Shut up. You're going.

After breakfast I walk the kids over to the University of Southampton.

I don't make them start from Buckinghamshire, obviously, as the distance to cover is maybe a hundred miles. Shark cannot walk that far before lunch. I did think about it, because of the cost of petrol. But no. I am indulgent. We stay overnight at the Premier Inn.

(I may write about the Premier Inn later, because I love them, and I wonder if I can do a deal where I get free vegetarian sausages for the rest of my life?)

Anyway, we have come to the University of Southampton because it's the Ocean and Earth Day. Don't say you didn't know!

I have an obvious reason to come here, at the dropping-off point of England. I gave birth to a long-haired fish fan. It's that simple. There is no option but to bring her. Soon I may receive an invite from the local library near Nether Wallop saying Hey Grit! We have a new book in the library on the black tip reef shark! Do you want to bring Shark over to praise it? And I will think about this invite for one second before replying We'll be right there! We will stay in the Premier Inn overnight and eat their delicious mouth watering vegetarian sausages for breakfast!

But I have to bring Squirrel and Tiger too. I believe Social Services might have something to say about my other idea of locking them in the house for three days with a can opener and a selection of baked beans.

Well I pay for the decision one way or another. Squirrel and Tiger have been sulking that they are forced to come and they never have anything they want and Shark has everything and we have to tour the entire universe worshipping swim bladders and that is so unfair because horses have tails and there are black holes and why can't we look at those instead?

SHUT UP. YOU'RE GOING seems to be the only answer to complaints of that sort, which I hope you do with your offspring too. Reminding kids of the time we drove 150 miles to the planetarium, or the month we put up five hundred quid to sit on a horse on the Isle of Wight - that is all totally pointless. Kids only ever remember the grudge. That time you forced them to wear clothes when they didn't want to? Outside, in the rain? You unreasonable parent!

So here we are at the Ocean and Earth Day, and Shark pushes off to do her own thing because frankly the family is embarrassing. OK, on that she is right. You should see us. And I have hair! On my head!

Somehow the rest of us end up in the geology department. Tiger spends a long time, and I mean a long time, staring transfixed at the earthquake machine. So long in fact that the guy there might start to feel it is a bit creepy and weird, having a little kid in a fluffy coat totally blown away with his construction.


But let me first say Tiger is right to be hypnotised because it was a fantastic earthquake machine. It is the sort of earthquake machine that makes me proud to be British. Two bricks joined together by an elastic connector. The sort of stretchy connector you use to keep the boot of your car held down, so you aren't stopped by the police when you drive your old wardrobe to the dump.

But I know something that the guy explaining the tension and balance of the earthquake machine doesn't know. That Tiger will be building one of these the minute she arrives home. She has been experimenting trying to make unicorns fly for something like four years and I know for sure she is staring at that contraption and thinking balance and tension and forces and SPRING and CATAPULT and LANDING. So that is a horse-shape mythical being and Newtonian forces covered all at once, thank you very much.

Then I turn round and there is Squirrel. Now Squirrel does not move for two hours, except maybe to shuffle along the benches a little. Squirrel is copying down every bit of written information she possibly can about rocks. And fossils. And more rocks. And rocks.


Hello Squirrel! What are you doing?

I must write this down!

Do you want to come over to engineering and pilot a submarine?

No! I must write this down!

And that's what she did. Till the end of the day. All the pages of information that Squirrel did not manage to write down before the security staff made us leave the building on threat of prosecution I had to photograph to write out at home.


But I do not mind. Really. Because I turn to Squirrel and say, Squirrel, why do you need to write it all out? And she shouts in total urgency, like she might explode internally with the pressure of it, Because I want to be a geologist!

And that is possibly one very proud parent moment. Because now I know I was right to drag her over the Chilterns four years ago to listen to the geology group leader for two hours explain about lower, middle and upper chalk, while she complained that her feet hurt and all the time in the rain I forced her to wear a coat.

And a good time was had by nearly all, in Gloucester

It starts here, and thanks to breakfast, Premier Inn totally wins. Tiger is gleeful. Last time we stayed in a Travelodge I force fed her cornflakes with a fork at 7.25am and she's never forgiven me. Shark is simply licking her lips at the sight of the Sunday morning spread which, coming down to £2.50 each - and I haven't had any hand in the preparation, cooking or presentation, and do not have to wash up - means that by 9.05am my first preference is to come and live here forever.

If staying in a Premier Inn with their delicious breakfast wasn't simply the best start to a budget day out in Gloucester, we then hoof it over here, to the cathedral


where I am delighted to find the tomb of Edward II


who gets my vote as the most entertaining and pointless king Britain has ever had, possibly until we arrive at Charles III.


From there it's over to Gloucester docks


where we take to the National Waterways Museum to continue an educational day and find out about the history of the canals in England.*


* Actually, read there, 'play with the toddler water table until we are forcibly removed from it yelling like an albatross because the woman from reception will come round with the keys to lock up. You can tell by the sour look of misery on her face she has been on reception all day putting up with this sort of customer when she should by rights be sat at home in front of half a roast Sunday cow'.

Sometimes Dig speaks a lot of sense

I need to sort this problem.

This weekend it's Squirrel's turn to throw herself about on a cliff side and I must transport her there, and bring her home again.

That's not the problem.

The problem is, I would like to stay overnight somewhere en route so that we experience the fantastic countryside that is England.

When Dig is here, and we move around the country depositing children, Dig needs a shower, clean sheets, a flushing toilet, lights that turn on at a light switch, and walls. By those facts, we overnight in a Travelodge. We do not stay in a tent.

But Dig is not here.

And we have a tent.

At this point, it is Michelle's fault.

She put the idea in my head because she has a tent. And she has fun in her tent. You need only to read her blog to realise she has fun in that tent. And it is the sort of fun that I would like. I want fun in a tent. Like Michelle.

But we have a tent.

And Dig is not here.

Solution. Take the tent and the children and go and put up that tent in a field and overnight there, and then we are free to do what we want and go where we please and it will be like Mr Polly all over again except this time the drama will be played out with a happy Grit and her charming children skipping in the countryside.

Problem. I do not know how to put up the ruddy tent. It is like no tent I have seen in my life. I cannot find the instructions. I would carry it up to the field and have a go there but it is throwing it down with rain.

Solution. Try and work out how to put up the tent from first principles IN THE BEDROOM.*

* Do NOT try this at home. Putting up a tent in a bedroom is a totally stupid idea. It does not work. It has no chance of working. The tent will lie in a crumpled up heap all over the floor while you cry.

Update: I have not booked a Travelodge. No. I am made of stronger stuff than to give in.

I have booked a room at a Premier Inn instead.