Rain and shine

Rain rain rain rain rain. That stops everyone going out, so Dig and the children stay irritable at home.

Hahahah. I don't. I go out. With Oo. Shopping. I am a Proper Girl. And I am doing Proper Girly Things like drinking coffee and complaining about the cake in John Lewis.

Well, Oo complains. I don't. I am just grateful. It is free, I tell Oo, because this is the voucher given to me nearly two years ago when a member of staff saw this down-at-heel mother of triplets. She took pity on the stains from the weeping. It's why I don't wear mascara anymore. She gave me a voucher for two cups of coffee and two slabs of cake. I didn't like to point out to that kind shop assistant that I never have time to go to John Lewis coffee shop and, worse, I didn't have any girl friends to go to John Lewis coffee shop with, except for one who lives in Dubai.

Anyway, today Grit is a Proper Girl, even though she has never watched Sex and the City and is not actually sure what Proper Girls do. Hey, I remind Oo, the year Shark, Tiger and Squirrel were wrenched from my wretched body, Big Brother started on TV. I was so cut off from society you had to explain to me what it was, because I never understood what people were talking about. That's what motherhood did for me. It started off as a sort of a prison sentence where the guards would dribble and squeal and slurp and sleep and poop all day and all night while I watched over them shouting She smiled! and Dig would grunt, She burped.

But this is now, and the results of a proper girly afternoon out are to look at clothes, complain about the state of undress in the youth of today, and purchase some brown facial fluid in a bottle, which Oo will probably have to explain to me about. There are, of course, other expenditures, which I'm going to keep quiet about.

The afternoon is also gratifyingly disastrous, because this is Oo after all, and involves several John Lewis staff at closing time scouring every shop floor looking for a Debenhams shirt.

And I do not know whether this is the mark of a Proper Girl, but there is my complete gratitude that on this rare occasion, the person I am with shares my understandings, consoles me about life, says on balance I am right to eat crisps, and does not interrupt to shout poopy head, or to make demands for cheesy rice, toast, and where is the leg of the doll because I said I would glue it on. No, they just made me feel like today, the sun came out.

The horror, the horror

What a choice of bloggery today.

Should it be the letter from the police about the state of the car (again)? Here we are, 9.30am, and the letter arrives. At first I think it must be the summons, but no, it's the letter which reads:

'a car park attendant, local warden or police staff recently noticed you had left some belongings on view in your car ... anything on display in the car does present an opportunity for car thieves ...'

Feeling picked on, Grit goes to the car to peer in, hoping to see the gold bullion she's accidentally left lying around the back shelf, or the Gucci handbag and diamond necklace casually thrown on the front passenger seat. But no. She discovers a Squirrel coat which is so filthy it's trying to burrow out of the back window, and three folders with the contents spilling out across the floor - quite clearly three 7-year olds French lesson a La Tete, and not a couple of CDs holding the names, addresses and bank details of five million people. And then, this, in the open glove compartment:


I'm going to address myself to all professional car thieves now. Can you see the empty rice cake packet in the middle there? That's the blue bit of plastic which I am saving so I can put it into a recycling bin. I know it's quite valuable. Organic Kallo, no less. So I'll move that immediately. Or perhaps you can make out the sandwiches? They're the brown square things that we took with us last Wednesday. One day I'll get round to putting those on the bird table, so don't steal those. And then there's the banana skin, hanging out of the ensemble like, well, I daren't say. Supply your own simile.

Perhaps the viewer to this lot assumed I am carrying around the latest spot of modern art, maybe a little something by Tracey Emin. Either that or they have a bunch of letters to send out and the poor sod whose name is Grit is on their database, flagged, thanks to the frequent calls to the police station because we live in Smalltown, the recent car accident and the way I am probably video-taped while standing in the queue at the Post Office complaining about the surveillance society.

If not that blog then, how about Shark, Squirrel and Tiger disappearing into the garden to collect mud, seconds after mummy Grit, at 3.50pm, said something like 'Let's go to John Lewis in ten minutes'. And then it started to pour with rain, great bucketfuls of the stuff. Forty minutes later I am dragging in a soaked Shark covered in mud, a smelly Squirrel and an over jubilant Tiger with very pink cheeks, the sort of pink that says 'I will probably catch my death from this, and it will be all your fault'.

Perhaps I shouldn't blog about these things at all, but about the atmospheric squeal that Squirrel's growing lungs are now capable of. This squeal is so encompassing I bet you heard it this afternoon, late tea-time. Soon it will be the stuff of legend. It will be 'Where were you when Squirrel screamed?' Just a bit longer, I guarantee, and she will have this squeal fine-tuned to pitch perfection and we will be calling in the glaziers and apologising in the Sunday newspapers while dabbing at ourselves with hankies.

Of course I could simply blog about the shopping trip into John Lewis to buy swimming costumes. I fully accept I've brought this on myself. The very thought drove me to it: the shaming glances other mums will throw me, pretending not to, when they see my 8-year old Shark emerge from the changing rooms in her polka dot bikini, suitable for age 6 - and which I have twice tried to lose by hiding in the cupboard under the stairs, claiming it has been eaten by the swimming pool fairies. I have been forced to smile at her delight when yesterday she rediscovered this wardrobe malfunction and then had to express great enthusiasm for her lightbulb moment that 'now we are 8, you don't have to join us in the pool and I can wear my favourite bikini!'

Because of the late hour - John Lewis closes at 6pm - I am forced to take everybody. This is something I have learned not to do. I can coax one child in and out of the car and I can hold hands with her to make sure she walks in the same direction as me, usually under the pretence of mother's love not wanting her to get run over or knocked into the course of an oncoming bus. But three I cannot do. Even though I am very determined, and have no personal dignity any more, so will do whatever it takes, publicly, including sing and pretend to be a bat (I have done both, and more) to get everyone's attention to follow me, follow me in this direction, now, now, now, I still have only two hands. This is a serious shortcoming. It is more of a disadvantage when all three, the same age, are fighting for hands, space, jostling at pavement edges, pushing and yelling. So scarred is Dig that he now refuses even to cross the road outside the house with all three of them to get to the tennis courts opposite. Worse, he says, because their goal is within sight and a sister must not get there first. Competition, to the death, if necessary.

But today I've promised swimming costumes in preparation for next week, and this is the only opportunity I can see. And we're late, thanks to the attractions of mud.

My first problem is the sheer noisy weight of us as we enter John Lewis. I cannot say any of my children are shy, retiring types - except when you stand in front of them and ask if they are enjoying their home education: then they will stare in horror at you and turn bright red, acting as if they never saw outside the front room before today - usually they are noisy, spilling out beings, locked inside their triplet bubble and continuing their loud impenetrable chatchatchat as if invisible to the outside world.

I try to warn them. I say, look, can you see how everyone is staring? First, you all look the same; people are confused, and will watch you. Second, you are very loud, and often have screamed in public; people may know you. Third, we are taking up the entire aisle now, so please can we walk single file and keep a little quieter?

None of these work. In the swimming costume department Shark sees a sales assistant and whispers, loudly, 'Shop assistant! Smile!' All three suddenly stand bolt upright in a line and put on a display I guess they might like to think indicates 'we are innocent'. I can only wince; I may have something to do with this after all. For the last two years I have taught them to try and look normal when we, school age kids in school time, see the community police officer coming towards us on his rounds.

But of course now it is too late. We have attracted the attentions of a smiling shop assistant who continues to smile even when Tiger declares very loudly that she 'isn't wearing that' in a tone as if offered a dead toad, then Shark brings down a line of hangers and costumes with over zealous arm movements. Shark clearly takes after Grit who manages to bang her head on the projecting arm of a clothes display, moves back and bumps into Squirrel who is foolish enough to stand behind her looking in another direction. In fact the whole expedition is fast becoming a Laurel and Hardy routine without the fun.

In amongst the mayhem I cannot help but feel we now have the one-to-one attentions of the sales assistant like a local police force, sent there to guard the stock, probably because the mother has brought in these kids as a front so she can half-inch the pop socks. I try and throw her off by getting everyone in the changing rooms, which are far too small, so two disgorge out to wander unsupervised through the rails. At this point, the chipper assistant attaches herself to Tiger and is trying to contain her with an 'indulge' routine - one which I've tried myself - treating her like some teenage shopaholic, crooning 'What do you think of the pink? It's very you'. My 8-year old Tiger is lapping it up and probably expecting this sort of treatment every Saturday from now on.

At closing time we emerge, arguing, from the shopping centre. Squirrel says she is happy with last year's pink bikini and I'm praying it fits. Tiger is swinging a new pink costume with sequins, looking a bit too Mae West and for which I blame the sales assistant. And Shark has a replacement bikini, in blue. For Shark, there is no other colour.

There is only one advantage to this, and that is that I can count the swimming ordeal mostly done. Until we get to the pool.

Purple boots

Tiger is desperate. She wants some pink boots. She needs pink boots. If she does not have pink boots, she will probably die. Right here. Now. On the spot.

Grit, being a good mummy, has a big sigh and looks on ebay where there is a very fine pair of purple boots in Cardiff that she puts on watch and then forgets about, so the 99p bargain goes to Sparklady.

Apparently, nearly owning a pair of purple boots from ebay isn't quite the same as wearing a pair of pink boots you can call your own. So with another big sigh it's off to John Lewis to be measured properly and then buy a pair of pink boots. That's Grit's idea, anyway.

While mummy Grit makes an exhibition of herself shouting at the ticket machine and thumping the buttons, Tiger wanders about looking for pink boots. She can't find any. I point out a lovely pair of red ones. Tiger thinks they are horrible and says she's not wearing them. I say they are beautiful and wonder if I could squeeze my size 6 foot into a size 3 if I don't wear socks and scrunch up my toes.

Not actually seeing any pink boots and being told there aren't many boots this week because new stock is coming in next week, doesn't deter us, and Tiger's foot gets measured. Tiger does not like this at all in case the slide-thing hurts her toes. Squashing out Tiger's toes with my fingers means that she measures at 12 and a half. Fitting lady says she is astonished at how wide Tiger's feet are, well over H.

'What are you looking for?' asks the cheery lady.
'Pink boots' I reply.
'We haven't got any' says the lady. 'We haven't got any in boots in H fitting. Boots only go to G. But you could try 1G in boots. Here's a pair of red ones.'

Grit says they look beautiful and let's hug them and try them on. Tiger mutters. Fitting lady ignores her and presents them. Tiger mutters some more which sounds like never ever ever. Fitting lady ignores her some more. Admittedly, listening to what Tiger is saying is pretty difficult right now, since she speaks in a whisper and has no front teeth.

Well Tiger's facial gestures seem to do the trick, so the lovely red boots which should be Grit's by rights get taken away and fitting lady lifts up a pair of girly purple boots and says, 'We have these in 1G'.

Tiger looks interested. Then Tiger looks determined.

There's a lot of grunting and shoving and fleeting looks of surprised pain while Tiger crams her foot into one. 'It feels comfortable' she gasps in a strangled whisper, her little toes clearly bulging out of the sides. Fitting lady is shaking her head and tut tutting.

Then I come over all mother. 'Well', I say, 'when you're aged 18 you can shove your feet into anything you like. But right now I'm paying and I'm not paying for them if they don't fit'. My voice sounds just like my mother's at Clarks in Sherwood in 1967.

'We don't have any more boots in 1G' sings fitting lady. 'We have shoes in black in 1H'.
'I don wan black shoes', Tiger whispers urgently in my ear.
'Are they for school?' says fitting lady cheerfully.

Tiger's face contorts in horror and she shrinks behind me. Not only has she had her feet clamped in a vice, she's now about to be airlifted to the nearest primary.

'I don wano be here!' whispers Tiger. I theatrically whisper back. 'Do you want to go home?'
'No.'
'Do you want to look somewhere else?'
Tiger gives a sly look to the black shoes coming in her direction. 'Yes' she croaks.

And so it's Next. They have pink boots. Not the right size. Then to Clarks, where it's a thirty minute wait for Sandra to appear from out the back. More tut tutting. Then to BHS who have pink boots but mummy Grit refuses to buy them on the grounds that they are revolting. Then it's Pumpkin Patch: Tiger hates their pink boots and they don't fit anyway. Then it's Mothercare, Debenhams and H&M.

The last stop is M&S, right at the other end of town. And there Tiger spots a pair of purple boots. She tries them on, declares she likes them and that they're comfortable. By now I'd probably agree to anything. It's taken four hours. And my feet are killing me thanks to these ill-fitting shoes I found at the charity shop last week. But as we happily trot back to the car and I watch my lovely pointed toes tippety-tap, I think that my shoes may be killing me, but at least they look good. But I wish they were in red.

End of the fridge

We come home from being Tudors and the fridge has disappeared. I discover this when I try to put away some cheese. Dig says it is not stolen, but swapped for a freezer. He says that last week he went to John Lewis, and while me and the junior Grits were all cavorting around on Tudor lawns the delivery men arrived and did the swap. They took the fridge, and left us with the freezer. This is a relief.

Me and Dig don't actually get the chance to talk much. When we need to talk about things like why the accounts haven't been filed since 2004, we try to sneak to the office next door. However, the office has become a site of struggle since May thanks to the nesting blue tits, and the constant stream of children in and out to see daddy blue tit fetch mealy worms for the babies. Thus, just about every conversation me and Dig try to snatch about important things like accounts and fridges is constantly interrupted.

Actually, as an aside, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have been interrupting every conversation since February 2000, at first with sustained wahahwhahaha or snuffly noises, and now with rubbish about why horses need swimming lesssons and who's stolen the tiara and who has thumped whom and why nothing's fair.

Anyway, between Squirrel's demands to go on a bike ride, Tiger's complaint that it's not Friday, and Shark demanding her tiara back, I gather from Dig that last week he bought a freezer because he was unable to bear the fridge any longer, and feared his reputation if Ermintrude photographed the inside and stuck it up on an au pair website with the caption, 'This is what you're in for'.

Now it is difficult to describe the inside of the fridge, and I fully agree that the best way to get it discreetly removed is to buy something else from John Lewis because they take the old one away. We have another fridge in the office which is disgusting because it's never cleaned, but it is not a patch on the one that's just gone.

The problem started when Dig bought a washing machine, so I'll blame him for the state of the fridge. The front of the washing machine bows out and, being adjacent to the fridge, prevented the fridge door from opening properly. At first I threw a dishcloth in there to mop up the spilled orange juice, but I couldn't reach the cheese crumbs, nor the upturned jar of moulding peanut sauce, nor the spreading oily layer from the green pesto jar, nor the toffee someone put in there and which glued itself to the shelving. The whole interior started to resemble some sort of industrial waste site: the orange juice gradually turning brown; green stains dribbling in sticky lines down the insides; crusty layers of unreachable vegetable off-cuts frostily gluing themselves to unfathomable parts. The soil, Hama beads and snowman's head didn't help. In fact, after a few months, there was no clean patch of white plastic left at all.

Then last week the worst happened. And for Dig, the final straw. A whole open carton of Tesco tomato passata got pushed in there and knocked against the back wall. It exploded. Now I'm not sure what the inside of Idi Amin's fridge looked like, but I bet it was pretty gruesome. Well, our fridge looked like that. Stick a cabbage head in there, with the tomato sauce sprayed all around and the cheese deposits growing underneath with bits of dead carrot sticking out of them like finger ends, and you have a pretty good idea about our fridge.

So the fridge is gone, and a freezer is in its place. Not plugged in, mind, because that would be pointless. Because next comes the difficult part. Dig argues that he's decided we need a fridge in the kitchen after all, and not a freezer. There is nowhere to put butter except for the fridge in the office, and that's a long walk for some butter. So he says we must take out the old fridge from the office, clean it up, and swap it for the new freezer, thus making it pointless using the freezer, because it will soon move.

There's only one problem to this plan. To get the fridge out of the office, and to get the freezer in we would need to clear a pathway.

I will leave the office to your imagination. Suffice to say the last time a vacuum cleaner was in there was 1998. I haven't actually seen the carpet since 2001. Punching a hole in the wall and exchanging the fridge and freezer through that seems a simpler option than suggesting to Dig we have an office tidy up.

Or we could just live with an unplugged freezer in the kitchen. And accept that this was the price we had to pay for getting rid of Idi's fridge.

Parking rights

The orange light is permanently on at the petrol gauge on the dashboard, so it's time to fill up at the service station. And for some reason, there are lots of queues. So I dutifully park in line 7 where we are next in line for the pump, and I can chat to Ermintrude about how I might say in French, 'I have no money, could you pay for the petrol?'

While we are waiting, the man in front of me wants to reverse. Tsk, I think, he's just too impatient to wait for the man in front of him to come back from the shop after paying and drive on. Tsk Tsk. How impatient.

I reverse anyway, and give him a good space to come out. Then a man in a van suddenly drives straight ahead of me, into the space I just made. This is too much. I am enraged. I leap out of the car and shout 'Why am I here?' I start to gabble. 'I'm reversing! I have reversed because he reversed! And he reversed to get out! So I reversed! You stole my space!'

I can hear Ermintrude tittering nervously, sat in the passenger seat. As I'm gesticulating and demanding, pointing at the van and the space that's not there, I'm thinking, this is nothing, Ermintrude. Really. You should have been there the day outside John Lewis when I was forced to begin the campaign against people who do not have children, yet who park in parent and child spaces.

Now I reckon I am not the only parent who is upset by this inconsiderate behaviour. There are probably websites of rage dedicated to the gits who park in parent and child spaces when they clearly have no children. This is how my campaign started.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were less than a year old. They were still in their triplet buggy, and it was no small matter to push that thing with three fattened baby dollops in it. Especially in the cold, sleeting rain, in the darkening afternoon skies of December. And through a car park at that, because like most car parks outside shopping centres, there's no pedestrian walkway, and if there is, the triple buggy - at the width of a mini - is too wide to get down it. I'd already sat in my car, opposite a parent and child space outside the store, waiting for an occupant to leave, and then they indicated no, so off I went, returning 20 minutes later, wet and exhausted with the walk from the far side of the car park, with Shark, Squirrel and Tiger complaining and kicking, fussing about the rainhood which it's taken me 10 minutes to fit.

And what do I see? A sleek black Mazda, sitting in the parent and child space I'd waited for. I looked inside. Immaculate. No biscuit crumbs. No food rotting in the upholstery. No chewed toys, hanging from the rear seats. No baby seats. No Mr Floppy Bear hanging with his paw trapped in the door. No blankies, wet wipes, teething rings, buggy scratches. No evidence of any child at all. That did it.

It was a sacrifice Shark had to make. Despite the cold and the rain, I got her out from her seat, pulled down her Baby Gaps and ripped her nappy off. Then I squished that sodden stinking nappy underneath the windscreen wiper.

I did that until all the children were out of nappies. And when everyone was happy on the toilet, I carried around a pack of nappies in the back of the car specifically for the purpose. I never got to see the pay-off, the look of horror on the owners of those Mazdas and Mercs and upmarket cars with their clean upholstery. But I did get the gratification of hearing the contents of toddler bottoms slide across the windscreens.

So believe me, Ermintrude, asking a man to move his van is nothing, really. And he reversed it and let me have my space back. As of course I'd expect of any decent, considerate citizen.

John Lewis shoe department

We are in John Lewis kiddy shoe department. It is empty, apart from me, Tiger, and Rana, the sales staff, who asks me if I have a ticket. Ticket? Ticket? I'm clearly expected to have a ticket if Tiger wants to look at sandals and decide whether she's pushing off to Next.

Now I've been here before, and I remember. Probably to overcome the rush at term starts, John Lewis has a ticket system. In the past it's been a cross between bingo and the deli counter. The staff shout out a few numbers until one comes up and then I shout up 'House!' and all goes well.

Only it doesn't go well. Not at all. Because John Lewis has installed a fancy new computer-driven ticket system. There is a computer screen now that asks the question 'Are you interested in the fitting service for shoes?' I can answer Yes or No. Answering something smart like, 'I am in the shoe department because I want to buy an oven' doesn't figure. So I press 'Yes'. Then up comes some more screens: How many children? What ages? Boys? Girls? By now I half expect it to ask what shoe size I'd like measuring for. It all seems a time wasting palaver to me, given the fact that Rana is the only person watching us, but I'm guessing that's what John Lewis are doing it for. To waste my time, and free up the time of Rana who probably is in need of a cup of tea by the time she's seen to James and Geraldine and Davy and Martin and Katy and Clara.

When the machine gives me a ticket, it reads we can be seen by Rana at 4.49. It is 4.15, and we are the only ones in the department. Now, naturally, Grit becomes a bit stroppy. 'Shall I wait?' I shout. 'I can wait if you'd rather!' 'I can wait over here!' Tiger has already eyed up some expensive pink Birkenstocks and I could probably tell Rana that Tiger takes size 13. Now Rana is very good and poopoohs my ticket, even though I have got bolshy with it. 'No!' I say. 'Let me wait! The ticket says 4.49!' She is even nicer now, and smiles a lot and offers to find shoes in size 13 for Tiger.

Now this is where the trouble really starts. Because another mother turns up. And she is worse than Grit with the machine. She is Fuming Mother, and she does not play the game. She slams the keypad with No No No and says it is bloody rubbish and why can't her son look at some shoes when Rana is ready because there is no-one else here apart from the mother with electrocuted hair and a daughter who looks like she has already chosen expensive pink Birkenstocks in size 13.

Grit is naturally delighted at finding someone else who is even more stroppy than she. So Grit can have a secret smile while Rana goes off to find shoes for son of Fuming Mother, and while Tiger jumps up and down some more in expensive pink Birkenstocks, just in case, she says, she might like the other pink ones better.

And then, disaster. It is 4.36. And Hulk Mother, the owner of ticket 4.33, arrives at the shoe department. And what does she see? Rana is actually measuring someone else's feet! And there is a child jumping up and down in expensive pink Birkenstocks who has evidently been measured already! Hulk Mother is not happy. Not at all. She is worse than Grit and Fuming Mother put together. She stops, and shouts out across the floor for us all to hear, 'I have a ticket! And somebody-' she shoots a mean, accusing, glance at Rana, 'Somebody decided to serve somebody else! Even though I have a ticket!' Hulk Mother brandishes the ticket like it is the sword of truth just plucked from the mountainside of honour.

Now if I were Rana, this perfectly horrible woman would probably reduce me to tears, or I would lose my job for telling Hulk Mother to shove her ticket, but Rana is evidently a much more professional person than me. Rana just smiles, patiently. Even while there is a big fighty scene going on, with lots of John Lewis staff trying to run discreetly, Hulk Mother glowering meanly, the head of shoes whispering about complaint procedures, and Tiger, still jumping up and down in expensive pink Birkenstocks.

What I can make from this, John Lewis, is that your new computerised ticket system is simply not working. Today it undermined your staff and put them in a position where they were punished for using their initiative and their common sense. It undermined your customers and it put us all at odds with each other. It got Grit's sarcasm flowing, got Fuming Mother's hackles up, and gave Hulk Mother an opportunity to vent her rage back at your staff.

So whether you stock expensive pink Birkenstocks or not, we're not coming back in a hurry. And I think whoever installed the computer system in the kiddy shoe department owes Rana a bunch of flowers and an apology.

The fridge

The fridge is disgusting. I can barely describe it. So imagine this scenario.

Eighteen months ago the washing machine broke down. Dig went off and bought a new one and within a couple of weeks it was installed and working. Relatively problem-free for the inhabitants of The Pile, you might think.

There was just one problem. The front of the washing machine bows out, like a big curved letter C. Why it does this I do not know. It just does. But the consequence of the washing machine with a front shaped like a letter C is that we cannot open the fridge door. The fridge is adjacent to the washing machine; we cannot put it anywhere else because it is a specially long fridge and doesn't fit anywhere else. And for the last eighteen months we've not been able to open the door. Well, to be specific, we can open the fridge door to about a 30 degree angle; just enough to slip a hand in and out with a litre of milk.

Now, have you or your children ever put anything in the fridge, then knocked it over, and thought, 'Dash! I've just knocked over the yoghurt/ milk/ grated cheese/ orange juice/ pink sugar mice/ Hama beads/ pile of soil that mother is going to have a fit about when she finds it/ the bowl of soup that I thought I might eat later/ the tinned tomatoes that I opened on auto-cook and couldn't face/ half-bot of wine/ a snowman's head from the freezer/ the rest of the pasta that one day I might make into pasta salad/ clay fish/ etc etc?

In any normal fridge, of course you can spill it, curse, scoop out the contents and clean it up, promising to be more careful next time.

Well in this house, when any of the above gets knocked over in the fridge, there's nothing we can do about it because we can't open the door beyond a 30 degree angle. I can throw in some dishclothes to mop up the orange juice and soup, and I can scoop out a bit of the soil, but that's about it. I simply can't get in there to clean it all up. So it stays.

Now after childbirth I can take some disgusting sights, but the inside of our fridge isn't one of them.

The slight problem is that we are about to be exposed on this one. We have a visitor coming to stay on Saturday until Monday. This is Sasha, who is flying in from Germany to meet the children and decide whether she would like to be an au pair with us during August. And what if she opens the fridge? This would be a disaster. Dig has a reputation to maintain. What if she photographs the inside of the fridge and posts the horrific sight up on MySpace, or worse, provides a narration and sets up a video on YouTube? The national press would be alerted to Dig's fridge. I would be prosecuted. The children would go into care. All would be lost.

So today I have grabbed Tiger by the arm and marched her off to John Lewis to buy a fridge. Dig assured me you could go in, say 'I'll have that one' and they pop it round the next day.

Only it doesn't happen like that, Dig. Oh no, not at all. They pop it round in seven days time. Seven days. Sasha will have been and gone. She'll have her photo/video safe in her mobile phone and she'll be dialling the Daily Mail on Monday morning demanding counselling and compensation. So let's hope she's vegan, hates milk or never expresses interest in the fridge.

I could chain and padlock it, which will look normal, of course. Or I could stand in front of it for 48 hours shouting out 'Don't worry Sasha! I'll get the milk!' Or we could just let her get some milk for her cup of tea, and we pretend everything's normal and hope we get away with it.

Oh dear, oh dear. On the fridge front, all is lost.

Ice cream

I have been into town with Tiger and she forced me to buy an ice-cream maker. She dragged me to John Lewis and marched me up the escalater. I did not even get the luxury of standing there, sagging over the handrail while I get carried upwards and can rest my ancient feet. No. I get told to get up the stairs jolly quickly or there'll be trouble.

And if that wasn't bad enough she whizzed off to the cookware department on the second floor and found the ice cream makers and refused to move. In fact she stood there and shouted loudly to the coffee demonstrating woman that she needed some help with the ice cream makers and be flipping quick about it because she has another appointment in half an hour and this time she's not going home without one.

After about five minutes of Tiger shouting and the coffee demonstrating woman looking a bit uneasy, a nice young man arrived and Grit, sorry, Tiger, demanded that he told her all about them, and what you do, and how you can make delicious chocolate ice cream, and you can use soya products too, you don't have to use any of that cow-killing stuff if you don't want. Then Tiger started drooling a bit and grabbed one in an unseemly haste, dribbling, 'It's mine and I'm going to have it. Get your hands off it.'

Within ten minutes she'd forced me to pay for it and then marched me back down the escalators to get it home. I did not even get a chance to hover about by the faux fur throws and gloat about the fact that I got a John Lewis one on ebay for a tenner, and absolutely gorgeous it is too, if only Shark would stop rolling about in it pretending to be eaten by a grizzly bear.

Now we're at home, and I'm going to give Tiger a big telling off about behaving so rudely in John Lewis, and especially about pushing in front of the old lady at the queue to pay so she could shave five minutes off the time she could get back home and unwrap her new lovely present to herself.

But first, I'm going to make ice cream.

Shopping

I've been shopping with the triplets. Not all at the same time, of course. That would be suicide. If I take them singly, I can almost guarantee there'll be no fighting and brawling or rolling around in the gutters. And I get some quality, one-to-one time, and can actually have a conversation with each of them. I've planned this for when Dig's back. He's hanging around on the sofa now looking ill and miserable, so it seems like a good day to leave him in charge of two children, and not three.

First it's with Shark to Tesco, to get some emergency lunch. I hate Tesco. I would call them a bunch of scoundrels, villains, unethical charlatons and rogues if I could get away with it. But I go shopping there. Mostly because they're open 24 hours so I don't have to go shopping with children. Going shopping with children is even worse than shopping at Tesco.

With Shark in charge, it's painful. She has to push the trolley. She has no sense of direction so I apologise all the way round the fruit and veg. After a while she's not strong enough to push either, so lolls against it, not giving up, with a scowl on her face, blocking the aisles and progressing at a speed of one centimeter every ten minutes. After five minutes I abandon her and run round the shop gathering ingredients. Since it doesn't seem much like one-to-one quality time I give in to a demand for mango.

The next quality-time trip is with Squirrel, to John Lewis furnishing department. I'm persuading her to move into the bedroom with Shark, but she says she's not going unless she gets a princess room. I say she can have a gold and white princess room and not a pink princess room because the sight of all that pink is going to make me retch and I have to live there too. So we go to look at gold and white things.

Squirrel is destined to be a Woman of Quality. She immediately settles on a lead crystal chandelier with gold metalwork. A snip at £1000. Then she eyes up a pure white rug at £750. She wants a decorative curtain around her bed, so I show her some net curtains at £2.25 a metre and suggest she could paint them with her glitter glue. She says that's not a good idea and heads off to the bridal fabric with hand-sewn spangly beads and sequins in floral pattern at £28 a metre. I say to her that's very good for a fact-finding, ideas-generating mission and we come home with a metre of sparkly gold fabric from the reduced bin for £4. Now if there's a little lad out there destined for Squirrel, don't say you weren't warned.

Finally, it's Tiger's turn. Off we go to Ikea. By this time I'm getting a bit tired of quality time and feel a bit truculent. Tiger spends most of her time complaining that we can't just walk into a shop and see exactly what we want the moment we want to. I don't know where she gets that attitude from. She tells me to stop complaining about things that don't matter, like hurty feet, and I tell her to stop being an irritating six-year old who does nothing but complain. So I can't say the trip to Ikea was a good quality-time experience either.

Next time, Dig can have the quality time. I know where they'd go. Shark would get to the bottle shop, Squirrel to the electronics shop, and Tiger to the DIY shop to look at cisterns again. At least that would balance out the cooking and interior design. And I'd get to lie on the sofa, reading the newspaper, with my feet up.