Someone's impressed by Grit's parenting skills

Here's Grit, passing on the news and great drama of her day spent home-educating her kids, finding OFSTED has donkey's ears, and cleaning that lovely kitchen sink, when she has to stop everything.

She receives this in her inbox. And this mail, which you will probably receive very shortly, if you have not already done so, is so very wonderfully good.

We are looking for someone to get the children ready in the morning, prepare and clear up the family's breakfast, make the beds, and take the children to school, which is about a 1.5km walk away. The au pair would then need to pick them up at 3.20 and look after them until we get home. We will ask the au pair to babysit 1-2 evenings a week. We have a really great cleaner, so there wouldn't be any heavy housework. There is a bit of light cleaning and laundry which would take about 90 minutes a day in total. There would be plenty of time free in the day to go to language school, and there are a lot of good ones in the area.

If you agree to take the position you shall be paid 2500 (Two Thousand Five Hundred Pounds Monthly) and shall be given a weekly pocket money of 500 pounds. Your residence shall be comfortably furnished within the Company housing estate. We are comfortable here as Shell pays us well however we cannot work effectively and take care of our kids hence our solicitation to you to come and Nanny for us.

Look at that pay! And all for taking the kids to school! I might make a few demands round here regarding my salary.

But as I am sadly otherwise engaged and cannot take up this wonderful offer, possibly located by sending all my bank details somewhere in Nigeria, I could nominate a couple of other worthy candidates.

Things I won't miss

Tra la la! We are Elizabeth Hurley free! What a lovely Sunday morning feeling on a Friday! For the first time in weeks I don't feel obliged to rise early to get the milk out, which Hurley reminds me about if I do not do. Sometimes for a good fifteen minutes. She claims breakfast is very important and if she doesn't get a pint of milk by 8am she may pass out. I have tried suggesting the corner shop opens at 6am, but strangely, at this point, her English fails her.

Come to think of it, there are several things now that I will not miss.

Elizabeth Hurley's dreadful washing up. This was so awful that I routinely crept back into the kitchen after she'd done any washing up and stick it in the dishwasher. I discovered why all items came and left the washing up bowl looking untouched. Hurley does not use hot water because it hurts her hands. And that applies to the washing up liquid too.

Hurley's reminders that more home-made jam is required. These reminders have been given in the same way as reminders about milk or bread or anything else. The empty jam pot / milk bottle / packaging is lifted up and wordlessly waved at me.

I will not miss either the fact that Hurley, with supreme laziness, never put anything away. From things she washed up ('I do not know where zey go') to personal items like make up and books ('Where eez my mak-up? But I left it ici on zee table in zee kitchen next to zee cereal').

Neither will I miss the way Hurley interpreted five hours work each day to mean disappear to her bedroom after breakfast to reappear for lunch and then sit on the sofa and read a book. And when asked to help with the housework, reply 'my book it is very good.'

In fact, when Hurley did do anything, it was so horribly wrong that sometimes it was preferable when she didn't do it at all. Not only did she block the vacuum cleaner so we had to dismantle it to clear it, she routinely blocked the conditioner tray in the washing machine with powder so that the final rinse was with a rather hefty helping of Daz. Fortunately on this one, she never did any laundry for us, just for herself.

Neither will I miss the tartes. Now I know this sounds odd, and for the first week it was quite a novelty. But there's only so much fat and sugar I can stuff down my throat without feeling like a foie gras goose. Last week we reversed the torture and the children made steamed puddings and custard which Hurley dutifully ate. After her third helping of golden syrup pudding at 2000 calories a slab, Dig suggested our parting gift to her might be a pair of English thighs.

And if that were all, it would be quite good. But no. There was the constant demand on Dig to fetch and carry, the constant demand on Grit for shopping essentials, the way the entire household seemed to have to reorganise to orientate around her, and the effortless way her very presence would send Tiger into orbit.

If there is a finally, which I suspect there isn't if I thought about it, there's Hurley's complete lack of sensitivity and awareness to her surroundings while she lived with us. In particular Grit's birthday, when she told Dig off for allowing the kids into the flat to blow up balloons at breakfast.

Phew. That was therapy. I hope she never comes back to wash up the saucepan of left-over rice she's placed in the sink from her lonesome dinner last night, or for the one sock and the pyjama top I've just thrown into the bin.

Endings and beginnings

And if yesterday didn't end bad enough, this morning finds Tiger in a foul temper, trolling about the bathroom door scaring Shark, who won't leave the toilet. This, quite frankly, is an inconvenience we could all do without. We're due to pick up Dig from the foyer of the posh hotel at 10 o'clock. The plan was to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum en famille for the morning and still be back in time to wave off Elizabeth Hurley on her evening flight, having smartly released ourselves from the trial of having to be nice to her in her last few hours.

We do manage to set off from the hotel about 10.15, having emptied the room and having remembered to give back the keys instead of walking off with them like Dig does. So despite the difficult start we're more or less on track. But then in the car on the way to pick up Dig, Tiger goes bonkers and starts slapping Shark.

I've had enough. I am Misery Grit. Pitt Rivers can wait a few years longer. We pick up Dig and drive straight home. I drop off the family and head up to the Health Centre where I make an appointment to get us some help with Tiger from the Child Psychologist. I hope she's experienced in triplets.

And while that trauma's beginning, another one's ending. Elizabeth Hurley leaves the house. And my goodness does she drive Dig mad in her final hours. For the first time ever I hear him shout.

As far as taking her plus six bulging overweight bags to the airport for this evening, strangely neither me nor Dig are available to take her, and on this we had our story straight. You'll have a cultural experience on the bus! we chant. Basically we've lied. Neither of us want to drive her down to the airport where we are sure to be scammed into paying £300 excess to EasyJet to get her woolly jumpers home to Nice. And if anyone asks more about the other lies we told to get Elizabeth Hurley out the house and home before December, I'm saying Allie put me up to them.

Well Hurley at the last minute says she no longer wants the bus seat that Dig's gone to the trouble of booking. She says she's found a man with a dog. He's picking her up at the station and driving her to the airport so he can interview her for an au pair place in January. We ask no further questions on that but Hurley's final words are that she likes dogs better than children.

And after the 24 hours that Tiger's put me through, as I wave Elizabeth Hurley good riddance, it's probably the first time I've found myself in agreement.

Elizabeth Hurley gets it wrong

Elizabeth Hurley cooks something she calls 'Four Quarters Cake'. Actually, she doesn't so much as cook it, more explode it in the oven, thanks to a linguistic failure. This is her inability to understand the difference between 'teaspoon' and 'tablespoon', despite having been given in lesson in cutlery not 24 hours before.

Adding two tablespoons of baking powder causes the Four Quarters Cake to explode shortly after baking commences, thus drenching the inside of the oven with cake.

So polite are we all, that we then say cheery things like 'Never mind!' when we'd really like to say 'Twerp'. We even try tasting some. It is disgusting and a lot of 'Urghurghurghing' goes on immediately all round.

Satisfying.

Vinegar

I have to come into the office to scream. I have walked to Tesco to buy two litres of vinegar for the ongoing chutney making and when I get back I see, twinkling on the path, peeping out from under the geranium, our front door keys. They're actually the front door keys we gave to Elizabeth Hurley some time ago so that Dig didn't have to go down the pub at midnight again, telling her he was just off to bed. To get round that awkwardness, he then had to wave the keys about ostentatiously, which either made it all better or worse, depending on who was watching. Anyway, she lost the keys a few days ago, which peed Grit off mightily.

So now I put down my shopping bag to pick up our lost keys, and the vinegar bottle falls from the bag and shatters, exploding vinegar everywhere but mostly in Grit's right foot.

By the time I get in the house, I am not in the best of tempers. I slap the keys down on the kitchen table and grab a wet towel to douse down my vinegared foot. Elizabeth Hurley seems entirely oblivious to the towel performance. She delights in the appearance of the keys and pounces on them, snatching them up and jingling them happily in the air. While I am mopping down my leg, she proudly points to the kitchen scales and the weight of blackberries that she's picked from the garden that morning, and then gleefully suggests that now I have come home I might make some more jam since she does not like the Hartley's.

So now I've come into the office to scream. I am still fuming about the chutney, whose key ingredient is soaking up my trouserleg, and I am still fuming about having found our house keys sitting on the path outside the house, merely lacking the sign 'Please use me to break in and take all possessions'. And I do not feel like making blackberry jam.

On the other hand, I do feel like sitting with my diary, counting the days to October 11th.

A birthday breakfast

It is Grit's birthday today and so a glass of whisky to start the day is permissable. Anyway, I need to get through until breakfast. Dig told the children yesterday of the imminent joy that is mother's 147th birthday and they are planning a morning surprise.

Of course I have to pretend to be ignorant of the upcoming surprise. Especially when a Tiger, or a Shark or a Squirrel bursts into the office where I am now hiding and asks sweetly whether I am planning to go into the kitchen yet for breakfast. Dig tells me that unless he instructs me otherwise by code, the answer is 'No'.

Throughout these performances, the innocent face that I have to display is, quite frankly, killing me, so I reach for the brandy. What I really want to answer is 'I want my muesli. Stop doing what you are doing. Put the felt tip pens down. Mop up the liquid. If you wrap streamers around the kitchen again I will go beserk with the wooden spoon painted like a dolly, at which point I cannot be held responsible for my actions.'

Dig assures me there is no liquid involved. He says it is not streamers either but that everyone is cooperating and not fighting and there is no blood or paint. I say it is an hour and a half since I woke up and drenched myself in coffee and it's about time I had my breakfast. The corpse smile that I'm keeping about me is starting to hurt, and unless I get my muesli and soya milk soon the tetchiness will take over and I'm going to explode or die or both. Dig says he will go and chivvy them along a bit and off he goes.

Ten minutes pass and he's back, with an open mouth and a look of astonishment. I fear the worse. But no. It is Elizabeth Hurley. She is up and having breakfast. In my seat.

'Do you know what she just said to me?' asks Dig.
'No.'
'She stood up in front of me, put her hands on her hips and said "I am very angry!" '
Now it's Grit's turn to be astonished. 'What have they done to her?' I ask.
'Nothing!' cries Dig.

Well, Elizabeth Hurley is angry indeed. Apparently she says the children woke her up this morning at 7.30 by chattering in the schoolroom. She says this is unacceptable. This is her day off and she deserves not to be disturbed by children in the morning. She says she has got up early thanks to the noise and she has had to eat her breakfast surrounded by noise and it is not nice.

Dig is equally outraged. He points out that this is the family flat and today is a day of celebration. I would like to think he added 'Shove it' but I bet he didn't, partly because he doesn't know how to say that in French but also I suspect that the thought of an enraged Elizabeth Hurley might be more than a man can bear before a shower and after only two cups of coffee.

'Well what have the children been doing?' I ask. I know I'll blow the surprise but hey-ho, a cross Elizabeth Hurley is more than I want to face too on my birthday day with no breakfast.

'Drawing Happy Birthday cards and blowing up balloons' answers Dig. What? No streamers? No. No liquid? No. No lying down screaming on the floor? No. Lots of happy chatter and anticipation of cake for breakfast. Which there isn't any, incidentally. Dig adds that Shark is very proud because she can tie knots in the balloon end, but not always. So for those balloons blown up she is tying a piece of string around the end, very tight indeed.
'And is there much noise?' I ask.
'Nothing out of the ordinary' says Dig.

So there you have it. Grit drinking on an empty stomach while Shark, Squirrel and Tiger take nearly two hours to make a birthday surprise happen by blowing up lots of balloons and making cards. I wonder if Dig has deliberately given out misleading information to Squirrel who has written 'Happy Barfday' on hers. As I eventually and joyously contemplate my muesli I give everyone top marks for cooperation on balloon handling, string tying and card making. And secretly I note that thanks to the string, the balloons will all deflate by tea-time which makes clearing-up easier.

And Elizabeth Hurley, who is very cross indeed, disappeared by stomping off to her room and slamming the door.

Thus the Grit household felt fully exonerated after failing to invite her for a splendid autumn walk through the parks followed by a celebration family lunch down at the local curry house and the last couple of hours down at the kiddie theme park.

The knee

Elizabeth Hurley has a malformed knee. She says it is congenital and her grandfather had it. She makes a wiggly shape with her fingers at the site of the knee and I obviously look puzzled, because Elizabeth Hurley then rolls up her trouser leg and shows me the knee. 'Do you see?' she says, pointing at her genou. Actually, I see what looks like a perfectly ordinary knee. A bit knobbly, but there again it gets fed a lot of jam in the mornings, so I rather hope the knobbly bits are fatty lumps on the way to being a size 24 genou.

Anyway, she cannot stand upright now because of her malformed knee. This means she is unable to do the washing up after supper. I do not point out that the malformed knee seems to have been acquired today after the cooking of a dozen muffins and before the clearing up. Neither was the malformed knee an impediment to going down the local market this morning and buying a pair of stilettos for a night out at a disco on Saturday night with some new found friends acquired at the local pub. And I bet come Saturday morning the malformed knee is perfectly flexible once more.

Perhaps I look sceptical. Because Elizabeth Hurley then offers the very credible excuse that she got her injury today while being a horse to amuse Shark. So I equip her with a hottle bottle to wrap round her malformed knee and Dig accuses me of doing that deliberately so I have things to blog.

And actually, while we are on the subject of injuries and looking for something to blog, Grit has a very tender left buttock today after falling down the attic stairs last night.

Toot toot!

Whoop-de-doo! While out collecting blackberries to bully Grit into making more blackberry jam, Elizabeth Hurley has fallen into a ditch! And not only that! The ditch was festooned with nettles!

The last straw

This is a whine about Elizabeth Hurley.

So if you enjoy reading complaining whines about people you don't have to suffer, read on. If it makes you impatient that Grit and Dig are too weedy to get rid of her, read on.

1. Breakfast is very important for Elizabeth Hurley. So important that she can drink all the milk for the children's cereal. Then, when I come into the kitchen on my way to my getting-up shower, EH waves the empty milk bottle at me, saying 'there is no milk'.

2. Jam is very important too. It might be more important than milk. Complaining that there is no jam in the house is a sign of its significance. Yes, Elizabeth. That's because I've hidden the 14 pots of home-made jam to stop you eating them. In exchange, I put out two pots of Hartley's which are on special offer at Tesco. Incidentally, this prompted the complaint.

3. Elizabeth Hurley is not very sensitive to her environment. She somehow picks just the wrong moment. For example, as we are rushing to get Shark, Squirrel and Tiger out the house to a lesson I've paid for (therefore they are going) Hurley asks if I can teach her how to use the microwave. I don't know how to use it myself, so the only answer is no. I get a very impatient glower.

4. Everyone seems to have an allergy to something these days. Elizabeth Hurley is allergic to the vacuum cleaner and washing machine. Despite being asked to vacuum the floor (we have to be specific after Sasha) and wash Squirrel's bedding, nothing is done. Even when we have been out the house for five hours to give her the chance to get her head round it.

5. In fact, when we are out the house for five hours, the house looks exactly the same when we enter as it did when we left. Last night's towels are on the sofa where the children left them. The popped balloon bits remain on the schoolroom floor. The laundry has taken up its usual place of spilling around the kitchen and Hurley has done her usual trick of emptying the dishwasher after I have placed it on rinse, so all the pots are covered in a fine layer of potato starch, rancid milk and greasy butter slime. All the crockery is stacked on the worksurface as usual because EH never puts anything away, claiming she does not know where it goes.

6. When EH eventually does the laundry, she puts all the powder into the hole for fabric conditioner. Grit wonders if she has done it deliberately.

7. Asking us to find the keys to the front door which she realises she lost yesterday when going to the pub is not a good way to start to the day.

8. Taking my place at the dining table was bad enough. Becoming so useless that Grit now has to clean the toilet to Elizabeth Hurley's room is edging to the final straw.

9. The final straw. It is supper time. Elizabeth Hurley has said she feels tired today and would like soup. So I cook potage bonne femme for her and pasta for everyone else. Then I call everyone to the table. I trigger Tiger's temper tantrum. I call Tiger to the table and she doesn't want to come. But now we are late to eat and I am weary and I want to keep out the way by pushing off to Tesco to buy jam, leaving Dig to calm things down. When I get back from Tesco, everyone's eaten. That I'm not upset by. I am upset by the fact that Elizabeth Hurley has cleared up only her soup bowl. Everything else is at the kitchen table. So at 10pm tonight I am tired, hungry, and clearing up the kitchen.

It's enough. The flight back home is rescheduled, not for Hurley's preference in December, but for October 11.

Self

Today is a day when I discover why I'm finding it so difficult to live with Elizabeth Hurley. She's hopeless as an au pair. But she's a personable character. She teaches us a bit of French and she cooks a few fruit tarts.

Well, this is what happens today. And it's nothing more than the smallest of moments.

This term, there's no swimming lessons for Grit and all the little junior Grits. The self-sacrifice required was tipping me over the edge. First the routine of dragging myself through someone else's bathwater every Wednesday morning. And then being broke, thanks to tennis lessons. And then there's the trauma of getting everyone in and out the car without a fight breaking out over a woggle. Plus the chances of Tiger making it through the lesson without going bonkers at Fish is zero. When we get home there's nothing to eat but raw potatoes. And as Shark, Squirrel and Tiger can swim some required meters, for the moment I've decided my self-sacrifice in this direction is complete.

So this term I decided we swim when we want to. Or rather, since I cannot take three children aged under eight into the pool, I can take two in when I want to, or I can palm one onto Elizabeth Hurley and I don't go swimming at all. In fact, there are lots of possibilities opening up now I don't feel I have to go.

But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are not aged eight yet. So today Shark goes swimming with Hurley and I take Squirrel round Ikea. Tiger stays at home, where I hope she is not snarling at Dig. Tiger has taken against Elizabeth Hurley, which I'm sympathising with, but we have told her it is bad grace to chant 'If she's going I'm not going!' even if I say that myself. But Tiger, I say, I try not to chant it in front of the person I'm referring to.

Anyway, I enjoy a quiet hour with Squirrel in Ikea. We spend nearly £20 on a pot to hold tomato sauce and some other essential items I forget right now, all because Ikea don't have the embroidered lampshade at £3.50 we came in here for.

Then it's lunch, and I have yet to cook it, so me and Squirrel go back to the swimming pool to collect Shark and Hurley. We wait for Shark and Hurley. And we wait. And we wait some more. And some more. Then we wait a bit longer, even though Grit has gone striding in to the changing rooms (twice) shouting 'Depeche-toi!' and some other choice words which I hope neither Shark nor Hurley can properly understand. I have a very hungry Squirrel in the car. At home there is a hungry Dig, uncertain what to do about lunch for us all, and a very, very, hungry Tiger, who does not do well on hunger pangs. And then there's a famished Grit. Shark, struggling out of the changing room with towels, woggle, bikini, and goggles on her head, says she is hungry too, and asks what is for lunch.

Well, I say to Shark, I will have to make something quick when we get home. We just have to wait for Elizabeth Hurley to blow-dry her hair. And we wait some more.

Then I wonder why Elizabeth Hurley isn't gnawing at the swimming pool floor tiles in desperation like the rest of us. Ah, of course. She's taken a large packet of digestives to the poolside. And scoffed them.

Pass me the whisky

Part of Elizabeth Hurley's brain is missing. Perhaps she has packed it inside a pickle jar and it is hidden in one of the enormous suitcases she has had flown from Nice at a cost to her mother of 300 Euros. I don't know. But I've had my suspicions for some time. Here is the evidence.

1. Part of Elizabeth Hurley is distinctly plasticised. She has these beige lips which, like those glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs Tesco sells for Hallowe'en, are inserted around her mouth at going-out time. Going-out time can be to the playground, the farm, the Co-op, the pub or to the bottom of the garden. The lips are very smooth and shiny and look a bit detachable. Also, she does not move her mouth much when she has her lips inserted.

2. When Dig took Shark, Squirrel, Tiger and Elizabeth Hurley to the kiddie theme park, Elizabeth Hurley said she had fun on the kiddie rides and roller coaster but was a bit disappointed because it was all not Disney enough. She was expecting more plastic trees, Mickey Mouse and, preferably, some singing flowers. The absence of these was a sad disappointment.

3. Pixies exist. It's true. Elizabeth Hurley has proof. Here's her story. Put your plastic lips in, then tell it to yourself while you wear a very intense, possibly French-looking expression, slap your hand flat on the table to emphasise your main point, and open your eyes wide at the astonishing conclusion. At which point, also declare, in a French accent, 'Incroyable? Mais vrai!'

'My muzzer, she keep a bottle of whisky on ze shelf, la. Zeez bottle is always full. She never like whisky. Me, I never like whisky. Zeez bottle, always there. Zen, one morning, we come to the kitchen, and la! C'est la verite! Zeez bottle, it is empty! Who could have drunk zee whisky? My muzzer? Non. Moi? Non. Zee Pixies. Oui. Incroyable? Mais vrai!'

So here is Grit, thrust into a land of insertable lips, plastic flowers and naughty pixies, where the words 'chalk' and 'cheese' are everyday now becoming more idiomatically appropriate.

Isn't this all the wrong way round?

Well in truth this au pair business is hard work.

Here we are, some days into the regime of the new au pair and I'm suffering. It's not that Elizabeth Hurley is a horrible monster, because she's not. She's not locked herself in her room and refused to come out. She's not insulted the children, spent hours on the telephone or called me a stupid English cow. And yet I'm finding Elizabeth Hurley quite difficult to live with.

So I conclude it's me that's difficult to live with. And I'm analysing just what niggles me.

1. For a start, Elizabeth Hurley takes my place at the kitchen table. Now this may seem petty. But quite a lot of home ed things hang from it. For example, at breakfast, when I've a captive audience with their mouths stuffed full of Cheerios, I get out the book on Blackbeard, or Marco Polo, or echolocation in bats, and I read it aloud. And from this small kitchen-table start I might be rewarded with pictures of bats, or Marco Polo, or Blackbeard. I'll get captions to go with the pictures, some of Blackbeard's loot made from silver paper; someone making ginger ice cream for Marco Polo; someone making paper bats to hang from the ceiling, and someone reading Pirate Pete's Adventure. But the gentle rhythm of our morning lesson routine is disrupted. And I get to sit in the visitor's chair.

2. Elizabeth Hurley eats. My goodness, she eats. She eats anything that is not made of metal, wood, plastic or fibreboard. I suspect she'd have a go at the latter if left more than an hour unattended without a snack. I am a visitor at the kitchen table and now very poor indeed.

3. Elizabeth Hurley leaves stuff all over the house. There's sports trousers on the washing line, a hairbrush and make up in the schoolroom; vitamin tablets in the kitchen, books on the tables. I clear this lot up daily. So I'm a poor visitor in my own house who cleans for the au pair.

4. Elizabeth Hurley has not touched the laundry, wiped the bathroom sink, looked in the direction of the vacuum cleaner, or attempted any tidying in the front room. She has, however, cooked three tarts, one fruit crumble, two cakes, a caramel and some blackberry ice cream. I'm a poor visitor who does the cleaning and is getting fat on a sugar and butter diet which I've paid for.

5. Elizabeth Hurley has commented, not once, not twice, but three times now about the children. And not about how cute they are either. Rather in a way which has me defending our home ed and our pathetic attempts at Plan B (proactive version) at 11 o'clock at night. I'm a poor, fat visitor who does the cleaning and is rehearsing her lines for the law courts.

6. Elizabeth Hurley has so far managed to get Dig to take her to the pub, bring her back from the pub and go shopping with her in Tesco. The latter is a feat I have never managed without a fight. So now I'm a poor, fat visitor who does the cleaning, is going to court and whose husband is being led astray with tarte au fruits courtesy of an au pair who incidentally looks like Elizabeth Hurley.

I wonder why I'm getting niggled.

Cook's economy

Elizabeth Hurley's cooking again. Today she says she can use up the slightly stale bread with an excellent French recipe for pain perdu. This involves a pack of butter, sugar, more eggs, a vanilla pod, milk, mixed spice and star anise, plus a couple of mangos. There is the slight excuse of eight slices of stale bread, which I've found lurking at the bottom of the bread basket.

Actually, the cost of the slightly stale bread is nothing against the ripe mangos, vanilla pod and the star anise. Since the bottom of the value wok I bought some time ago at Tesco is now irrevocably burned, I could add the cost of that in too. Thus this recipe to economically use up eight slices of stale bread on a mid-afternoon snack has cost the equivalent of eleven loaves of posh fresh French bread from Waitrose.

Not that I am complaining. Dig, who has not yet had his choppers round either the lime tart or the pain perdu, says that providing a tenner for Elizabeth Hurley to go shopping with Shark to Tesco everytime she says it is time to make a snack will increase the weekly expenditure on food by a further £140 a week. Dig has capped her next snack budget at £3.

Short fuse

Well if we had a respite from an exploding Tiger yesterday, we didn't get one today.

Elizabeth Hurley offers to paint everyone's faces since this is one of her specialities. She turns Squirrel into a butterfly, Shark into three dolphins leaping from the sea, and then, disaster. Tiger asks for a pegasus flying through the air. Now, this would be difficult for anybody. Elizabeth Hurley is temporarily confused and suggests she looks at a pegasus.

Tiger is inflamed. We're not sure what Tiger thinks Elizabeth Hurley is asking for. Perhaps she thinks Elizabeth Hurley is offering to face paint the toy pegasus she keeps in her room. Whatever is the problem, there's a very short fuse between the provocation and the result.

Nosh nosh

We're finding Elizabeth Hurley's weak point. Deprived of food for fifty minutes or so she gets anxious and wobbles. She says she's not diabetic but she must have food and then proceeds to point to various parts of her intestines in a lengthy explanation of French au pair digestive needs.

Badly translated, different parts of the body require different foods otherwise we will die. Probably by this weekend. The specific terminology about which part of Elizabeth Hurley's intestines require what sort of foods escapes me, but I can understand 'Je veux absolument manger des gateaux'. I nod in agreement and ask 'Est-ce que tu veux faire un gateau? Toute de suite?' Oui, apparently.

She may have been here less than a week but already I've done two emergency shops at the Co-op, Dig's discovered his breakfast's been eaten before he's got to it, we've been forced to stop at an emergency pizza shop, a 2lb pot of home-made blackberry jam I'd fondly got out for the duration of her stay has been largely emptied, she's complained about the lack of milk in the morning, and she's made a lime tart and scoffed it.

When the lime tart cooking started yesterday I felt quite forgiving at the thought of a bit of French cuisine, even though it took six eggs in the blink of an eye. Indeed the micro-slice I managed to fight for last night tasted delicious. Shark got a preferential slice, as did Squirrel and Tiger, and Dig got none. Then the rest of the 'citroen express' was put away under the cake lid for approximately 2 hours 15 minutes. After that it was strangely gone and Elizabeth Hurley was licking her lips and reaching for the jam pot.

So at the moment I am facing an empty fridge, another late night shop at the Co-op and secretly hoping that Elizabeth Hurley's punishment will come upon her when she wakes up one day and finds she is size 24.

A World Picnic

We pack Elizabeth Hurley into the car with Shark, Squirrel and Tiger and drive off to Big Park. Because today, thanks to the parks department, there's a World Picnic. That sounds promising. With a World Picnic I can show Elizabeth Hurley that we are not quite the backwater she probably thinks we are, and I can tick multicultural education at the same time.

Of course it's not just an excuse to show off our world status here in Smalltown. Oh no. There's some proper learning involved too. For a start I have no idea what Bhangra is. The flyer that I picked up from the library last week promises Bollywood dancing, African choir, Celtic, Folk, bellydancing and Bhangra. Bhangra is beyond me. I fondly think one of the children might be inspired to ask about music around the world, and Bangra in particular, so off I go to Wikipedia to do some research. Now if Shark asks I can impress everyone by talking Wiki about Bally Sagoo and DJ Stormz.

When we get there and shove Elizabeth Hurley into the field with the kids it's clear that the World bit of the World Picnic is a bit overstated. The local Gospel singers have bussed in extra support and seem to taking up quite a bit of stage time. Then there's some cute kids doing the Bollywood dancing, and something else which could be Bhangra. I'm not sure and wonder if there are sound files on Wikipedia.

Actually the Picnic bit of the World Picnic is a bit of an overstatement too. Grit has packed a disappointing picnic of six bananas and some oat biscuits. And there's no hippy stall selling gumbo, which was what I was relying on.

Anyway, we're not disappointed because we bump into the Hat and Guitarman, whom we haven't seen for ages, so Grit and Dig spend a lot of time chatting and not doing much listening to what's possibly Bhangra, or in eating bananas or oat biscuits. Elizabeth Hurley gets bored and goes off to play with the children by rolling down hills. That's an excellent start in my book since now I don't have to do it. Then Elizabeth Hurley starts to complain about going dizzy. This fatigue is apparently cured only by scoffing hot-dogs and guzzling Coke.

And so we spend the afternoon, chatting, rolling down hills and guzzling Coke against the sound of the local gospel choir. All in all, the World Picnic lives up to its promises, in a local sort of way. But we're not complaining. After all, it's a parks department event, and free. And we'll say that the attendance will grow in years to come.

The trials

It's Elizabeth's Hurley's first day with us, so I decide to torture her immediately on account of looking like Elizabeth Hurley and coming from Nice. Coming from Nice allows Elizabeth Hurley to drop location names like 'Cannes', 'Monaco' and 'Italian Alps' while Grit can manage 'Tesco' 'the police station' and 'Toddington where we have a big scream'.

The first trial is for Elizabeth Hurley to go off with Tiger to the local park and come back alive. I reason that if Tiger's up to her daily standard, they'll be back in ten minutes. Tiger will be gnashing her teeth and growling while Elizabeth Hurley will be in tears and packing the three enormous bags she's somehow managed to squeeze onto an Easy Jet flight and which are presently occupying the entire floor area of her bedroom.

Unfortunately, they're back after 45 minutes. Elizabeth Hurley looks a bit unsure about what she's in for, so I send her down the Co-op with Shark. Shark is busting to go out with Elizabeth Hurley. She has a shopping list and has decided that chocolate cake would be a good welcome. We settle on apples and a loaf of bread instead. But of course I'm not really interested in the apples and we have plenty of bread. I'm interested to see if Elizabeth Hurley will survive the ordeal I've set up for her. After all, Shark's last trip to the shops with an au pair ended up with Shark coming home alone and the au pair fleeing the house two days later.

Rather amazingly, Elizabeth Hurley and Shark make it back in fair time with the shopping mission complete. Shark's dancing about with delight wittering about lime tart and Elizabeth Hurley declares the trip tres bien with a big broad grin.

Right. It's time to throw Squirrel and Tesco at her. I have a ban on shopping at Tesco accompanied by any child since the time Shark went crazy at the checkout and followed me screaming all the way home, pausing only to take running jumps at me and punch me in the kidneys. Then there was the time that Squirrel refused to move, Tiger went beserk with a trolley, and the unpleasant hour when Shark and Tiger had a stand-off next to 200 stacked up jars of pasta sauce. As most parents know, and the ones who don't deserve to find out, shopping in supermarkets with children is like taking a journey through hell pursued by Satan with a red hot poker.

Well knock me down with a feather but Squirrel and Elizabeth Hurley arrive home with Squirrel all smiles and Elizabeth Hurley looking tired but not defeated.

So that's the first day. And in the pursuit of a speedy conclusion this time to whether the au pair will go or stay, I am continuing to locate her weak points. Spiders are usually a good one so I have made sure the window in her bedroom is appropriately open into the garden to catch the evening air.

Kite day

Thursday can find me on my hands and knees, conducting what appears to be a finger tip search in a field. Great. I wouldn't mind but I get pelted in the head by a home-made kite while I'm doing it.

This is the Fly Your Kite day which rounds off the summer events schedule from the parks department. It's both a success and a disaster. It's a success because Tiger's good at flying kites, so she can't claim to be rubbish at everything before breaking out into a frustrated storm of self-hatred. In fact, Tiger's extraordinarily good, and while Shark and Squirrel are crashing about, unable to get up their kites more than ten millimetres off the ground, Tiger's going round giving everyone lessons in how to do it.

Tiger is very responsive to the kite. This is what I can see. She watches the movements of the kite as the wind blows and buffets it about and she moves her hands in time, like she's dancing her fingers with the wind. Shark, on the other hand, doesn't bother looking at the kite at all. She runs at a clap down the hill with the kite bouncing along the ground behind her then turns round and wails at it when it catches up with her. It's been looking like a dead thing on a string for the race down the hill and now it's got to be dragged all the way up to start again. I almost feel sorry for it.

Squirrel, meanwhile, is giving up quick at this game and has gone off to make a mini kite at the toddler craft desk with two straws and a square of tissue paper. She's amusing herself with that and intermitently coming out with her home-made kite to have another go. I reckon she's wondering if her kite's seen the error of its ways yet and whether it's prepared to leap into the air yet on her command. Nope. Tiger comes along anyhow and gets the thing up into the air with one hand. She's already holding her own kite safe in a wind stream some fifty meters above her head.

The disaster of the day is, of course, all of Grit's own making. I've lost my glasses. Stuffing them down my front I thought would be a good idea while I tried to throw Squirrel's kite in the air and watch it drift forlornly back to ground. I was so inept at it my specs probably couldn't bear to watch anymore and decided death by trampling was the better option.

And this, I surmise, after the first fifteen minutes of searching, is probably what will happen. The grass is long and a vigorous cut some weeks back has left large clumps of brown straw piled up over the field. If my glasses have fallen into the longer grass or under the brown clumpy lumps, then it's only when I stand on them and hear the snap and crack of the lenses that I'll find them.

I have to say though that I will probably be spared this moment. Someone else will get to savour that, because there are upwards of fifty people on the field and no-one, except me, is actually looking at the grass or where their feet are going. Everyone's looking at home-made kites bufooning about on the air or careering about at head height.

The first kite to hit me in the head does so when I'm not looking up so can't take avoiding action. The second kite that hits me in the face is especially irritating because I am just that moment standing up and pontificating to Squirrel about how she should look around her and not help look for my glasses, because if she doesn't keep her eyes about her she may well get hit in the face with a home-made kite. With perfect timing, a home-made kite hits me in the face.

After this I conclude it's probably best if I start recruiting everyone on the field to look for my specs instead of standing on them and being hit by kites, so I start looking mournful and wailing 'help!' in what I hope will be a damsel in distress sort of voice. On my looking team I get one kid who's fallen out with his brother and a grandad who tells me he's blind in one eye.

Well, after another 30 minutes, I do find them. Scratched but unbroken, and I find them not by standing on them. So whatever happens now I will be mighty pleased. Because I have to drive over to the airport tonight in the dark and pick up Amanda from Nice who's arriving to be Grit and Dig's third au pair of the year. Without these specs I only have sunglasses and wearing those late at night is going to mark me out as someone highly suspicious or peculiar to both security staff and Amanada from Nice.

So we can all heave a big sigh of relief. Until we actually see Amanda from Nice that is. Perhaps Amanda from Nice should be wearing the sunglasses. Suffice to say, Grit's saying bonjour at ten o'clock at night covered in grass stains and scratched glasses accompanied by three screaming kids while mentally I'm giving Amanda from Nice a new name thanks to her extraordinary resemblance. Elizabeth Hurley.

Great.