The deed is done

I may have lost my mind. The left brain and right brain have finally parted, gone their separate ways and are now unrecoverably on non-speaking terms. They leave a whistling gap between them.

The children have burst into the void, busy filling up the space with a selection of their finest plots and plans.

Yes, it is now perfectly sensible to bring a hamster into the house to love and care for.

I am sure, once upon a time, I maintained an absolute unshakable fixed line on that. All pets are madness. When the left and right brains were working in happy harmony, there it was: no living creatures in cages, no pets, no responsibilities to squeaking creatures with big eyes, no, no, no, no matter how cute.

But now it is. The deed is done. Sparky has a bowl, a name, a patch of straw for beating the bounds and three ladies in fixed adoration attending to its every furry twitch.

'Should I home educate?'

Really? But it's true. Someone is come to grit's day for help in making up their minds!

Do not let me be involved. I have no responsibility towards decision making, not even my own.

As for yours, marry her or divorce him; send your child to school or pull them out. I claim no part in helping anyone go this or that way with profound changes in a life. Catch me doing that in the same way I'd run from a burning building.

As for grit's day, all you get here is one type of reality for day-to-day learning of children out of school.

I won't deny, some days are all so much heart-laughing head-turning, I can only think I must be on permanent holiday with a endless supply of Malibu-based cocktails.

Other days, well, I try not to disguise the downside of kids all day long. In fact, I wearily include, for your benefit, all the bits of the educational day that make me wish I was dead.

But you could spot a philosophy that runs through these ordinary daily activities: one that keeps me going. Every day should be an adventure and a discovery. Learning should be natural, not forced and theory not removed from practical observation and experience. Combining theory and practice in learning is hardly a radical idea, so don't credit me with that. Aristotle already linked the two.

So, by all means use here for information, but decide from your own instincts and your own child; find your own philosophy of education and seek out Aristotle if it helps.

But because I aim to be so very helpful, here is a question if you haven't thought of it already.

What do you want school for?

I grew up with the fond idea that school could give me choices and access to areas of learning that were beyond the reach or interest of my parents. For example, I longed for school to teach me about pottery; my mother would have none of that clay-up-the-wall misery, thank you very much.

In reality, school did not teach me about pottery. We had a one-hour lesson for which I had to wait nine years. But I was already hopelessly in love with the whole pot business, and taught myself basic techniques covertly. The access never widened. The opportunity was gone. The desire, never fulfilled, languished, and has now sublimated into wistful staring at shapely translucent old pots in museums.

But what if you, resourceful, active, and energetic parent, could spot that pot yearning in your own early child, feed their interests, and ably provide opportunities for clay-based joy? Maybe you can move on to real potters with kilns and proper workshops. Artists who talk glaze and firing temperatures and willing to work with a bunch of home ed kids for a steady six weeks. You can find them, of course you can, because people with all their skills, learning and experience, they make up our society.

Then, not only pottery, but all the other weird and wonderful kid interests, such as butterflies and beetles? Horses and weaving; beading and fish-spotting; sea froth and cooking?

Compared to what you can provide, what is school for?

Well, that is the academic side. Now here is an activity we all enjoyed today. A walk in the woods with similar minds.

And a dog.


If I have another observation about this choice of life, it is not about clay or materials science, maths or grammar or electrons. It is about being a person.

Being a person takes time. I am still learning.

With children, I have noticed this: they grow with unique delights and unfathomable fears and strange wisdoms and laughable terrors that inform their learning of the world.

I believe this bizarre and beautiful protean start of human should be respected with time, decent treatment, a listening ear. I simply could not trust that enormous job to a classroom teacher, no matter how well meaning, burdened with the pressures of hundreds of children, streaming through a cold system which feeds them all to an output end.

Children need time to know their who-they-are.

So the dog. I have watched this fear of dog - maybe we are now in sight of the end - give it a year or two - no dreadful repetitions of the running dog with the clacking jaws and the screaming woman - I can see how this fear will grow and change, helped by friends who listen to what it is to be a child.

Would that time be given in school? Would anyone care? Would the fear have worked its way through, or would it have been dismissed and disregarded?

What is a person to do with their delights and fears and wisdoms and terrors? How will those inform and shape their world?

Here, at least, we have the time to begin to find out.

Let's hope here's a geologist in the making

Otherwise, in a few years, I'm going to feel pretty silly, leaving my 11-year old daughter to sit absorbed in the garden for two hours, carefully sieving soil into piles of particle size, while all the time I'm telling myself that this composes an effective education.

Gooseberry thrills

I love gooseberries. The smell of them is heavenly, isn't it? Delicate flowers and fruit and wet summer earth.

Picking them from the bush is such fun, too. Squatting down carefully beside them, lifting their leaves to peer underneath, finding those dangling fruits, moving the branch to uncover them, to find if they are too little and green to pick, or full and round and perfectly ripe, expect a moment of sharp exquisite prickling on the backs of your fingers; but those needle points can barely defend that perfect fruit from my delighted hand.

Lightly stewed with crystal sugar, those firm fruits become such a superb soft textured combination of sweet and tart, I know they'll promise thrilling tingles to my taste.

I remember all the years of picking gooseberries. And I can think happily of all the babies I'm very glad not to have found under the gooseberry bushes.

In memory of gooseberry days, here is my recipe for gooseberryade.

Wash, top and tail one pound of good ripe gooseberries, add strips of lemon rind, and pour over water that is just boiled. Press gently but not to tear or pulp the gooseberries. Now find other distractions to occupy your hour.

When the liquid is cool, strain, add sugar to taste and call the children to celebrate their summers to come.

Please don't let this happen in England

Dig has received an offer. It's from a company in Hong Kong: one of the many educational support companies dedicated to creating a joyful environment for learning and development of children!

I say, let's look closely at that offer Dig; I seek a natural, joyful learning for our children! This could help me along!

Dig says we're offered a discount on a short course of two preparation classes. The classes would teach us about the admissions interview we must undergo for the school of our choice. The classes would also coach our children on how to perform at interview on the big day.

Then he says, Oh no! It's too late!

On closer inspection, the offer for joyful learning in the interview prep class seems only to be for children aged 2 and 3.

But I do turn into an Edwardian candelabra at midnight

Dig is all up for attending this year's ball at Oxford.

I include these photos for the benefit of passing American readers.




Why we are going, do not ask. It is inexplicable to me.

But tonight we dump the kids with Aunty Dee who trailed us yesterday on our halting journey down England's main drain otherwise called the M1.

Yesterday, the amiable aunty took Shark out of our equation. Today she is sleeping with the mice, mould and spiders in the cellar (how well we treat the relatives!) but with the sole purpose to give us parent people some time out.

Maybe she has caught wind of something final, like Dig is whisking me away to say, now he has had time to think about it, divorce is a good idea, but just one thing: would I stay on to do the laundry? That would be helpful.

That matter aside, and on the Oxford issue instead, be less than impressed.

A college administrative assistant (who probably should know better) put me on the graduate invite list, possibly by accident. At Oxford I merely did a Jeffrey Archer; I slipped round the back door of the august institution to crawl out a year later with the ignominy of a vocational qualification (aka PGCE) and I have been on the invite list ever since. Unlike him, I play the connection down, and I never go, if only to spare the blushes of Fellows.

But tonight Dig, who has far more claim to these events than me, has something in his bonnet and wishes to go.

Easy-going Grit (yes! I am! it is true!) thus complies. But what do you expect that I go along and pick a fight with a bouncer, true gutter girl that I am?

The problem I have is that someone is apparently keeping their eye on me, because I have, in a crowd composed mostly of foreign graduates and a few gently moulding academics, craftily managed to get my ungainly mitts round a glass bottle. (Wine, not beer, if anyone is alarmed.)

A glass bottle in my hands is not allowed. (Do not mention the bottles all the waiters have been swinging round.) I may be aged over fifty, have had three kids wrenched from my bowels, suffered enough indignities and disgraces to make you put your fingers over your eyes, and be old enough to be the bouncer's mum, but from all this life experience it must be assumed I have neither learned nor grown, not one jot.

I must not be trusted, perhaps for fear that with my age, experience and disposition I go berserk, glass the aging historian propped next to me and I swing the fragmented bottle round my head while dancing naked in the quad.

So the glass bottle is removed and I am given the dregs in a plastic cup. A PLASTIC CUP. Yes, dear Americans, I may be standing at an Oxford ball and be dressed in designer Marella, but I can only drink from plastic.

Well of course this sets me off. I hunt down King Bouncer and discover that to have this legitimate authority to remove glass from old ladies I have to pay two hundred and fifty pounds every three years to the Security Industry Authority run by the Home Office. Once I am in charge of putting a team together to bounce the venue I can more or less choose who I would like - maybe a few pals - and they can eye-spy glass bottles clutched in the claws of dodgy old birds like me and act appropriately in the interests of health and safety of you all.

Suffice to say it did not all end too well, but at least from the evening I managed to gain a gentleman to accompany me back at 3am to the hotel, so I can reassure any concerned reader that I never glassed the historian, never danced naked in the quad, am not returning to prison, have no black eye, nor am yet irrevocably divorced.

Amuse the kids on the interminable hours of car journey hell!

Oh yes, the rentrée for the happy family Grit!

Take these top ten tips from me, the travelling uber parent, about the happy journeys you can avoid, locked in a moving car on a motorway for six bleeding hours!

1. Play the What If game!
Start with great intentions. Try storytelling. Ask, What if... a penguin flops onto the roof of our car? What if... the car in front is driven by an albatross? Each person has to come up with a story. You'll create a great imaginative journey. At least for five minutes!

Squirrel: What if an albatross is driving the car? What do I care? What if she hits me? What if I hit her back? So it's alright for her to hit me but I can't hit her? I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!
Shark: What if she's screaming in my ears? I do not like it. I have a right to shut her up.
Tiger: What if I open the car door and get out while we are travelling? What do I care? No one cares about me.
Grit: What if we stop the car and throw you all out? What if the police come? What if daddy leaves us once and for all and never comes home and you are taken into care and I go to prison and you all end up sleeping on park benches? What are you going to do then eh?
Dig: What if you all just shut the fuck up?

2. Audiobooks!
Don't give in yet! We can make this journey FUN. Put on an audiobook. If you can find one amongst the garbage on the floor.

Squirrel: I cannot hear it. Turn it up.
Shark: Stop talking.
Tiger: I wanted to listen to that.
Grit: All of you be quiet.
Squirrel: She is talking!
Shark: You started it.
Tiger: I wanted to listen and my sisters are talking!
Squirrel: I am not talking.
Shark. Yes you are. Shut up.
Grit: Be quiet.
Squirrel: Yes, shut up.
Shark: Shut up yourself.
Tiger: Shut up shut up shut up.
Dig: Right. That's it. I'm turning it off.

3. Look out the window!
Yeah, look out of the window why don't you, booby face?

See? Fun can now begin to pass out of the devil's arse while we each stare angrily out of the windows whispering insults at family members under our breath but maybe just loud enough to be heard by the sister sitting next to you.

Problem: We own more kids than car windows. Certain to lead to rising tension, death threats and activity number 4.

4. Elbow each other, kick each other, then turn round to claw at your sister's face in a screaming fit!
This is great fun and much better than general whining and bitching. Proper physical violence is the end result of five minutes frustrated anger and quickly leads to activity number five!

5. Stop the car at a service station to give everyone a break, use the toilets, think of all the good things, and reason with the children.
Dear children, let us see the pleasure in this and let us work together! If we all help each other in our interdependent family, we might get home quickly! Then we will all eat chips from Rocky's! Let us start again, bonded on this great adventure together!

6. Repeat numbers 1-5 within the space of ten minutes.

7. Stop the car to threaten the children.
Experts at this game can think up some excellent threats! We will sit here all night if necessary, you will go to bed without any supper, we will never go on holiday again, we will sell the car, yes, that is what we will do. Your mother and I will go on holiday together and Aunty Dee can come and look after you and then will she be cross. etc. etc.

This works! This actually works! Well, it works between junction 29 and junction 27. Then the fighting starts properly, none of that girly nonsense, at which point, you can escalate quickly through these parental steps of despair!

8. Pull off the road completely, find a minor road, and drop head against steering wheel.
Follow this quickly with getting out the car, opening the back door, and demanding the children get out on roadside.

9. Weigh up the consequences of driving home without them.
Sit in car seething quietly for a good half hour, soul searching why every car journey ends like this, how we alone have bred harpies in frocks. Meanwhile, every other car happily travels past with their occupants demonstrating true family bonding while gaily singing uplifting hymns of moral courage. Spawn shamelessly continue to slap each other about on grass verge.

10. Come up with the final ultimatum.
From here, your mother is leaving you. As you have made it impossible to travel by car, she will catch a train home. From Yorkshire, it will cost two hundred pounds. She will deduct this sum from your pocket money over the next year until you have settled the balance in full.

Issue this threat while collecting bag, coat, keys, and with face that says Do not mess with me now, for I have a 100 per cent intention of carrying this out.

To help me maintain some sense of proportion about this journey through hell, and to carry out my own remit of dragging the best of education from the worst of experience, here is a picture of the Battle of Flodden Field, a subject the Grit family will shortly be discussing over chips from Rocky's.


Make me feel better! Tell me how your car journeys with children are much worse than mine!

Life is better without maps

We drive directly to the rock art.


Thanks to last year, we know where it is. Disappointing. Not the rock, the driving straight to it.


It takes us no time at all. That is quite sad. I enjoyed the moment I couldn't guarantee I was going to have.

Which asks, isn't life more interesting when we're not sure? When we're without maps? Maybe I want life without prior knowledge of the way ahead. I want life filled with exploration and discovery and mistakes and diversions and my daughters, surprising bogs with sticks.

But today, when our rock-art goal simply falls into place, we look at the clock and know that we have time to visit the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Crossing the sands is thrilling.




I mean, once on those sands, we might suddenly realise we misread those tide timetables and then we would be engulfed by the sea! When we are rescued, the coast guard could say of us, 'people don't realise how dangerous it is, driving into the North Sea'.

But of course we read the timetables right. We know the folly of driving into the North Sea, so we don't do that. We take two hours to stroll about the sights of Lindisfarne instead.




Our experiences there are all very predictable. We run about the abbey, photograph the nineteenth century castle, take a half hour in the museum, then the place shuts down at five o'clock, sharp.

The day sort of ends as it began. No dramatic turn of events, no startling announcements, no unexpected conclusions.

There is a weeny little bit of me that is disappointed by that as well.

Mess, misery and mistrust at Chillingham castle

I suppose I have to thank Chillingham castle for something.

Let me think. Hmm. Could take time.

The tea room! Yes, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger enjoyed the tea room! (These children are becoming very Victoriana. The day is not complete without tea and cake at four.) Yes, I can say they wandered about the rest of the castle grumbling about the auction house lots, but they enjoyed the cake.




But I should thank Chillingham castle management for something else too. Giving the kids a subject for discussion while we dragged ourselves from room to dispiriting room, other than, Should you be allowed to thump your sister? Discuss.

So today we spent our time discussing this:

What responsibility should an owner of a building with centuries old connections have towards a telling of history, the building they preserve, and the people they invite to see it? Discuss.

Usually, I am happy to support a telling of history. It doesn't have to be a national glory line. It can be quirky, off-beat, original, little-person, and that's no matter to me. Sometimes those voices tell us about society, attitudes, cultures and histories in a way that grand statements and nationally sanctioned sentiments never can.

If that line comes to me at a price, like the entrance fee to a stately home or a ticket for the gardens, then I appreciate everything has a cost. And I appreciate buildings take a good deal of maintenance. Good grief, I only have to look at The Pile to know that. And we're only a weeny Victorian heap with a leaking roof and a few non-functioning sash windows!

But inescapably, at the heart of me, I believe we all have a responsibility towards the histories we live in and the histories we tell. If anyone is fortunate enough to live in a building with centuries of connections to the land, to the people who lived and worked there, who made it possible for you to enjoy that place, then you have an added responsibility towards the insights that the building and its spaces can give.

I think this idea extends to everyone, really, perhaps in different ways. We all live alongside the endeavours and thoughts of others who went before us. In a building, I respect the work people did and the time they took. I have never forgiven the neighbour for stripping out an original Victorian fireplace so he could use the space for a cupboard. (Insert very rude word, thrice over.)

With that belief - that we have a responsibility to the past which we can express in various ways - I'm not sure I trust the owner of Chillingham at all.

I am unsure about the restoration because I have no information about that. Maybe it is faithful; maybe not. I have no basis to believe in it. I doubt, deeply. I only have to look at the piles of auction house lots that inhabit every room because there's no interest in building a narrative here, not through space, nor object.

Worse than the uncertainty is the knowledge that the owner gleefully admits to telling 'false history' to catch out 'schoolmasters'. What point is he seeking to make? What is he seeking to do?

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were confused too. They know enough history to be in that room for Edward I and become puzzled by the Union Jack and the African drums. But then the owner, with curious lack of thought, and careless lack of responsibility, laughs at my confusion.

Well, maybe I shouldn't take myself so seriously. Maybe I should be happy with the idea that I am staring at charming English eccentricity.

But for me, Chillingham is a building that I can only remain unsure about; it's a sad home for a cacophony of jumble; a collection that says, here is someone who's not interested in history, not of the people who built it, not the spaces they once shared, not the hours or years of their lives, not even the relationship between objects they made.

Maybe I'm expecting too much. Maybe the owner of Chillingham simply enjoys playing at castles and thinks I will, too. Out on the board comes torture chamber, ghosts, and secret rooms. When it's done, the game can be put away, no more use, because it's only a game, and we can play it without care, thought, or any sense of future.

Spot the bath.

Where shall we go next?

I am emotionally flattened and thought-drained.

This is my reward for thinking. Not surprisingly, I try not to indulge too often.

But think I must, because here are my triplet teens-to-be, poised, hinge-point, between late primary and secondary. I face so many imponderables I barely know where to begin.

I have done what I thought should be done: primary education should be practical, experiential, questioning, adventuresome, child-led, muddy.

It is easy to facilitate with an open mind and a strong heart. While schooled peers sat in classrooms, uniform learning for exam technique, my young ladies ran about fields in the drizzle; hugged sheep; walked woods with friends; enjoyed Shakespeare; considered five hours reading time well spent; indulged in art, craft, practical skills and a good dinner; visited every museum for miles around; travelled; patiently listened to mama recite the hourly progress of the Battle of Bosworth; joined difficult discussions about English culture; took what sports they fancied; joined lessons as they liked, then fled the room when someone mentioned algebra.

Primary education out of school has been - maybe I fear the future - shockingly straightforward. I strongly recommend it, compared to the alternative on offer here.

But I'm stuffed.

Because really, how easy is it, at this hinge point, age eleven, to turn about and face the local school? I am not likely to match the skills and expectations of a home ed child down the local comp.

It's not only me, either. Faced with Squirrel's obvious delight in digging up the garden in preference to knuckling down and writing a single coherent sentence of the creative story I have been banging on about for two years, I can't see that any secondary school in their right mind would have her.

Of course we have wondered whether, at this primary-secondary point, we should give the private schools a challenge. Except I have no income and, as far as I'm aware, Stowe isn't declaring itself gratis from next September.

Then there is the other stuff that cuts up the day; the stuff that interacts so deeply with education that some people call it lifestyle: all the stuff of where are we living and what are we doing.

I feel we are at a fork in the road. Given what Shark, Tiger and Squirrel say, my own doubts and inclinations, and Dig's pathetic inability to avoid tax, the upshot is, I'm not sure.

In the short term, I guess that Phase II of the Great Home Education Endeavour is likely to proceed as it did in Part I. Muddle along, bouts of panic and self-doubt alternating with overconfidence and blasé indifference. It alarms the children and comforts them in equal measure, so everyone's happy.

As part of the plan, I continue mulling over the best way to follow a Geography GCSE. It will give Shark some reassurance that I know what I'm doing, supply Squirrel with some rock action, and remind Tiger that there are many ways to reach an end point; we just have to choose what's best for all.

Now, enough of that navel gazing. Wherever I drift, I always have a part of my brain still plotting in a number of firm directions.

Here is the culmination of my delightful scheming brain's hard work.

It is a horse. Albeit one making sideways glances to reassure itself of its superiority.

Here's another one. This one is nice but dim, and has horns.


Not our horses, I hasten to add. Good grief no. I am already bound in a dithering moral dilemma over a two-inch hamster, thank you very much.

These horses own the horse-crazed cousins. Not my cousins, either. They are Dig's. Whatever mess we make of our living arrangements, we have to stay in with the horse-turned cousins due to the fact they are quite demented, love horses, and Tiger has a gene from their side.


That partition of the family is all properly horse: leggy, blond and dignified, with interests in achievement and show jumping. I bring to this equation short, dark, with unhealthy interests in loafing and idling.

In case you are wondering, this is not entirely a post of unrelated points.

This day - when we offload Tiger and Squirrel to the horse cousins, and tip Shark into Aunty Dee's Volvo to drive at 10 miles an hour over North Northumberland - is a day from which I draw great support.

I have planned this moment through all the trials in Hong Kong, promised Tiger that it will be possible, brought it to pass, and it shows me that I am capable of thinking more than two hours ahead at a time.

This gives me great encouragement. If I can plan and bring Tiger to a horse in Northumberland from a hillside in Hong Kong, then surely I can plan and bring into fruition an education out of school for one daughter (wants GCSEs), a second daughter (wants autonomous) and a third daughter (as yet undecided, but may involve fairy wings.)

I can. Can't I?

Farne Islands

Obligatory. My mini twitchers have high-maintenance puffin needs.

I find it absorbing, looking at the different photographs taken by the different members of the family. Evidence: the children's camera. I can guarantee, 800 pictures of puffins, shags and the other ones.



This year, seals, too!


Clearly, my construct and search for memory of these events is very different from everyone else's. They snap away with puffinspuffinspuffins and I am all Keep still I want to remember your shoes.


And rock. Yes, I like to photograph the lovely Farne rocks, too.



Then I take a few more hundred pictures of the children in bird-watching and bird-photographing poses.




Bizarrely, I am still in love with them. Even though some moments I would like to throw them out of a top floor window of a castle or push them off a boat into the North Sea, then laugh at the splash.


But I think I should acquire a better camera. I'm still using my old phone one and it is barely surviving. The battery drops out in awkward places.


I also discover I have photographed the extending telephoto lens of the man standing next to me. I have no idea why. At this point in life, wishful thinking, probably.

Preston tower and Warkworth Castle

Seriously now, let us embark on our week's tour of beautiful Northumberland!

First stop, bloody border battles.

No, not the fine line between Squirrel's left leg and Shark's right leg in the rear seat of a Citroen Berlingo.

Although that does indeed qualify as casus belli, especially after five hours of enforced listening to your sister breathe.

Incidentally, other legitimate causes of war include the following: all unicorn politics; unicorn court proceedings; unicorn tea-making ceremonies; unicorn recorded history ...

also ... walking through doorways first; finishing the apple juice without telling anyone; claiming the mud patch is yours; moving the sea-shell bucket deliberately; reading a book that someone else wants to read, and barricading the door to your sister's room with a vacuum cleaner and a chair in the full knowledge that she is inside, sulking over the recent unicorn fight.

And don't mention the grudge matches! They come with us wherever we go! I have not heard the last of it since Shark bit Squirrel and Tiger hit Shark with a shovel.

See? We people with children can bring up quite an impressive range of warmongering! Ye border strifers twixt England and Scotland, is it the best that you can do, to argue over some hills, a few sheep and an ox?

Now, having set the scene, here is our first stop, the glorious Preston Tower. You can see why everyone up here felt they needed something just like this. I am sure, given enough time in each other's company, every person in an entire family would need a fortified tower apiece.




Second stop today, the wonderfully defended Warkworth Castle. A highly recommended castling experience for warfare, where all bodies can escape from each other through plenty of dark corridors, tunnels, steps up and down, doors, windows and little corners where you can curl up and pretend it is the fourteenth century and there are knights in shining armour battering the door down and come to take you away.






If you have a mind to warfare, you would thoroughly enjoy the border experience here.

But is it not a mother's job to be peacemaker and tranquility seeker, whatever the odds stacked against you?

I have discovered that throwing my hands up in the air is a good opening gesture, followed by tutting, predictable reprimanding, mild hectoring, scowling, finger wagging, emotional manipulation, then giving up and stomping off before grasping at straws and using bribery with promises of liberal application of ice cream.


That works! Peace in all the borders! (At least for a good five minutes.)

Photoblog: Seahouses