Stourhead

We must visit Stourhead, obviously, after hearing gardener Alan Power's lyrics on the Radio 4 Eddie Mair Show.

Believe it or not, in Stourhead, it's all autumn, autumn, autumn.

And people photographing autumn, those twitchers of trees.

Don't forget the temples, too.

Fortunately! Alongside the many talents of this household, we have an informal training in eighteenth-century garden design! This is a benefit of living near enough to Stowe that we visit for their National Trust tea parties, wee in their bushes, and have our ball confiscated from us in 2003, but you can never say I hold a grudge.

Stourhead. I recommend a visit, if you like autumn, belonging to the Eddie Mair club, the lyrics of Alan Power, or temples.

Day trip to Bognor Regis

That human need for spontaneity, it's got to come out somewhere.

Loved up on lace

Good Friday

The gritlings push off to the local museum today, chum Tigger in tow, with the sole aim of extorting six Cadbury's chocolate eggs apiece from the old woman at the front desk. She probably thinks she's going to have a lovely time in the museum egg hunt.

Shamefully, we lost our annual pass to this local museum some time ago, but we are now unfortunately well known, so production of it seems no longer necessary. The little grits have visited this place so often they now treat the place like an extension of home, slamming back the entrance door, demanding to know where the chocolate stash is kept, and generally making a nuisance of themselves with other visitors. One time they came home outraged that a coach party had arrived to look round their turf. Their familiarity with the old telephone sets, the tram, and the printing press brings out their charmingly anti-social, ASBO sort of behaviour.

Good Friday brings it out especially, what with the brown lard overdose, but I am warning them that they should atone for it appropriately at some point. I am threatening them with a stint at dressing up and volunteering in the future as a way of saying sorry for what we did to the old woman when we were high on Cadbury's cocaine.

Anyway, while they are out the house for hours, it is a day off for me. There is only one thing to do. Finish stitching the locked heart I started before Valentine's Day.

Your Easter fun ends here

This is what you need to see. A bunch of home educators on a public holiday, round the kitchen table.


We have the maths worksheets out, and we're armed to the teeth with protractors, compasses, pencils and rulers.


Worse, it's a bank holiday Easter Monday.

The only point of which is to provide an excuse to teach division of boiled eggs into latitudes and longitudes.

Tsk. We are beyond all normal boundaries of sanity.

So have this as proof, that home educating parents are a bunch of hot-housing slave drivers driven to control a child's mind and destine them to lives of grinding misery, purely so we can pursue our selfish goal of breeding children with an Oxbridge degree by aged 14.


Oh come one, I was locked in the house all day with kids. What else did you expect?

Driving after the god called Education

I am invited to feel guilty. About many things probably, but especially how I am burning up the planet via the Gritmobile.

No. I won't feel guilty. Not for our access to this coastline in this snippet of time; the moment I can snatch before I lose this country again.

Anyway, guilt is a feeling I do not do a lot of. Neither guilt, nor regret - the real hard-core wounding, chew-my own-lips-off regret. Not much of that, either.

Not necessarily because I have sailed through life making choices which are fantastically blameless and am now an all round twoshoes-goodsome type, no.

Probably because I am a battered old crone. I am old enough to have made mistakes enough. They have forced certain reconciliations with myself. I come to a quiet forgiving truce with my bright and dark parts; a settlement which allows me to venture out to explore the world everyday, feeling more or less intact.

I avoid being paralysed by guilt and regret. I take opportunities as and when they arise. I do not beat myself up. I balance imperatives, priorities and desires. I make shifty compromises. I stay sane. And sometimes it all leads to the Gritmobile teetering precariously on an eroding cliff edge.

I console myself. If things go really badly, the Gritmobile plunges over the cliff, and the world goes up in a puff of smoke, I can always rely on being English. For most disasters, I have a script: I know how to bumble on, make the best of things, say nevermind couldbeworse putthekettleon.

Now, having unwisely blurted out my failings and inadequacies, here's today's drive-fest along the south coast, burning up your planet.

(And if there was a frequent and reliable shuttle bus, picking up and dropping down we happy tourists strung out along this remarkable coastline, I'd probably take it: driving is quite tiring and I cannot stop for a refreshing beer, half-way through.)

First stop: the RSPB Reserve at Weymouth.
I'm sorry, Weymouth, I never want to come here again, ever.
Your town is horrible. I couldn't wait to get out.

(The Weymouth Tourist Board is of course welcome to put us up in five-star accommodation
and show me a good time, if only to prove me wrong.)

Third stop: English Heritage, Portland Castle.
Brilliant, as all English Heritage is.

See? The EH audio guides are fantastic.


You're wondering what happened to the Second stop aren't you?
Weymouth was so horrible, I had to pull into a layby for a cry.



Fourth stop: Chesil beach.


This place is not on Planet Earth.


You must turn left at Zelta-Minor and avoid the asteroid.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger found Earth rubbish on it though.
They politely endured the boring pointless lecture on Portland Limestone
(which forms an admirable curve at the end of Chesil beach)
then set to, building ships to sail across the Atlantic.

Fifth stop: Lulworth Cove.
Exhibition centre, ice cream shop and geology, all rolled into one.

I think someone will ride a Geography GCSE.
Then I can drive about the countryside looking at landscape while I burn up your planet.
And I can shift some of the blame to the educational enterprises supported by government.

Sixth stop: Durdle Door. Unavoidable limestone arch.
You cannot look at Lulworth Cove, then not go over the hill for this.

Now, let's drive back to the site for a nicecupoftea (while the planet dies a little bit more).

The last day

The gritlets do what they want today. All day. Hours of without-a-care-in-the-world beach stuff.

Beaches are boring. Not for the first hour. Maybe two. The first hour is fun!

I can do geology and rock smashing and pond poking.

Two hours, maybe, with some walking.

Three hours, and I get a little tired. I want a cup of tea. I need to pee. There is a lot of water coming at me. In waves.

Then there is wind. The sun is out and it is hot. The sun has gone in and it is cold. The weather. It is oppressing me. We could do other stuff. I am bored and pissed off and need to pee and I want to go home and drink a cup of tea.

Then I have to fight with myself. I am horrible. I am miserable and selfish and mean spirited. Surely I cannot begrudge my poor children what they might reflect in years to come makes for a happy holiday? The only happy holiday they ever ever got with mummy and daddy! (By the way, where is daddy? Is he at the cottage sending emails? Shut up about that. Horrible unkind cruel wife-type woman.)

Godhelpme. I have been here four hours.

Right. Well that is proof. I can repress it no longer. I knew this would come. The knowledge that I actually enjoyed being up here with the ruddy weird family and the windswept land. And we had to give up the trips to Edinburgh, Belsay, the dragon heads at Wallington Hall, the visit across the moors to the elderly aunt, the ritual crawl through the hypocaust at Corstopitum, the trek up to Housesteads, the journey down to Blyth - all so we could come to the beach and dig holes. This is evidence that we shouldn't be leaving tomorrow at all, homewardbound for Buckinghamshire. We should be in residence for longer. Somewhere close to a beach. With mobile phone access. Then I could tip the little grits out onto the beach, supply the phone, and run off, pee, and drink tea.

Except life never works out the way that is satisfying. We have to go home. Then we all get split up again. Dig must go to Hong Kong. Shark has a sailing thing going on somewhere. Tiger is heartbroken for a horse, and Squirrel probably wants to go to Suffolk because she hears tellings of fairy dust washing down from the trees. Me, I will kick my self-pitying arse about the house and move the furniture. Then there is other stuff that upsets and offends and outrages me and scares me and provides very little in the way of pleasure or reward. I must do that stuff too. We cannot live life like we are on holiday for ever. Although I will plot for it.

Anyway, here is today, the last day, when we visit cousins who breathe horses, stare into rock pools, make castles, dig holes in the sand, eat pizza takeaway, and pack up the car. To go home.

I may be defeated, but I am never giving in

Pah! Rain, sleet, snow? What means this melange to us, intrepid explorers? I laugh in the face of British weather!

But not for long because it is bloody freezing. Now get in the car and let's drive around all the minor roads of Suffolk for three hours. Brilliant!

Wake up! Arse dollies! Off we go!


This Suffolk driving is not so easy. Especially when that's the minor road to follow.


Of course I'll look on the bright side! This isn't Norfolk. Because that's the only time I ever used a compass for real. You get amongst those woolthread tracks, flatland all around, then turn round three times with no sense of direction and pfff. You are contemplating a life living in the car boot, matey, eating your own shoes. Pray then, like me, to be found before you die.

But wait! This is what we discover! St James's Chapel. Don't ask me how. I became distracted by an English Heritage sign. Anyway, it comes with an original hooded Medieval monk.


Actually that is Squirrel, but she is doing that thing of standing still, dark stranger muttering curses. Possibly at me. I have just driven her to a cold stone hut in the sleet in the middle of nowhere and I declare this brilliant.

Next stop on our fantastic tour is Dedham, where we can breathe Constable country. Nerdy types for whom this matters found out where Constable painted The Stour Valley and Dedham Village. We might peer through the hedge, discover the same, and live a lesson in Art History. Here I plan to turf the little grits out the car and walk them about the beautiful countryside, admiring the view and drawing pictures.

OK, we did not quite get out the car.

Mostly on account of the artillery rain bashing in the windscreen and a mutiny of little grits complaining their shoes leak and they have no rain hoods and No. They are not leaving the car. No matter how much I gasp in astonishment, Look! this field is art and it is brilliant.

Hmph. Gritlets, you will come back to this place yet, I warn you.

Anyway, next stop! Rear end to a housing estate in Clacton on Sea. They have a Martello Tower. You can bet I am prepared and lecture everyone on the Frenchies coming by sea. History! Brilliant.


Rats. They escape!


Time to bury the little Arsefaces in the sands. At which point, the sunshine magically glimmers for all of fifteen minutes.



Time to head into Clacton. Is there not something brilliant about the English seaside resort under February rainclouds? The wistful echo of the single slot machine? The sorrow of the nonchurning pink candyfloss machine? The mournful sobbing, somewhere at the back of the offy?



There is only one thing to do. Hide on the pier and eat chips.


And then, because we haven't enjoyed ourselves enough, up to Colchester. Where, at about 3.15pm, I sustain the brilliance no longer, and slump against a pillar in Peacocks covering my face with my hands. It is fine, little grits. Ignore me. Leave me here wrestling with dark thoughts, momentarily defeated, in weary refuge at the world's most horrible place filled with shocking pink and black, suddenly thrown here looking for boots because I cannot bear the Tiger whines about soaking wet feet for a second longer.

I overcome. Of course I do. Right next door is the fantastic Colchester Natural History Museum. I know an old Church looks unlikely. But it is brilliant. Offering free geology, stag beetles, and a very patient member of staff who waits twenty minutes for Squirrel to count £1.70 in non-shiny coins from a Dalmatian dog purse. I recommend it. Particularly if by now you feel like a shuffling dribbly hobo with cold feet, wet coats and red noses with what feels like seaweed leaking out of them, looking for an hour's sanctuary at the frayed end of a long, long day.



A day which I can truly say was brilliant.