Back home

There is nothing to come home to from Madrid. The boiler is still broken upstairs, I left Tiger's pink trousers on the washing line outside for five days under the dropping ivy and the nesting pigeons, and the car tax is due.

On the plus side, I discover I am destined to be demented by age 70. On my doormat is a note from the dementia society. They say I should give them my money while I remember I still have some. Only I don't have any. I remember that.

But when I crank up the computer I discover everything is fantastic in the money department, if not in the trouser-on-the-washing-line department. I could donate my millions after all.

I have won £950,000 pounds from Mercedes Benz. That's three times now. It should nicely join the £1million I won last week from Google and the £50,000 I won in the Eurolottery that I don't play.

But there is more! My blog is now so exciting with its six and half readers, one of whom fancies the pigeon, that a website about dog mental health aspires to feature grit's day, but only if I pay them some eurodollars.

With my new found millions, and looking to escape the delights of a Smalltown house without heating, I might just do that.

Why oh why are museum cafes so expensive?

We have spent three hours in the Prado.

OK then, let's cut to the chase and say

THE FINEST COLLECTION OF ART I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE

and which unfortunately I keep asserting belongs to Prada.

But now we are knackered.

My eyes are bleeding, drawn squinting close at Goya, tracing atoms of crackled paint. And those colours of Fra Angelico! So pure and perfect I have been sniffing, just in case I can whiff paint and turps. Now my fingers have started twitching with involuntary spasms because I have been yearning to snatch man with a hand on his chest, shove him under my arm and run off with him. But I cannot decide. I want Durer as well. At the very sight of him I am slobbering. He is ohsoclose to my tender touch. I will be kind to him. I promise.

Dig says stop dribbling. He says I need a stabilising cup of tea, a jam sandwich and a packet of crisps. So let's shift our arses over to the Prado cafe like genteel ladies and an honorary Dig-like gentleman might do, and let's partake of a spot of lunch. Refreshed, we can restart our tour from the eighteenth century and take it to tea time.

We make it over to the Cafe Prado - and you can bet my entire body is elevated five inches off the floor at the very idea that Grit is become the sort of gal to enter such a refined place of luncheon - then we squeeze our five great British rears around a table built for four, and Dig strolls off patting his hungrytummy for the savoury delights to come.

He reappears five minutes later, with the shocked expression of a man who has seen a premonition that his body is to be ripped apart by demons. He needs only to have his hand round his own throat feeling for his whispering pulse to complete the picture of the near-death experience. Clutching a small bottle of wine, possibly one pipette's worth, he can only stutter How much? For a sandwich!

Now Dig is not particularly a poor man, but neither is he rich. He is northern. He has priorities about his brass. One of them is not to hand over fifty quid for a round of sandwiches and a bag of crisps to a cafe, even if it is in the Prada.

We all squeeze up again and have a very good British moan and groan about the ridiculous anti-family prices charged by museum cafes the world over.

And these are cafes in places where we cannot get out. We don't want to get out! We want to stay! We want to have lunch and go and see more art! But we are hostages. Fivefamilyhungrybellies. The only way out now I can see with dignity is to pin five hundred eurodollars to Dig, blindfold him, and shove him back again in the right direction for the cafe staff to rip those notes right off his shirt and stuff a cheese bap in his hand.

But Grit's resourceful and enterprising spirit saves the hour. I have a half a dozen semi-chewed bits of bread in my handbag which I have been carrying around for a few days, so we eat those. Here is Squirrel, examining this feast.


See the happy glow when she is replete!


So when we have dined on bits of handbag bread with added fluff, some tap water I have scrounged, and half a pipette of wine, off we go again to enjoy art.

Does this dent me? Not at all. I have yet to stand in front of Velazquez. I may strip off.

And this merely proves my point. We do not have to be the great and good to be in any art gallery in the world. I am loud, awkward, ugly, mean, broke, and shop at Lidl.


But this art is all ours. And I am in heaven. (Starving.)

Kids should go to art galleries. Full stop.

Kids! In you go!

The Reina Sofia in Madrid is one formidable modern art gallery, and in Grit's opinion, if you have kids, unmissable.

I don't know if you avoid taking your kids to art galleries. Perhaps you fret about what other people will say, or worry about the reaction of the art guards, or get anxious about whether your kids will scream, run about, then throw themselves on the floor if you show them a Picabia.

All I want to say is screw that. All kids belong in art galleries. No negotiation. Art is our culture, our past, our future. It belongs to our kids as much as to us. And if they stand in that gallery and yell out their guts, then shrug your shoulders, and call it art.

I should warn you, I have one big attitude problem about this. In some places I have thrown Shark, Squirrel and Tiger into those hallowed halls like a hand grenade. Chuck them in the middle of the Hockney and you can see the bomb blast of moral outrage taking place in slow motion all about you.

The indignation, I bet, is mostly from the child free who think they are the only rightful people who should be allowed to look at art. Spare me.

I have been very judgmental about those women in particular who look like high-class hookers clippyclopping Jimmy Choos through the holy house of art. The same women who, sighting a living breathing child just about to curdle the air with a yellow lungfull of howl, recoil with the type of disgust you would reserve for the smell of an eviscerated rat held over a bunsen burner.

Bad luck, ladies. Art is ours. Art galleries have been our legitimate life and stomping ground since dot. Believe me; me and the gritlets, we are not going away.

I have been very particular about this since I turned that pram sideways to get it through the door of the local art gallery.

And I get worse.

I do not even like kids to be quiet in art galleries. I do not like reverence and hushed voices. What is this place? A church? Nope. No way.

I have taught Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to march straight in there, own that space and place, stand still and be surrounded by all the art they wish; to point, shout mummmmeeeee! loookatthiiiiis! Then, if they hate something, I want them to tell me, strong and loud. And if they like something, I've taught them to lie on the floor, whip out crayons and a sketch pad, copy that idea, and take it home to see if they can model the like.

And do I care about the afflicted souls and morally wounded in our wake? Not at all. Get over it.

If I could get past security, I would make it so every parent can bring in orange squash and blankets, and set up squat in the middle of the floor and sit there, discussing whether vinegar on emulsion would have the same effect, then whip out a roll of wall paper and give that idea a go.

Nothing you say will dent me. I congratulate myself for that art is ours attitude. Because I believe it's thanks to that way-of-life education, now I have three kids who can spend five hours in the Renia Sofia, doing this.






Success.

Take your kids to art galleries. I want to see them there.

We made it.

Oh yes we did. And here is the lucky business receiving our eurodollars for tonight's cheese and tomato extravaganza.


I tell you, these kids are round-the-world cheese and tomato pizza experts. So it had better be good from the Taberna Tirso de Molina.

Everyone likes the look of this place. Peering through the windows we can see shining white tiles, red brick, thick yellow varnished pine, crowds of people, and industrious red-faced waiters swirling around under globe lights. It looks French. Even the entrance door in the arch transports me; it's long and thin and glazed and it should be nineteenth century and reveal a sour faced Jean Paul Sartre sulking behind, brooding on gauloises.

It's not immediately obvious they do food at all, except for the menu slapped up outside. As soon as we risk an entry, the cigarette smoke from the youthful crowded bar front billows out, with great clouds of relaxed chatter following. No-one bats an eyelid as three kids are led through the crowd to the restaurant tables at the rear at 10pm at night.

Try and lead three kids through the beer stink of the Engineer's Arms in Smalltown and see how long before Social Services turn up. Thank goodness we've left that anti-child British land behind for a few days.

Here I could be experiencing pure joy, because an efficient and attentive waiter who doesn't tut and glower and fuss and snap whada the kids want? comes to take orders, wait like it's no problem to know whether Tiger will eventually order cheese and tomato pizza or cheese and tomato pizza and, without haste or hesitation, just brings the wine, water, great olives, and crisps as big and round as Squirrel's head.

And so begins a very fine meal. Excellent portion size. But a little salty on the cheese. Squirrel takes after mother and helps herself to a bottle of gin.

Only joking! Got to keep Mrs Gradgrind on her toes. Of course it's not gin. It's Martini.

After a few drinks, Shark is looking like a miniature version of Dig, in a frock.


Dig has met his match there. Soon she will be sitting in the gentleman's club, comparing the bouquet of a 1989 Chateau Moulin de la Graviere against the complexity of the 1986.

And here's Tiger. She's leaving, because she's not putting up with this ridiculous family any longer.


Not with the sort of mother who declares the pizza is far too big to finish and starts wrapping it up and shovelling it her handbag.

This is Spain, I say, and here carrying pizza around in your handbag is not at all frowned upon. People here are sociable, tolerant, relaxed and they won't do like they do in France either, which is look at you down their nose like you are draped in rat fur.

And just think yourself lucky young lady, because if we'd taken you down the Engineer's Arms in Smalltown for your cheese and tomato pizza you wouldn't have escaped without the compulsory purchase of a quarter of smack and a knife fight on the pavement.

As it is, we leave simply with smiles. And tomorrow's lunch in my handbag.