Hunting the criminals

We are supposed to be out today, but we're not. We're in.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were booked at a crime and punishment workshop in Nottingham, probably getting it all muddled, hanging good Robin Hood and praising bad King John.

But at 5am this morning I suddenly woke up with a nightmare. No matter how much I thrashed about and tutted and grumbled I could not get back to sleep. Then I began to have wake-dreams that the paint on the walls would climb down and eat me. Normally this would be OK, and we could still go, if we were travelling on the coach with the other home educators, and if I didn't have to do nearly a two-hour drive with a screaming fit in Nottingham city centre, and if the weather wasn't quite so appalling, and if I didn't have to drive home again on the same day.

Outside doesn't help. It's lashing gales. I may have to go and tie the house down with ropes just to stop it being blown away. Then at 8am Dig doesn't help either. 'Do not go' he says, and adds the weather is awful, the M1 will be chaos, and we will all die horribly. Just as I think he cares, he whines 'Is there any coffee?'

Dig, I argue, let's face it, I have driven in worse. Do you remember that time we set off for Warwick castle and there was a cyclone outside Birmingham? Or the hailstones that nigh on dented the car roof outside Bury St Edmunds. And Cornwall, only last week, when we drove around with a screaming three-headed monster in the car.

But he's right. Eveything's against me, there is no coffee, and I am weak and fed up. So while gales blow around the country and everyone crashes on the M1, I don't drive to Nottingham. I stay at home and brush fleas out of my daughter's head. She keeps asking, Are you done yet? Is it finished? and I keep saying No. Shut up. Keep still. Watch Walking with Dinosaurs. Stop moving, because I just have to get this one here, and then wait. Because when I get it, I'm going to do a crime and punishment workshop. I'm going to pin it down on the kitchen table and shoot off its arms and legs one by one and them I'm going to stick its head on a pole outside the front door to serve as a warning to all its kind.

By five o' clock in the afternoon, just as I'm thinking for the millionth time what a great time everyone else will have had, stringing up Robin Hood, I relent, and let Tiger take a wee. Even the most dedicated nit picker has to take a break sometime otherwise really, this splitting hairs business could drive a judge mad. I swear I have been round every single hair on Tiger's head. Twice. Not one of these criminals will escape me. I feel such anger and outrage. How dare they violate my sweet Tiger's little scalp? How dare they even look at her and think her curl laden head might be a groovy place to live? How dare they even exist? Do they do any good in this world? No. They should be hunted down and killed.

I am sure my psychosis is suffering. Apart from the paint, I dreamed of an exploding camel.