From pain to shame

Take Tiger to the riding stables.

Here, have pictures.

Doubtlessly delighting any passer-by who hankers after tales of mane nuzzling and hoof picking. But for me, ankle-deep in horse shit, enjoying it all not so much, aka, suffering.

To my way of thinking, small, fat-bellied short-legged ponies with attitude who scowl and snort until you reluctantly give them a polo mint are equally as bad as tall haughty horses who look down their noses at you, and if they consider you at all, it is to briefly assess how inconveniently lumpy you will be as they trample you face down into the stable yard. Which they will do shortly, so fuck off out the way.

Of course Tiger is not of my type. She loves it all. Small, fat, bad-tempered types and indifferent, superior types alike.

I will try and arrange a marriage for her to a stables owner, so if there is any passer-by who is in the happy position of having a junior to inherit your generous stables (plus horses), and the junior looks like a horse, talks all day about horses, and doesn't bat an eyelid when I leave the room to go and read a book because horse worship may just kill me, then get in touch. We can marry yours to mine most successfully.

In more important news, I have a potato-related vulnerability.

I come to this conclusion as I am researching lucid dreaming (I have a notebook commission to do).

This morning, as I lie sleep-wakeful, fearful of missing the early start for the stables, I dream.

I am staying in a hotel but am completely naked as I arrive in my car to go to my room. This is shaming for me, obviously, so I try and bluff it out, pretending nakedness is normal in this modern day and age. I then attempt to behave even more normally by shoving a plastic bag containing peeled potatoes under the bed in the room I have occupied. While totally naked I am pushing the plastic bag under the bed, but it won't fit, thanks to other people leaving their belongings under the bed before me. (Annoying.) The next people who are due to occupy the room enter, and behave very courteously towards me, while I go round the room (clutching my bag of potatoes), collecting all the other things I cannot hide, like Shark's art projects which have mysteriously appeared on the widow ledge.

When I look up my dream of nakedness and potatoes, I reason the most suitable explanation is my fear of exposure. If Elibee and Mr W come round to dinner, I will be shamed by my lack of cooking repertoire (yes, at the moment it is mostly potatoes). I shall tell them, better make it the Indian take-away, like normal.

There are limits, apparently

Inevitably, to the new stables. Recommended to us by a fellow home educator; one who owns a similar horse-stolen daughter to Tiger.

Get them together, and this pair of horse-turned juveniles are obviously demented. Within seconds they are hopelessly absorbed in conspiratorial whisperings of polo mints and hoof picks.

The young woman/horse slave standing at the wooden board in the cold shed who ticks Tiger's name delightedly and withdraws money from my purse for more horse nuts promises they can meet Tiger's wishes for hacking and horsing; they'd be perfect, no problem! Just ask, whatever it is!

Okay then, I want you to air-lift a horse outside of Tiger's bedroom window, stick jingle bells on it, and wave it about come Christmas Morning. Then give her the horse to cuddle, ride, stroke, nuzzle its mane and plait its tail. By the way, you pay all fees, bills, invoices and expenditures for vets, shoes (day wear and evening), little rooms with straw, big rooms with carpets, glitter for arses, then add saddles, reins, hats, wings and ballroom gowns. Forever. And ever.

See? I doubted you would make that particular Tiger wish come true.

Surely home education will be good for something

Tiger has fallen in love. Again. Honestly, she is a fickle child. One minute it's all a-swooning after a glimpse of Bubbles. Next she's enamoured of a Daisy. Or a Dandelion. Or a Delilah.

This one is called Sparkle, or Splash, or something. I forget. Take a look at it. Looks like all the others, doesn't it?

Really, I should be a horse fanatic. Out here in Buckinghamshire, practically in spitting distance of the Cotswolds.

Aversion to Horse is, of course, not doing me any good. Not with my ambitions for my daughters. Because there has to be a Plan B regarding this home educating enterprise, doesn't there?

If Plan A fails (an independent life after university? Frankly, I am doubting the possibility of a lucrative career in embroidery) then Plan B it is.

Plan B is to slyly turn the story of home education into one of private tuition, then launch my offspring at the gentry, where a Fail in NVQ Forestry is guaranteed to classify the bearer as a member of the intellectual elite.

Once there, my darling daughters are sure to find themselves wealthy young men, blinded by the idea of a private education and deaf to the defects. One sure way to this end, I am convinced, is to get a girl on a horse.

We are at some disadvantages here, I do recognise that. First, socially. Second, I cannot bring myself to pay for the upkeep of a horse; handbags are more useful. Third, I am not a stables woman. As is woefully evidenced by my performance today. But for Tiger's sake, I will try.

I have set myself some goals.

1. Swoon, obviously and decorously, when in company of Lord Horse. (Must not go UGH UGH UGH.)

2. Remember the stable girls are individuals! Even though they are all aged sixteen, thin as twigs, 'living in', fair to blond, sporting ponytails, and called Am / Em.

3. Careful with behaviour. I simply end up showing myself out like a gangster's moll. I am so completely not. The cash is honestly acquired. Nothing to do with my husband's activities at all. I can tell the Tax Office anytime how Dig is utterly scrupulous in all his dealings with the pimping business.

It is me. Blame me. I never got the hang of the banking system, and now the wretched Barclay set won't give me any chequebooks. What else can a woman do? I simply have to settle the stables bill (two residential holiday weeks, riding, purchase of hat) in fivers.

Of course this causes a fluff at the desk. Dropping to my hands and knees to scrabble about a handbag for a roll of fivers obviously isn't the done thing, but it's not as if I was keeping them down my bra. I learned my lesson about that when I went to John Lewis to buy the sofa. Do not keep a roll of two thousand quid in the left cup of your bra. But surely, keeping cash in the same purse I reserve for my sanitary towels is sensible. If I am robbed at gunpoint (in Buckinghamshire this is common) then isn't my robber least likely to touch my private sanitary towel purse?

Well, my shortcomings at the stables are obvious. But I am never beaten by life's troubles! I resolve to continue another few months in the hopeful pursuit of Plan A (or until the maths, spelling and general gaps in academia become obvious), and then look to Plan B, quietly placed up my sleeve.



PS. Please do not tell anyone, but my only interaction so far with the Old Berkeley Hunt has been to swing punches at them in the defence of poor persecuted Mr Fox! Obviously I can't do that anymore. Not only am I a woman of maturity who cannot run fast enough now to avoid arrest, I have three young charges to launch at the upper-middle class in a socially responsible manner.

More horse related woe

Here it is. The daughter thief. Snatching fresh victims! Whinnying with mockery to trample on my pain. What torture this is to me. The daughter thief has won! It eats all my money, steals all my daughters, disdains my cares and leaves hoof prints on my soul.

You, you dreaded horse - how I resent your charms and secret powers - you have now stolen away not one of my daughters but two of my cherished daughters! Can the pain end here!

Tiger, her heart was stolen so long ago. I, foolish parent, in a moment of weakness, hoisted the four-year old girl children over the saddle edge 'to get a better view'.

Oh stupid, unwise folly filled parent! I had no better view of the future! I did not forsee that horse will seize this moment, capture the youthful spirit and never return her to my mortal concerns! From then on, it has been, on Tiger's lips, all horsehorsehorse!

Tiger, I have wrestled with my heart. I have had no choice but to watch you slip to worldofhorse. There is no guard I can raise against it.

But Squirrel! Noooooo! One week living with the stables, while mama vainly seeks to justify this on the basis of some educational mishmashery nonsense, now she is taken too!




It is all woe to me now. WOEOWOWOWOEOEOEOW.

These, to my eyes, now become instruments of torture...


And this, the power I have left to resist.


Oh fishies, be friends to me! I have but one daughter left! Do not let my fin-turned daughter Shark be lured from your watery grip!

Smalltown Tax

Emerge this morning to find the Smalltown Tax is due. This is a regular payment we have to make.

Look on the upside. We have a large garden where the kids can scream I hate you, and a beautifully commanding proper-built house with a heavy wooden kitchen door that sounds like a thunderclap when you slam it.

We couldn't afford this type of luxury close to London. So we are here, located in rural edge small town, rubbing alongside traditional working class, middle class Victorianophiles, Bangladeshi restaurateurs, and newly arrived incomers, who probably can't wait to get out thanks to the vagaries of the Friday night tax system.

The Smalltown Tax, for those happy folk who never have to pay it, can take any number of forms: broken wing mirrors where drunken kids run down the middle of the road after midnight with outstretched bottles and metal bars; dented car bonnets and car roofs where the kids run over the vehicles (they usually get off when they meet the line of white vans); knife-attacked car tyres (see photo); and the occasional broken kitchen window, garden theft, or simply having your car written off as the police chase the forced marriage kidnappers (our unforgettably large 2006 tax bill).

In this list I count only those that involve depressing discovery, a day's inconvenience, and repair costs at the local garage.

I do not count the extraordinary taxes (murder, arson, muggings), nor the ordinary taxes, such as feelings of revulsion at having to clear up the wee from the Saturday night drunk in the lobby; misery at clocking the teenage hooker who mistakes my home for the den three doors down; depression at having to walk past the house where the druggies hang out; and irritation when the local youth cycle down the back alleys bombing the gardens with eggs because, apparently, this is all the fun you can have in Smalltown.

For me, after limping to the garage on three tyres, an hour's wait (and eighty quid tax), it's a dreary local tax, and all I can hope is that I don't get another one in quick succession.

More importantly, I spend the rest of the afternoon doing the real emotional and financial work. That is, the horse shop, equipping the newly horse-struck Squirrel for her week's residential fun with a stinking great mare (cost to my bank balance, hundreds, and all taxes to my soul, extracted).

I knew we would find our way here

The jury has been out for some time regarding the question, Who would make a better mother for Tiger? Me or a horse?

I think the matter is finally settled. The horse won it. Even the mechanical one. Horse scores more points than me. The mechanical one comes with a gentleman jockey who can tell you stuff, like where to put your bottom when it's travelling at 90mph. That is not knowledge I have yet mastered. In fact, I haven't mastered any horse knowledge. Worse (possibly criminal in Tiger's eyes), I haven't shown any interest in mastering any horse knowledge. Not about front, back, upside down, inside out, nor oat feed. Indeed, my philosophy has been so far, 'Avoid all horse. Drive Tiger to stables. Find bank card'.

But now I realise it would have been cheaper, and more efficient all round, had I bought a horse to rear my sensitive child.

A horse would have done a much better job than me. Whereas I make unreasonable, pointless demands - hair! bedroom floors! clothes! for goodness sake give us a smile! - a horse would make none of these demands. It would fight none of these battles. It would simply stand around, whinny, and bash its hooves on the stable floor before staring in stern expectation at Tiger. She would have intuitively known those eyes said things like You can look after me! I need constant care, feeding, hoof-picking and poop-scooping, for which, in return, I will let you canter about a field with me while I try hard not to throw you off in a show of indifference and disdain.

It would have been a joyous upbringing. Tiger would already have turned into a quiet and happy equine slave, willingly running about with buckets of water and more dinner, rather than the unhappy bundle of neurosis I reluctantly drag between continents.

So here you have it. The mechanical horse. At Newmarket horse racing museum. With gentleman jockey to show everyone how.

I can only howl at fate and cry Why?

Horse racing? I just don't get it. So I've used all my keen intelligence to avoid this place. Anticipating the signs, I've looked straight ahead, and breathed quietly. I've driven by ten thousand times, in both directions, and never said a word to Tiger. Once passed safely by, in my head I've punched the air and thought, today I got away with it.

But I know I'm on borrowed time. It has to happen. It's like meeting a fate you know is there. I will have to give in. Fate will come at me, armed with all the powers of the universe, while I try and fight it back with a piece of string I stole from Squirrel's handbag.

And now it took a step closer. Months ago, Tiger, always gripped by horse love, saw the signs. She asked. I looked out the window and pretended to be deaf. She in turn ignored me, and stared at every passing moment to this sister museum, while I counted my breaths, and she insisted, Mummy, I said I want to go there. Eventually, I made up reasons why not, but I knew they would never be enough.

Today, I had to yield. I can't fight fate with a bottle top and biro, and so here we are. I am bewildered, unknowing, made speechless. The Hong Kong Racing Museum.

I have no words. Only photographs. And a knowledge that is perfectly formed. Shortly you will find me in Newmarket.

You see? I can explain nothing. But here is a picture of turf.
Tiger tells me it matters, if you are a horse.

And another thing

That's a strange idea about kids educated from home: they're unlikely to take part in activities if the parental interest doesn't lie there.

Eh? That doesn't work, does it? Take sports.

The gym, I like. The kids think I'm crazy. But I'm not interested in ballet and Squirrel did three years of the torture. I have no particular interest in sailing either, but Shark loves it. And Tiger! Great snorty horse creatures are the stuff of my nightmares! Tiger, she loves them. In England, she regularly and happily sits on a horse, while I sit in the car and happily test the chocolaty bits of digestives.

I don't think I'm alone. I think there are thousands of educating parents out there - school-choosing or otherwise - who encourage their kids in one sport or another while themselves disguising active loathing.

Each week they probably suffer miserably by the sides of rugby pitches, or feel excluded and marginalised at dance classes, or desperately try to weasel out from any parental involvement of school sports days. We still turn out, cheer on, and face up to it all.

But what choice do the children have, especially if it's a school-bound sport?

Of the alternative educating parents I know, one common bond we have is our shared experience of horrible times with sports at school. It makes us all the more determined that our kids should choose for themselves what sports to do, and that their choice should be enjoyment and involvement.

When I was a kid I loved swimming. The swimming pool was one of the first places I went to independently; I can recall the thrill of catching a bus there alone for the first time; every week I imagined myself in training for a triumph great and glorious, even though I was a terrible swimmer and a competitive no-hoper. It didn't matter to me. I adored it all.

Then I attended a school where swimming was a compulsory part of the curriculum. Within a year I was terrified of it. As the hour approached, so did the panic attacks, sweating, shaking, stammering. It was nothing but fear and humiliation. With water. Everything that I'd loved about it, I hated. When it finished, I didn't go swimming again until I was aged 32. That's what school did for my passion.

School did that for all sports. Hockey nearly killed me. Athletics, I loathed. Netball, I dreaded. Tennis, it left largely unscathed, because the PE teacher told us we would never do much, so we may as well use it as an excuse to run about in the sunshine. I could probably pick up tennis again today.

But the worst of all was ice skating. I hated ice skating. With a hard hatred that could slice ice better than hot skates. The six ice skating lessons in 1974 were the only lessons at school from which I played truant. So catch me now, Mrs Watson.


The whole miserable experience has made me sure that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger shouldn't go through that route. But that they should choose their sports, follow their enjoyment, and engage to their comfort and ability levels. Today, we visit the ice rink. Shark wants lessons when we arrive home in England. Tiger and Squirrel already reached the level of their satisfaction.

I don't need to suffer. Ice skating is no pain to me. The kids can do any sport they want, regardless of whether I like it or not. Anyway, Starbucks does a decent coffee, and it's just round the corner from the ice rink.

Pathetic

My darling Tiger. Today we collect you from your stay at the stables, to bring you home.

I don't think you want to come home with us. What tells me? Maybe it's the look of shock mixed with misery that crosses your face when you see my ancient mother carcass slowly dragging itself across the field.

My advance towards you comes as the steady beat of the tolling hour. Your shoulders sag and your heart heaves. Your time here, at the stables, has ended.

Here it is heaven. Here you are surrounded by keen, sharp-eyed girls who leap on horses. Spontaneous with life-spark, they up and bounce and stride and play as if this stable yard were a mere continent: a small skip away to the wide grass waves of galloping fields, where you can all frolic wild with horses.

For this week, you have joined these joyous people and their bright horse ways, and I know from that look of bewilderment that you forgot about us; enough not to send us a postcard from heaven.



Later, you will sit sullen in the car, or at home, misty-eyed and far away. I will jolly you along with prospects of return. And of your lesson - two weeks is nothing! - but you already miss the smell of Dust and Star and Mars, and yearn to be back here again.

If I could, I would use that. I would look at you, all fixed eyes and steely resolve. I would say Hey Tiger! Let's talk business! You want horse. I want maths worksheet. Let's cut a deal!

Of course I won't, because I am in thrall to your mournful eyes and shiny bottom lip. I know, compared to horse, that for you I am inadequate. Mother love now is nothing. Without silky mane and prancing hooves, I cannot measure up.

Weakened at heart, I search for the single glimmer of advantage, to plead, Tiger! Come back to me! Sure, horse can take you to the stars, but look! Horse cannot cook pasta.

Do not let this daughter thief near a saucepan.
If you do, I am done for.

Wanted: Daughter thief

Here it is, this thieving creature, creeping to us in the night and stealing away my daughter child.


See! Another! Be vigilant, for they are everywhere.

Do not let those big, soulful, eyelashed eyes seduce you. It is all calculated horse intelligence to lull you and make you sigh aaahhh ahhhh aahhh like a twerp and yearn to stroke fetlocks and put glitter in manes. No! Desist! You should know that they are foulsmelling gutterliving sugarlump addicts. And they will steal your daughter if you allow her near them. Keep the daughter child away! Away!

Look! Now we see the evil appear! Look at those crazed staring eyes! That truly awful nose violating my phone camera, seeking out sugarlumps and daughters! Revealing themselves as the cruel and calculating child snatchers they really are, plotting and scheming for access to more daughters! More sugarlumps!


Do not be taken in! Pay attention to your daughters! Learn from my sad and bitter experience. Equine worship is begun in so many innocent ways, and soon it becomes all enveloping and all pervasive. It requires mama to dig her hands deep into her shrivelled bank account and pull out the last dredges of last month's pay to stump up for yet another residential week down the stables.

Poor, broken hearted mother! It is a bewilderment to see the Tiger daughter seduced by these great snorty hairy stamping creatures.

Yet they laugh at me to know that another year has passed and the Tiger daughter's equine love is still strong!

I know the time has gone, and with it, her heart from me to them. Tiger stares from her window and sighs, tenderly, knowing that in only a few hours she gets hold of horse. She stares at me, with urgent eyes, and I know that I must provide her with bigger leggings and longer jodhpurs. She cries that the others cannot fit. Her feet are poking out the bottom, dangling there, and reminding me that I may have put this moment off, but I can put it off no longer. The feet must fit into the jodhpurs and the jodhpurs must have the horse. And then these shameless animals lead my daughter away, causing her to pack her new jodhpurs and leave us for a whole week!

When will it ever end? This is the second year of two long years that Tiger daughter has taken herself off to the stables. For this Easter week, they provide a bed, dinner, and other horse-crazed daughters. And horses! Ever so many! All at once! And worse, POTS OF GLITTER.

Yet I can do no other, but drive her down there, and wave goodbye. She loves them. I do not know why. I wipe a tear from my eye. The daughter thieves scare me half to death with their big teeth and rolling eyes. To me, they are the stuff of nightmares. In my unconscious, they trample over me, and squash me face down to the mud. And yet now I hand her over to their care.

They gallop through her dreams. Under her guiding hand, only hers, she jumps and leaps and runs with them.

Daughter thieves, every one.

It mocks me! See how it mocks me!
The devil horse whinnies Ha Ha! You lose, Mama Grit! You are not as lovely as a horse!

Tales of hats and misdemeanors

Pick up Tiger from PGL holiday.

While we have been cavorting on clifftops, in castles, and at the beach front, Tiger has spent the week on horseback in the mornings and dangling from a zip wire in the afternoon.

PGL comes off well on the entertainment score with a 9/10. She's more shifty on the stables experience. She's not exactly a beginner on a horse, but she's not entering the show jumping competition anytime in the next fifteen years either. She's probably an inbetween kid, and probably needs an intermediate group.

But the stables didn't have an intermediate group. They had beginner and advanced. They taught her how to get on a horse, make it go, stop it, and get off. She was not impressed.

Neither was I. They lost her hat last Monday. So part of this Saturday morning was spent driving back to planet horse and sending the staff off to look for the missing hat because we're not going home without it.

The hat was found on the desk of the woman in reception: the very desk where I'd stood like I wasn't going anywhere unless carried out by security, and where I'd explained to her exactly what the lining looked like and the fact that it had Tiger's name and my phone number blasted all over the inside in black permanent marker. I cannot say deskwoman looked like she was the sort to be organised about things. At no point did she raise one finger in the air and say Oh Yes! I've had this hat here on my desk and been trying to contact you! Not a bit of it. More, flabbergasted expression and You mean a hat? Here? At the riding stables? Whatever can we do?

Anyway, apart from the trauma over the damned hat I also listen to Tiger tell her story about Tinkertop, one of the other kids in her group and a proper little madam.

Apparently, Tinkertop got everyone in trouble. Worse, she made everyone miss the activity because she wouldn't fess up about her misdeeds. Tiger has Tinkertop's name down now in a little black grudge book and will be stalking her over England for something like the next fifty years.

I tried to tell Tiger that the world is made up of loads of different types who do not, like some of your home ed chums, sit quiet and nice in workshops while the leader explains to your eager faces everything you have to do, at which point you go off and do it. Some kids misbehave, and some misbehave real bad. Even when their parents send them to posh schools and pay through the nose to get them on a back of a horse in August. What's more, I tell Tiger, this is one reason why we send you and your sisters to the PGL holidays in the first place, so you can meet and deal with a range of bizarre behaviours beyond the reach of any that your normal assortment of home ed kids can dream up.

And Tiger, now that we have picked you up, driven another hour backwards and forwards to the stables and I have listened to the saga of Tinkertop and her misdemeanors for the fifteenth time, now I need to give you one HELLOFABIGCUDDLE because I have missed your cute face and complaining ways something dreadful.

How I know my little girl

One of the biggest worries I had at the beginning of the week was whether Tiger would use the bathroom at the farmhouse where she was staying.

That means both go to the toilet and wash.

I figured that if she didn't do the former, somewhere about Wednesday she would explode, so I would get a call. That didn't happen. I guess about Tuesday she pooped.

Then there was the washing thing. When we saw the accommodation up at the big house there was one bathroom with bath and shower for six girls. And a spider.

The moment I learned about that spider I knew that not one limb of Tiger's would go near those washing facilities unless she had received absolute assurances that there remained not one spidery particle in that room. Reassuring her it was gone - whether shuffled off due to imminent invasion of pre-teens or flat under a slipper - would not have been sufficient, such is her lack of trust in what adults tell her about spiders and all creepy crawlers. Yet serving up the spider's head on a platter would not have done either. It would have had the same impact on her peace of mind as the careless moment last year when I passed her a bedtime book called Bad Dreams.

But I reckoned that if she wasn't going to wash, it wouldn't kill her. Add the fact there is probably nothing Tiger would like so much in all the world as not washing. Taking her to heaven would be the idea of smelling of horse Daisy for an entire week.

And in fact that is exactly what happened. We pick her up today and I give her a big big squeeze and know she hasn't missed us much, maybe sometimes, when she wasn't trotting around a field on Daisy. I tell her she smells like a horse. She smiles proudly and says 'Mummy, I didn't wash all week. And there was a spider in the bathroom'.

I need to make it through the week

I miss Tiger so hugely I cannot quantify that amount. It is a distance further than from here to the stars.

And this despite the two connected cells remaining in my brain telling me she is safe and well and probably not being trampled upon by a mad horse down at the local stables. For that, someone would surely telephone and no call has come. The third brain cell, that I keep for common sense, says Tiger on her boarding week has probably already forgotten about mama and papa and sisters. I will arrive at the end of the week and Tiger will look at me quizzically, her head tilted sideways, her finger in her mouth, and a puzzled frown that says Who?

Well right now I despair of making it to Wednesday. There is a horrible pressure in my chest so great I am surely enduring enlarged heart disease made worse by sorrow and the constant emotional torture of looking around for Tiger, only to recall in the emptiness that she is on the back of a horse in a field, or possibly being trampled to death by a stable-crazed pony which nobody can be bothered to tell me about.

I miss her in every part of the day, like missing the way she rolls herself up in her purple patterned duvet every morning like an exotic gigantic slug. I miss the way she growls at the breakfast table because I prised her out of bed at 10.30. I miss the way she tucks her knees up under her pink dress and snarls when I tell her off. I miss her standing quietly by me in the office, watching, not saying anything. Then I know there's been a wrestling match over a unicorn or piece of knitting and her sisters have come off worse and are probably lying there right now in the front room all mangled and bent out of shape having incurred Tiger's wrath.

Then I miss those moments when she is so quiet and thoughtful and downcast I realise this is the way she shows us her sensitivity. That crumpling point when she shows us how fragile and vulnerable she is can be brought about with a careless word and thoughtless gesture from any one of us. But we can do that so often because it is so hard to know what that word might be. I am learning how to recognise that moment and how to swiftly use a new word or turn events round to lessen the impact. Really I think this is a sign of growing up, daily, and Tiger is becoming that unstable collection of spilling out hormones we will soon recognise as the difficult pre teen.

But my goodness Tiger how you can deliver those wrongs too. Like when you are outraged at something somebody said. Then we cry how it was really a supportive thing they said! But the wrong person said it, or it was at the wrong moment, the wrong voice pitch, or maybe the wrong turn of head or the wrong type of smile. And then Tiger will flare out a rage to match all and any that I can muster. Well I miss that too, Tiger, I really do. And possibly I cannot wait to see your darkening scowl and hear you yell MUMMMMY! in your volatile hot-head anger in response to my provoking words like Why not use this paper to make your thank you card? And when you snap at me this weekend, which you surely will, I will probably laugh in delight and fall on my knees to wrap my arms around you.

Worse, come the weekend I will be so happy to see you and want you to be happy back home again I may fall into the trap of asking you what would you like? What would make your life complete?

And it will not be home-made strawberry ice cream like I imagined, it will be that I must adopt a horse. Oh yes I will do that, although I have no idea where to keep it. Possibly in the cellar, unless it locks itself in by accident like Sasha the au pair, and then it will have to climb out the windows. Can horses climb? This is going to be such a bad idea when I tell Dig. Better just adopt the horse for my beloved Tiger and not say anything.

I can wait no longer. Seriously. I am going to creep right now to the stables, climb over the fence or cajole and wheedle and weep until someone lets me in and then I am going to hear and see Tiger and smell her hair and bring home her photograph to cry over and cuddle with.

When this day ended, I drank heavily

First we went to the Buddhist temple to say Happy Birthday Buddha. Don't count me as a Buddhist. I cannot chant and I hit spiders with shoes.


And I have no idea what this says. Probably Do not photograph this sign.

Then we rolled down hills. Strangely, Shark can only roll sideways.


We sniffed the blossom and I resolved to stop relying on this phone camera, because there is a limit to the quality of these photos. It's convenient though, in case I have to photograph our smashed up car again.


Then Shark, Squirrel and Tiger made daisy chains. I thank any deity available for the fact that their fingers are big enough to take on that duty.

And on the way back to the car, we hang a wish on the wishing tree. I have no idea what Squirrel is wishing for.


And finally the moment I have dreaded.

We leave Tiger at the stables for her boarding week. I feel so sad she isn't climbing straight back in this car to smack one sister round the face and kick the back of my seat. And I feel so glad that finally she feels ready to stay away from us all, and is so excited about cuddling her favourite horse, Daisy.



I hope Daisy knows how fortunate she is.

Horse day

Of course I have ambitions for my girls. I do not want them lying on the sofa munching crisps, drinking beer, and watching daytime TV like mama. No. I want them to do elegant things. Like horse riding. With an education like this, I am sure to get them in the right circles and marry them off to a distant relative of the British royal family.

I know I must sacrifice something for this type of ambition. So I slap a smile on my face and take Tiger down the stables once a week for her riding lesson.

Fortunately, today I do not have to do that. Because Dig is back, everything is falling neatly into a right and ordered place. It's his job to take her and I can spend the time complaining about it on the blog.

Because not having to spend nearly an hour of misery at the foul horse stink den called the stables, is one mighty big relief. I do not like these great lumbering snorty creatures called horses. OK, I am grown up and no longer believe they are going to kill me, but it doesn't mean I have to like them. Not one bit.

For a start, horses reverse without indicating. Worse, they do not even bother to look at the space they are reversing into. Now, horsey, if I did that type of manoeuvre I would be in big trouble getting out of every car parking space. But I note that when these great hairy creatures do the reversing thing and crash into every innocent person standing behind them looking the other way then there is a big hue and cry and everyone shouts CUTE HORSE! FOOL PERSON! Standing there behind LOVELY HORSE. Clearly, being a non-horse person in the vicinity of these hairy fat monsters means you deserve to be trampled to death.

And that's not my only complaint about the horse, the fact that it can kill me with its arse. They cannot see where they are going. They only look sideways. There is nothing to trust about an animal who does that.

Then there is the hair and the smell and the poo and the hooves. There is nothing cute about these things at all, and do not get me started on the combed ears and tails held up by pink ribbons.

Because that sort of thing is typical as well. They need more looking after than a baby. There are constant ministrations and reverences made not only to this hairy beast but to a variety of weird objects that are treasured more than gold necklaces. Stuff like tack and bit and bridle. All this mountain of stuff is hung up and polished and stroked and cooed over by size zero stable lasses sporting long blond hair in jaunty pony tails and striding about with legs that measure up to my shoulder height.

You see? Normally I must sacrifice my rights to free speech and not shout all this stuff out at the stables. But it's true. Horses get everything their own way, they have stuff to dress up in, and servants to look after the stuff. And for this what do they do all day but crash about making offensive noises?

Of course given our ambitions, it's not for me to make comparisons with the British royal family.

Six impossible things before supper

And we're off!

After breakfast Grit Dig and the Gritlets drive to Salcey Forest as fast as possible


to meet Linda Johns for her art tour which is so splendid and breathtaking that Grit says we are going to get out the chickenwire and do the same in the back garden


then dash straight to the lake where I do not know what comes over me but it seems like a good idea to put Shark and Squirrel together in a double canoe and that is probably the worse idea I ever had since I tied them together as toddlers in the three legged race which is the only time truly I have wet myself in public laughing because now they paddle out to the middle of the lake and proceed to smack each other around with paddles so the instructor comes over to see what the commotion is about


but I leave the water fight for Dig to watch and the instructor to umpire and I shove Tiger in the childrens playground


but at 4pm put Tiger in the car for the horseriding lesson


then drive back to the lake where Shark and Squirrel are fighting in the playground instead but I drag everyone out because we are due at the outdoor art exhibition


and the twilight glow in the dark party to see the drawings that Shark and Tiger completed yesterday afternoon with Sally Booth at her workshop


while Squirrel was busy with her ballet exam class and I am so glad glad happy that Dig is here all this weekend and especially today because if he were not we could not have achieved all this but I would have buckled under the strain to be in so many different places all at the same time and I might have been tempted just to stay at home and watch TV.