It's a bit of old concrete asking for it

Kids see something designated as 'art'.


In the absence of any other interesting play area outside the History Museum, kids bring 'art' into their world, on their terms.


I really wanted to photograph the security guard who looked like she hadn't smiled since 1972 and who knitted her brows and huffed and puffed and flapped her lips while making a big cross sign with her forearms.

China, what you should take from this, is that you actually need more interesting playgrounds for kids of all ages, and fewer great chunks of worthy public art.

To help you along, I'm almost inclined to start an underground movement of guerrilla play, whereby we bring kids aged 5-15 to your China concretes, and muck about all over them.

We took a snow leopard to Paradise Wildlife Park

Today, my children left me. I stood among the big cats, all alone, and they left me.

I'm not surprised.

I knew it was coming. I heard them plan it. They discussed which animal was coming, what greetings should be exchanged, what friendships should be made, and what story should unfold in the secret jungle.

Then they packed their bag, ordered me to drive them, ran the snow leopard across the park, and left me.

They have been leaving me for years. They started soon after they could walk, and they took the contents of the dressing up box with them.

Later they came back, and towed away horses, jeeps, railway carriages. Soon enough, their little fingers grabbed onto anything and everything they could find, and they vanished out my life, with not so much as a See you later.

As they grew, they cared less what they took. They made what they needed. They dug holes and hollows and secret places for their playmates. They took earth, moulded it with purposeful hands into mud, then sculpted everything they lacked. Wings to fly with; talismans and tokens to safeguard troubled times; bread to eat on their journey through the stars.

Sometimes I came along, big heavy clumping creature that I am. I spoiled it. I swept everything away, often without knowing what I destroyed. I even took the stars.

Shamefully, sometimes I saw what I took, and I knew it for what it was. A fragment of paper with a scribbled note; a length of twine with a tiny bead; a pipe cleaner, threaded on a button. Each significant. This scribbled note, a unicorn's diary. That twine, a mark of loyalty to the clan. This pipe cleaner, a wizard's wand, spellbound to its owner.

When I am feeling hard and vengeful, I pick these objects up from the floor, take them away, crush them in my hands, and throw them in the bin. The house is only so big. I cannot save everything. Maybe I'll keep the wand two weeks. They'll make it again. Perhaps they'll forget what I did. I won't tell them.

But some things, I do not touch. Even I, ogre, know where not to tread. Those moments, which are not mine. That transition which gives rise to wrongs, disloyalties, betrayals, wars. And to resolutions, affirmations, new beginnings.

The point where my children leave me, and cross the line into the land where I can't go, is the reality they have which I clumsily call play, and which they know is real.

Their play is real and alive, and is part of who they are. It is the space they inhabit, the choices they face, the decisions they make, the people they are. I won't touch that.

So today I stand, and quietly watch the snow leopards come face to face, growl their greetings, and embark on their adventures together.

Don't mention the horse nose

I want to take the man who invented Shrinkles and I want to give him a damn big smackeroo for bringing five hours worth of peace to this household today.

Well, until Princess Fairy Raindrop created a diplomatic incident by pointing out King Horse Julian's nose had a slice taken out of it. Then the dolphins got involved by laughing and made everything worse. As night follows day, The War of the Kitchen Table began. Order was not restored until all the Shrinkles knights were banished to their rooms to consider the errors of their ways and the great Grit Controller picked up the kitchen chairs.

The offending injury

Until that point, great.

To the woods

Five years ago, looking for like minded people in local reach, I sought out a local home ed group. I found one.

How awful was that experience; how demoralising, how unlikeminded, how it was as if I had plunged into the deep blackness of the night countryside, and found myself a hundred miles from the nearest light, sunk in a ditch. I almost thought the game wasn't worth a candle, such a test of resolve and stamina those lonely months became. Made unsupported, unwelcomed, we made our own friends and investigated the local school.

Then by chance, a drive away, I found a second home-educating town and someone said, open and honest, What problem? Come along! No-one seemed to mind who I was, or much what I thought, did or said; no-one set me up in a spider's trap; they simply said Welcome! and asked Do you want tickets? and Would you like to join us? I left that bad experience and that alien group behind, and went on to enjoy what we did, shrugging my shoulders and waving my hand.

Then, five years on, right on my doorstep, there's a sudden flicker of movement, a sideways step, a vanishing, a welcoming email, some words, and now here's that alien group, reformed, local, all going down to the woods together; the children as kings, queens, artists and engineers.



Just for an instant before we set out to this woodland play, I had the urge not to go, perhaps in case that change was a deception and that it were not so different than before; that it became our Lord of the Flies. Perhaps I feared we couldn't make a safe retreat, and that when I crawled back I did so cursing, washing our wounds and vowing never again.

But I'm glad we went, because all that happened was that we grown ups exchanged understanding nods and quiet words and resolutions that things in the future would be different and the children played at being kings, queens, artists and engineers.




One step at a time. And maybe then we can stay longer, in this unreal world made in the woods, and do our best to make it real.

Why home educate? (4) Sport

We get to watch. We get to watch when Shark steps with singular determination to the sailing dingy; when Squirrel twirls, and with that face she thinks a serious ballerina should have; we get to watch how Tiger's eyes light up when she clings to a horse, and we even get to bite our knuckles and pray they don't all fall in, fall over, or fall off.

Every week throughout their lives we see some new and wonderful physical ability. From standing up to chew on the table edge, to falling off the climbing frame in the playground and not dying, swimming for the first time, cycling without pink princess wheels, then archery, abseiling, skiing. This month alone I've watched gym, trampoline, tennis, ice skating, kayaking. And the best of it is I can be right there when it happens. I can seek out any type of lesson that's wanted, we can choose the places and times to go, the instructors we like; and I can look at my little faces delighted and excited as a sudden new skill is found and disbelieved and found again.

Today I watch Tiger at the ice rink. Months ago she clung to the sides, her legs taking off without her. Then I watched tentative toe work, stretching out to the first leg's distance; then the sudden forward movement, one foot in front of the other, and then shooting straight across the ice with that face, that mixture of pure delight, curiosity, strength, ambition, shock, like Where did this come from?

Today I watch while Tiger jumps, really, jumps from the ice, with thin metal blades strapped to the bottom of her feet, and she jumps, up in the air and there is a breath of a gap between the ice and her blades and then down she comes back onto that ice and she stays upright! She actually stays upright! And her face is amazed and inside I scream wildly and declare that is the most stupendous and amazing moment and it will stay in my heart forever. Because now there's no stopping her. And next she'll be twirling and gliding and spinning and doublebackflipping on that ice. And as that vision grips me along with a terrible fear that makes me want to strap her into a helmet and body armour, I am gaping in awe, and I feel privileged and honoured, and with that triumphant fraction of a gap between the ice and her blades, have watched her grow up with a huge bound in confidence and self.

And I am not saying that any parent of a schooled child feels none of these things. Oh no. What I am saying is that home ed gives us all here at the Pile the time in which Tiger and her sisters can experiment, explore, choose and pursue whatever sport they need. I am there not only to set it up for a Tuesday or Saturday morning and then complain about it, but to see it working through and watch those moments of glory when Tiger does not fall flat on her backside for the third time in a row.

If it were only this. Because the local school provides numeracy and literacy hours, but not the thrilling diversity of sailing hours or trampoline hours. And their lack would put me in a mother's role of making up the deficit, probably with emergencies like swimming in the event of a canal or a drunken student party, ten years from now. But I couldn't cram our ambitious range of sports into those leftover weekends and holidays without Tiger giving up on me at 10.30 on a Saturday morning and shouting Mother! Leave me alone! Enough exercise already! Jam doughnuts next!

But most importantly, if Shark, Squirrel and Tiger went daily to school, I simply wouldn't have the imperative that home ed provides. In the land of home ed, the buck stops here. I look to no-one else to come knocking to provide a sports education for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. I look to theirs and mine own judgements and Dig's overdraft. The knowledge of this responsibility gives me a huge kick up the rear end; it impels me to go out and find these sports and activities, plead for rates or special treatment, and get them all organised, scheduled and done. And I wonder would I do this if my kids all went to school? Because there on a Monday, Shark might come down and shout Muuuum! Have you washed my gym kit? If I don't have it, Miss makes me sit out.

Or worse, she might follow it with, On second thoughts mum, can I miss gym today?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Then be glad.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger really have no need of a plastic Playmobil Roman amphitheatre at all. Right now they are playing with the dollies they made last year. These are mostly hand sewn dollies. That's hand sewn by Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. I'd like to say they are good.

Here's a couple of them, snuggled up in bed together and, I am told, eating breakfast. Where my kids get that idea from, I do not know, because in all their lives Mummy Grit has not once managed breakfast in bed. A flask of coffee, a bottle of brandy and a Lindt chocolate bar is my lot. Anyway, here are two of the dollies.


Would you like to wake up in bed next to one of those? That one on the left has a false nose. Squirrel cut a hole in her face by accident and we had the idea of sewing a nose over the hole so her stuffing wouldn't fall out. The one on the right, well, what can I say? She looks like the hideously ugly sister of the Bride of Frankenstein. But look on the bright side. Now her hair is sewn on instead of skewered on with pins. Here they are close up. If you ask nicely, one of them might pucker up for a nite-nite kiss.


I'm not sure where the third dolly has gone, otherwise I'd show you the full set. I saw her yesterday and she was on a zip wire in the garden. We haven't got a zip wire in the garden. Though I suspect we now have some string tied onto the tree with a dolly swinging from it.

And I can take a pride in all of this, as good home educators have to, because otherwise it is all hopeless. This is design and technology. And independent learning. Well it gets even better because today all the little girls have been very happily making some new outfits for their home-sewn dollies. Such as this one. I'll await the call from Galliano while you admire the couture of this little number.


There you go. And this is how home education can swell your heart with pride and render you in despair, all at the same time.