Three blogs in one

Dear me, which blog?

Should it be the triplet blog? I could chronicle the minute-by-minute argument over the identical tennis racquets. It started as we're going to tennis, spookily enough. The courts are a footfall away, so everyone could watch.

The audience of mini-tennis stars would first have witnessed a lot of arms and racquets swinging, then some tussling, pushing and shoving. They would have heard exclamations of It's mine! No it's not! It's mine! No! Mine! Mine! Mine! Then they would have seen a rather dishevelled looking man appear at the front door, minus shoes and socks, but with trousers (only just) and wearing a loose, fashionably white shirt with a tomato stain down the front. Everyone would have marvelled at how wildly and violently he could mouth threats and gesticulate; they would possibly note what a very cross expression on a very red face he could manage, even though it was 9am in the morning.

Of course at that point the audience would have heard the ear-splitting shrieks. I believe we may soon be contacted by an anti-burglary company wanting to record that sound and sell it back to us in tin boxes.

Well I am sad to say the shrieks were the turning point. From then on, it all got a bit rowdy. In fact there was a bit of howling and door slamming and the beetroot-faced man picked up one of the triplets who by then was pretending to be an ironing board while another one tried to leg it with a stolen racquet over the gate.

Thirty minutes later, had the audience cared to watch at that point rather than play tennis, they would have seen three little girls meekly leave the house, each equipped with identical tennis racquets, on which there is now fastened three different coloured pieces of wire. Just to be on the safe side for next week's lesson.

Well it could be the triplet blog. Or it could be the marriage blog.

Imagine. Here is lunchtime Grit, slumped over her soggy potato, broke, down-beat, grey-haired, fat, saggy bosomed, with the mummy-mashed brain of a woman who has barely been able to sustain a single line of thought for the last eight years, contemplating a bleak and desolate tomorrow with a man whose interest in her life today appears to be whether she has done the laundry yet. In fact she is now in such a pit hole of despair she may be contemplating suicide as the only way to escape this life of misery, failure and poverty, but no, guilt is a worse punishment than death, and she is now deserving that extra guilt every day because she knows some people have life a lot worse so she has nothing to weep about. Then, with barely a glance, Dig says:

'I think I have a found an au pair for the summer holidays. She is German. She is probably blonde, blue-eyed and petite but don't worry about that. Anyway, she is studying Social Anthropology at Cambridge from next year. She would like to develop her understanding of how cultural values are reproduced within the mechanics of British family life.'

And I say, Would she like to do the washing up?

But perhaps this blog should be suitable not for triplets nor marriage, but for a gritty type of day. Because, foolishly, Grit has promised to take Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to the special Saturday kiddie RSPB meeting. This is about birds, on a farm, in the rain. Inevitably, this means a real farm. And a dairy farm at that. Bear in mind, dear reader, at her best Grit is vegan. Visiting a dairy farm is as anathema as inviting Satan to a children's tea party.

At this visit to the dairy farm, in the rain, Grit is made to march round up to her ankles in mud. She is forced to paddle in cow poo and listen to the roaring sound of cows having wees in an iron shed while the farmer talks about posh heifers. If this were not bad enough she is forced to look at the following scene, because somewhere in here there is a pee wit, probably waiting to be shot, drugged, sliced up by a passing tractor or savaged to death by hounds:


If things could not get worse than being forced to look at a field for half an hour, in the rain, Grit and all the other happier and more dutiful mummies are then invited to take their lovely children into the farmer's house to see the farmer's wife and eat cake and drink tea.

Grit does not want to go, and becomes bolshy. She does not want to be force-fed milky tea after hearing how baby cows are removed after four days and how boy cows are shot at birth or loaded onto veal crates and shipped off in the dark. In fact she has already been a bit of a nuisance by asking deliberately what happens to the boy cows when she bloody well knows and wants the farmer to drop that Ambridge knee-slapping crap and tell us all the truth. Tiger, at that point, whispers it is not the best time to say we are trying to be vegans. I take this to mean Tiger is developing an excellent sense of British social manners suitable for a German anthropology student and decide to keep my mouth shut.

At the end of the day I decided to luxuriate in bed with a lovely comforting glass of brandy and the newspaper. Which was going fine until I spilled all the brandy over the newspaper and the bottom sheet and had to get out of bed to change the ruddy thing in case Dig came up to bed and suspected me of having a wee.

And so ended a Grit sort of day. With barely anything to redeem it from start to finish.

Never mind. There is always tomorrow.