unexploded warhead Squirrel has found in a field, brought home undetected and shoved in one of her nests. But no. It's a clock that Tiger made last year. Then I remembered. I put all the home-made clocks in the drawer because I couldn't stand the ticking. It was like living behind Big Ben. I've disarmed the warhead now by taking out the battery.

Six of our clocks are attached to the walls. One I took the battery out ages ago because it was a very loud tick and anyway, the minute hand was always getting stuck and just jumped up and down when it got to number 8. The other clock, facing it, is five minutes slow. Which I take into account when I look at the one in the kitchen, which is three minutes fast.

The rest of the clocks are scattered around on various electronic items. The oven clock is the best. Since the oven door fell off, I wonder if there's been consequential damage, probably from the enormous amount of heat which rises up everytime we try and bake potatoes. Anyway, it does its own thing. Last week it was trying to tell me it was 27:80.

So perhaps, what with the genes and the realia resources, I am at a disadvantage in trying to teach the time to Squirrel, Shark and Tiger. But I've tried. And not just today, either.

I've pointed out all the different times on all the different clocks. We've looked at pictures in books. We've moved plastic hands round plastic faces. We've made our own clocks, as the evidence shows, in the drawer. I've drawn lots of clocks over paper plates. I've drawn a half-metre-high clock on the big blackboard. We've watched clocks on platforms, in airports, and at the dentist. We've done tell-the-time jigsaws with Thomas the Tank Engine, tell-the-time jigsaws with Pooh and Tigger, tell-the-time with Peter Rabbit, tell the time with effing sodding Bunny and all his effing Pixie friends.

So it's not surprising I'm becoming a tad frustrated on this one.

Take today. After an hour and a half of watching the minute hand on the clock tick round, pointing it out, writing down its movements, looking at our paper plate teaching clock I made this morning, explaining the big hand, the little hand, the minutes, the hours, the seconds of the terrible toiling progress of those dreadful hands, tick-tocking their way round the Alice in Wonderland clock face, I'm foolish enough to wonder if any of it has gone in, perhaps just this once.

'What time is it?' I ask Shark. The big hand is pointing to the 2 and the little hand is pointing to a fraction past 5. 'Two minutes past five' Shark says. So I get up very quietly, come into the office, and rip up my paper plate teaching clock. And I look over to the office clock. It's stopped. Now, where are the matches?

Grit-free

No grit in Grit's day today, thanks to a lovely afternoon with Jol, eating and talking and drinking coffee.

So no grit there.

A grit-free day, then.

Except trapping my finger in the car door after parking it in a panic at Waitrose where they charge you £2 to park the car unless you buy some strawberry smoothie and a bucket of fruit.

And discovering the dishwasher's contents after getting back from our day out. The dishwasher is energy-saving, so doesn't use any water. Or, possibly, any energy. Clearly the new way of using this remarkable appliance is to rinse all the dishes before they go in, and wash all the dishes when they come out.

And, of course, if there was any grit in my day, it would probably be the road closure on the B-road across the hills to Middletown, which made us half an hour late for the home educators 'Making Pills and Shampoo' workshop.

I'd just like to say this lateness was not thanks to us being incapable of rolling out of bed before 8.30. We did roll out of bed at 7.30, actually.

I know no-one will believe me.

A rewarding day

It's Thursday. I look on Thursday as some sort of reward for living through Wednesday.

The first Thursday reward wasn't much of one. It was a notice of an impending county court judgment. This is for a contract that ended in 2002, and was ended by the company involved, and is a demand for money we don't actually owe, which we have paperwork to prove, but instead of accepting that, company X nicked a few hundred quid from our bank account, which resulted in our bank designating this as an unauthorised payment and taking it back again on our behalf, at which point company X dumped a debt collection agency on us and, despite them promising in 2006 that the matter is now closed, have pushed the paperwork onto their solicitors who are taking us to court.

Well, good luck to them. If it continues I'll name the lot of the scoundrels and rogues in a name and shame exercise. Before that happy moment, which may involve a drive down south with a banner in the back of the car, I may consider starting my own campaign which involves sending the same letters to the same people every day for a month just to help nail home a small point about harrassment.

The second reward wasn't up to much either. I look in the paper and see all this stuff about the National Curriculum for the 0-5 year olds. I have to howl with laughter and smash something up with frustration all at the same time.

Apparently, sticking your fingers in your pasta at the age of two can be taken as a sign of literacy. Actually, it's not the total ludicrous nonsense of it which raises my hackles, it's the agenda behind it. Stuff like this suggests that every action by the likes of Squirrel, Shark and Tiger, is available for public assessment. It also suggests to baby Squirrels, Sharks and Tigers, that each of their actions is not part of growing up, but part of a national system of achievements and failures, all of which is going to be watched and assessed by someone else with a tick-box sheet. My, that sounds empowering.

Well childhood takes a long time. And thank goodness that I started that process being able to hang spaghetti on my ears, show off my scribbly pictures, boast about the scab on my knee where I fell out of Big Bro's trolley, delight in what I'd found in the garden soil, hide my failings, mistakes and shames and threaten PigFace Bins that if she did that again to me I'd smack her in the mouth. Say what you like about the 1960s, but after a day like that I could fall asleep without the neighbour filling in a set of ticky boxes about me. And as an adult, I'd like to continue the same, if the National Curriculum for 40-50 year olds is going to allow it, of course.

After I have to put the soap box away for fear of crashing right through it, we're onto the third reward of Thursday.

Well this isn't much of a reward either. Dig pushes off to the airport to catch a flight to Middle earth. He's gone for much of a week, and I'm single-mothering again, with only the solicitors of the debt collection agency for company.

Not surprisingly, I've had enough now of Thursday, and of the kid who just put up two fingers at me while I parked outside the Co-op, of the tut I got at the Post Office when I asked for stamps, of the unfixable internet radio which stops working within five minutes of Dig leaving the house, and of the git who threw a Pepsi can into our hedge where the birds are nesting.

So for the rest of Thursday, I'm rewarding myself with a raid on the fridge for the banana pie we made yesterday, and the remains of the wine bottle upstairs by the bed.

Of course I could always look forward to Friday.

Going downhill

I'm still glum, and am getting into a depression. And now I look at the weekly diary and see that it is Wednesday and we go swimming.

This isn't going to help.

I'll refer you to the post for 11 January 2007.

Try glamour

I need to feel better. All the magazines tell me that my life problems can be solved by looking different. So I might try buying one of those magazines and, by evening, if I follow their rules, I might look different, and feel better.

First I reckon I'll need to put in some effort in the make up department. I'd need to wear some. There are lots of lovely shops in Bigtown that wink at me and tell me how beautiful I could be, if only I would try.

But I'll remember why I don't. The last time I hit the make up bag my eyes swelled up and I looked like a frog. Perhaps I apply it wrong and those black lines shouldn't actually go in the eyes. I can't help it. I rub my eyes a lot. Or perhaps the make up is fifteen years old and past its sell by date. The blusher worked better, but I'm wary. 47-year old women generally don't blush. There's not much you can show us that we haven't seen before. The lipstick works, sort of, but it tends to wear off quickly. I think I might be eating it, along with the cakes.

Then there are the clothes. I keep promising myself, when I have spare cash, to go off to the bright shiny shops in the centre with all the personal shopping advisors and get hold of one to sort me out. That'll be a test of her stamina. Today I'm wearing a baggy old jumper on top, and a baggy old jumper underneath. I'm also wearing a tee-shirt with a hole in the armpit. And my trousers don't meet round the middle. The button fell off and I haven't had the time to sew it back on.

Anyway, being able to look nice is tied up with that weight thing. One resolution I made last birthday was to lose some weight. Apart from the baggy jumpers, all my clothes have shrunk now and I've got an unecessary layer of fat which travels round me like a wobbly road. It even has pot holes in it.

I haven't actually got round to all that exercise yet, but I'm still hoping. I blame the building works near the gym. I'm sure that stops me from getting to the gym properly. Last year they closed the roads while up went a big hotel and lots more restaurants. I suppose I could have parked further down the hill at the train station and walked, but there are some mornings when it is cold, and it is sometimes very difficult getting out of bed.

And as a last resort I could always blame the children. It's easy to get fat when pregnant. And being pregnant with three is three times the excuse. I know that's wearing thin, because we're talking seven years ago now. But I argue that it doesn't really get any better. They make cakes and biscuits now. Last year they made 54 chelsea buns. I thought about standing at the local post office and giving away these delicious soft fruity buns with their perfect sugary crusts to the poor and needy, but then reckoned there was probably a bye-law against giving away chelsea buns, so of course had to eat the lot.

On balance I think today might be a bad day to look different. And I think I'll give the magazines a miss.

An old book

Dig's sorting out his library. I've got a freecycle box with some books inside and I need some more. While he's about it, he tells me a story, about an old scholar and a book, and I'm telling it you now.

An old scholar had a magic book in his library. 'What did it look like?' I asked. 'Not important' answers Dig. I reckon the cover probably wasn't much to look at, a bit battered and grey and worn, with the edges curling up, because magic books generally have to be like that. But anyway, I'll assume it was special, in its own way, because each time the old scholar read the book, the words would crackle and sparkle and come into life, and send off beautiful colours in all directions.

'Is this the Borges story where the words move round?' I ask Dig. 'No it isn't' says Dig. Anyway, the old scholar looked at the colourful words in book for many years, and probably got a great deal of pleasure from it. I don't know that of course. I'd like to think so anyway. Then one day when the old scholar opened the book, some pages fell out and drifted to the floor. Well, the old scholar looked at the pages and looked at the book and then suddenly lost interest in the book and all the colourful sparkling words inside. Perhaps the words began to fade right there and then.

'Why didn't the old scholar like the book anymore?' I ask. 'Lots of reasons and shut up interrupting' says Dig. Perhaps the old scholar thought the book was spoiled now, or not complete, or perhaps the Borges story really did come in and steal some pages away. Whatever happened, the old scholar put the book down and didn't pick it up for many years. I reckon he probably forgot about it since it was in a library and there were lots of other books and they probably had more interesting ideas to share than a manky old book with fading colours and some pages missing.

'That's not the end' says Dig. Because one day, after many years, the old scholar opened the book again. Perhaps it was by accident. The colours started to glow and change just like before. I like this idea. I think that if I was a book and no-one ever looked at me and then all of a sudden hey presto! someone starts reading again, then I'd feel chuffed. I wonder what the old scholar thought. 'What happened next?' I ask Dig.

Dig says he's not sure now. He thinks that the old scholar probably just lost interest in the words, and closed the book and put it away again. I reckon the old scholar was worse than that. I think he must have carelessly thrown the book on a pile in the corner. Or he might have used it to prop up a table. 'That's not a very nice thing to happen to a book, especially a magic one where the words can change colours', I say.

I think that's probably the end of the magic book. I reckon the colours in the book will never change again. Perhaps it'll end up in the freecycle box, not wanted by anyone, just going round everyone's house until it ends up on a skip or a bonfire.

'That's life', says Dig, handing me a book for the freecycle box.