Shark falls in love

We probably travelled several thousand miles for this experience.

Because we're all in it together

We all fall out with each other.

Not me and Dig, obviously. We piss each other off low level everyday. We don't keep the heated passion for monumental chuckingcrockeryatwalls-type falling out. This form of anger the kids reserve for each other.

Not Squirrel. She is exempt today, and keeps her own council while she dodges bullets. Wise.

We suspect the arguments start because Tiger is homesick. Her homesickness, her missing love for a lost cuddly snow leopard, doesn't manifest as a sad face and the expression, I'm homesick. Not at all. Her sadness is manifested by hurling blunt objects and sharp words at Shark.

Shark, unfortunately, woke up this morning with a single purpose of returning as much of that misery as possible to everyone and anyone, including the koala. This is not because she is homesick. This is because she is aged nine and still learning on which side her bread is buttered.

But today Shark, we want to take you dolphin watching, and every time you come up with that smart answer back, we delay that dolphin watching experience a little while longer to piss you off in return for pissing us off. This is not because we are homesick. This is because we are mean, bolshy parents who wouldn't mind a bit of acknowledgement that you are loafing about Australia instead of strapped to a local primary school desk staring at black and white photos in a geography text book.

The morning proceeds pretty much like low crossfire for an hour or so, with the kids needling each other, while me and Dig try to keep the lid on what we're really feeling in that very British parent way, even though we would oh so much like to give everyone a good clip round the ear and a slap on the bum. But we do not. We say things like That is a very rude and disrespectful thing to say. A slap round the arse would convey that feeling of outrage so much quicker.

Eventually of course we do make it to the dolphin watching boat ride round the harbour of Port Stephens, where the sulky behaviour more or less continues, except this time Shark's beginning to suspect she might just be thrown overboard, so better keep her mouth shut in case mama goes berserk and has what she calls 'an elastic band moment'.

Anyway, I'm ignoring it now. There are some 150 bottlenose dolphins living it large in the harbour, or so we're told. We manage to find about six of them, to be told they are doing what dolphins do when they are asleep, that is switch half their brain off, come to the surface of the water and breathe before switching brain sides.

Shark has lashed herself to the front of the ship like Captain Ahab and she is not giving way to anyone, not nobody, not ever, because she is damn well seeing those dolphins if it is the last thing she does right now on this earth. If she does not see at least six dolphins I am taking the captain of that craft into hiding for his own safety.

Tiger is not at all thrilled by this experience and spends most of her time complaining that Shark has given her the camera and a death threat. She says Shark has told her to take pictures or else. But the dolphins are non-existent, and if she did not exist then she would not have to take pictures of non-existent dolphins. We say do not be silly and give the camera here. At the great upgoing shout of excitement with the first sighting of the non-existent dolphins, Tiger switches tack and says she is not allowed to photograph the non-existent dolphins now because we say so.

Squirrel is caught in the middle of this misery highway and is infected by the sheer weight of this depressive cloud. I feed her biscuits surreptitiously as a reward for having to put up with us all, then I push off for my complimentary cup of wobbly tea. Dig drinks beer.

There is only one solution to this intemperate time when the dolphins have been watched and Shark threatened with a seat on an aeroplane home rightnowthissecond, and that is to make to the beach.

Strangely, everyone is made happy here, sculpting islands and boats with one seat and other solitary constructions from sand, and we all do this quietly on our own patch until the sun goes down, the tide comes in, and we walk home in the dark.

On the fumbling way home in pitch blackness, the Inland Revenue in Scotland telephones Dig on his mobile and threatens a penalty charge if he does not pay immediately the outstanding sum demanded from him two days after we left England.

That is OK says Dig. But first, I am on a family holiday. And second, everything else can wait.

Love it and hate it

Yesterday's storm passed. I can get on with matters of staring at a koala's bum and finding Australia beguiling and irritating both at the same time.

Irritating, possibly, because we are stuck on a limb at the edge of nowhere. With darkness, which falls at 5.30 each afternoon, all visible life disappears. The shopping mall five miles away shuts up, the roads fall silent, a solitary night fisher takes to the beach, the koala shifts between one buttock cheek to the other. And while this might be blissful for a short time, Grit is a goodtime girl fresh from Hong Kong. A little cultural variety wouldn't go amiss.

I am not exactly a city girl but here I am, finding myself frustrated in search of street life and alternative culture. Down at the shopping mall, discovered this morning, it's all neat and ordered and homely and uniform and everyone dresses like it's 1989. I suddenly yearn for those rich varieties of street people providing a dash of chaos to ignite the unpredictable. And I wouldn't mind some uproar and noise along with that confusion and disorder.

But most of what I miss right now is news. Any news. Except discussion on whether school league tables should be published in New South Wales. Didn't we start that issue in the UK 20 years ago? Or how some bloke is leaving one woman because another woman will have him instead. Clearly nothing's happening in the world. With hope, I could turn to the women's pages, where I can be instructed in how to be as lovely as lovely mothers and cook biscuits.

So some might use expressions like lonely parochial outpost with insular attitudes cut off from the rest of the world. But that wouldn't be fair.

Australia is wonderfully, intensely, beguiling. Possibly because we are stuck on a limb at the edge of nowhere. And I'm not giving up hope of doing that walkabout. I feel the urge. I just want to point in that direction and start walking. I don't know why. I can't explain it. You have nature to yourself. All this immense energy and mystery all around you and if you set out in that direction, you'll be connected to it and lost forever. All that landscape to explore, to know and realise it will never be known, the huge depthless vastness of it, the deserts, mountains, valleys, wide lands of nothing in nowhere. I want to see it all, be in it all, and it starts right here.

With time on my hands while Shark, Squirrel and Tiger track tree frogs and jump in and out of the pool, I make it my sole purpose in life to sit at a picnic table with a beer and muse on whether I could settle down and live in Australia, or whether it would prove too much and I would long to move on and find another place.

I don't have an answer. I watch a koala bear eat five eucalyptus leaves for dinner, scratch a furry ear with a foot, fall asleep in the fork of a branch and never look in danger of dropping out the tree.

Did you say we spend a week here?

I knew if I waited a few hours I would find out what is wrong with this place.

First off, we are living on a reclaimed swamp. Hence the tree frogs, who think it still is a swamp. And the mosquitoes, who have chewed off both my legs and are starting on my arms. Squirrel is slowly inflating in all directions. Her legs looks like weird balloons with measles.

And there are other disadvantages. Like in Australia it is autumn. And they don't ponce about with changing clocks back and forward like in the UK, just so the tourist class can loll about lawns in evening sunshine quoting Auden. None of that crap. There's nothing but dark round here at 5.30pm so that's your lot, mate. And then again, being autumn in Australia, it has done nothing but piss rain on me all day long.

After three hours locked in a tin cabin with CanwegotothebeachCanwegotothebeach reverberating between my ears I do what any person driven mad by constant whining of triplets locked in a tin cabin would do, and that is mount an escape attempt with laundry.

I leg it out the door, through the attack lines of mosquitoes and quaking thunderstorm carrying armfuls of soiled clothing.

Having achieved my objective of reaching a laundry hut I discover more pain. I cannot do the washing. I can make neither machine work and the owners to the site aren't here. There's a notice pinned on the door with an emergency telephone number. Calling to say I have covered my clothes in laundry powder might not be the type of emergency Australians respond to warmly, so I lug it all the way back to the tin cabin again, discarding knickers on the way, and with the rain pelting me in the face like this time it means business.

By lunchtime I am quite desperate. We have had eight fights and one near miss on a black eye. This is clearly Australia's fault. They have made such an outdoor culture for themselves with all that bronzed surf and bush stuff that everyone seems to have forgotten to provide anything sensible to do indoors at all. The British are good at indoor amusement like Monopoly, charades, and parlour games because we spend our lives imprisoned in the front room. And providing a life of field tramping in mild British drizzle for the gritlets means we are poorly equipped for proper Aussie rain bashing. Worse, I realise now the little grits have developed no inner resources and have lost the playing cards donated by British Airways.

Thus at 2pm I foolishly cave in to the constant demands to go to the beach and shout Yes! we will go to the beach!

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger clamber in the car. I admit that. I would rather burn up the ozone layer than rot to death in the 500 yard walk through the torrential downpour.

Life had clearly become desperate for all concerned. Two minutes later the gritlets are scampering up the river path to the beach and throwing themselves in the sea fully clothed before embarking on building a scale sand model of Jericho with three Hong Kong yogurt pots and a spade that has appeared from nowhere. And for the next two hours the rain pours down upon their oblivious heads.

I would very much like to make my escape at this point. Stupidly I do not. I stand on a ledge under a roof overhang of the surf hut (locked) which provides 12 centimetres of cover. Here I part read A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. Since I am standing on a ledge two foot off the ground in the pouring rain contemplating a week's thunderstorming beach holiday with children in a tin hut where the world blacks out at 5.30 prompt, I can truly say at this moment I fail to see the funny side.

By 5pm things are looking worse than ever. To bribe the little grits off the beach I suggest I drive everyone to the shopping mall to buy sweets. I know this is off-the-scale demented but two hours on a ledge does this to a woman.

The roads are totally dark. I have no map. I do not know where there is a shopping mall. I am driving a car missing a pedal and it has no gears. The rain is tipping down and the wipers cannot keep up. Naturally, I drive at a speed of a one-legged echidna on a road with an 80 km speed limit trailed by fifteen pissed off Australians.

On the plus side, I note the koala had pushed off this morning. I am assuming it is not sick to death of listening to the constant references under its tree to its idle ways and fat arse but because eucalypts do not provide good shelter in thunderstorms. Thus I plan to go native and start observing koala behaviour as indicative of weather systems. This resolution provides a strong sense of place and is strangely satisfying.

Here is the ledge.
I drove back after the storm passed just to take a picture of it.
I have developed a strange emotional bond with this, and the koala.

But I am quite difficult to please

So, while in Hong Kong, Dig finds this place in Port Stephens. He books it last minute on the internet. It's either this or the layby on Highway 1.

Let's see how you did, husband.

Because while we're all sitting outside eating breakfast, Shark eye-spies a koala bum hanging lazily from the tree right over our heads. As it slowly shuffles along a branch, that sort of disproves my theory the owner has nailed a furry cushion there, unless he's got it on radio control.

Then it's time to walk around the site. The swimming pool's small but heated and Shark, Squirrel and Tiger run off to change. Not before they squeal in delight at the tree frog, butterflies, tiny scuttling lizards under the fallen leaves, and the lorikeets and rosellas squawking overhead.

Don't be too long in that pool, we caution, because you have to walk the ten minutes to the beach and say hello to the kangaroo who lives in the backpacker's campsite over the road. Then we have to pop into Port Stephens to check out the dolphin watching cruises and find the opening times for the Shark and Ray Centre fifteen minutes down the road and for which Shark would sell me as a galley slave should I be foolish enough to put up any resistance to that experience.

Then of course there are the sand dunes, sparkling waters, vineyard and tonight's barbecue to cater for. Dig feels it's part of his duty to take that over and he wouldn't want to disappoint anyone, so I can relax while he cooks dinner.

Let's just say, husband, for now, I'm reserving judgement.

Counting the cost of Qantas

It is a two and a half hour drive from Sydney airport to Port Stephens. Just as well we leave eight hours to complete that route. Really, we could have done with twelve hours to park the car and pass out properly at the roadside rather than behind the wheel.

It's not that things went badly. They just went without any sleep at all, thanks to the Qantas flight of doom.

So at 7am on this Sunday morning, Dig is standing only by means of his skeletal structure propped up against the Thrifty Car Hire desk at Sydney airport. He has no consciousness at all, having had that removed somewhere over Darwin. This makes it comparatively straightforward for a Thrifty woman to extract several thousand pounds from him including his life savings and a promise of 25% of all future earnings in exchange for a week's hire of a dark blue car, make of which completely passes me by.

Picking up the car sets the day off nicely. It's an automatic, so we don't know how to drive it. Dig presses all the buttons and levers and tries to find something to do with his feet. He may as well hang them out the window to amuse the kids who are falling into a full scale war in the back driven by lack of sleep and madness. Tiger is chanting Mummy needs a poopy as we kangaroo the wrong way out the car park entrance with the attendant shouting slowly behind us, Sir, it would help if you took the handbrake off.

From that, all else follows. We have no idea how to get out of Sydney. We have no map, or at least we do, but the navigator, whoever she is, does not discover it in the glove compartment in front of her for 40 minutes. We have no food or drink and in sixteen seconds of finding Highway 1 the consequences of starvation, sleep deprivation and madness burst forth in nuclear war on the back seat.

So we make a slow and juddering journey to a week's beach holiday based in Port Stephens, travelling an average of two miles an hour thanks to being handicapped by a handbrake permanently on and no clutch, a driver who is unconscious for most of the journey, a navigator off her face with lack of sleep, and triplets punching each other about the head over who has moral rights to be a snow leopard.

At least we have the gratification of seeing this sign at one of many laybys we become familiar with, heading north.

Hello Qantas. Shall we talk about PAIN?

Like the moment the cabin steward came round to stick needles under my fingernails and beat me about the head with a spanner?

Or did I just dream those moments? Like they are indistinguishable from the reality of torment? For which read the overnight Qantas flight from Hong Kong to Sydney.

But before I recommend everyone out there grab a donkey and use that because it's a darn sight better than becoming a Qantas customer, I would just like to put in a word of praise.

But hey, bear in mind I was young and foolish. Travel was an exciting thing and the huge enticing variety of air experience lay ahead of me, so twenty years ago flying with Qantas was an experience that, although not up there with the likes of Cathay or Singapore (who handed out fresh orchids), then Qantas was rough and ready and entirely serviceable and no messing about, and I quite liked that. Like they say over the tannoy no sleeping in the aisles because that is what the Aussies probably do when the aisles present a practical solution to a problem, but I welcomed that and warmed to it, probably because I felt their heart was in the right place and the steward handed Dig a full bottle of wine. And I mean a real bottle, not these poncy miniature millilitre plastic bottles everyone hands out these days.

But something has gone deeply wrong.

Deeply, badly, wrong. Qantas, you should have owned up to the few minor problems on this flight. And then we might have forgiven you the horrible errors of your ways. Like the routine way we discover there is no online check in for our flights, so every time we turn up for Qantas we have to leave a good two hours just to stand in a check in queue.

And then you bloody well knew about the problems on this flight and never had the courtesy to admit right up front it was all arse about face. No. You made me suffer. And for that, you sink to the lowest of all airlines and now sit right down there with TAP.

OK, where shall we start? We had a warning, when we are standing on the beach at Lamma, and Dig takes a call from Qantas suggesting we agree to be bumped, so long as we can get on an early morning flight leaving in less than 12 hours. Now if you are facing the idea of waking up sleep deprived triplets at 5am to be dumped in Sydney a day before your accommodation and car are booked, facing the prospect of walking into a hotel to pay rack rate for two rooms with connecting door, then the offer starts to look less attractive than it might.

Should we start there, or with the additional hour spent sitting around waiting to collect one boarding pass? Qantas woman says they cannot let Shark on the aeroplane. Better leave her in Hong Kong.

When she finally returns saying oh yes, you can take Shark to Australia with you, our mistake, here is the boarding pass, she then adds, casually and smiling, like people might add, And did you know your wife is having an affair with a horse? Or, Your car has now exploded because I have pressed the detonator, that By the way, all the visa information submitted for all your passports is WRONG and you will be turned away at Sydney immigration. Have a nice day.

Dig may stand there with evidence in his hands to prove everything is RIGHT, but now this is no concern to Qantas woman. If five minutes ago there was an issue with Shark, now it's the entire family they have screwed up. But strangely there's no need to worry. Just hurry along, because if we detain you for ten minutes more you might miss your flight.

Oh that might seem like luck. When we chain ourselves to the seats on board, everyone discovers the on demand video system doesn't work. Now I am not particularly intuitive but something tells me they knew it wouldn't work, knew it never had a chance of working, and yet even used a straight face to suggest vaguely someone might fix it. Hmm. I didn't know engineers could fly several thousand feet in the air, unless you keep one on board. Well for lying, Qantas, to disguise your failure, you sink right down there, straight off. If you had been honest and said right up front, OK, we fucked up here, we haven't got any kid's video, we haven't got anything by way of entertainment, and guess what? We don't even care about your kids! then I sort of could have forgiven you. I sometimes feel the same, but that's because I'm a parent.

But should I go on? Like, if you fly Qantas, please take your own food. The vegetarian mush shoved at me was possibly one of the worst meals in aviation history. The one with some indistinguishable brown goo, a bread roll and a banana. But a side order of salt? Did you omit the potato by accident? Why not inject that salt straight into my children's brains next time? You would do your job of killing us all with hypertension so much quicker.

But then the whole script was wrong, Qantas, WRONG. Like you straight off suggest we all buy duty free. I should have taken up that offer, ordered a bottle of scotch and anaesthetised my brain so I wasn't conscious to witness you throw inedible food at me, then leave it to abuse me for an hour before coming round to ask if I need a drink. Hey! At least I got asked that question! Dig was missed out entirely and had to suck his own feet. Then again you do have your impish ways, like removing my cup and only then asking if I'd like tea.

Of course this litany doesn't cover all the small and painful miseries we all endured. Like the oppressive heat in this cabin. Perhaps you were just trying to cook us all and serve us to the next flight to shave a bit more cost from the inedible meals service. Or the convenient way my overhead light doesn't work. Or after two hours in I was frantically pressing the call button and pleading for the cabin lights to be dimmed so I could try and sleep and imagine myself elsewhere.

But at least this one has sky in it

Somedays I feel someone took a pair of scissors to my life, chopped it up into bits and gave me back a jigsaw. I can't piece it together. Key pieces don't fit. And I am sure I lost some under the sofa.

Grit's jigsaw pieces, the fragments she usually holds, are all about education against the odds, worry and loss, handling triplets, distributing banana sandwiches at 70 mph, getting lost, wiping up snot, serving hard boiled eggs, making ends meet, staying alive, and tramping across an English field in rain and mud persuading herself that she is making the best of a bad job.

I like to imagine one day there'll be a whole picture and it will add up to a lump of grit that turns into a pearl, because if it doesn't Grit will always be nothing than a shard of grey grit that is just like grit in your eye or in your shoe. A bit of bloody irritating thing that isn't going anywhere except sluiced down the storm drain and off to the local water treatment to skulk for the rest of eternity in an effluent pipe.

But then there are the other jigsaw pieces I'm handed. Ones which don't fit, and they are Grit's life when she is with Dig. Dig leads an entirely different life from Grit. People around the world ask for him; he's honoured and feted, treated with respect, is invited to meet government ministers, royalty and Melvyn Bragg. Last time I looked, he had a Wikipedia entry. While Grit is scratching about in a field grubbing up some life lesson, Dig is wined, dined and head hunted.

Which is partly why we are in Hong Kong, so I'll admit that much.

And because this week I am with Dig, and our hosts want us to have a lovely time, my jigsaw pieces have been an escape from my ordinary life; I have been dined in good grace, transported round by taxi, brought to apartments, dined some more, showered with advantage, shown the benefits of Hong Kong life, dropped into property agents, reassured there is no problem with the home ed options, the lifestyles, the bookshops and weather. And when we are all left alone at night I've shared Tiger's whispered fears about what her cuddly snow leopard might think, because he is frightened by typhoons.

Well, as we approach the end of our time in Hong Kong, Dig says he's not making any decisions just yet, because his freedom's not for sale and he won't grace anywhere more than a year. I can consider myself lucky then. He is, you know, not interested, unless everything's on his terms, because he is basically a free creative spirit with a world vision and he is not swayed by a house on a hillside, a shedload of cash and a Hermes handbag. Not at all. Dig is principled and good and not at all corruptible and has absolutely no interest in Chanel or anything like a pair of Jimmy Choos. Nope. Don't even mention those to him, because his free soul is not for sale, and I do agree with that. Oh yes I do, even though I would in all honesty like that lifestyle on Lamma Island and that Chanel handbag very much.

Where is this leading? I don't know. Probably to another jigsaw piece that doesn't quite fit if it leads to those rooms with a view over the beach of the lotus eaters.

Rooms with views.

The Lamma Island hippie set take to the herbal tea garden...

before spending their last few Hong Kong hours on the beach.

Plastic Fantastic

One of the things about towing kids around the world with you - let's not talk right now about pain, blood, shit, tears, broken souls - is the wondrous places they can take you to. Places you would avoid like the plague if you could only choose for yourself what type of experience to have and need not consider the fragile developing mind sets and world views of three bolshy kids with an unhealthy interest in pink cuddly toys and fish.

Places like Ocean Park.

Ocean Park is Hong Kong's version of Disneyworld. It is the place where all the molten bits of glowing Chinese plastic, all the singing, dancing, moving junk of hideous toys are brought together, heaped up, and dumped in a pile on a hillside like someone screaming an almighty blasphemy against anything living and natural.


Strangely - and there is no accounting for this - it is also the place where Hong Kong worships its pandas, alligators, sealions, cute furry animals with big eyes, thousands of variety of goldfish, and the dolphins, who have their very own theatrical showtime. No-one eats them. And that is good.



This amusement/marine theme park is one place I would never normally go within 500 miles of, except of course there are Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to attend to, and they pull me into this place like there is a magnetic attachment involved, the mechanism for which I have yet to discover.

Then once you are inside you have to think to yourself, if you have kids, that it is the most wonderful thing to see your little kidlet faces light up with delight. Perhaps with the expectation of being plunged into a waterfall while strapped into a plastic raft, or with the excitement of seeing a panda, and of watching a dolphin ping a ball with its nose. Really, it should be a mark of your parental devotion if you can tolerate being lifted miles up into the air on the world's second largest outdoor escalator, all in the name of amusement. I should have medals. I certainly have scars.

OK, I admit. I did sort of fall in love with the alligator.

Hong Kong Science

I am sure that if the little pieces of girl, Shark, Squirrel, Tiger, attended school in England, and we had pleaded for special dispensation to be released from that commitment to bring them with us to Hong Kong, when we returned to the UK an adult from their school world would say, with meaning, Tell me, what did you learn in Hong Kong?

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger would whitter on about doors and parks and long necked turtles and chopsticks and Buddhists who buy fish swimming in tanks outside restaurants, then pop round the corner and release those slippery saved prisoners into the harbour, but the squint-eyed fellow peering at them would say again, Yes, yes, but what did you LEARN?

And that school tuned adult would mean, of course, What reading, writing, arithmetic, what school work did you do?

Well despite the fish freeing Buddhists, and I am ashamed to admit it, but a small part of my brain squeaks that too. But what are we learning?

There is only one cure to relieve this oldschool pressure in my head and that is to take Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to the Hong Kong Science Museum.

Science is good. Science is learning. It has things like electromagneticsoundwavecompression. After today I can claim our schoolwork is all done and dusted. Tomorrow we can go stare at stars and eat lotus on Lamma Island beach.

So here we are, visiting the Hong Kong Science Museum. I can scrounge lessons in windpatternisobarspressure. Because science crosses all borders. And when Mr Squeers stares disapprovingly down at us, I can prod Shark, Squirrel and Tiger into action with leveragesublimationmolecule.

But fifteen minutes in, I discover science is not universal at all. It is quite local. The Hong Kong Science Museum has a large section of one floor given over entirely to horrible ways to fall over and die on a building site.

In Hong Kong, building a skyscraper, knocking it down, building a new one, taller, smarter, shinier, more marble, more glass, more glitz, more ambitious, is a favourite pastime. Hong Kong island edges closer each year to Kowloon mainland. More land is reclaimed, the working harbourfront swells, the skyscrapers rise, the sea is swept away. Don't bring fondness. The 1950s Star ferry pier with its modernist clock tower was blasted away in 2006 to make way for a swanky line of terminals, poking their noses further into the water. And if last year your business spent several million dollars securing prime harbour front space, consider it money well spent on the ad budget, because you'll be outshone next year by a new shoreline development, in progress now. Everyone in Hong Kong will be touched at some point by the construction industry. So here, in the Science Museum, there is a large section devoted to different ways of dying in building site accidents.

But Hong Kong is prepared. Meet Dr Safe and his talking chemicals. There is Uncle Flammable, Auntie Irritant, Brother Corrosive, Harmful Junior and Little Toxic. Just like a real family. I might adopt them as blognames. The animated chemicals describe several horrible ways to be poisoned, mutilated, lose hands and set yourself on fire thanks to careless practices on the building site. And if you are not warned enough, here comes Uncle Explosive with his very short fuse to blow everyone up.

But no! Because Dr Safe with his Material Safety Data Sheets talks reasonably to the hazardous chemicals, we need not lose our hands in building site accidents ever again. Are you unconvinced? Glance at the exhibit next door of the foolish migrant worker plunging to his death after falling from an unfinished building. Take that as a limbering up exercise for scanning the Occupational Disease Databank to realise how you will die painfully and slowly in your job unless you take action now. Then at least you might have enough life left in you to head upstairs for your near-death experience with crash test dummies slamming into trucks and losing limbs in the Automotive Technology Gallery.

But science is universal, right? Hong Kong is just strangely driven in its obsession with falling over.

And the fact that everyone on the streets today looks like they are extras in a medical drama, striding about walkways wearing face masks and surgical gowns, merely tells us the responsible population is taking correct and proper preventative action over swine flu.

Which sort of makes it ironic that as we emerge into the Medical Sciences Gallery the first game we can play is how to extract medicine from a pig.

Sometimes it is better to travel than to arrive

So I decided to post only for today the news that we finally made it to Sha Tin, to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

I'd like to say we finally made it because we idly strolled along Hong Kong streets looking over the good fortune shops selling lucky money and happy plastic tat for kids on festival days. Or perhaps we finally made it because we lingered with jasmine tea back at the restaurant where the gritlets had seven minutes to learn how to use chopsticks last Thursday, or starve to death. Or perhaps we finally made it to Sha Tin because we took up that offer of the foot massage and had our fortunes told and found them delightful.

Well it was none of those finally made it reasons. Sha Tin is way over there, up north in the New Territories. It may be part of Hong Kong but it is miles away from the frenetic business of the Island or the shiny shops of Kowloon. A clean new residential town, it spreads over a spacious seat from which the foothills around it rise, evoking those beautiful soaring mountains reaching beyond the clouds, hills of China.

Given its setting, it would be easy to be distracted. These mountain names are said to us, but I forget already. They blend together like poetry fragments, and this is, I think, how Chinese translates into English. The hills are the higher wisdom or the wandering dragons or the jasmine princess. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, we are told, are similarly lost in counting nouns and become in Chinese pieces of girl, like pieces of gold, dragon daughters and sister of heaven.

So we finally made it because I may have become lost in Sha Tin, lured away by Chinese-English, which is a gentle antidote to the busy new town plaza, shopping mall, intersections, road junctions and walkways where we become confusingly lost by passageways held up in the air, from which we can't get out and back down to the ground. And when we do, there is the beautiful park, luring us on with shades and long necked turtles posing for us on the rocks by the garden pathways.

But we finally made it, really, thanks to the slow hours threading our way across the Island, over the water, through Kowloon, into the green hills of the New Territories, by tram, on foot, by overground, underground.

And when we arrive, when we finally make it, the museum at Sha Tin is huge. There are permanent collections of Chinese expressive arts. There is the Children's Discovery Gallery, with Life in a Village and Undersea Garden. Perfect for pieces of girl. Indeed, the museum deserves our special attention for several hours. The education to be had is wonderful. Here is a rich and splendid resource on all painting, history, arts, Chinese life, culture, all Hong Kong.

And when we did get there, when we finally made it, do you know that it is always closed on Tuesdays?

Three cheers to BLOGGER!

Because this is the day that Grit and the Gritlets jump in a taxi and zoom away on the wide roads, over the cityscape of downtown Hong Kong, past the spiralling skyscrapers, in and out of the bright highway tunnels blasted through the hills, and off into the cool green spaces of the elegant expat houses, where we finally disgorge from that taxi and say hello, face to face, hand to hand, to Wife in Hong Kong.

How cool is that? Is that 100% COOL?

This is amazing to Grit. Because without Blogger, Grit and Wife in Hong Kong would never ordinarily meet. We inhabit different worlds. Grit is a beat up sandal wearing old hippie who lives on a planet populated by anarchists, home educators, feral kids and mutants. Wife in Hong Kong floats about in gracious surroundings and rubs shoulders with the Dior dripping glitterati whose cultivated kids eat canapes.

How far apart can you get? Yet here with Wife in Hong Kong I can drink a cup of tea and feel human again. And we have Blogger to thank for this meeting of otherworlds. Blogger has become this curious necessary new strand of cyber life. And clearly, blogging unites the most diverse of people.

But just for today, we're not confined to cyberspace. Strange, most strange of all, even though there are worlds we all inhabit so far apart, we share common paths; we cope with families, upheavals, childhoods, traumas, marriages, deaths, partings, celebrations. Our internets cross and for a few hours we sip tea and discuss life after motherhood because like all bloggers who slip in and out of each other's footsteps, we understand each other when we have met ten minutes before.

Well of course now all you really want to know is whether Wife in Hong Kong dyes her hair orange, ties her children to the air conditioning units or wipes her nose on her sleeve, like Grit.

Well OK then, Wife in Hong Kong is not only lovely, she is just as thoughtful and expressive as you can imagine from her blog, except more beautiful and glamorous with it. So go over to her place, wander about with her footsteps and give her a big cyberhug, because at this point, she deserves it. And then don't forget to invite her over to yours.

Just when everything made sense

He is not mad. That is normal.

This is the fifth time I've whispered that to Tiger and we're only two blocks down.

It's Sunday, and everyone's feet hurt from pounding those hard Hong Kong pavements, so today we're playing safe and taking the children to experience life in one of the many local parks.

Although Hong Kong is in many ways an enclave from China, it is very much a part of China too. The people here behave much as I have seen them behave in other parks in other towns and cities of China. And China can do parks in a big way. They can be large communal spaces, paved, marshalled, arranged, concreted, planted, with children's play areas, designated photo stops, public injunctions and signs not to spit, park bicycles, play ball games, skateboard, set up market stalls. They can contain kitch items – a giant panda composed of plastic flowers – but they can contain practical meeting spaces, elegant marble features, streams, stone bridges, nectar rich flowers and fluttering butterflies.

But above all, they are public: places to be seen in, places to play board games, places to watch others, to do the things that a small room does not allow, places to take your pet bird, along with its little bamboo cage, and hang it in the tree to sing with all the other birds and wonder at flying.

Watching all the behaviours here today I've made it a goal to find a history of the Chinese park. I am sure it is a social history, and one inextricably linked to change, to the Cultural Revolution, to family life, to city dwelling, the new wave of capitalism, to the changes happening round us all the time. The park is China in microcosm.

So when Tiger sees the middle aged man standing solemnly in front of a traffic cone, his arms outstretched, as if he is cuddling a big bear, his eyes closed, swaying slightly, concentrating, breathing deeply, her first reaction is to look away; to ignore him, because that is what we do. He might be mad, possibly dangerous, he might conjure the bear to life and set about us, screaming. But I tell her to look back, because his shoes lay discarded, and on both his feet, tied firmly round the ankles, are two plastic bags.

Then, of course, everything makes sense. He is standing on walking stones – raised pebbles, fierce projectiles of stone as hard as bullets, and they have been made wet by the recent shower. Sensibly he is keeping his feet dry with the plastic bags while he conducts his daily exercises to strengthen his muscles, cause good energy flow, massage his feet, concentrate his mind, focus on the here and now and go home refreshed, probably living a longer, healthier life than me and mine.

This moment, realising that round here everything is normal, tells me why I love to travel, and what a special time it is to share with Tiger, Squirrel and Shark. I tell Tiger that wherever we go we might often think that folks round here must be mad, or dangerous, or scary, or strange. But if we take the time to pause, observe, think, talk it through, work things out, then we might find that everything is normal. And more, it might give us a moment to think about our own lives and how we live, and how we might do things differently, or the same.

Yes, says Squirrel. Because if he came to England, he would find that we put doors all over the place.

Starting down, ending up

We wake to a deep grey sky, booming thunder and flashing lightening. A storm is spreading over the harbour, and we watch it coming. It is spring in subtropical Hong Kong, and the weather, we are learning, can change hourly from humid and warm, to wet and warm.

From our safe air conditioned view, thirty floors skyward, the children watch the storm. Squirrel says she likes watching the rain fall down into the mist below, and it is fun. She doesn't yet know about summer. A subtropical summer brings the oppressive humidity that can weigh down heavy on our shoulders and exhaust our energy. It brings the punishing typhoons which would hurl pellets of rain beating on our heads like fists if we dared step out to the flooding streets. It's not fair at this moment to ask Squirrel if she'd like to live here longer. In springtime Hong Kong, we are getting off lightly.

As the rain hammers against the wide windows of our flat, and we all stand to watch the harbour below take a beating from the rain, now I begin to appreciate the Hong Kong obsession with falling over. Wherever we have walked in the last few days on this northern strip of Hong Kong Island we have seen the same public sign: a little person falling over, a sparky set of lines drawn between the floor and their bottom. Along with the picture, a public injunction to be careful on slippy floors and wet surfaces. The sparky bottom could happen to us they say, and then we'll be sorry. But we can't say we weren't warned. We have laughed about this public sign. As I imagine those treacherous streets and marble stairways, I silently promise not to laugh.

Then the morning drags on. Dig leaves for a quick meeting with Jaz. That means three hours alone, but in this weather I'm not inclined to start a street tour. After half an hour, the fun of watching the rain subsides, although the rain beats on. After an hour, I'm feeling the pressure of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, locked in a flat thirty floors up, complaining that they can't go swimming.

After two hours the flat is looking a lot smaller than it did when we arrived. It is also looking trashed. Papers, crayons and clothing are strewn over the floor. I would take recourse to comfort eating, but now there is nothing from our initial supermarket shop apart from a mountain of foul tasting seaweed that Shark is crunching through, and a pack of butter. Neither seems like a viable solution. Give it another fifteen minutes and both will be a godsend. And as for Shark eating those revolting strips of seaweed, tonight I am checking her for fins.

Soon there is only one solution. The TV. We stare blankly at Cantonese language cartoons. I announce it is time well spent because this is a lesson, and will be useful should we need to learn Cantonese. Then Squirrel settles down to write her diary, Shark reads, and Tiger plays with a small pack of cards, donated by an airline, should we wish to teach our children poker in anticipation of a visit to the gambling dens of Macau.

When Dig returns, the day seems to turn. The weather clears, the humidity lifts, the mood lightens, we all become jovial, and we look ahead to escaping the flat and taking the children to the zoo and botanical gardens in the central area.

We're determined to use local transport, so we're avoiding taxis as much as possible. This means tram, footbridges and, in Hong Kong, the mid levels escalators. I have never been in any other city in the world which eschews streets in place of escalators. In Hong Kong at least I can see the need for it, because I do not fancy the thousands of steps up the vertical urban mountainside. And it's something to be proud of. We are welcomed to the Mid Level Escalator Alley like it might be the triumphal arch through to a passage of honour.

The zoological and botanical gardens are a short walk from the escalators. They were set up in 1871, probably for the colonial dwelling Victorians to think fondly of Kew. They must have wandered about the globe with saplings and shovels. They have done a particularly fine job here, although some of the trees are sited on a mountainside slope of a 45 degree angle. Some of the trees are rather helpfully now held in place with a ton of concrete.

Squirrel, Tiger and Shark run up the paths and think it all tremendous fun, finding this vertical garden in a vertical city. So does daddy Dig, mostly because for this zoo there is no entrance charge, so looking at a gibbon is free, and possibly makes up for Grit's en route expensive sandwich, which at a discounted $30 sent daddy Dig's face crumbling in pain. 7/11 do sandwiches for $9 he says. Yes Dig, they do. But they are crap, whereas mine was delicious.

He is not exactly in a position to talk, let's face it. Because when we have oohed and aahed at gibbons, lemurs and raccoons, Dig says now he would like to go souvenir hunting for Shark, who has pocket money to burn. He drags us all to CAC. I choose that verb wisely. Tiger's feet are putting up a shout again once she is removed from the gibbons and the playground, and Squirrel is drawing up a list of complaints, so after another hour beating through the footbridges above the roads, no-one's walking willingly. Squirrel says she won't forgive daddy for taking the steps yesterday when she could see the escalator and he is supposed to be the grown up and what is the point of a blind grown up leading everyone around Hong Kong? After another hour of pounding pavements looking for CAC, Tiger is all for mounting a rebellion and lying down. Shark says she wishes Hong Kong was flat. I am gracious, and don't say anything. Call me diplomatic.

Eventually, when the sky is dark and the skyscrapers bursting out thousands of lights we find the place Dig's looking for. CAC. That's Chinese Arts and Crafts, and it is located in one upmarket shopping mall, the Pacific Place.

Imagine smoked mirrors, shining glass, the click of Blahniks on marble floors, a pianist rippling through gentle notes in brilliantly lit halls. Chanel and Marc Jacobs sit sedately here alongside Armani and Versace.

CAC is located next to Diane Von Furstenberg of New York. Dig's face falls. I laugh, because I am unkind, and my feet hurt. But I do sympathise with Dig's dilemma a little, because he has made a promise to Shark about her pocket money, and the Lonely Planet guide book reads quality bric-a-brac and other Chinese trinkets... an Aladdin's cave of souvenirs. Nick nack shop it is not. There's no price on the jade necklace gleaming under the crystal window lights. I refuse to go in. Not only because of the location and the stock, there's a woman patrolling the door, and she might not let me pass. Shark has $30 to spend on a souvenir, and she's desperate. The cheapest thing Dig can see is around $175,000.

It is a day starting low, but we are determined not to end it there, even though all our feet hurt. Shark is consoled with the memory of a gibbon and the idea of a sit down on the tram back home to Kennedy Town. And tomorrow, we say brightly, it might not rain.

On the streets

It's time to hit the Hong Kong streets.

The first difference I notice from the last time I was here, nearly twenty years ago when Hong Kong was a British colony and handover a long way ahead, is that in these days of Chinese rule, the cleaners are in. I remember grimy, difficult, hazardous streets. You'd be pushed into the oncoming path of a tram by the simple mass of humanity tidal sweeping down the street. It wasn't malice. Or even indifference. It was self preservation. Everyone needed to keep moving because if anyone stood still for more than twenty seconds they'd be bonded to the pavement. Forever. One particular street was especially perilous. It ran with sticky chicken fat, and in the grey humidity of sub tropical weather making it past the chicken shop was a life or death negotiation.

Well there's nothing like that deep grime now. The hazards of moving humans stays the same. We quickly learn to walk building-side. But I don't know whether my perception of cleanliness is because today I am married, have children and Dig is older and seeks certain comforts in life, or in those days we simply inhabited a world of grime as a consequence of trawling low class dives, sleeping meanly, eating poorly and living dangerously without regard for personal safety. I don't know. Maybe I think the big front-of-house public clean up is because of SARS, because of China hosting the Olympics, because too many bankers and accountants sticking to the pavement became a hindrance to international trade. Perhaps someone can help me here.

Shark doesn't feel like she's in exotic climes, that's for sure. She marches along the pavement looking like she owns the place. She's well ahead of the family group, marching on independently and purposefully while Dig pauses to consult the map so we can make it to the Museum of Hong Kong for the orientation lesson without falling in the sea. Shark strides on, casting ne'er a glance behind her. We should all follow her. She looks like she knows where she's going. By the end of the week she may be running the Hang Seng bank. We'll let you know.

Tiger, by contrast, is wilting. Her feet hurt. No, they really hurt. They really really hurt. They hurt so much she is in pain. Did you hear that? PAIN. Let's talk about that, Tiger. Let's go on endlessly about FEETINPAIN and let's not notice the lady in front of you wearing a coolie hat and face mask. That is not interesting at all. Nor is the Star ferry heading towards you which we are going to get to go to Kowloon. Nor is the huge variety of shipping just thrown up in your face and all the Cantonese language singing out around you. None of that interesting but let's talk about FEETINPAIN. Tiger, you do that while I put my fingers in my ears.

That strategy will serve me well for Squirrel, too.She may be suffering culture shock. She denies it. But we can tell. It started off OK. She was asking why? why? everytime we pointed out anything, like rubber necking tourists do – skyscrapers, pavements, road junctions, shop fronts, how they are not pet shops. Then the why? became more insistent. Then it lost the question mark and became downright aggressive. Finally she is clutching her head in her hands and screaming in an agonised cry WHY! She needs only to drop to her knees to complete this image of a soul locked in perpetual torment.

Dig, of course, is master and commander of this fragmented party. He has the map. He also has the rather useful manner of looking like he knows where he is going and what he is doing. This is probably a show of confidence gained from years at a public school where one simply commands resources because they are there and one is here as well, so they are one's by rights to dispose of accordingly.

He doesn't try this technique with old wife Grit of course, because she would get nasty and kick him in the shins, which she would do whether she is standing by Hong Kong harbour or outside the lavatories in Homebase, Bletchley. Old wife Grit, I'd just like to say, is smilingly pleasant, charming, patient, kind and motherly throughout the five hour trek today on Hong Kong's many busy streets. I just thought I'd mention that on my public record.

But master and commander triumphs. He manages to steer this unwieldy and unlikely party forward. Through trams, traffic, across the water, via a pizza eatery in a shopping mall, until he can deposit the happy not-arguing-at-all family safely at the Hong Kong Museum with the inflatable dinosaur head outside.

And thus is our first day. As a result the children will be tested on fossil fish, salt pans, the role of the pawnshop in nineteenth century Kowloon, the Opium Wars, the handover, and how to cross the street safely. Like next time, if you don't want to be shoved into the gutter and crushed to death horribly by a bus, tram, taxi or minibus, wait for the bips.

Probably too good to be true

Our arrival in Hong Kong is seamless. Lounging across the barrier at the arrivals hall is Jaz, an acquaintance of Dig's. This is the first time I've met him, although I've heard about him often.

Jaz is a teenage spirit spilling out the body of a middle aged man, and he suits Hong Kong perfectly. For years he's shuttled between the dark nights of Scandinavia and the bright lights of Hong Kong. Now he's thinking about finally taking the plunge and making that commitment, buying a flat in a prime location on Hong Kong island, taking those vows and staying put because, he adds, behind the glamour, Hong Kong is a filthy mess, and for that, he loves her. I wouldn't trust him. He may back out of the deal.

Jaz greets us warmly, jovially, hugely, with a wry smile, loose limbs and suit, and the minute we put a foot wrong, he'll probably take advantage of us, smiling, and let us know it at the same time. We may hand over several hundred dollars in order to be taken advantage of all over again. He looks at Shark, Squirrel and Tiger and mixes them up, deliberately. He forgets their names, captures their attention by shouting out 'hey team!' and casually offers himself at their disposal as the arbiter for dispute when they see their bedrooms. As he teases them, he charms them, referring to himself as 'that horrible man'. Girls, never trust a lounge lizard. One day you might thank me for that advice as you hang off his words and give up those shy smiles.

Jaz leads us to a smart blue people carrier parked close at the airport and we're helped aboard with bags and kids. Then we start on the journey to the island where we are to stay in a residency block with sweeping views over the harbours heading towards Kowloon.

From the airport I can look at this landscape for the first time in nearly twenty years. There is a new town development close by. Large skyscraping towers rise up, like striding giants flicking a casual fuck you as they pace a steady beating path by the base of a soaring mountain. The road around them curves a broad concrete smile; as we drive, yet more structures sprawl only up and up. We are in the world's most vertical city, where the only reason to come down is so you can go up again.

The territory of Hong Kong, one of the world's greatest ports, is made up of several islands, although you would never think so. We stride the sea distance between them effortlessly by road and bridge. Sweeping into the denser networks of roads alongside vast docks we can see why Hong Kong is one huge product hub. Those items you're using at the breakfast table this morning? We saw them loaded. Millions of them in thousands upon thousands of metal containers, reaching you by sea and road.

The meeting of road and water is part of Hong Kong, but it's made up of the daily work of thousands of people too: we quickly turn into a wide street churning with pedestrians, trams, taxis, noise, lights, and then into a smaller road with bars, shops, folks sitting out on narrow streets on barrels, then again a turn and we find ourselves crossing tram lines and back along the waterside. Suddenly it's a stop and we're out, staring up at the sixty floors that we'll call home for the next week.

The resident block is shining with smoked glass, gold effect mirrorwork, marble style floors. Jazz leads us to the lifts. We have to take the slow lift and not the express lift. The slow lift serves floors to 35; the express lift doesn't stop until floor 36, whooshing past the lower floors because there isn't time to stop. There's no floor 4, 14, 24, anything four. It's bad luck, because in Cantonese the sound of four sounds like death. Three is lucky, is life, and this sound saam is the first word I learn, rippling behind us approvingly from desk staff and doormen.

From the lift, key cards, security codes, more doors. Privacy is hard to come back in this densely packed city of millions of people, but when you have it, keycode it.

The flat is surprisingly spacious and beautiful. Huge picture windows show a panoramic view of Victoria harbour. A fight breaks out immediately between Squirrel, Shark and Tiger when they see their rooms. Far below we can see the harbour sweeping away into the pollution smog and mists over the South China Sea. Skimming over the waters are ferries, tugs, catamarans, loading platforms, fishing boats, a sailing ship, a pirate ship lost from the wrong century. An enormous sea going cruise ship sits motionless while all the water traffic skims and crosses. The churning water behind each vessel leaves long trails of white streaks, like the vapour trail from aeroplanes. The argument over the bedrooms goes on. Jaz laughs and makes it worse by suggesting ever more complex solutions, sometimes requiring staff and men with lorries. Even the children laugh. In the harbour, vessels skim past one another, and by right those ships should have crashed, and everyone on board fallen and lost at sea.

After another twenty minutes I interrupt Jaz's negotiations and broker a fragile peace, at the discreet cost of a packet of chocolate biscuits solely for the girl brave enough to stay in the worst room, perversely with the finest view. But Jaz hasn't finished with us yet. He's taking us out onto the streets to find the supermarkets, and on to the restaurant, where the children can experience their first genuine Cantonese meal, learn to use chopsticks, and discover that fish swimming about in tanks outside do not signal pet shop.

Outside the sky is grey and the air a heavy mix of humidity and pollution. Jaz laughs when I ask him if Hong Kong has blue skies. Three times a year he roars. But mostly it's this. Through the distant mists I can make out lumpen shapes of mountains, but I can't see them clearly. As we walk along the narrow streets, pulsing with colourful shops signs, people moving in and out of bars and shops, brilliant reflections from shining windows, Jaz points out the hanging wires, battered air con units hanging from walls, the sharp twist into a dark cut where no one would accidentally turn. Some of these streets skim round the backs of shops and restaurants; figures emerge carrying bags. They might contain refuse, or they might not. I can see why he feels he might need to stay.

I worry about dinner, but I don't say anything. Years ago I felt Hong Kong was one of the worst places a fussy western vegetarian could eat. I ate McDonald's chips and vowed never to eat a turtle, as if a vow was necessary.

I shouldn't have worried. Jaz introduces us to a Cantonese colleague, who says the children can eat what they like, because she'll sort it. She sits the waiter down at the table with us, and together they make up dishes the vegetarians can eat. Tofu, in moderation, pak choi with garlic, fungi, which is nothing like mushroom, something we are told is sliced lily root, carrots carved into delicate shapes, and cabbage, lots of it, lightly braised. And if all else fails, there is rice. Nothing fails. It is delicious. For now, I am converted. The sweet green bean soup for desert will do us all good assures Jaz. It is an excellent digestif, assures good balance in our spirits, and promotes restful sleep. On that he is right. We fall asleep with the millions of lights shining from tower blocks around us and the harbour still buzzing below. And for today, I am regretting that we stay only for one week.

Here we come

Honestly, Squirrel has ideas above her station. And British Airways might have beds in first class, but down here in economy to Hong Kong, there's folding room only, so tuck in those knees. And stop pointing out that mama has developed an obesity problem on her backside. She knows. Squeezing into that seat may not be possible without emergency liposuction.

Well, apart from the Houdini act required to get in and out of the seats, the twelve hours on board flight is surprisingly pain free.

And hey, the BA cabin staff even manage to pause and smile! You wouldn't believe how that small smile matters after eight hours chained to a seat. Even a false smile will do. And so much better than the glance that says we have better things to do than parade up and down an aeroplane bringing you a Fanta to feed your fat arse. Get it yourself, bloody peasant.

Of course the interest the staff take in whether Squirrel wants a cup of coffee or not might be because the plane is half full, so the under staffing doesn't look quite so apparent.

And the fact that it is half full, for which I guess we can blame the economic downturn, means fat Grit can loll about over two seats, which becomes a positive advantage at bedtime, even though she has to take off her legs and shove them in an overhead locker to spread out on those seats to sleep.

Well airlines, take note. The BA staff might have their upper lips freshly starched every morning but this has to be better than the opening gambit of whadyakidswant? from the Emirates cabin crew when Squirrel was about to drop dead through thirst and neglect.

Marks out of ten to British Airways? Tiger 8/10. Shark 6/10. Squirrel 3/10. That possibly reflects the fact you didn't give her a free upgrade to first class. Your mistake was to let her know it exists.

They are still not coming

Thanks to Aunty Dee being around, the gritlets get to attend some of the lessons that are starting up today, while I run around reminding dancers, sailors and French people about the dates of the lessons we won't make.

Strange that no-one's yet offered me a discount for the lessons we miss this term.

And because I should be doing so much more right now, and will worry whether I have packed the phone charger, so better check that for the eighth time, then here's a photo of the items I have now taken out of the luggage three times and hidden in the cupboard. Only to have them reappear hopefully on the bedroom floor.

The most important piece of luggage

So here is a confession. All the autonomous home educators will hate me. Each time we go away, whether it is Bath or Hong Kong, I put together a project book of tasks, activities and things to do.

I'm offering no defence, bar it may save my sanity while Dig dumps us all in a hotel room one morning while he goes off to work and I think Crikey! What do I do now?

And if you're interested, go here.

Were we smoking weed?

I wake up this morning and I feel totally relaxed. I wish I could say it was a night of passionate hot sex but it was not. It was the result of three hours of laughter with Ellie and Mr W who came by to share a curry with us from the local takeaway.

Aunty Dee ran up and down the stairs checking on the children who were bribed into silence with the boxed set of Dad's Army and twelve Tesco pancakes.

Now close to the bedroom upstairs is a small kitchen with coffee maker for morning coffee and microwave for late night heating of pancakes. Aunty Dee taught Shark to put three pancakes on a plate and punch in fifteen seconds.

So maybe next time I will duct tape the microwave door shut, because fifteen minutes for three pancakes resulted in an awful stench and a kitchen full of smoke.

Despite this, I remain relaxed.