World Museum, Liverpool

Who can failed to be charmed by a name such as World Museum?

It tells me so much about Liverpool. Like, here is Liverpool. Beyond Liverpool? Who knows! Let's just call it the world. Now what's the point of it? Everything you need is right here! In Liverpool! Why do you want to go about concerning yourself with the world?

I went with low expectations, admittedly. The website makes it look like a hangout for toddlers. When I expressed interest in visiting, someone casually said with a curled lip, Oh that place? It's for kids. And yes, the stargazing section was busting with the under-10s.

Creating a campaign aimed at the kid market sells themselves too short. It not only implies the wider (and older) audience is indifferent, it allows some sections of the world to escape attention. But this is so wrong! You should see their Africa section. It has some serious collection and a lot of nkisi. But it was totally empty, apart from one happy toddler and a patient papa.

Fortunately, I messed up the camera setting and by a happy mix of incompetence and random button pressing came away with a lot of brooding photographs in expressive film noir.

Here, enjoy.

Don't ask me where my kids went. All I can say is that I was lost in Africa; the world also offered stars, fish, and probably somewhere, a horse.

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

The Walker Art Gallery is fantastic. Go there.

I love it so much, I can pick fights with it.

First because the place shuts at 5pm. How can you shut an art gallery like this at 5pm? Isn't that RIDICULOUS. And it's no good telling me the office workers should visit at weekends. NO. People should be in and out of this place every evening to restore some sanity and balance in their urban lives.

Look, when I am in charge of everything, this is one of the first things I am going to change. Compulsory visits to your most excellent art galleries.

By the way, when that commandment comes in, you can give the Tate a miss. They have the usual boring one-dimensional way of seeing the world. It's all brains-hit-by-hammers stuff there. Yawn yawn yawn. Come to the Walker art gallery instead. They have everything.

Yes, it is exactly that sort of quirky, reverent and irreverent mix that most appeals to art critic Grit. The Walker collection hits this line brilliantly; it finds those works that engage with historical traditions of art and simultaneously plays with the cultural norms, assumptions and expectations these works offer to surprise and subvert. Perfect.

Kids move between a superb collection of the Pre-Raphaelite Bros to bandaged sacks of plastic rubbish.

Personally, I am not a big fan of the plastic rubbish brigade, although I like to see various approaches to art brought together so they can knock against each other. On that score, Bill Viola's Observance is beautifully placed.

Look, here's my final point about the lovely wit and style evident in the Walker collection. They even have the one with the teenage Jesus, all sulky and difficult while he's being told off.

So the commandment from Grit is that you must visit the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. By Order.

And take the kids. It is not an intimidating place and no-one hated me. In fact all the staff ignored us, while we carried on pointing, photographing, arguing over the ipad, reading aloud, talking about the art, laughing, thinking, and thoroughly enjoying the visit.

Thank you, Walker. Now open your doors for late evening viewing and I'll be your slave forever.

That was a day

Say what you like about Thatcher, she did me a favour.

There I was, providing my junior Shark, Squirrel and Tiger with a lecture on 1980s British social and political history, introducing them to the Toxteth riots, which naturally segued into an explanation of Thatcher Thatcher Milk Snatcher, took a diversion into unionised labour, fell into an extended riff on the place of women then and now, before finishing with a replay of The Specials Ghost Town, and WALLOP! I find the very subject of my educational endeavours, she died.

Bang on cue. My extended lecture on the 1980s no longer 'mother wittering on again', but suddenly relevant to us all, and this time not for my happy reminiscences about my sticky-up Thompson Twins hairstyle (which totally suited me, if you're wondering).

Tiger, Squirrel and Shark, they looked at me with a new and quiet awe. Mama had clearly brought about this state of affairs through educational mind power alone. If she can do that to ex-prime ministers, what can she do to us?

At the very least, my children, place you in one of the key areas of the country when you can honestly answer that question, Where were you when Thatcher died? with 'In Liverpool, home of anti-Thatcher riots, place of Militant Tendency, above a pole dancing club, where we can listen to the explosions and cheers of the street revelers below'.

I'm assuming this sequence of events is pure coincidence by the way, and not the power of the spoken word, carried on a special poisoned air, flying from this place to hers, to knock her sideways. But I'm not telling the kids that.

For me, I don't know whether to punch the air or continue my lecture with a sober addendum on woman power. At this point, I can't tell the little grits whether Thatcher saw the inevitable changes that were coming to the UK's industrial heritage and simply precipitated them, or whether she caused the misery and grief and mayhem out of blind ignorance and willful spite aimed at male-dominated union power. Maybe both.

But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have certainly had an educational time of it. Not only have we delivered the death of a most controversial ex-prime minister, we've renegotiated the Slavery Museum and the Maritime Museum, both of which bring an odd tangential support to an impromptu politics lesson while we explore the world in terms of power and control, resistance and defiance.

And thanks, Liverpool. You're certainly making this outing one to remember.

Liverpool!

Yes, Liverpool! That's why we're here, to see Liverpool!

For the educational preparation, I've read aloud to the little grits the poignant and funny Twopence to Cross the Mersey by Helen Forrester; pointed to the slave trade which is obviously not the same as please tidy your room; I've instructed my trusting little charges in how to set a milk float alight and wheel it towards the enemy (Toxteth 1981); and I've navigated once again those subjects which are so routinely on the curriculum of our home ed experience - power, politics, authorities, and responsibilities.

And culture, of course, I have talked about that because Liverpool is the capital of culture 2008.

It is shopping paradise, isn't it? I spend a good hour scuttling between Lush, News from Nowhere community bookshop on Bold Street, and the cash point, on the notional idea that 'I am equipping us with what we need to stay in our chi-chi apartment'. This actually seems to come down to a bag of glitter bath bombs, a stack of radical books, and a postcard of a cat.

But then it is all go, go, go! On Grit's excursions you have no time to rest your feet! Let's go on a tour of Liverpool!

First stop, place of holy pilgrimage, the Cavern Club! I would like to tell Shark, Tiger and Squirrel how this famous location is a must-visit for today's music scene in Liverpool.

I cannot. First I have to explain about the Beatles (met with indifference), then I have to explain why the last band I can find playing here are a sad disappointment to my fancies about a world-class venue for upcoming talent (Chas 'n' Dave).

Okay, forget the Cavern Club. The architecture!

Anyone interested in Georgian, Victorian gothic, Arts and Crafts, renovated docks, and objects of wonder perched atop magnificent late nineteenth century structures, aka the liver birds, then Liverpool is your destination.

Although the docks were bombed in the second world war, plenty of solid buildings remain in the city, so thank the Lord that Liverpool was too poor to be able to afford to knock them down. The town has a collection of superb late Victorian buildings and you should all visit to applaud them, just in case some mad town planner thinks it would be a great idea to open development and build a shopping centre and car park instead.

Now it's the Slavery Museum to discover how the city became rich; how Liverpool supported the confederacy in the American Civil War; and how Britain took the role of the maritime police in abolishing the slave trade, making us look suspiciously like we were finding new excuses to beat the shit out of the French and anyone else we could find to lever moral, political and economic advantages.

But we're not finished yet! Yay for the UK Border Museum! Down in the basement to the Maritime Museum, so not far to walk. Yes, it is a bit preachy and one-sided, but what did you expect? It offers interesting factoids to store away for later use.

The other view of Liverpool I note is the urban style. Obviously I cannot go round photographing the ladeez in the street unless I want a split lip, but I can confide there is a lot of animal print about, plastic and nylon leopard in particular, plus a great deal of tottering in Hong Kong-style footwear, i.e. fashion items for which even a season is too long. This fashion season, probably all two days of it in Liverpool, is platform soles, studs, spikes, and seven-inch heels. I am in awe of those.

I tell my big Grits that Liverpool could just bring about a change in Mama Grit. After all, the leopard print is not the garment of a down-beaten woman. It is the choice of a matriarch, a signal of the don't mess with me mindset and a flag of defiance to age and circumstance. Sounds just about right.

Clearly I should be single (and male)

Arrive at the city centre apartment in Liverpool. Conveniently sited over a pole dancing club and a late night girly bar.

The apartment is designed as if I am a chic young urban professional, and I like to stay in places that are black, white, steel, with television sets bolted onto the ceiling.

I think, with this interior design and the proximity to the pole dancing club, if I am to properly enjoy this apartment, I should be 25, footloose, and have a penis. As things stand, I am 52, bullied by three kids, and connected to a gas hob where I can forever cook a hearty pasta dinner.

Anyway, see for yourself. I can't stop gawping in horror. There is a silver animal's head over the kitchen sink. Could be buffalo. The word steer keeps coming into my mind, alongside images of cowboys strangely dressed like yuppies and memories of Habitat circa 1982. We all look at the head incredulously for a while, wondering why, then Shark announces there are no bookcases in the flat but she has counted three television sets. The young man showing us the apartment confides that it is his favourite place and he loves it here!

We are so clearly not the target residents - aspirant urbanites, hen ladies and stag buddies - but I ignore that to tell everyone how we can enjoy many aspects of staying in this city centre apartment! Even though we haven't a penis. After all, it is very chi-chi these days to live in urban style over a brothel.

Then I spend the next hour unpicking myself from that remark via awkward questions regarding poles. I end up explaining that you must have very strong stomach muscles to hang onto a pole and, inspired by this experience, I might try it for myself down the gym.

Apart from the steer and the pole dancing and the need to cook a hearty pasta dinner, the gentleman seeing us into the place is so very sure we will like it, that he almost suggests he will kill himself if we fail to adore it all. He is so attentive to any possible requirements I have, that for a moment I think he might be flirting with me, except I am old enough to be his great-grandmother. And I am sure I remember his zoot suit the first time around.

He fusses at me, clucking about how wonderful is the stylish apartment with the 2,000 television channels and the fantastic jacuzzi and the discounts he can procure - we only have to ask! - that I forget to check whether the urban style comes with any tribal-sized saucepans in which to cook that family-sized pasta imperative.

When he's gone I discover in the black and silver micro kitchen there are indeed three tiny saucepans. Each could contain - oh, at least 3mm of water - so it's the corner chippie for us. But I should travel the vibe of this chi-chi urban lifestyle! I should breathe a sigh of relief! Between the vibrant nightlife, the city centre noodle bar, the late-night bistros, and the pole dancing club, here at least my aspirant urbanite side can, at breakfast, play at boiling an egg.

Fair exchange

I give the kids away, again! Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are on a geology walk without me. Although I remain a little bit jealous about that, while they receive an education in sediment and river basin, I can sell confectionery at the local flea market. 

I always turn up at these events in a mixture of outright terror and fear of exposure (Who am I trying to kid? What the hell am I doing here?) combined with a full belly of confident assurance, given to me by all the wonderful people who stop to say such charming things (They are like poetry without the words! You should be in Liberty's!). 

Notebookery-wise, it is a fair day. Out go the confections for the control issues, the sensuous and frivolous knicker-diamond combo, an autopsied butterfly, a lost geographer and a stricken love. When I come home, I see that we all balanced the day: incoming we have lumps of chalk, flint, slices of sediment and a pocketful of gravel.

Without me

Take Shark and chum Tigger to Dunstable Downs where they are to go geocaching with the Woodcraft Folk.

The Woodcraft Folk are utterly bonkers. You may have noticed that, if you have any doings with them. On the top of Dunstable Downs, the chill is coming up my coat flaps at about -5, the wind rushing up that high chalk escarpment barely unimpeded by bush or tree, and finding delight at the top by freezing off my nether extremities.

And I have only stepped out the car to hand over the kids. Normally I am quite a fan of this geocaching lark, but I have no desire today to grub about the bushes looking for a plastic sandwich tub containing the advice Joan and Eric once found this. Regarding the snow on the roadside and feeling the ice crystals forming up my nose, I am delighted to let the demented noddle-headed happy folk do their geocachery business without my help.

I am much more sensible today. Being of sound mind and still standing body, I am drawn to other pursuits, in the warmth. With leather to stroke, handmade paper to gently part, and a typewriter without the letter B to touch, tenderly.

The signpost cut like a crucifix doesn't help

Good grief, the view looks bleak. Even I have to admit it, and I am a skilled practitioner in the ways of wilful blindness: always looking on the bright side and seeing the best of everything.

But on our walk today, the wind laughingly slaps my face and spits snow in my eyes. This winter's long lingering - the sunless, joyless, grey, bringing its partner in crime, a hellish bitter cold - they have become almighty oppressive to a woman's spirit.

It has brought out my complaining twinge rotten; on these endlessly leaden days my own mouth has bored me witless; I am surprised my ears have not left home, listening to my mardy whining of When Will This Bastard Weather Improve? while the eyes stare miserably ahead watching the shivering blackbirds stare forlornly back.

Yes, I know there are compensations in the twigs and the pebbles, and believe me I have to find them, but I am looking forward to Spring with a fierce determination. When that first stretch of warm reviving sunshine falls, I shall throw off these five layers of woollen jumpers and the thermal vest with a coffee stain down the front, and I shall dance in slingback sandals, jangle my fake sparkle and wear clothes that make my daughters clasp their fingers to their eyes. The spirit surely needs it.

Why I need followers of film

Catching up on Film Family Fun.

This week, two treats. First, Longitude. You know the one. It's where Michael Gambon took 31 years to build a working marine chronometer, and Jeremy Irons took thirty seconds to have a nervous breakdown.

This work offers no alien monsters or blood-lusting dinosaurs at all - okay, just the odd swinging corpse - but is perfectly suited to the gentle and cultured scholarly leisure pursuits I am trying to inculcate in my home educated young ladies, through my film soirees chez Grit.

Or at least it is, once I have the bastard incalcitrant telebox working, and after I have yelled at the gritlets who are hiding in the cellar hoping I will forget about it all and let them carry on playing the damn horse game.

But as I say, it is essential viewing for we wanderers in history, geography, and navigation.

The gritlets did remarkably well, so something kept them going, and it wasn't me getting them out the cellar with my tales of how films can be useful and beautiful, delivered in an intonation that sounds like Mother Superior sat on a cloud. It was the dramatic tension of the whole film that held the attention of my three 13-year olds. Here they can witness the passion a marine chronometer can bring about in a human soul. A highly recommended viewing, if you like narrative history, or you like marine chronometers, or you read the book, or you never saw it the first time round. Except don't start to watch it at 9pm. It's three hours long.

The other media treat this week was Richard III, Laurence Olivier version (1955). Totally brilliant, made better because we grouped up with other home educators and made a lolling-on-the-sofa afternoon of it.

But here is a clue why I am so persistent; why I routinely suffer my little children with their media education. It is not for their general or specific improvement. It is so I can spare them the obligations of old woman small talk. They can visit me when I am aged 90 and they 50; safe in the knowledge they can bring along an old Laurence Olivier or a Michael Gambon to keep me company, and it will keep them sane.

No news happened!

A momentous night! Shark, Tiger and Squirrel are all removed from the house, all night, all at the same time!

Not banged up in the local youth offending unit, no! This amazing vacuum of children is created by the wonder that is the sleepover culture!

No person - alive/dead, able bodied/disabled, in full command of their faculties/screw-unloosened - has ever, ever, ever, taken all three of my kids away from me for a sleepover at the same time.

The consideration of such an enterprise alone deserves a medal, let alone actually carrying it out. But, the supervising adult was brave/foolish enough to offer it (I advised against it) and they would not be swayed.

Obviously, I celebrated properly once my offspring waved farewell.

By wandering about the empty property wearing an absent-minded and lost expression for an hour, then forgetting to put on the laundry, becoming distracted from some page layout by the need to stare bleakly at the hole in the office roof, before finishing my night's party lifestyle by going to bed, feeling disoriented and empty, since the only cheeks I can kiss goodnight have all disappeared.

By morning, nothing had happened. I never got a pleading phone call at 2am.

It is a weird occasion, this first absence of the children from the house. But they are teenagers now. It is a sobering thought that one day, perhaps in a few short years, I will consider their fleeing the nest and my consequent solitude utterly, completely, normal. Hopefully, regretfully, joyously, sorrowfully, fearfully, normal.

Children not included

Typewriter! I love you! Continuing to seek a stream of wisdom which is flowing in the exact opposite direction to modern life, I find this delightful piece of kit has fast become an essential tool in my notebookery; it has become to me as important as my leather needle, a sharp pair of scissors, and the pliers. Even though the letter B keeps dropping off and I have to hand-wind the ribbon.

We can all know the importance of the typewriter in the Gritty household by the way a set of rules, prohibition notices, and codes of behaviour are listed each time the words the typewriter are reverently uttered.

Rules like Don't touch it, leave it alone, stop hanging about near it, don't even look at it, are only the beginning. Honestly, the rules of acceptable behaviours governing access to the typewriter would tax any tribal anthropologist.

And oh yes, you come here to read about the home education. Well, I have a craft stall coming up, so let us say that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are doing autonomy.

That means Leave me alone, Put that letter B down, Sort out your own lunch, and Come away from my typewriter.

Day off

Booked the griblets into build-your-own-robot session at the British Museum, then they called to say it had been cancelled.

Suddenly offered a day without their mother, the British Museum, Samsung, or a robot kicking off and making pointless demands of them, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger disappear to amuse themselves with teenage stuff, probably play the horse game that I see has now taken over their young developing brains.

I don't over-scrutinise their online time but, driven by a vague idea about parental responsibility, I ask what it is for, this horse game.

I am answered by a stare that mixes bewilderment with pity. How can I ask such a stupid question? I slope off. Maybe if it involves developing strategies for buying and selling horses it will come in handy one day when they're involved in high finance, or trying to reach rock-bottom price on a used battery down the local car boot trading floor.

I have my monthly craft stall coming up anyway, so am quietly grateful. I can blame Samsung, say typical of the British Museum, ignore the griblets, and spend my time stitching delightful new confections to lay before the feet of my customers; the bizarre, the bold, and the beautiful.

Deutsche Bank sees us alright

Forget what I said about the banks. Deutsche Bank is alright, isn't it? Apart from er, being a thieving bank and all. It is, on the other hand, splashing the cash by funding kid-friendly projects in my education world, particularly the very fine version of Romeo and Juliet that we see today at Shakespeare's Globe. I have to thank them for that, right? And the fact that this excellent performance was totally free to me, the little Grits, and a theatre audience filled with friends, being a demonstration of the Globe's educational programme, so cheers, Deutsche Bank, you bunch of arrogant thieves carrying a loveheart for Shakespeare. What you need to do now is pay for Romeo and Juliet to tour out of London and countrywide, pay outright for next year's education programme at the Globe, and give anyone who asks free season tickets to Globe land, for ever. I think that might just see us straight.

Good Friday

The gritlings push off to the local museum today, chum Tigger in tow, with the sole aim of extorting six Cadbury's chocolate eggs apiece from the old woman at the front desk. She probably thinks she's going to have a lovely time in the museum egg hunt.

Shamefully, we lost our annual pass to this local museum some time ago, but we are now unfortunately well known, so production of it seems no longer necessary. The little grits have visited this place so often they now treat the place like an extension of home, slamming back the entrance door, demanding to know where the chocolate stash is kept, and generally making a nuisance of themselves with other visitors. One time they came home outraged that a coach party had arrived to look round their turf. Their familiarity with the old telephone sets, the tram, and the printing press brings out their charmingly anti-social, ASBO sort of behaviour.

Good Friday brings it out especially, what with the brown lard overdose, but I am warning them that they should atone for it appropriately at some point. I am threatening them with a stint at dressing up and volunteering in the future as a way of saying sorry for what we did to the old woman when we were high on Cadbury's cocaine.

Anyway, while they are out the house for hours, it is a day off for me. There is only one thing to do. Finish stitching the locked heart I started before Valentine's Day.

The endless round

Today - maybe yesterday, could be tomorrow - we host the monthly Chemistry co-op. We get out Professor Poliakoff, Ellen McHenry, and an ancient make-your-own salts kit.

There is no place for teachery-control in these sessions, I can tell you. It is mayhem from start to finish, stopping short only of bloodstains and broken arms, but requiring a spirit of resignation when you witness the fragrant apple (one small drop only!) tipped (three tablespoons) into the cornflour.

Indeed, the Chemistry Co-op is so routinely haphazard and shambolic that it appears completely normal when San enters the room to yell Has anyone lost a tooth? I just stood on one on the kitchen floor. No-one claims it. Maybe it is mine and I haven't had time to notice it yet.

But this is typical. Chemistry Co-op is the sort of frenetic event which explains why schools exist. We should really video it and stick it on Youtube, so any prospective home educators can see the domestic chaos you're in for. Forget the stylish interior with matching upholstery, that's my advice, unless you consider the Volcanic Food Event, the Exploding Eye Palaver and the Chemistry Co-op to be fitting design movements for your home ed household.

Apart from this chemical fun we have somehow managed to squeeze into the last few days, alongside the outside visits, a Reading Group, a Film Family Fun Night, a Latin lesson and an ice skating social. All I can say is that I am thankful that the latter was off site.

Introducing the kids to opera

Tonight, home ed outing to Milton Keynes Theatre for Welsh National Opera and The Cunning Little Vixen.

There can't surely be a better kid introduction to opera! Not counting The Magic Flute set in a caravan park. That was good, too.

But although it seems to me perfect material for encouraging an enjoyment of the operatic singalong, I have found this problem with volunteering to be the group ticket buyer for one of your local home ed tribes!

ATG Tickets make it shockingly easy and friendly for you, and you get the discount rates for booking ten or more seats, sure! Then, when you blithely say to your tribe Oh, don't forget it's the opera! the elders go all quiet and claim they are busy washing their hair, rearranging the bathwater, and growing their toenails, so they can't possibly come.

Well, you people missed a treat, of course you did. There were naked men and free beer and everything. And the staging, costumery, dragonfly dance and singalong was all superb too.

Now I know you home educating types are jolly enthusiastic about introducing the offspring to opera, so if it tours to a venue near you, of course it's worth the group rate tenner to see it!

Simply organise your group and go. Even if you have to sell on the spare tickets at the last minute to friends of friends, who then sell on the tickets to their friends who you have never seen, so you turf them out the tribal group, then apologise and glare at them like it is all their fault, then snatch the cash from their terrified fingers. WNO's The Cunning Little Vixen is totally worth it.

Middle class and ruthless

My mother would be PROUD.

I made it to THE MIDDLE CLASS.

What I failed to achieve by marriage, education, aligning my cultural norms with the preferred socio-economic group, I made it thanks to Barry Sheerman, the former chair of the Education select committee who says My home educating kind? We are not only middle class, we are RUTHLESS.

I'm cracking open the cava!

To celebrate the public reading of 'You can't drive education like a sports car' I get Shark, Squirrel and Tiger in the car and drive them over to Cambridge.

I'm driving a clapped out Citroen van, which demonstrates just how aligned I am to the 'right to private and family life', and how fast we aren't travelling while I concoct my next ruthless, middle class scheme to dangerously visit upon the heads of the vulnerable home educated children, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

That scheme, incidentally, is to march them round the Polar Museum, eat student-style at Gardenia, then go sit in King's College Chapel listening to Bach's St Matthew Passion.

Surely qualifies for middle class and ruthless, right?

My dangerous scheming works splendidly! Except for a few minor working-class problems, like failing to realise Bach's St Matthew Passion actually does last three hours on hard seats, and cheap five-pounds unsighted tickets means you can't see a damn thing about the choir except the back of a tenor's head. It also means having to grudgingly get a taxi to redeem the stranded van because I cannot read a park-and-ride timetable, and walking about Cambridge with a vegetarian hamburger from Gardenia stuffed in my handbag because Squirrel refused to eat the blasted thing so I threatened to serve it up for breakfast, then pride wouldn't let me part with it. APART FROM THAT. I am so totally delighted to be middle class and ruthless.

Frobisher's Rock. I became unreasonably excited about this geology and history combined. 

I started photographing any geology collection I could find from that point, although this is not really the main draw of the Polar Museum for the happy visitor. It is the letters, of course, from Scott's doomed attempt on the Antarctic. They are deeply moving. I may have had to suppress a quiet working-class sniffle.

Then three hours! On hard seats! With never a word of complaint from the little Grits! An attempt on the Antarctic clearly put an evening's sore bottom into perspective.

Here, have a snatch of the Passion, and let us all thank Barry Sheerman for our elevation.

Must be Monday

I swear we only do this fortnightly Mapping the World co-op for the shortbreads and fancies.

Ocean and Earth Day

I recommend, if you have children whose brains have been sucked out and replaced by fish, that you escort them annually down to the University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre, for their Ocean and Earth Day. Here you may let the happy fry go free. Your fishy offspring can stretch their gills, flip their salty fins, and be off to explore the undercurrents of the deepest, darkest oceans.

Consequently, I do not see Shark, Tiger and Squirrel all day long.

Well, that is not strictly true. A packet of chocolate biscuits is on offer about tea time, bait to drag them out of the place. It works, dark chocolate luring them back like wandering fish seduced by a particularly tasty meal, but I suspect only because the place shuts up shop: Shark was thrown out of the tour round the aquarium, so there was nowhere else to go. In the first chocolate-biscuit-end-of-day assessment, I hear only universal grumbling that the fun ends at 4pm, and not at a proper time, like never.

I agree. Time is my only complaint. I think the Ocean and Earth day should go on at least until supper, because I had to listen to the ins and outs of the early-day closure injustice for another six hours.

It is a simple problem of logistics. A fishy-minded visitor cannot attend to everything between 10.30am and 4pm. Is that not a ridiculously short time to seduce us with your fishy wares? If you listen to the lectures about bubbles, rocks, diving and biology, then attempt to struggle round the stalls, pilot a submarine, do the quiz, watch the videos, make the ammonites, scoff lunch, see the ships, read the careers boards, ask questions of the engineers, no wonder there is not time to visit the aquarium.

I chose wisely. The lectures. On the basis that I could rest my arse for a good couple of hours, and adopt the face of one who has a scholarly approach to fish, while secretly hoping my brood return to me in an exhausted state clutching hand-made plaster ammonites and novelty fridge magnets.

Despite the complaints about time, our endless enemy, I can only thank the staff at the University of Southampton once again for allowing we fish-loving public to trample all over their nice clean Oceanography centre, leaving only footprints (plus a trail of trash and fingermarks on the door frame where they had to prise off Shark) and taking with us, only photographs.*

Shark, giving me that eye-rolling manoeuvre. 

I suppose I said something foolish, betraying my ignorance about tentacles.

* I jolly well hope so, anyway. But if I were you, Southampton Geology Staff, I would do an inventory of your rocks.

Southampton SeaCity Museum

Q: How is Southampton's SeaCity Museum?
A: The maritime history gallery? High on design, shallow on information.

Like, I was desperate to know more about The Oak Book. This is amazing! A book of council rules dating from 1300! Who doesn't want to know more about the shipping trade, local politics, and social interests of medieval Southampton? But no museum information helps me out. I stood in front of the thing questioning the fount of all wisdom, my ipad. Result. Then I went and collared the man at the desk. He confessed (after only three minutes interrogation and no thumb screws!) that if you're a visitor seeking knowledge in any depth or detail about Southampton's sea history, you'd be better off with the city archive service.

A: Titanic gallery upstairs? Excellent.

After my historical huftypufty, I start feeling better with the upstairs Titanic tour; it is excellent, with a visual narrative combining with individual stories and insights into the social setting of 1912. Dramatically, it is well designed, as you have to appear to cross the gangplank onto the fatal ship, then engage in deck life, before being sunk with the video. Your progress ends with the Titanic inquiry, for which you sit in a courtroom and pretend to be judge, jury, or speaker in the dock. By the time I'd finished, I felt wrung out and knew for sure that Leonardo DiCaprio was never on board.

A: Titanic gallery downstairs? Pleasing many masters.

Probably designed with National Curriculum History attainment targets in mind, 3.1, 4.2, 5.7 (2011). I pointed out a few choice items (film versions; plastic diver; question about a locked torch case) then left it, to go and drag Shark out of Gallery 1.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger do as they do in all museums (home educated child alert). It delights and frustrates me in equal measure. Every panel has to be read; information has to be copied into notebooks; artifacts have to be scrutinised; videos watched; audios attended to. It makes me hugely proud and simultaneously pissed off when, after one hour, they're still at the first gallery, when the place shuts before they've gone the whole round.

As usual, we were chased out the building by jangling keys.

Conclusion is yes, visit, at least for the Titanic. And, of course, for the overnight stay in the local Premier Inn where you can enjoy their delicious breakfast, including my favourite speciality - of which I have to secure at least three for my handbag - their leek and potato vegetarian sausages.