Aim: Take the children camping.

Method: Squish into the interior of a metal bowl the following: four tents, including the pop-up tent which won't pop-down; two self inflating mattresses, one too short and one which won't breathe out; the bag containing the old inflatable mattresses and a foot pump because you never know and it will give the kids something to do while you thrash about with a mallet; mallet; four sleeping bags, except I haven't got one, so pack a duvet and a blanket; blankets, extra, just in case, plus woolly socks, wellington boots and sandals; hospital kit containing 5 varieties of medication, 2 litres of zinc oxide, a tub of vaseline, and three plasters; toothpaste; map because the bastard satnav broke down and never recovered; emergency contact numbers when the inevitable disaster happens at 3am; RAC card; all tickets, season passes, bits of stuff that end up lost in a field; talk of great adventure, even though we know everything is doomed from the start; unquenchable determination not to give in; smile, because at some point I might mean it; and kids. Don't forget the kids. It's their holiday, too.

Not at the parade

Had a spectacular Grit collapse today of the sort that I do especially well, even though I say so myself.

Related, I suspect, to that party turn I can perform where my face swells up like a purple helium balloon then my skin drops off.

I was forced to cancel the craft stall I had booked, where I was hoping to sell my new jazz number. Anyway, it is one good reason for not telling anyone where I will be, because there is a high probability, I won't.

But the elegantly supine Grit meant Dig (who is fortunately at home en route for HK via South Korea) had to ferry about the Gritties Juniors to today's events. To wit: parade of giant puppets where they are proudly (I hope) holding aloft the giant faces they have spent the last six Mondays composing, plus the Hat's party bash by the lake, where there were guaranteed to be choirs and guitars.

So I have no pictures on a day that should have been busting with them. I did, however, capture the view of the jasmine from the hammock.*

I can tell you, I am a crappy person to lose health. I do none of that brave to the last sort of dignity and composure. Absolutely not. I am kicking and screaming my way into this next new phase of my death-in-life.

*The hammock wot I made from an old football goal net and two chunks of tree because I am too mean to buy one. And I bet you did not know there is quite a bit of geometry to get right in a hammock, did you? Get it wrong and the bastard hammock pitches you face forward into the brambly bush. I got Squirrel to test it for me the second time round.

No lawnmower education either

Passing through a strange day of ennui. A bit like Flatliners, without the actual death, or the defibrillator. A sort of suspended animation. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger look about, blankly, and ask, What are we doing? I look back and say, 'I don't know.' Then, unhelpfully, I add, 'I couldn't coax you to Celebration of the Lawnmower.'

Perhaps this uncommon abeyance is post-holiday blues; perhaps it is the miserably restricted diet I'm suffering as I try to track the cause of the angioedema; or perhaps it's because Dig is returning to Hong Kong; the medication; or maybe today I feel I've not really sorted a focus for our home ed having got us back to England and over the funeral.

The local museum I'm sure would've helped. Hopefully they're launching themselves towards a new status as one of the nation's quirks and eccentrics, hosting the annual lawnmower party or organ festival. But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were unmoved by the latest attraction, and my entreaties. 'You can see early models of lawnmowers! And there will be lawnmower enthusiasts from all over the country!'

No. They wanted to stay at home, where they drifted off and eventually joined back up together again to dig unicorn burial chambers in my lawn. That must have provided adequate focus because next they converted the barbeque into a sacrificial altar. I told them, I do not approve.

By way of atonement, and perhaps with a fresh morning eye on the savagery gone on about the lawn, Shark decided to help me out with the household chores. She went off to empty the tub that catches the rain that drip-drip-dribididrips from the roof in the garage art studio.

Unfortunately she upturned the water straight over the path outside, which immediately turned into a bog. Oh well. No doubt it will become the new experimental peat-bog burial ground and Lem the wicked unicorn will meet his end there shortly.

So I have not much news to report for today. Except I am alive. I shall be glad about that, because it's more than I have expected.

Ahead and behind

Well, people of England, we have a time difference here, which puts la famille Grit eight hours ahead of you.

Rest assured then, that by 10am your English morning, I have hit the evening dry sherry and opened Squirrel's bag of cheesy wotsits. They serve as as a delightful hors d'oeuvre to my supper feast of noodles and tomato sauce.

By the time you are considering your afternoon cuppa I will be several glasses of red gone to bed, hopefully remembering to do my Mrs Santa duty. Of course I shall not forget. Midnight Christmas Eve is a traditional time to start turning the house upside down in the hunt for a pair of scissors.

The children have been tracking this time difference all day long, and now have set about tracking Santa on Google Earth, thanks to Norad and Dig, who made the plugin work.

I wonder in passing if British English might not be the first language of Norad's programmer, what with the Elf Toss. If it is, they need to acquire an urban dictionary, and quickly, before the letters on behalf of outraged family values begin to pour in.

Also incidentally, Dig has been in strangely jovial mood all day, encouraging the children with this Santa bothering business. He might have got me some divorce papers for Christmas, which would be fair, because I've got him sod all.

Thus I am signing off another Christmas Eve, this year without the annual happy party at the Hat's, but in fond recollection, and probably a quiet teary self-pitying sob, or two. I have found that wishes never come true.

But hope yours does, unless it is for my untimely end, or for your liver to be eaten by wolves or something equally odd.

Happy Christmas.

Not a must-read for the joy-filled

Christmas is a great strain. I think it is made worse, being in Hong Kong.

In England, I can see the point. The lights and the tinsel are needed, because a December mid-winter is damn dark and cold. We have to bring sparkle into the bleak somehow.

Straight off, don't tell me to do it with the Christian. I am a gal of human blood, gristle and bone; earth, light and dark. This winter festival comes from feeding need. But I don't mind the religious believers overlaying my primitive with fine spiritual sentiments and the loveliest language, of course not. I'll get in on the act myself if it means I can take a time to join them, and listen to the music inspired by their devotions.

I believe it's basic fire and warmth which keep the cold from taking the hardest toll. And we can hope a bit of glam might bring anticipation; perhaps we could have rewards after all, even though in reality most of life outside looks dead and done for.

Show a few pin pricks of light, and we might also enjoy our imaginations. We can grow stories from dark places in long nights. For that, bring company, and add some over-eating to remind our bodies of human satisfaction.

Full stomachs, warm toes, shared minds, all safeguards in the moment against the lean months ahead, and yes, I can see the point of Christmas in dark, cold England.

But I am out here, and denied my December England. I don't have the props. No dark and starry nights, foot-stomping in frost, or winter breath showing me undeniable evidence before my very eyes. The weather in sub-tropics Hong Kong is lukewarm sunny, like an early English summer. The people stroll by in shorts, no-one looks to their own breath, and there are no hearths.

I can't give myself up to any widespread self-deception, either, as I can do in England. Few of the traders around us share this festival, so there's no cultural conspiracy which I can look to, to sweep me along. The shops will stay open throughout, the Christian families take their observations seriously, and the retail experience is just that. Christmas comes fast in the sales opportunity calender of round-the-world retail festivals, just after the Golden month, Hallowe'en and before the New Year.

I am left then, with a denuded Christmas of one plastic tree, 24 dented baubles and three strings of lurid tinsel.


But because I have an imagination and a bottle of sherry, I'm thinking up means to make one or two days more special than the rest. I will enjoy watching the children be delighted by chocolate and puzzles.

And I know, on peering into her stocking, Tiger won't ask, like me, What is the point? Well, I'm opening the sherry because we all made it through another year. And look, even though I am not in England, I'm still alive! That has got to be worth a moment of reflection. Please don't blow it to tell me otherwise.

We have ways of making you enjoy yourself.

I am living in a twilight of unremitting pain now, thanks to the fun I can have at Hallowe'en.

Honestly, this is one reason why I never wanted to send the kids to school.

At the nursery Shark, Squirrel and Tiger attended for those disastrous months, preparations for any cultural event started weeks in advance.

Worse, we were supposed to be grateful; the staff probably reminded me daily of how they'd relieved me of a job. No they hadn't. They only added to my job, because every day the kids were at nursery, I spent my time undoing the damage.

Take Christmas. The staff started that the day after Bonfire Night. The nursery supervisor? (The enormous one with the big arms and narrowed stare, who I will call Gloria.) She was in charge of the wall display. She simply left the tinsel in place. She had previously used it for the Catherine Wheel, and before that, the summer sun on the beach party. November, she merely supplemented it with a 5cwt tub of glitter.

We parents had to ooh and aah at this amazing demonstration of creative thinking, then say nicely, Thank you Gloria, and not add under my breath, for being such a pointless arse.

I would collect my kids, usually hiding in the toilets or quivering miserably by the door, and there would be Gloria, waiting to lay home the message about the magic that is Christmas (i.e. whipping the 3 year olds into a froth of disappointment every day for six weeks).

Out would come a folded bit of paper stuck over with glitter. Gloria would be permitting no doubt about this matter, but yelling 'Hand it over. It's lovely mummy isn't it? LOOK. MUMMY THINKS IT'S LOVELY.' She lacked only the tenderness of an iron bar.

And the entire ordeal of celebration from November 6th to January 6th was totally for the benefit of Gloria and the nursery staff. They would doll themselves up in yards of tinsel come December, start consuming large blocks of brown-coloured lard, and force the school administrator to wear reindeer antlers. Of course they claimed it was entirely for the benefit of the children.

No it wasn't. Suffering a relentless enforcement to enjoy the Laws of Festivity in Gloria's god-given righteous way, and impose it all on my kids from November to January, was like a violation of my soul.

Now look. I've got well off the track. Probably a defense mechanism.

It is just that I see the same thing happen over Hallowe'en. Only this time I can't escape with my indignation. I cannot seem to opt out the prescribed ways of enjoying myself.

Look here. We haven't even reached the party yet.




For a woman who has gone out her way to avoid particular identifiers of mainstream culture (yes, call me anti-social, who cares, the world needs fruit loops), this is all pretty hard to bear.

I do not expect sympathy.

But I would like some. Tomorrow I have to wear the clip-on horns.

Happy and bleak

I sent this article over by email. I received one back in return.

It's clear to me. We out-of-school educators, we won the argument on learning.

Schools can be grim, joyless, factory places; childhood thieves and spirit crushers.

They deal in mass systems, handle lives with minimum cost and maximum efficiency, order everyone in rigid structures and call it individual.

To say they are accountable, show you better that the system works, they intrude into your family, make daily, pointless demands, and thus control the hours and every days of pupils, parents, teachers.

And shutting your children away from the community! We have observed that for years, we people in your High Street. While we have been hiring public halls, taking over common spaces, using your libraries, museums, parks and high streets for learning, we watched the schooled children dressed to a kind and shut in boxes. Who's part of the community there?

So yeah, we won. The home educators were right. School is outdated. The world moved on.

I won't expect that people like me - gripers and misery guts - we who pull kids out from this system and holler from the sidelines, we won't enjoy any credit for shaping ideas about education.

I doubt any thanks will come to any of us for pointing out missed opportunities and putting the pressure on schools to change, even though in my world I've watched people turn lives upside-down, sacrifice friends, and chuck up careers to put into action what they believed in, what they feel is right in bones and hearts.

Nope, not us. It'll be mainstream educationalists in institutions who advance social theories and tell you the way forward. Thousands of inconvenient parents since Joy Baker will be swept away. We're the threatening ones, potential abusers, cranks, outsiders, freaks and loners, remember? Institutions need to keep control, and they don't do that by thanking the opposition.

But I think, in the next stage, the argument won't be about what education should look like. Glance over to some of the guiding ideas in our world. You can see what it's going to look like.

The argument will be about how much state/corporate involvement do you want in your lives.

The state/corporate will seek to assume control over knowledge in new and more fundamental ways than at present. They'll worm down to the organisation, access, and flow of knowledge. They'll want to structure it, order it, supervise it. They'll assume a role as regulator and monitor. When it is accessed by the young, the state/corporate will call it education.

Anyone might welcome that, or not. But where's the line? Where's the cut-off point? At which point will you say enough? A child's learning - their time, play, freedom to ask, explore, think, discover for themselves - this belongs to the child, and not to governments, nor corporates.

Only good can come

My dear creatoids from Planet Z-01, aka Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Today has been a difficult day, has it not?

Frankly, it has been hard work for me.

I have had to follow all your pre-teen Care Instructions to assist the shaking back to your rightful shapes of dignity, self composure, and content demeanour after the happy door slamming of yesterday.

These instructions, I have found through trial and error, include the following.

(Apart from pussy footing about in fear I get it all wrong so you unjustly bite my head off and spit out the bony bits of my ears.)

No ironing and no tumble drying. Feeding you instead, large quantities of your favourite dinner to console you. Supplying you with your favourite socks to appease you. Reassuring how your parents love you (even if you are brain-sapping creatoids). Providing a calm environment in which you may consider your options. Suggesting a soothing place to go that is out the house.

I think it has worked. We have all been successful in our own ways in the reparation process.

Shark nearly accepted a hug, Squirrel offered the necessary apology, Tiger kept herself hidden, Daddy Dig pretended nothing had happened (probably the reason we are still married), and I offered a trip out the house to see some old bowls and chipped plates.

Aren't they lovely? Here they are. They make me feel better. I will come and look at them again, to calm me when I am feeling stressy. Then I will occupy myself with further learning about old pots, Kui dragon, Doucai technique and Fencai enamelling.





Ahhh! That's better! Finding out about old bowls helps me heal the wounds while recovering my dignities and aspirations.

Well, we all have our own ways out the pits, do we not? What is yours?

Ten great ways to handle the pain!

So far, I'm thinking, all I can say is woo hoo! I am coping far better this year than last.

Perspective is a great gift. So is heading over the hill, another year older. I find, even though the experiences and circumstances are no less shittier, the view of them is wider.

But - although we know what a depressive miserable old bastard Grit can be - I am yet driven to reflect, and turn my own sad ways into something useful! (See? I am so good to the people of Planet Earth!)

Thus, here are Grit's well-earned, top ten tips for climbing through depressive ditches. Those timeless pits of misery dug by life, and made accidentally worse by those who never see how truly crap it is. They just shovel in extra shit as you're scrabbling up for air.

1. Walk
Preferably outside the house walls. Pacing the walls on the inside merely irritates everyone. Anyway, walking out of doors means you must...

2. Wear clothes
Go the whole hog! In fact dress the hog in knickers, shoes (could be matching but not essential), clean vest with no tomato stains, skirt. Force eye make-up on the hog, with lashings of lip gloss on the hairy hoggy lips.

3. Think
Stuff the positive pretence. Realistic assessment of pros-cons, advantages-disadvantages works best for ole steel-eyed Grit, with cold, hard, uncomfortable, squirming, laser-beam scrutiny on all faults, flaws, and weaknesses, compared to strengths, successes and necessities. Leads to all round view of options, strategies, risk management. Then, after the brutal assessment...

4. Choose vice
Alcohol, in grit's case. Sad. Gin, specifically.

5. Take it out on something
Some might recommend cushions, pillows, or Postman Pat. But this is where one's own body also comes in handy. I hear physical exercise is a more socially acceptable way of externalising and owning pain than self mutilation, self abuse or self starvation. What the hell. It's all coping. And accommodating social niceties are not high priorities when you're face down in a gutter.

6. Ignore all negative judgements
Maybe there are people who murmur, 'I will never do anything as unacceptable as that' or 'How rude'. Maybe even, 'Unforgivable'. Think, how there is hope for them! Maybe they can yet learn to be human, and have a little life crisis for themselves.

7. Find a friend worse off than you
Sue (not her real name) is a case in point. Sue always cheers me up. She lives more chaotically than me! Broke? Unhinged? Given to acts of random violence? Child off the rails? Kitchen blew up? Meet Sue. Always a circumstance to make me laugh out loud. It's no coincidence she's exploring the stand up circuit. In her words: I exist so people can think, 'Thank God I'm not her'.

8. Fantasise
Delightful, delicious, dangerous, delusional, daydreams. Hands off them, they're all mine, perfectly tailored for me, controlled by me, and no-one's having any of them.

9. Laugh
Because in my experience people do not like the company of a miserable bastard. Not even me. I find smiling easy. Meaning it is still sometimes hard.

10. Be honest
The English say it like this:
How are you?
Very well thank you.

It should go like this:
How are you?
Well, I had the urge to string myself up. I gave it 24 hours, ate a decent meal, and popped a happy pill. I feel a bit better now, thanks.

Displacement

So I have begun the assault on the house.

Here are the purchased items this morning: Bathroom tile spray; wood floor cleaner; bleach for the sink where the flies breed; limescale remover and death to all wildlife on every continent cleaner; shiny mirror spray; antiseptic liquid disinfectant; hacksaw; stanley knife; 48 jiffy wipes (bogof).

This suggests furious activity and determined intention, does it not? It is also excellent displacement activity. Acquiring this lot prevents me thinking about anything at all other than bleach squirting, foam spraying, and floor wiping.

The next step is to actually use them.

Yes, I will. Even though the activity will be fraught with dangers and hazards. I maintain that staying inside the house to clean it up, floor to ceiling, is educational too, and perfect for the home educated child to experience during the long summer holiday when the parks, discovery centres, swimming pools and museums are full.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger need to find out these ways. How house cleaning rituals are the revelation of psychiatry, including as they do all manners of neuroses, phobias and pathological behaviours.

During the ritual bashing of the house into submission I might even get onto the subject of electroconvulsive therapy, if I electrocute myself again. (The cleaning up routine has happened before and it does not always end with a stain-free floor and a pleasant odour.)

Well, half way through the day I can report the children are engaging enthusiastically in this new educational enterprise. They have been a little scared by the original purchasing and have removed the limescale cleaner from me on environmental grounds. Possibly to appease me after I snatched it back again (have you seen the state of the fishy toilet? Do you want to retch into that?) Shark has tidied her desk, Tiger has picked up three books from her bedroom floor, and Squirrel has stashed her finest treasures (including clay balls and splinters of wood) behind her bedroom curtain, where she imagines I will never peer.

So, I can say that house cleaning is all good, and good for us all.

I am feeling momentarily purposeful and vengeful and determined and resolute and going to punch this house in the guts because I am notfuckinggivingintoanything.

The house is looking better.

And the children are embarked on a new turn in their education, having learned that wood soap is very good, the word psyche is Greek to mean butterfly or soul, and life means you can tear good from all circumstance.

Even ones where mother knocks herself sideways with bleach fume, drenches her face in Cif and, without warning, suddenly sinks to the bathroom floor in a crumple and demonstrates psychiatry in action, saying No, nothing's wrong, everything's fine, no, do not worry, I will be alright in a minute. I am just cleaning here, behind the toilet waste pipe.

Of course I will never need this blog as therapy

I am a month away from The Return. The anxiety is starting to fill me up and pull me out of shape. When I stop doing what makes my hands and head busy, a picture of what I do on the Last Day pops into my mind.

On the Last Day I will count the luggage one two three four and the kids one two three and me one and then I'll do it all again, like some horror dumb show. I'll carry on doing that, repeating it all, because I don't want to go through the actions that come next.

But I shall make sure that it is all hilarious and funny, like the cutting of arms or the retching into a toilet bowl.

Allergy joy

One week in England, and I do not feel normal. This is disappointing, because I wanted to feel normal in England very much. You have sunshine! And fantastic bird song! But, after a few days arriving here feeling fantastically energetic, as a woman of thirty and counting backwards, I am now waking slow as a slug, barely can remember what happened yesterday, and looking like a beat up old vagrant maybe two hundred and sixty years on the streets and counting forward. It is very inhibiting and, since I feel like not going out but lying down nursing a headache, not a little depressing.

What is effecting this rapid catapult into miserable malaise I do not know. It is leaving its mark, whatever it is. Never mind about the internal workings, on the outside I look terrible. Red itching panda eyes, neck rash and a headache so big I am sure it is visible, like a growth protruding from my brow.

Of course I have called on Dr Internet. He says he can explain this. It cannot be my ongoing allergic response to my own house, cumulatively worsening as the days pass, and that it's time to sort out the mouldy cellar and buy a hypoallergenic pillow.

No. It cannot be that. Dr Internet says it is a terrible incurable disease which will leave the gritlets motherless within six months. He also adds that inexplicable skin marks, memory loss and feebleness are signs that I may have been abducted by aliens. Even now they may be sucking my life out of my body for their ongoing humanoid experiments.

So it all looks a bit hopeless. In fighting spirit, I am swallowing the cetirizine, trying to ride it out, opening the windows in the mould-filled cellar, and pretending that I am not feeling self conscious about the hunchbacked shoulders, red lumpen face, and general air of defeat while I stand in the inevitable queue at the Co-op with my solitary bottle of beer. Soon I shall conduct my own experiment and observe what happens when I go live on a Suffolk floor for a few days with a dead flat cat and three kids.

If the malaise, facial trauma and red itching panda eyes do not subside at that point, it will be proof, one way or the other, of something.

Maybe Dr Internet will be right after all. I am going to die in a horrible way very soon, but not before I am properly taken over by the aliens from the Planet Vesticular.

Something comes of nothing

Apparently it is Fun Day at the beach. I must attend. Shark assures me fun is to be had there. It said so on the poster. Anyway, she is going, so see you later.

After an hour of wondering whether I should throw myself into the sea or go and have fun, I follow a dog and let him decide.


He takes me past the ball court. Here, the Chinese are having fun. They are singing operatic ballads, clapping in group accord, and making noises through a microphone.


Don't ask me what they are doing. Good works in Cantonese, probably.

There doesn't seem to be much else for it, because the dog has wandered off and the sea is busy with boats and ferries, but to make my way over to the fun day at the beach. On the journey, I can contemplate island life and feel worse, because I am indeed a self-absorbed miserable and ungrateful bastard.


At the beach the expats are having fun by drinking beer, singing Pink Floyd songs, selling each other old shoes, and telling the kids to shove off. Well, this mother is. One hundred Hong Kong dollars buys me two hours. Go and have fun. I must now sit at the beach and contemplate solitude and death with an old Scrabble set that someone has flogged Squirrel for ten dollars.



Periodically, my reveries on mortality and how many words I know that actually contain the letter Q are interrupted by the offspring. They discover my mournful body piled up among the stones and attempt to cheer it up by waving cake at it. Unable even to be roused by cake, I say, go and have fun because I am enjoying being alone and thinking how many words I know that contain the letter Z. Here is another thirty dollars.


At some point they return to say they have now spent so much money at the cake stall they have induced guilt in the expat who is giving them free cake and this is Tiger's fourth helping.


I do not think I have anything more to add without sinking into undignified and disagreeable introspection, so I will depart today with the picture of eco art displayed at the fun day.



In response to which, Squirrel fills my handbag with old plastic bottles, hacked and splintered wood, inscrutable items containing tubes and pipes, frayed ropes, a selection of worn away glass, and bits of indigestible, malformed plastic junk the sea had spewed out.

Strangely, carting that lot home in my clanking handbag was the moment in the day when my spirits lifted.

What to do with sad miserable gits

Grit has tipped into a stink of sadlonelymiserableselfpityingbastarddom.

Ignore her. Soon I will go and give her a slap. And a lecture on moral fibre, stiff upper lips, and why the price of breakfast cereal does not matter, stop moaning about it. OK, relief would be through tender words and a hug, but forget that. It's not on the agenda. Instead, I have ten top ways to cheer up. (Probably works for both sexes):

1. Put on lip gloss and eye liner.
Princess Di did this and it worked for her. Eye liner creates an air of vulnerability and people will like you. They will not sit down next to you on the ferry to Hong Kong and, after two minutes, glance at you then get up and move. What is that about? Do I smell of wee? Try having three babies sit on your bladder for eight months before they're ripped out your womb leaving you for dead. See if you like it. Bastards.

2. Fall over.
This means people will rush to your aid and you can feel someone - anyone - actually cares. Like buggery. I mean, how many times do I have to fall over before I am rescued? I have tried limping, staggering, clinging onto rope. Eye spying the handsome Spanish sailor offloading the old women off the ship, I thought aye aye, now's my chance to swoon into a manly grasp. That would keep me going for a few weeks. What do I get? I swear when it was my turn on that gangplank, he gave me a shove.

3. Smile.
Then you can pretend people like you when they smile back. But you have to get it right. I hear there is more to this smiling lark than baring your teeth at strangers. Do that and you look like an escapee from a secure psychiatric unit. I don't know. I have not tried this one yet.

4. Say nice things.
To your family, you might try, You look lovely today. That haircut you gave yourself this morning with the craft scissors suits you. Are you going to wear knickers with that outfit? Then your family members will respond warmly and kindly and not tell you that they hate you before flouncing off. To your partner, you could try saying Hello. Do not be put off when they narrow their eyes suspiciously at you like you're up to something.

5. Breathe.
This is everywhere in Self-help for Self-pitying Bastards. Apparently, breathing is very good for you and reduces stress and tension. That would be the stress and tension created when you push a pillow onto your face to scream into it because then for sure you cannot breathe. So I'm told.

6. Wear different clothes.
Wear different clothes, and inhabit another identity. This is a good theory. It allows you to step outside yourself, metaphorically speaking, and gain perspective that your miserable bastard side looks like a hobo. Especially when they wear those black trousers and that grey top, once white; the one with a yellow curry sauce stain over the left bosom where the sad side forgot how to eat and dribbled dinner like a two-year old. Scrap this one. It doesn't work. I haven't got any other clothes and I'm not shopping with three kids hanging off my arms whining about their feet.

7. Create a happy file.
I have got one of those. It is called a blog.

8. Return to nature.
Yes, there is a hollow once filled with lovely walks through the rainsoaked mudbashed fields of England. I bet you have skeleton trees and seductive smell of wet earth. Oh shut up, Grit. These days I can kill mosquitoes with my bare hands, point at butterflies and kick frogs. (That last one was by accident.)

9. Give help.
This is good. If you want help, you must give help first. I tried to help Squirrel with long multiplication. There was no need for all that poutylippery and huffypuffing exiting the room with I am never doing maths with you ever ever again. I did not know I was supposed to put in a nought. Who tells you these things?

10. Be grateful.
Think of things for which you are grateful, aka, roofoverhead. Then think of sad people who are homeless, starving, more miserable, lonelier, dead. Slap oneself. Take excellent therapy by reading round other happy files. Or go to zooborns.

There. Grit feels better already.

You know a way of living when it goes

Finally, I found the island bakers. Turn off the road through the village, follow the pink concrete wall of the toilet behind the hole in the road. There's a little baker's counter hidden beneath the overhanging green awning that reads Beerlao. For the past two months I thought it was the hotel Bali breakfast bar.

That's what I'll answer, if anyone asks. I'll also say that, for my taste, their bread's too salty, six raisins do not deserve the title raisin bread, and I miss Dove's Farm wholemeal something chronic.

The fact that it took me over two months of living here to find the bakery tells me something too. It's another of the difficulties I discover, half-way perched up a hill on an outlying island in Hong Kong. I have few neighbours, fewer I can call on as friends, and fewer still to whom I can remember to ask, as we cross paths on the ferry pier, By the way, is there a bakery on this island?

I can talk to people like that at home. There, we live along an ordinary street; across the way I can turn here, there, and ask, Will you help us out? Are you going in that direction too?

By the way - and despite what you read in newspapers and popular books - never for one moment think that people who choose a lifestyle built around an alternative education somehow lack friends. That we stare mournful and listless out the window and wonder, What's going on? How can I ever meet anyone again? No. I don't do that at home, in England. I do that here, in Hong Kong. Along with the wish that someone would stop me in the street and give me a leaflet for a local baker.

There's one group of people who are - by their language and looks - obvious targets for new-found island friends. The ones like me. The expats.

But it is hard. I am not a good expat. Walking back from the ferry pier in the early evening, through the small town where I pass the English bar with the blowsy blonde tipped at the front seat on the corner, the seat that comes accompanied with a red-faced beer-bellied man pitched forward on his elbows, I shudder. I think, I hope I never become like her. Somehow, I do not think that sudden response is a good basis for friendship.

I have met people here of course, but mostly they are off the island, working, busy with their own families, filled with the concerns of their own lives. I have made friends Hong Kong wide, too, thanks to our home educating ways, and they grow more valuable to me as the days pass by. We can talk about bread as suitable fodder for hungry kid bellies. But they can't tell me where the island baker lives, nor whether they have bread by 1pm on a Saturday afternoon. (No.)

Perhaps it's a reflection of my own shortcomings. I cannot say I am totally alone on this island, nor that I recognise no-one here. In passing on the street to buy eggs and pak choi, it feels lovely to raise my hand, smile, wave, and in recognition, shout Hi!

I admit, sometimes I may do that a little too enthusiastically. I did it once by accident, when I wasn't wearing my glasses, and assumed the long hair and slender frame belonged to someone else. As I grew closer and her face fell into focus, I thought, Bugger. I've never seen the woman before. I'm glad she smiled and waved back though, even if she did look puzzled.

But I found the baker's. At last. The bread's too salty, the raisin bread is disappointing, and can you air-lift emergency supplies of Dove's Farm? You see, there's a missing bit of my life. Another bit gone. A comforting bit about knowing where I am, where things are, people I can reach out to, places I can touch and, without a moment's hesitation, find bread that tastes good, and that I can just take for granted.

Happy families

We walk the family trail on Lamma Island. That's the family trail. For families.

The family trail is straightforward. It's a walk along a concrete path, from one side of the island to the other. Journey it, and you pass the jungly trees and busy beach, before climbing the spines of the dragon mountains. Over the top, you're down into the green valley sloping to the shores, where you can stop at the seafood restaurant before catching the boat back home.

Walking on concrete paths through vegetation is something I do quite easily in England. But I do it badly in Hong Kong. Here, as I melt in heat and humidity, it becomes more an unseemly demonstration of red-faced sweating English stagger. It's all the more humiliating when being overtaken on the mountain stride by young, tanned, Italian dolce vita girls, swinging cute pink purses, Jimmy Choo shopping bags, and an athletic companion called Enrico.

I can only sigh, and know that those days of youthful mountain seeking are over for me. I'm not an independent woman about life, making her own decisions about her destinies. Not anymore. I'm a mutually supportive partner in a happy family. And since I have not suitor, tanned Italian skin, firm backside, nor a pair of Jimmy Choos, I can only cling, scrabbling, to what is left me: the happy family life. The sort of happy family life which can be yours indeed, for nothing, on the family trail of Lamma Island.

That's the family, by the way, who all split up even before we got out of the house. The family that took two hours to prise Tiger out of her bedroom and only succeeded with the lure of a pack of digestive biscuits and the promise of a green ice cream.

The same family, who, on exiting the house, hears one of their clan announce she is off in the other direction towards the Chinese pavilion past Fisherman's Village, where she is going to explore her new island autonomy and read her fairy trash in peace and quiet.

We'll just go on without you Squirrel! Dragging Tiger behind us, constantly moaning and groaning about leaves. No, don't you worry about us, just go off and enjoy yourself!

And then the happy family members all decide to seek separate routes, as far as possible away from each other up the dragon spine, probably because Grit is taking far too long, glowing and staggering, staggering and glowing, red faced under her Seahouses sunhat, huffing and puffing fit to bust.

What with the Tiger daughter now legging it up the hill to get the thing over and done with as quickly as possible, Dig cantering along behind her, Shark strung out between us all and Grit up the rear, you can bet by the top none of us were actually talking to each other, bound only in the mutual thinking that we would like to give the rest of the family a damn good kicking. When I am overtaken in the brilliant sunshine by the braless beauties plus the fortunate Enrico, and my sense of our happy family is complete.

Maybe we should really bond together and get a dog.

This is grit

How are you getting along in Hong Kong, Grit?

Wait while I apply the lip gloss. Then I can say,

Fine, thanks!

Well of course I'm not about to say I'm having a miserable time. Grits don't do that. Grits don't give in. We keep to the long view. We gritty types get up again when life comes at us waving an assault rifle, a purple ribbon and a banshee howl. We carry on, because we have no other options.

OK, there are options. They involve gashed limbs, pills, and cliffs. But I am mature. I have now worked out that these are less preferable than head down, keep going. Do that, and my gritty body might yet grow an indestructible backbone and a stronger heart, so trials are for the good.

So today I am doing fine. Thank you for asking. We are settling in nicely.

And the swelling is better. It has responded well to two bags of ice. And the mosquito bites are healing. The huge, red lava lumps that scatter my arms and legs. They are not measles, even if they look like it, so everyone calm down. There is no need to panic. Yes, I know the scratching thing in public is not very attractive, so I am trying to stop that too.

I have showered, also. This is good, at least for the time I am in the shower. The humidity in these tropic parts is so great and overwhelming that half the time I am not sure whether I am in the shower fully clothed, or out the shower, naked. Either way the result is the same. Let's just say that in every waking hour without an air-con unit strapped to my head, I am doing a lot of glowing.

Unfortunately, thanks to the heavy amount of glowing, I have had to give up the make up. The Dior rejuvenation face magic was sliding down my face and dripping off my chin. The mascara had a particularly theatrical look. I stopped wearing it after several Chinese ladies met me on the path to the beach and stopped in their tracks. I could be wrong, but from the expression on their faces I had the distinct idea I may be approaching some sort of uncrossable line.

Anyway, regarding the make up, my mother said that putting on a face makes you feel better. She carefully imposed those vibrant red lips on all her sorrows. I think they helped her. Maybe it helps me too. So I haven't given up the lip gloss.

I saw my mother put those red lips on, then go out into the world. Safe under armour, her mouth would never tell the words, when someone in the street stopped her and asked, How are you doing, Dot? And she would say, Me? I'm doing fine.