Even better than a walk round a lake

No, I didn't take the little grits for the home ed meet at the lake as promised.

But I did shove a pile of books at them. I said, Oh look! It's South America!

Then I scarpered.

Yes, according to Mrs Gradgrind at the local authority, today I probably failed to meet my heavy duties of education.

In my defence, I became distracted, quite early on.

Once I was off with the fairies, it crossed my mind (again) how school is a ruddy good idea. You get all those hours to yourself! I could write novels, rearrange cushions, conduct affairs, then work part-time at the Co-op. I'm sure I could fit in those activities, 8-4, Monday-Friday.

But it is also true that I cannot feel so bad about abandoning the junior grits to their own devices. Again. The way I see it, I have brought up the offspring to learn independently. In fact, by taking a few days out from my educational duty, I am doing them a favour. Aha! That's it! I am creating the environment for self-guided learning, self-control, and self-discipline.

After just a few minutes, I can see this has worked! One is experimenting with fire. Another is mixing clay paste and smearing it all over her desk, and the third is absorbed in cutting up paper. Finding appropriate activities suited to their age and aptitude! I succeed!

Meanwhile, I am modelling creativity, and how not to run your own meagre business barely covering the cost of the leather.

Example: Someone has inherited their grandmother's recipe book. The handwriting in that book is difficult to read; the spidery copperplate a memory of a gone-before age. But the recipes! Delicious ginger pudding with a dash of magic. Thick custard with a secret pinch of -ssshhh! The sherry trifle, spiced up with the tipple that only grandma can add, because she knows where she hides the bottles. All mixed up with recipes for window cleaning fluid and how to make your own furniture polish. People should have been able to predict the consequences when her eyes went. But with hindsight, it explains why Tinkertop never wanted to eat the custard at granny's house.

But grandma's book betrays its age alongside her tendency to thrift and her routine of poisoning her only grandchild. The spine is thinned, the bookbinding string broken. One cover hangs lose, holding by a thread. This is an old book become more fragile, its papers fading with every turn of the hand. How do you keep alive that which is dying?

So here is a book to start again with grandma's pinch, tipple and dash. The grandchild is all grown up, having survived the grate cleaner, and is ready to rewrite those recipes, in neat and tidy script, in a new family notebook, heading for a new generation.

Only one requirement. There must be a envelope which holds the secret to where the vicar's buried.

Free education

Yesterday I stumbled across a business, selling workshops, classes and clubs for primary home ed. My heart sank. Here is the future franchise model for services to the hard-pressed, home educating parent.

Need Geography lessons? £30 Book online. Add to cart.

I admit. I'm a hairy home ed hippie-leaner. I think, A seven-year old's education? It's all about life. And that's free. Please, people, you do not need to hand over cash to introduce your seven-year old to geography. Hand them an OS map while you go walking in woods, paddling in streams, and finding fungi. Neither, I would argue, is there any pressing urgency to employ tutors for your nine- or even eleven-year old in reading, writing, maths, or working out how to construct a den that stays up. Unless a specific development issue is arising for which you need specialist diagnostic and support, you can forge ahead with learning through living, and picking up a book.

Need Physics lessons? £40 Book online. Add to cart.

Especially at primary. Here, learning comes on the cheap, thanks to ordinary life, and active, messy, risk-taking play. Watch them. Kids learn, discover, explore, and test a theory by throwing their bodies about, on trees, swings, muddy riverbanks or the back of your sofa. Let them do that, and slowly the experiment turns from beating at the physical laws of nature to the inquiries of their imaginations and minds. The grubby mini people become the beautiful grown-up curious thinkers, speculators, creators of stories that begin, what if? The least good at this stage comes from sitting everyone down and teaching them about essay-writing techniques.

Need English lessons? £50 Book online. Add to cart. 

Do not be panicked into paying for it, that's my advice. Reading will grow from snuggling on sofas with books, pointing at signs, sharing puzzles, playing letter games, visiting the library, stacking a bookshelf, seizing the abundant resources we already have - from the street signs round where you live to the ingredients list on that Granola bar. You do not need to pay someone to teach that for you. Neither do you need to pay for your own culture to be told back to you, neither for your family history, the history that's around you, the geography of your home, your neighbourhood, and the tracks through the local woods to the ditch where the yellow iris grow.

Need History lessons? £80 Book online. Add to cart.

You are your child's teacher, and people around you are your teachers. People who work in shops, walk down the High Street, look at your teeth, fix lenses to your face, say hello on the bus, in the shop, at the cinema. They're all teachers. Home educators around you, in your area, around the corner from where you live - they're attuned to identifying the resources and opportunities already here; cohering them, shaping them, and sharing what they have. Usually, they do not require a fee. They give that information readily, in the expectation of solidarity and mutual support, offering to help each other, exchange wisdoms and swap experience, including whether the granola bar works best with golden syrup, or treacle.

Need Science lessons? £100 Book online. Add to cart.

Each of us parents is good at something. One might create storytime, or snap up the theatre seats. Someone offers messy play. A friend suggests the walks, and another wants to run a science co-op. Together, we share. The days are shaped by connections which help build and strengthen this community. Yes, home ed can become extraordinarily well-networked. The parents begin to know each other and the children, they grow up together. The outsider can't see this unknown world; it's maybe sinister, even cultish. Then it's okay to me that we're stereotyped. It's true, I might not bother with the Ladyshave come December, and touch my muesli and you die, but otherwise I understand the stereotype to mean a person outside of this network doesn't understand how this community works.

Need Maths lessons? £100 Book online. Add to cart. 

Mostly, in the home ed world, money doesn't change hands, unless it's for hire of scout hut or art workshop. As the kids grow up and out of primary, we parents huddle together, whisper Exams are coming! Whatever shall we do? Then we group hug, share the wisdoms, read up the syllabus, and choose, or not, maybe out of our skill set and comfort zone, to buy the services of those tutors. We'll divvy up the costs, find a room, sort a group, make it happen. We organise ourselves. To guide us is self-interest, the advancement of our kids, our understanding of interdependence, a spirit of co-operation, and the knowledge that we're doing something useful - we're helping to create a shared endeavour.

Need Art lessons? £100 Book online. Add to cart.

Sure, I pay for stuff, so paying for stuff is not the point when my heart sinks into despondency, as I see that business roll by on screen. My heart sinks because the offering of educational services to home educators looks like a sort of home ed; it feeds a market for home ed; and the business may even go by the name of home ed. You might think, newcomer, arriving into this world, So this is how it's done! Those wily home educators! They book the lessons, make the timetable, buy someone's time, pay by paypal, drive to the classroom, and give away that responsibility for the hours. But that's not the only model. There is this other one, where we parents with our children determine and influence what's happening. We choose the tutors. We have some say in shaping lessons. We take part, keep our children close, and we don't give up on power, or responsibility.

Need French lessons? £150 Book online. Add to cart. 

And there's the other problem. With a business supplying services for the needy home ed market, we watch a subtle change; the ground shifts by which the local council is understanding this strange thing called home education. They speak the language of that business leader. Words where education is not roving through fields, creating that loose connective of parents building learning for themselves, but one that is identifiable via your paypal account, timetabled on a system, organised into disciplines - English, Maths, Geography, History. How easy is it then for the council worker, annually appraised in their jobs by tickable boxes, to hear that inquiry and reply, Home ed? You might like to try the services over here. The lessons come with our blessings.

Need Sports lessons? £200 Book online. Add to cart.  

I accept there are new generations of parents coming into home ed. The landscape is changing. I may be at the dwindling end, while the franchise educational business is looking bright. But when we're gone, we're gone. Us hairy-legged hippies sharing out our home-made Granola bars. How could we ever tell any parent of those primary years, don't fret! You can do home ed yourself! You can take the control, join the co-ops, organise the outing with your own resources, your own contacts, your own freedoms: not for sale, not for purchase, not for profit. Just freedom to learn, not for any price.

Photoblog: Home ed meet

If you're worried about the lack of socialisation, the restrictions on play, the limited opportunities for practical problem-solving, the confinement that inhibits a free-ranging imagination, and the lack of team-building games, then you could do worse than to take Tinkertop out of school, and give her a breath of fresh air in the real world.

Travelling to Betelgeuse

Let this come as a warning to you, or the announcement that if you embark on home ed, you're probably going to have one of the best times of your life.

Home ed can lead you to places you never thought you'd tread. Stars included. Because oh yes oh yes I am now to become a proud member of the local astronomy club.

This is Squirrel's fault. She is the one who has become unsafe around moon orbits.

Me, I know nothing about astronomy. Except the world is peopled by loony tunes, conspiracy theorists, the social misaligned, the painfully shy and people who dress up like Captain Kirk, and I bet most of them are taking photographs of Jupiter.

The geology? I can handle that. It is under my feet and I can see it, pick it up and chew it. And I can bluff my way around limestone for a good eight seconds before I'm busted as a complete fraud. That record I am proud of. Okay, don't ask me any tricksy questions involving millions of years and marble, then expect an informed answer. You might get a blank stare and slight dribble, but let's say that if I am caught in conversation with someone who actually knows what they're talking about, then I can do good! So long as I make that conversation come in at 7.5 seconds.

But astronomy? No no no no. Not even for one second. Mention a constellation, and watch the eyes glaze while the zombie brain leaks out the ears. It doesn't matter how many times I'm told. Star stuff does not go in. After years of tuition from Big Bro, the one who has his head in the stars, I remain at a level which begins, There are stars! They're so pretty! Look how they twinkle! Names? What, like Patrick Moore and The Saucepan? Now that is enough. I need to lie down somewhere warm and recover.

Which is an odd way to begin my career as an amateur astronomer, but there we have it. Home education leads you to places you never thought you'd go. In my case, to a large room once a fortnight to meet a strange assortment of people. One of them shows us a picture of his breakfast and says M2 Ib is his friend.

Let's look on the bright side. He hadn't fixed on plastic ears to look like Mr Spock.


Discovering my great ignorance, starting simple.

Careers advice

The Geology Festival! Prompted by Squirrel, who fancies a career in geology. If it means someone pays her to map a Philippines beach.

I totally support her. I already bring to her chosen area my great swells of parental enthusiasm and a pile of rocks on the hall landing. Given that formidable start, I'm sure I can be just as good as a careers adviser at school.

This is my advice.

Get to know the people in the world you want to enter. This is what I sagely tell Squirrel, my mini proto-geologist. Half the finding-out work will be done for you.

This is not a case of who you know, not what you know, this is common sense. I tell Squirrel, go mix with them, and suss them out. See if they are the people for you. And at your age, they will look kindly on you, and talk to you, probably in a slightly patronising manner, but this can help you learn about stuff they know, find out what lives they expect to lead and what sort of people they like to be with. You merely have to listen. If you then decide their love is your love, these people are your people, it will make your progress much easier. As you travel through your chosen field, your professional will become your personal, and I bet you end up marrying it. Trust me.

This, then, is the wisdom after a day-long slog through the Geology Festival at UCL. I offer this to all. Not shale, lava and sandstone, but four main geological human types.

The elderly gentlemanly scholars. These mild-mannered rock watchers live in geological time. Their backs are bent from years of angular pebble sorting and their speech is inevitably soft and gracious. They are used to hours of soothing discourse with woolly mammoths. Instantly recognisable, the elderly geologist has spent so long studying glacial fluvial that the white cap upon their heads has actually become real snow. They now enjoy their remaining centuries classifying minute specimens of upper, middle and lower chalk, while hand-writing the labels because the typewriter age passed them by.

The middle-aged dynamic! Looking like 1970s sociology lecturers, the present incarnation of trend-setting researching geo-types hang around with their other middle-yeared chums, the Raiders of the Lost Ark look-a-likey archaeologists. Maybe allowing into their gang the cool Cox-styled physicists who whisper stars, moons, and planet earth to all the groupies. Yes, these are the people driven to show that granite is saucy! Limestone is sexy! Conglomerate is trending on Twitter! (But Woman of the Shires beware. The social rules of the Old Guard still apply. No throwing your panties about when Prof Iain Stewart takes to the lectern.)

The rocks and minerals sellers. Geology is global employment and geology is a grand-scale business, how true that is. At one end it's oil-gas-and-frack-it with side-dealing in government-to-government mining, drilling and rare-earth-mineral-contract swapsies, and at the other end it's flog you a bit of string with a lump of coloured quartz hanging off it. The sellers are everywhere, pimping rocks and adding two zeroes to the price. Beware. They often travel in disguise, and may wear suits. (However if Squirrel manages to get herself a job exploiting oil, blowing up rocks, or mapping volcanoes, then I might change my tune about some aspects of this exploitative, environmentally-suspicious business. Especially if it comes with a free two-week visit to see her in the Philippines.)

The enthusiasts. Aha! Fumbleinthedark amateurs like Grit! People who look at a rock and see not science and cash but slow-played dramas of permanence and transience; whispers betwixt mountains and sand grains; poetry of earth and space. Providing much-needed consolation and repair to the damaged human soul. Warning! Thousands of us rock-mad enthusiasts roam your land, thieving your craggy hillsides, pocketing your pebbly beaches, and scouring your gravel paths for crinoids. Then we drive carfulls of our loot home, where we dump mounds of it in the hall, up the stairs, all over the floor and on the windowsills.

See, how helpful I am, sorting out the social milieu of the geo-types for Squirrel's practical employment! I bet this is much better careers advice than offered in school! You like reading? Hmm. How about a librarian.*

Now have a tooth. The tooth is from some prehistoric marine thing. Shark bought it today after syphoning several hundred pounds of cash out my bank account to pay for it. She is so in love with its deep sea echoes, you might feel the love busting out the monitor screen.

*The complete advice to me, offered in 1974.

Now I have to rearrange the furniture

Photographically, I agree. It isn't much. But it is the only record I have. That, and my ailing memory, which is now vague enough to fail to recall which day it is.

Things are looking bleak for me, mind-wise.

This morning I put the plastics recycling into wash cycle Economy Cotton. It was only when I was alerted to the little porthole window by the thump-thump-thump did I see a shampoo bottle, a tinfoil tray and a cake base enjoying their 30-degree cotton wash. For a moment I wondered how on earth they got in, before it dawned on me there was only one agent.

It is not, I am sorry to say, an isolated incident. My facial recognition system is breaking down too. I continue to mix up Shark and Tiger. This morning I accused Tiger of wearing Shark's clothes.

I do not know on what to blame this amnesia, apart from a short-circuit in the short-term memory. That, and trying to do too many things at the same time.

It set me thinking, anyhow, about how I set myself a modest goal then simultaneously set about frustrating my own attempts to achieve it. Like chronicling the days while trying to live them. Or fetching coal while holding a stack of Shark's freshly laundered trousers over one arm. These are not sensible approaches to multitasking.

Anyway, amnesia and confusion are not what I want to record. It is this isolated incident and today's home educational triumph, the subject of the photo, above. It is Creatures of the Night, courtesy of a local wildlife watch.

I love this group. One of the leaders has barely enough wildlife knowledge to distinguish bird from sheep and animal dead or alive but she maintains a wonderfully infectious bounce that makes you want to go Who cares! We're all outdoors in the dark, falling into ditches and walking into trees! The other leader imposes more stability and order, mostly by striding about in a manly fashion and pointing. This evening he is elevated to Supreme Lord of All, thanks to procuring what he tells us are 'military-spec night vision scopes' worth several thousand pounds, so give them back. The kids are thrilled to get their hands on these, scanning the treetops for a glimpse of green pigeon or the flash of a rabbit's arse as it high-tails under a bush.

It is not the point that we can see these creatures during the day, nor that I wonder what educational content there is with a leader who never knows whether it's a bush or a tree, not even that Creatures of the Night signally fails to offer what I would consider suitable night-time creature material - werewolves, vampires, zombies, the protection of an alert naked man, that sort of thing - the point is, er, um, the point is, er, actually I can't quite remember what the point is, but I am sure whatever was intended to be the focus of this post, that it was very, very good.

And look, we went on a walk in the dark and I took a picture of it, above.

Let's all have a lovely time in London

Time for that routine miserable experience, the one that transports Woman from Shires to Central London, the one called train travel.

Of course we miss the educational workshop. The one I'd booked for at the National Portrait Gallery in Central London, going on right now for home ed kids learning about the history and art of slavery.

On realising the London Midland trains are cancelled cancelled cancelled  I remain firm. I am not a Woman of the Shires who simply gives up on her Big Trip Into Town! I bundle the kids in the car, don't make time for the fuel tank, and race down the M1 on a doomed cannonball run, given that the speed restrictions are still in force and everyone else is doing the same so there's a queue at Junction 14.

But the indomitable spirit in Woman of the Shires is never crushed! Well, until an empty fuel tank and a digital car clock beating a merciless way onward both combine forces. When 12.30 finally pings at me in what I take is a mocking sort of way, since the workshop starts at 1pm, I finally concede defeat. The only way I can realistically make it is to turn the earth backwards on its axis and fill up with fuel before I start.

I briefly consider the logistics.

Then I ring the organiser from this layby. It is somewhere outside Stanmore. Here it is, the site of my ignominious withdrawal. I am still trying to hold back the tears.

I apologise about the angle. Blame my head, leaning on the window.

But how the spirit remains! Even though the body gives up! In the face of monstrous experience, I have just booked another one. Another home educating workshop in Central London.

I can do the only thing I ever do, when I know a train must sensibly be involved - one that will transport me and my brood to an exact place and a time - I must cross my fingers and hope. Hope that the trains run, that there are no signalling failures, no engineering works, no breakdowns, no points failures, no queues at Watford; that there exist supplies of rolling stock and staff to drive them, that the right type of non-slipping tracks with the right sort of rain, leaf, snow, hail can be enjoyed, and that on the day of travel no-one wants to end it all, yes, and someone at the ticket office too, someone who looks like they give a toss.

I hate the way I am made to do all this, of course, by London Midland and all the train operators, the lords of which I bet travel everywhere by chauffeur-driven car. While they sit back and enjoy the view, I stand on a cold platform and watch my knuckles grow white. The journey they give me is only one of hope - hope trains will turn up, hope it will all work, and hope things don't break down.

Hope is the very worst ride of all. Hope is worse than despair. Hope is a more extreme pain than despair. Hope means there is no plan, no strategy, and no way out.

But we redeem the day, of course we do, because we are Grit, and gritlets. We have steel for blood, brass for neck, and personally speaking, a fine selection of teeth made of metal. Faced with disaster, I pluck triumph, and I drive to Hampton Court instead.

Here the gritlets are firmly on Cloud Nine. We may have not made it to the art that is slavery, but we have the Members Rooms of Hampton Court.

How we are charmed by the staff in the Members Room, and by the rooms of the Members Rooms! How wonderful are the Members Rooms! They become the only topic of conversation for the next eight hours. How welcoming are the staff! How lovely it is they have hot chocolate! How brilliant it is there are books! And seats! A sofa! Tables! It is like having your own front room at Hampton Court! Let's all go and live in the Members Rooms!

So to the staff in the Members Room at Hampton Court, a big heartfelt thank you for turning a day round from the Badlands of the Hopeless to the Elysian Fields of Rapture.

 Satisfied customer, not moving anytime soon.

Now, to London Midland, no thanks at all.

Fireworks

Okay, I might have been a little spoiled with the last fireworks I watched, I accept that.

When the fireworks of New Year cracked open the dragon's coat-tails, from which point the sky plumed with curling smoke and firecracking sparkles, with us warmed and fed in a beautiful apartment overlooking Hong Kong harbour, yes, okay, I was a little spoiled with the firecrackery show, watching the night that said hello to the Year of the Dragon.

Now, staring at Guy Fawke's end marked by bursting colours, over too soon, makes me feel a pang which tells me I miss friends; it hollows out a little bit of me, knowing time and life passing, and I can't jump over space and land to smile and hug hello, face to face.

But Tiger, she is not not sorry to be here. Not at all. She is delighted, jump for joy, for here is home and here are the fireworks of Smalltown.

I love having children

There is a fridge just off my bedroom.

(Do not ask. This is the House of Grit. All things are possible, and many are probable. Any normal day may begin with a public demonstration of earlobe nerve-endings supported with a biological teaching head, and end with a procession of people dressed as trees. It has been done before.)

Anyway, the fridge stopped working. It lost all sense of its own temperature, and went straight to freeze.

Thus providing me with a freezer! Just off my bedroom.

(A freezer is far more useful to me, because I can freeze soup.)

Some time elapsed between the many uses of my bedroom (sealing up the rat hole and the construction of a naiad costume*). But it is from this period that I began to notice a most peculiar smell. Not the ordinary aromas of my boudoir. (Fragrant lavender scented linen! A fresh spray of cologne! A touch of Mitsouko parfum, if you're buying!) This smell was more - hmmm - how would you put it? Melted plastic and rotting vegetable.

After a great deal of sniffery exploration, I tracked the source of this particular complex aroma. My helpful child - how helpful they can be! - had switched off the power to my soup freezer in the mistaken belief they were switching off the glue gun!

(This will explain a few things, I feel. Although possibly not the glue gun.)

And so this is my diary entry for today. It has been a great success. I have excavated four moulded bowls of soup from a broken fridge off my bedroom, and peeled a large blob of melted glue off the wall.


*Naiads.

A little knowledge

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

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

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

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

The MOOC is coming

Yes I'm all fired up with the language of the MOOC.

No, I don't know what it will mean for home ed, apart from the fact that the MOOC bears a shape and a touch like a learning of the future - it sounds and feels like some learning we do now - and it places the Victorian factory/school model safely in the past. And accreditation. The certificate. For that, I suppose we'd have to get out the credit card.

Maybe next time

The children are taken off me by the Hat.

Today she comes, breaking into my life like summer sunshine on a winter's day, waving tickets for The Adventures of Sancho Panza. And off she whirls, towing Tiger and Squirrel, to entertain them elsewhere, feed them, amuse them, and bring them home, late.

Without another person in the house to lead me, cajole me, demand of me, and tell me, I am left to my own ways.

The house is quiet. It will be quiet for hours. I prowl around, examining the rooms, watching how objects are placed about me. I pick up coats thrown over chairs. I pick up books from floors. The sewing on a table, left discarded, I wrap up, to put away. Underneath, lies Squeaky Mouse. I take him to the toy box. Toy box. Too big for the space. How it occupies all the room! I wish it were gone. I poke my fingers inside. Stuffed with random cuddly toys. No-one plays with these, surely not now. I look at the wall behind, and ponder how it would beckon me with a smart grown-up bookcase, the too-big toy box gone, along with the guardians that hang over it; two broad shelves filled with objects that once amused children.

I begin moving furniture in my head, exploring what if, entertaining dark and dangerous thoughts. While my children are gone, I could snap my fingers and make this happen, change that, rearrange those, bring in these, hide away that. The toy box I would give away. Some other family, whose floor is cluttered and scattered with cuddly toys and no-where to hide them. You need this wooden box.

From its cuddly-filled insides, I pick up a soft puppet bird. He can go. But at the time, oh he was a find! You can make his wings flap and his beak crow! And Pooh Bear. He is bent on one side; one ear flat against his head, one ear picked up; a leftover shape where Tiger in her toddler bed cuddled him so tight, crooked under her right arm, fierce in sleep, holding on to what is hers. Pooh bear. I wouldn't get rid of Pooh Bear. Shark's hippo? He can stay, too, only because she might plead. Remember how he arrived, wrapped in a box, under a tree? The wish fairies had lifted him from an African river but had grown tired of his belly-aching complaining, so they abandoned the ingrate, dropped him on the path, and flown away to transport pelicans to Japan. We took him in. You never know when those wicked fairies tire of their amusements, to dump their unwilling carriages on your doorsteps. But the excitement of that day! And Squirrel's cat. Green eyed cat, looking ridiculous in a home-made knitted skirt and matching hat. I shall keep that as punishment for the cat. My kookaburra, the one that laughs, well of course he can stay. And Squeaky Mouse. Just for now, while the house is quiet, I'll put them back in the toy box, the one that's in the way.

Please get the evening done quickly

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theatre friends

We take our seats for Timon of Athens at the National. That play with Simon Russell Beale about the convenience of friendship, the social networks we stitch together for the pursuit of self-interest, and how to avoid the accountant, thus putting off the inevitable nemesis for as long as possible.

Squirrel immediately points out there are no children in the audience, none at all, except her and Tiger. It's true. Maybe parents think that Timon of Athens doesn't offer anything for the ordinary youth; there's no smart-talking lion or exploding building.

I scrutinise the audience, partly wondering what type of people choose to see Timon of Athens, and partly hoping I will see someone I know, so I can wave.

This is absurd. Especially how I peer at the rows of faces, when I know for sure there will be no-one I recognise. I don't have the type of friends who take their seats at the National at 7.20. They certainly don't wear dark suits and support women on their arms, women who wear heels and sway gently.

Thinking about it, I have never seen anyone I knew in the theatre-going audience; no-one I can wave to, and no-one I can't. Once - I forget which play - someone pointed out John Cleese in the stalls. Would that count as recognising someone, even someone I couldn't wave to and who wouldn't respond if I did? And in 1982, a crowd of us went to see When the Wind Blows, except someone was sat, bang in the middle of our booked seats. Obviously I chucked them out! I only paused to wonder why the rest of my party stayed huddled together in the aisle, whispering and pointing. Neil Kinnock? Well I didn't recognise him. If he wants to be leader of the Labour Party he should bloody well not inconvenience your ordinary theatre-goer, that's all I can say.

Anyway, a little bit of me is wistful. I wish I did see someone. I wish I could wave to people I knew. Only from the people I know, they would look weather beaten, run in, and dressed in old clothes. Maybe smelling a little of Linda McCartney's sausages, possibly even sporting a dribble of ketchup down the left side of their shirts.

I think I should start finding theatre friends. Ones I can air kiss and wave towards. I resolve, I will begin waving to people I don't know, and see if they wave back. Then I will choose someone's arm to lean on and sway, even though it's only 7.20, and I would find out if they held me, or let me fall.

Weaseling

Shark is out all this week. She is weaseling with the Woodcraft Folk.

I am not even making that word up. Shark tuts and says Don't you know what weaseling is? She adopts the scornful and contemptuous tone you might reserve for anyone you wanted to cut off socially, forever.

So I learn what weaseling is. It is squeezing your face, gut, and bum through tiny cracks between rocks and hoping you don't get stuck or explode. Apparently it is very popular. Except with the morbidly obese and pregnant ladies. They don't find it so much fun.

I tell Shark I could be quite good at weaseling. Only yesterday I had to worm my way through your father's office. I had to reach the fireplace without getting stuck between the accounting pile (1986-1987) and the pile of manuscripts submitted by the academic elite living in the world of commas (2005-2006).

Shark lets out a little snort.

What does she know! Last time she visited papa's office was 2010, and it's got a lot worse since then. Excavating a two metre mountain of rock-hard paperwork, concreted together by a solid mix of mould, spider steel, petrified dust and inertia is no mean feat. And when I did arrive at the fireplace, guess what I found? A bookcase! It contained stuff like Tre Utomnordiska Perspektiv, the 7010CT User's Manual, and a folder of letters from an increasingly shouty publisher about a boring arse of a book (print run 250) only promised for December 1987.

Shark says she thinks I have a point. Indeed I have! Papa says he hasn't time to do the deep pile excavation because he has to look at it and decide. Well, it might come to court. Hmmm. I suspect he is merely driven by Mr Trebus psychology to pile everything up, floor to ceiling.

Shark says maybe we could all set out for a weasel in daddy's office when she comes back. I think that sounds like an excellent idea. I could set the weasels going at one end, and see if they make a complete circuit to come out alive! Shark is quite enthusiastic about that. She says she will have learned some techniques for extracting her left leg from the gap under the table and her backside from between two chair legs.

Yes, I say, let's do that! Wouldn't it be a lovely surprise for papa when he comes home, to know that we have been resourceful in his absence, solved all his problems in one fell swoop, and turned his office into a lucrative theme park, Weaseling Wonderworld!

Bed end

I dismantle Squirrel's old bed and give it to the Aged. I am sure they appreciate it.

Squirrel, on the other hand, does not.

I don't know how any other parent manoeuvres themselves in this delicate job of replacing and exchanging kid stuff, but I do it terribly. There are tears all round, so the process obviously requires diplomacy of a sort which I cannot boast at all.

For example, I assumed that by dismantling Squirrel's old bed (shoved in spare room, not used for five years), dragging the dismembered bed parts to noisily clatter across a kitchen floor and prop them in the hall where we all fall over them, then wangling them through the front garden and into the boot of the car before driving off with the whole lot bouncing and crashing to a Help the Aged Furniture Warehouse, well, it sort of answers that question Are you going to put my bed back?

Er, no, Squirrel. Did you not see me take the corner in our 5-foot 11-inches car with your 6-foot bed frame squished against my left ear?

Now, since you've burst into tears of disappointed realisation that the words I am going to dismantle your bed really weren't my cunning metaphor for Would you like another hot chocolate? maybe I should go and retrieve it, huh? And bring its new occupant with it. Because I am sure your delightful bed will have a new owner before I get there. It is a lovely bed and you never trashed it. Okay, not too much, which is why it's sure to have a low price to convince some lucky bed-seeker that this bed is, indeed, the bed of their dreams.

It is not the stuff of my dreams. It is occupying good bookshelf space and creating an annoying nuisance and no-one has chosen to sleep in the bed or the room for five years. Aunty Dee even prefers the flooded cellar, the suicidal mice, and the Thomas the Tank Engine bedsheet.

So to this particular lump of non-desirable furniture breathing a sigh of death into the entire room, I can only clap my hands and say Good Riddance.

Squirrel is not in any way moved by this argument. But seriously I thought I had won her last weekend to my master plan to turn this pointlessly small room into a delightful bijou reading room and study. Suitable for - let's say - any child who happens to want a quiet place to concentrate on a few IGCSE geography exam papers which might fall off the printer. I remind her that only last week she agreed to choose the cushions.

Squirrel stomps off upstairs, yelling that it is her bed and no-one is ever going to have it, and she is never using that room ever ever EVER so there. I might turn it into my S&M room then, see if anyone minds that.

But this is the problem with Squirrel. Just when you think she agrees to something she brings you to confused bewilderment with a question like Can I put strawberry sprinkles on it? Then you are back to square one.

Well, she wins in a way, sort of, because when I get home from delivering the bed of misery to the fortunate Aged I discover, in my back jeans pocket, all the bolts to put the thing together.

Let's dance

Come on, it's how I enjoy myself. The kids, on the other hand, enjoy themselves not by photographing jiving trees, but by dragging the forest about and sorting it into sacrificial piles. I am told this is called den-building.

But it's true to say, that no matter how much we both enjoy tramping the winter woods, we're unlikely to be tree-wise enough to correctly eye-spy that ash dieback.

How you know they grow up

Acquired an extra child for our night's nesting.

This is the sleepover culture. At first, I was absolutely terrified by this swap-your-child madness. But now I am a big fan. You merely hand your child to other people, and you get to enjoy a quiet evening!

Of course there is the other side of the equation. They hand you theirs.

This used to be the moment when I froze in terror. What if I did something unforgivable by accident? Like feed the treasured offspring my poisoned dinner? Abandon them in a field because I only ever count to three?

Then I realised I was approaching this problem all wrong. On the arrival of the night-nesting child, I merely had to smell like a tramp, behave in an embarrassing manner, and look like I hadn't slept in a week. My own children, mortified by my hideous presence, would rush to protect their overnight friend, hurrying them far away from my endless capacity for embarrassment. Thus I recommend my tactic! On many a happy evening, my adopted overnight visitor has fled from my vicinity, spoken to me in hushed terrified tones and, in one case, made their own den where they became totally invisible to my fearful gaze. Success!

But times they are changing, and I know it on this night when I take the four bodies on our annual turn for the Hallowe'en ritual come early; when the Parks staff accompany a local theatre group to dress up as ghouls, witches and wolfmen on a guided story walk through the local wood.

Within seconds, I realise I need not have come. The bodies are becoming teenagers. Now I am not simply embarrassing, an object to be avoided at all cost, I am inconsequential. I am invisible. The nearly-teens want to giggle and shove each other around without any adult presence at all, not even a looming one in the corners. I could have dropped them at the start of the after-dark capers, then picked them up at the end.

So that is my lesson for today. Their independence is my independence. I shall leave the nearly-teens to do their own stuff. And on spooky story night, the corpses can do my job for me, while I push off to the pub.

Death dealing

I learn today how there is yet a thread of woolly feeling not yet cut away from the dead Grit heart, because by 5pm I am brought to tears by a paralysed mouse. Not any old mouse obviously - not one that shiftily slips around the skirting board after nightfall, finds the trap and swiftly snaps out of time and place - this is Pet Mouse, two years in, two years of care, all come to the inevitability of the dead end.

In my defence, I wasn't expecting it. I was just dropping Squirrel off to her sleepover. Instead of the normal greeting (cup of tea, celebratory game of Cluedo), I was met by a family coming-to-terms with a tiny skinny bag of inert fur, a feeble grasping claw, and one glassy eye.

I cried. It wasn't the mouse. It was watching how the family household stopped while San held that ridiculous scrap of next-to-nothing. That possibly touched my weakness. How humans can care, tenderly, over life's tiniest scraps. Maybe I had forgot how people did that. San cradled the mouse in her cupped hand. Mouse was wrapped in a lint duster, warmed in case the chill shivered on her bony body. She lay with one paw held out and one blind eye staring. Her live side twitched and her good eye blinked. San stroked her carefully, nose to tail with her thumb, and held a pipette of water to the tiny whiskery mouth.

When I come home I watch Sparky, the Grit family hamster, here under my disapproving gaze. She is industriously spinning on her wheel, happy on her rounding road to nowhere.

How I'm not looking forward to that day of Pet Hamster Death. How I hope, when it comes, that I never did succeed in cutting off that woolly touch of care and understanding for all tiny things beloved by children. I pray I don't emerge that morning, late, too many unobtainables jumbling against my over-ambitious to-do list, to thoughtlessly blurt, 'What? The hamster's not moving? Must be dead. Leave it in the cage and I'll chuck it in the garden later.'

Learning and play; one and the same

Yay! No obnoxious arguments, no bad-tempered grudge matches with weapons, no precarious, sulky, half-brokered truces sure to be broken when one side of the army breathes at the other.

Nothing today but the pleasing sound of play with Viking Voyages and the quiet triumph of mapping the Lesser Antilles. (And the scratching of Shark's quill pen. That, too.)

Thank you, Ellen McHenry!