Some days, life's just a walk in the park

One of the best things about being a home educator in this wonderful, wired world, is that you can wander over to the opinions of other people and discover what they think.

Like all things considered, taking the rational view, there's only one conclusion. You home educate, which means you are probably a child murderer.

Give someone a minute or two in an open comments box and they'll come up with the highly original explanation that we home ed types are driven by religion. And you can be sure we abuse our kids for years before we plunge the dagger in the head and reconstruct the patio. Yes! We have been indulging in years of emotional and physical abuse!

Of course nothing has been proven yet, so we could just be irresponsible parents who just don't care. Our lack of care means we're restricting the social networks, life chances and study choices of our kids. PS, we're also ignoring the human rights of our child, and no-one ever mentions their welfare!

What's the cure? Send in the good government! Set up a committee and let us try and persuade 12 rational people of the necessity of our lifestyle. Force us to do the same as everyone else. Let there be standards! Because we may be anarchists, antisocial, poor. Ignorant. Pity us. Then again, we're beneath your contempt.

When all else fails, we're turning our back on society because we are - this is the best one yet - middle class.

I can take all of this because today I got to walk with my kids in the park. I met other home educating parents. Some of them played alongside their kids. Some of them didn't. Some of us chatted about the need for handwriting as opposed to keyboard skills.

Maybe on that controversy I should be strapping a bomb to my arse and heading off down the bus station. I never like to disappoint.

But I wish that people would think things through before they pronounce judgment or make great sweeping statements about parental options. All it does is make it harder for people. It makes it difficult for kids who are terrified of school, who don't fit, who are begging to find other ways of learning. It makes it harder for parents to be bold and brave and listen to their inner voices, their hearts, their child.

Well people, listen to this.

Sometimes home ed really is simple. Sometimes it is life. Sometimes it is just a walk in the park, in the sunshine and the wind, and everyone goes home, happy.

Seven days with Spring

Oh dear people.*

It's been a while, but I must do this. The alternative is to typeset an academic article about Revised Extended Standard Theory.

I know which one I'm choosing.

We already did boxes, water, and sight. Let's seasonally adjust and do SPRING.

1. Make your own blossom.
Take your offspring walking in your local wood. Pick up thin sticks to bring home. Preferably without beating a sister around the head with them in the back of the car.

If we come home safely and everyone's in good humour, then we can destroy it all by asking the kids to do something pointless, like twisting crumpled up balls of pink, white and red crepe paper round the little twigs. Because look! You made blossom!

Because the mood is now turning ugly, stick the twigs in a vase and call it Spring Art. If you count the number of crepe balls on the twigs, call it Maths. If you count the number of crepe balls littering the floor, and add it, subtract, divide or multiply with the number on the twigs, brilliant. Advanced Maths.

2. Lambing.
Not the bloody visit to see cute little lambs again. You can't take an ex-vegan to a farm without complaints. Let's make lambs fly instead.

Attach paper wings to your lamb. Throw it out the bedroom window. Measure how far the lamb can fly. You can try timing the seconds before it hits the ground.

He says he likes to fly and he wants to go.
Even if his wings do keep falling off.

Build bigger wings. And fix them on properly this time. Make them of different materials. Like bamboo skewers and nylon. Off he goes! Measure the distance. Did the wings make any difference to flight direction? Distance? Speed? Time to impact? Is the weight or density of lamb causing a problem here? Has anyone got a smaller lamb?

Attach a selection of plastic bags, large and small. Keep throwing. Record the results.

After a couple of hours of cheap entertainment, create some theories as to why lambs don't have wings then call it Science.

3. Falala. Music!
Put on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or Vivaldi's Spring from The Four Seasons. Dress up and dance along but try not to dance yourself to death.

What did you feel and hear? Dawn? Angry weather? Evening? Birds? Tractors? Flying lambs? The sound of a sister crashing to the floor when you pushed her over by accident on purpose?

4. Visit a sensory garden.
These are all over the place, so if you can't make Kew, there could be one near you. Round here there's Luton's Stockwood Park, with sensory area and garden exhibits.

You can always make your own garden sensation, even on a windowsill. Go off to the garden centre and see what they have. If you are too mean to actually buy any of the plants (and I do not blame you, having been a person that spent £3,000 on a garden only to see it systematically trashed by small people) then just let the tiddlers run around the garden centre. At the sound of smashed terracotta claim the kids are not yours and you have never seen them before.

Set your kids a challenge wherever you are to find plants that are smelly, prickly, hairy, noisy, sad, droopy, bold, dead. Call this Science. And if you come home and write a poem about the experience, English. If you can persuade Tinkertop to call her poem le jardin, you get to call it French.

5. Think big. Start your own spring festival.
Let's face it, there aren't enough spring festivals around the world. One brief scan round t'Internet shows every belief, religion, minority, nation, all human groups catered for, each using Spring for a big blow-out party. Start a trend. Make up your own.

One year we had a party called Yellow. We painted the garden tree with yellow paint, hung yellow decorations in it, blew up yellow balloons, ate yellow iced cake, wore yellow, and made paper daffodils and stuck them in the ground. It hasn't caught on, but you never know.

6. Be inspired by paint.
Off to the library for paintings research before getting out the paintbrushes and going berserk.

Berry's Book of Hours does nicely whatever the month, and you can tick Art again. And History. Or there's Arcimboldo and his Spring face, which means you can compose your own self-portraits using only flowers you hand-picked from granny's garden when she was at the shops. When she comes home, you can call it moral discussion.

7. Set up your weather station.
Stick up a dozen cheap thermometers over the house and garden, and take daily readings, if you can remember. Take the temperature of the soil in evening or deep shade and after a day of sunshine, if we get any sunshine. Any difference? More Science.

8. We're all going to die with global warming.
Perhaps not expressed quite like this if you have a three year old. Half an hour with the newspapers or radio these days and you'll know in the UK that Spring is late and we're all doomed. This may well raise some interesting discussions about ecosystems you can have with a four year old. Or not, in which you can wipe your brow in relief and get out the Lego instead.

* You can see how important is a comma.

What story should I tell?

Today we're at Fishbourne Roman Palace in Sussex.

This is the story. While digging a trench for a water pipe in 1960, the workmen turned up some little tiles. They led to the discovery of a sequence of mosaic floors, and the unearthing of the largest Roman palace in Britain.

Archaeologists tell us that the floors span the age of Roman presence, showing early monochrome geometric designs to later, complex colour designs. One theory is that the floors show the time flow of labour and skills - from early specialised Roman mosaicists coming into Britain, then training up the local work force, and ending with a demonstration of the accomplished skills of the Romano Britons.


But I'm sure you don't come here for that story. You can get that elsewhere.

I bet you just come here to see if I end up backwards in a ditch, swinging punches with the security staff, or whether I smuggle the kids over the barbed wire fence to avoid the £20 entrance fee.

Yes, but they're not my story today either. It's when the day is done and we are driving home. In the quiet, warm hum of the car I make the mistake of thinking.

What was today about? Was it indulging my passions for the past and communicating this to the children in the way that I know best? Like saying, Leg up Shark! If I can lever you up like last time, I save a tenner.

Was it a story right now growing in the dreams of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger? The story where the dolphin comes alive? Or Cupid shoots an arrow and pierces the heart of a unicorn? Or maybe the one where the family falls into a time hole, transplants to Roman times, and must solve mysteries before the time hole tips us back, and hopefully here.


Those are the stories I don't know yet. They might live, silently, in the minds of my daughters, and one day, blow out of their mouths and seep from their fingertips; poets, artists and storytellers.


But maybe today was a day that sounds like a good, solid education. I'm reading aloud a story about the rise and fall of Rome, narrating matters of monarchy, republic and empire; of Caesars and wars; lions and conquerors. Don't worry. It's not too text heavy. And there are pictures.

But perhaps none of these stories count. These are difficult times if you home educate. People in power don't like it, because they can't control the story. Some folks wonder if we should be allowed to tell our own stories at all.

Right now, there may be someone in the local authority who thinks my stories are lacking, because stories that can be properly assessed must be told in lines on a page, with a box to tick at the end.

He may have a point. People in power are sure that home educators can't be trusted to tell the complete story. We would miss things out. Someone needs to ask questions, lead us to the conclusion, and see the worksheet. A story can be assessed from the worksheet, you can be sure. The roundness of the letters a, b, c, as expressed in the handwriting.

And because my children are home educated and therefore unknown and hidden, an inspector must have sight of Squirrel, and Shark, and Tiger, and check them for bruising.

Finally, the story must be repeated back to us on paper in a language, not mine, and narrated in targets we have missed and the curriculum areas we might like to review. Someone will be back next year to make sure we take their advice, address our failings, and comply. After all, Article 29 says that education must conform to standards laid down by the state.

Maybe it's best to let the state tell you the story. Then it can be assessable, quantifiable, controllable. Only this story, the one someone else tells you, someone in power, CRB checked and vetted, only they can provide you with any assurance that an education was done here today.

So I'd better be careful. I won't mention the unicorns. That's babyish, and my children should be past that developmental age. And I'd better keep quiet about the republic. Children aged ten do not talk about the difference of monarchy, republic and empire. Maybe age 16. Maybe not at all. Not my class of children, anyway. Leave that to the ruling class.

Clearly we're treading on dangerous ground. Someone will say, we don't want talk like that in this country. It's not the story we want to tell. Shh! Don't speak it. Be fearful of the consequence.

Then here's my story.

I showed my daughters the world. We felt the wind on our faces, trod in the footsteps of our history, and we each owned our time.

Shut up. You're going.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


Hello Squirrel! What are you doing?

I must write this down!

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

No! I must write this down!

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


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

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

There are Celts. Somewhere.

It is so completely typical of the Grit family that I travel miles with Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to meet one of England's finest countrysides - an area of outstanding natural beauty, no less - where we may step into time-stopped ancient lands, breathe deep the air of the Celts and, now each of us is lord, feel this land of England beneath our feet - only to arrive and tilt sideways into a ditch, unable to see my hand in front of my fizzog.

We are at Butser Iron Age Farm, Hampshire, and the rolling hill fog clears...


...but not by much.

Behold, the breathtaking view!


English drizzle, there is plenty. And more mist. And rain. And more drizzle. It may be genuine Celtic drizzle.

Then there is this.


Not snow. Don't get carried away. That is chalk bashing, by mallet. It's just one of the things we English folk like to do in rainsoaked greysodden fields. Accept it, and life is easier.

Soon, because now we are socially aspirational Celts, shortly to become Romano British, we will re-engineer a Roman archway. Mostly by making Squirrel hold up fifteen bricks on one side...


...until we conclude that this is a stupid way to build a Roman arch. The Romans would never do it like this. They would never have had Squirrels strong enough.

Make Shark hold it up instead.


But then! The mists roll themselves away, folding up over the hillside, and there, in the hard set rain, unfurls before us a true iron age settlement...


...complete with the bloke who built the rooves, and who tells us a thing or two about living in the iron age, and how these poncey days we are weedy sissies who think a carpet is a minimum living standard when it is merely proof of our poncey living sissyness.


Soon, he scorns, we will be taking ourselves off to the Roman villa built next door, and then prove to all the world we are the soft bellied comfort seeking jessies he suspected all along.


But of this site, Absolutely brilliant, says Shark. Iron age and Romano British, side by side. A slice of time. In rain, mist, fog, drizzle, cold, and cloud.

Absolutely brilliant. I agree. And that too from a wet, ditch-bashed, chalk-splattered Grit. You can take that as a recommendation, and visit there, soon.

If you can find it.

The school calls this a valuable learning experience (and charges you a tenner)

If I wake up in the night screaming at the horror of what I'm about to do - and I do scream, often, because my brain routinely serves up great midnight dollops of fear - then I have only to think of the circumstance that is the school visit, and my night sweat passes.

We see school visits on our travels, often. When we home educators get inside a museum, or a gallery, or any of the theme park 'educational experiences' on offer, like Britain being bombed even while you sit there, we invariably interact with the school visit. And this is what I see.

1. A lot of queuing. Children queue, and wait. And while they queue and wait, they are shouted at. I think that's called socialisation.

2. The shouting is done by adults, and often takes the form of words like 'if you were listening you will know that you must work with a partner' or 'you have ten minutes at each table and you must share' or 'complete each worksheet before you move onto the next activity'. Nothing about the Romans, then. Nor the Tudors. Nor the World Wars, or the artist, or the science, or whatever we might all be sharing this space to see. No. Instructions about organisation of people, or the flows, positioning, queuing and movement of bodies; information about routines and requirements. Any type of social control really, usually issued by covert threats, or reminders of threats previously issued on the bus on the way in. I guess this bit is called socialisation too.

3. Movement of children to designated areas with reminders about time. Movement is usually accompanied by adults strangely waving their arms, like semaphore. I've noticed this. Some teachers lift up both arms and flap them about a bit like they are struggling to fly. They will never manage it, holding those clipboards. Since the adults are doing this and the clipboards they hold contain the day's targets, I guess this is education.

4. The students are permitted to do things (but only for ten minutes). Now, this is what I saw. A crocodile line of children came into the discovery gallery. They did the queuing and the listening to the shouting and then they were off! Freedom to discover! One little primary school kid queued at Henry the Cycling Skeleton. He wanted to sit on the bicycle and see Henry (who is a skeleton) cycle along too. Henry shows you how your skeleton articulates and how your different joints work. The little boy queued and queued. After a while, the teacher shouted to all the children to line up as a crocodile again so everyone could move to the next gallery. And the little boy went too. He never sat on the bicycle, because the queue never reached him. But now no-one was queueing for Henry, and I felt sorry for the little boy who looked glum and resigned. I would've hailed him back, out of that crocodile, had I been brave enough. And I don't know whether his experience was called socialisation or education.

5. Management of errant individuals. This is a problem. Isn't there always one? This is what I saw at the Science Museum. A secondary school party was in, and something caught a girl's eye. Not a smiling Romeo, beckoning. Not a large slab of cake, dribbling chocolate. Nor a desirable pair of sparkling shoes. None of those. A display about magnets. So she impulsively left the school group and went to it, with her arms outstretched. Seconds later, a booming voice rang out across the gallery, and she was hauled back, slinking miserably to the group, head hung, bright red face. Definitely socialisation.

6. Sometimes I earwig over the teachers talk. I know I shouldn't. But I'll use the excuse that I used to be one. I know it's no excuse really. I can't help myself. Anyway, I want to know what job they're doing. I hear different things. Sometimes I hear a member of staff really enthuse about what they're looking at, and try and communicate something that's exciting, or surprising, or wonderful. I want to hug that teacher, and give them a big smackeroo. I can tell you they're rare. Mostly the staff talk about the students, and the day, or the timetable, the buses, or the staffroom politics. Could go either way. Socialisation? Education? Luck of the draw.

7. At 2.30 everything falls quiet. The buses go back to the schools. The place closes at five. We home educators have it to ourselves, and will potter about, doing as much or as little as we need to fulfil our investigations. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are free to choose. They have time, and space. They might puzzle over exhibits, spend an hour with one display, demand photographs are taken, copy down notes, draw pictures, talk together, ask questions. Usually, at 5.15, we'll be thrown out too, by a tired looking bloke jangling keys.

If I wake up at midnight, fretting that we're doing it all wrong, worrying that our lifestyle won't help, what if my kids are destined to be forever illiterate, homeless, unsocialised, running squealers who cannot tell the difference between right and left, up and down? Well then, I'll think about the school party, and be consoled that at least I only paid £6.50 to get in.

I think it marks twenty years

Midway through our madness, many years ago, Dig and me were still in love and thought anything possible.

Then we had the idea that from the house we would like to walk underground, to walk enclosed and yet outside, and come back through an arched frame into the warm and loving arms of the house proper. So we did that. We made that happen.

Or rather, a small part of it. We bought up the time and workforce of a local builder and they dug a trench, moved pipes, inserted walls and skylights and we called the funny shaped indoor, outdoor, underground space, a gallery. It is a short walk outside the house, underground, and back into the house.

After the children were born, I filled up the gallery with boxes and junk and wardrobe and clothes I'd never wear again and no-one walked anywhere there, inside or outside.

But I would just like to announce, if only to myself today, that now it is not filled up with those things. It is filled up with desk, and books, and games, and daughters.

Furniture took over my brain

Well I looked at Squirrel and said, That's a good idea. We can put a desk in the basement bedroom just for you. First I'll move the wardrobe.

I moved the wardrobe to the middle of the carpet. Then I brought the desk downstairs that had been a table upstairs. There was a table downstairs and I took that apart and carried it upstairs. But then I had a wardrobe in the middle of the floor.

So I took the wardrobe upstairs and wondered where to put it. First I moved two big boxes filled with fabric for sewing and I put them in the middle of the floor. That left a space. But the wardrobe was too big for the space. So I said to Squirrel, Fetch a saw.

Then I had a go at sawing off a bit of the wardrobe so that it would fit in the space but the saw didn't have enough sharp teeth after I used it last week on the tree, so I said to daddy Dig, Can I borrow your jigsaw? The one you used yesterday to cut up the bookcase I put in the back bedroom when I took down the shelf and brought the chair downstairs?

And Dig said No. I will do the jigsawing. And I hope he doesn't saw through the main gas pipe again like last time.

When Dig sawed a bit off the wardrobe I put it in the new place and it looks horrible. So tomorrow I will move it to the other side of the room where it will look nice and it will fit.

But to make both the wardrobe and the chest of drawers fit I will have to move the chest of drawers together with the box where I keep the bedding and swap that over with the box where we keep the spare bags and I will put those spare bags under the eaves but first I must move the Christmas tree and the boardgames from the box on the landing and move that downstairs along with the other chair and then I will swap over the table and move the chair that was upstairs, downstairs.

Simple.

P.S. Maybe now I am not so sure about the cut-down wardrobe. Dig says with that curtain in place it looks like a confessional for dwarves.

I've been here before

After several days thinking about it, I come to the conclusion that the best way to counter prejudice, blinkered attitude, social snobbery and wilful ignorance is to go up to the rooftops and shout out what I know to be true.

That home education works, regardless of which social class you are told you belong to. That home education benefits children of all abilities. That home education creates inquiring, socially active, engaged children who know how to learn. That home education produces scholars, poets, craftspeople, engineers, all trades, all professions. That home education benefits families and strengthens communities without regulation or control by the state. That home education builds confidence, independence, and tolerance in people of all ages.

Baroness Deech, if you have a mission, then so have I.

Mother's Day reward

Remind me not to have a Mother's Day celebration 2011.

I got a pot plant. I am not complaining.

It's just that the ads say I get a smiling mother, blond, size 8 and aged 26, surrounded by adoring, cute children, expensive flowers, a handsome husband, a perfect house, and chocolates. What happened to that? Not living up to expectations, that's what.

After a week of perpetually asking Is it Mother's Day today? Shark and Tiger completely forgot about it. Until Squirrel walks in with a primrose pot plant and a smirk. She has foresight. She peeled Daddy Dig off his computer at 11 this morning for a quick trip to the local hardware store which closes just before the neighbours complain about the planks of wood and chicken wire ruining Sunday lunch.

When Squirrel walks in with the pot plant, all hell breaks out. Shark and Tiger plunge into recognition, shock and panic. Now they too must produce a present. The present must be hand made because Daddy Dig says the ironmonger who sells pot plants shuts at midday and no he's not going round the back and upsetting the neighbours and everyone shut up about the pot plants.

After that, things went downhill. Downhill mixed with flaming inferno and some circles of hell, complete with screaming, tears and heads ripped off to be eaten by demons. At some moment in the trauma there was the pause to consider embroidering a 6x4 linen tablecloth with birds of paradise. For a few moments, that seemed possible. It really did, even with no embroidery thread and no needle and no time machine to make it complete for mama waking up for breakfast on Mother's Day six hours previously.

But of course I seized the opportunity of ten seconds silence and made a peace settlement, because that is what mothers do. I said for Mother's Day I would buy embroidery thread and take a book out the library. And I'd be happy to embroider the thing myself once we bought the cloth.

Well, the peace settlement was never going to work. Tensions were running too high. It was doomed to failure; almost immediately overtaken by some bilateral Tiger-Shark agreement to blame each other for no cloth, and chase the evil sister round the house screaming blue murder.

By 2.30 it was a thankful motherly point at which I could shove a hot cheese and onion pasty at the offspring faces and wrestle the lot of them out of the house to go and hear the Bedford Sinfonia play Peter and the Wolf at the Corn Exchange. Listening to Peter's near-death experience with a ferocious man-eating wolf was light relief; it stemmed the tears, and made everyone look forward to Daddy's baked potato surprise.

I have to say, ladies, it's OK. I don't need Mother's Day to know I am your mother, and neither do you need Mother's Day to show me your love by tablecloth or otherwise.

I know I am your mother because the lot of you are as awkward, obstinate, hysterical and gripped as I am by the notion that only perfection is good enough, and nothing else will do. Anything which looks like a compromise to a one hundred per cent achievement on a minute-by-minute basis will be a total failure and the universe may as well not exist. In fact, let me press the self-destruct button now.

But I have learned a few things too, little grits. I can tell you that great personal strengths come from public failure. I can say that the best way to regain your balance is not by giant leaps from nothingness to being: from deep holes of despair to a completed, perfectly embroidered tablecloth. You can fight despair in little steps. Little steps take us to an even, steady pace, where we can breathe deep, stand up, see with perspective, calibrate success and failure, and know that even if there is no fantastic tablecloth laid out for breakfast, embroidered with birds of paradise almost living in the cloth! then that is OK. Because there are successes in its place.

For me, those successes are being here, alive, watching you grow, and knowing that you are mine, and I can wrap my arms around you, and give your wriggling little faces my big big squeezy mummy kiss, with huggy bosom and slobbery lips and all.

For you, your success will be standing still, and letting me do it. Little by little, year by year. Even though long into our futures you may be aged 24 and standing with your boyfriend at the cheese counter in Tesco, wishing Mother's Day could be quietly sorted with a bunch of flowers and a box of chocs.

It can't be a day out in Cambridge for the science festival, can it?

Children who are not in school could be missing out on vital educational and social opportunities and experiences. Some of them may be at risk of harm or be in situations that are unsafe.

Children who are not in school are at greater risk of involvement in criminal activity and becoming victims of crime themselves. There is also a higher risk that these children will be victims of abuse.

- Local Authority guidance. Probably for a Local Authority near you.

Grit is not a lady to go out of her way to upset anyone, obviously. Therefore today I will do my best for Shark, Squirrel, and Tiger, and try not to disappoint the Local Authority. They know what they're talking about, after all. Surely they don't get called an Authority for nothing.

Here we go. I have found a vital educational experience! That should please everyone. And the children can't miss this. The park and ride bus to Cambridge city centre.

Next, I must provide a vital social opportunity. Like wait in this queue nicely for nearly half an hour and no screaming. That is quite some social skill. Then we can all see a lecture by the Naked Scientists.


Those scientists weren't even naked! You see, nothing is ever what it advertises in this weird world.

Now I know that the Local Authority says if my children are not in school today then they may be at risk of harm or be in situations that are unsafe.

I ensured my children were kept safe from harm as we later staggered about the streets of Cambridge at 6pm looking for cheap pizza eats.

Don't cross the road, Squirrel! It's harmful!


Phew. Safe from harm now.


Next, I must be aware that as Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are not in school today there may be a greater risk of involvement in criminal activity.

See that woman in the red coat? She is clearly suspicious. Avoid her. She might be a criminal and try to involve us in something. Like stealing diamonds or smuggling red coats. If she comes any closer Shark, make a citizen's arrest.


yet I must be aware that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger may become victims of crime themselves. And victims of abuse.


Oh dear. I have failed.

We all became victims of the crime known as Caffe Uno. It was not my fault. They had a lovely waitress who lured us into the lair of cheap pizzadom. She was so astonishingly patient for the 25 minutes it took Tiger to decide whether she wanted her pasta straight or curly - this alone should have given me a clue as to their dastardly plan to feed us, cheaply.

Clearly, I have failed in my struggle for the moral high ground.

The Local Authority may inspect my innards. I have caused abuse by cheese and tomato pizza in the highways and byways of Cambridge city centre. I confess.


Hang my head in shame.

End of the quiet room

I may be premenopausal. Which would explain why today I robbed a bank and killed a pigeon.

Robbing a bank could have been a dream, because you don't normally rob a bank while dressed as a Celtic woman warrior, handing a bow and arrow like you might find in the green forest of Robin Hood, and meanwhile grabbing a bag marked swag straight out of the pages of Maurice Gleitzman.

That could be the effect of quietly contemplating my bank balance while installing and filling another bookcase, purchased the same day for thirty quid from the local Help the Aged furniture store.

It's a bookcase in the last room of the house which had no bookcases. Now that's the end of the bookcase-free room. For many years I have positively resisted having a bookcase in that room. This might seem churlish of me. You can paint me as a boneheadedknuckledragger when I entered that book-free room.

I like to think this was the last calm room where I could retreat to, and have no distractions at all. It's a quiet place to recover from trauma and headaches, where I can weep softly into blank walls. The walls don't care, and that is good. But now I will have the walls bearing down on me and demanding I meet Conquistadors (Innes), Skellig (Almond), and Daughters of Britannia (Hickman), all calling me to account with Does Accent Matter? (Honey) and upbraiding me with a Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics (Trask).

Anyway, now the fates of this room and my life are combined, and sealed. I shall cover the quiet walls in loud bookcases. Then it will be no different from every other room in this noisy house, and I may truly come here and become mad.

And the pigeon. When I drive back from the Help the Aged furniture store, there is a pigeon in the road. Or more correctly, walking across the road. Don't ask me why. You can't ask the pigeon, either. There was a soft bump. And I looked back in the rear view mirror and I thought that pigeons always flew away, just in time. That is what they are supposed to do. Stupid pigeon. Now it will haunt me, so Gerald who seeks sexy pigeon will be glad of the revenge. Tonight it will assail me along with The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (Lively), draw me away into The Savage Garden (Mills) and then in the final denouement, I will uncover it in the library like Poirot and know it is disguised all the time as A Lost Lady. (Cather.)

Maybe brain is gone under sofa

I think my brain is taking a break from life right now. I'm sure it'll get back to you after I find it. It controls all the direction finders and the focus and the on/off switches and the volume knob.

Meanwhile, I must stop staring at the screen with a vacant expression while dribbling a bit from an open mouth. I must do something positive while brain is out, like post pictures of little grits doing stuff instead.

For the record then, this is what the home ed family of normal did last Monday.


Woodland walking. With home ed group and DOG. Calm down everyone. Squirrel likes only this dog. Not all dogs. But this dog. I am content.

Tuesday.


And there was French. And horse, somewhere. Tiger is worried that she will miss the sittingonahorse experience if the family up sticks and pushes off out the country. Foolishly, I have suggested she rolls up all her missing sittingonahorse minutes into one big lump which she can take when we are in the UK. I am an idiot. I cannot buy the ruddy stables.

Wednesday.



I am almost inclined to suggest you guess what is going on here. You will never do it. It is a workshoppery thing on Haydn and Chopin. These three lovelies are Chopin's sisters, for the purposes of visual reenactment.

Thursday. Go and see Tim Burton's 3D Alice in Wonderland at the cinema. I have no photograph of that, obviously, because conscience is not asleep and it knows what is WRONG and BAD and THEFT.

Brain, wake up now, because I need direction, control, and focus.

Thank you, Baroness Deech!

Hey! People who send your kids to school! Pop round to home ed land and have a laugh!

You know that we minority of parents - the mouthy ones who choose otherwise than school for our kid's education - already put up with a lot of head shaking, disbelief and nonsense, don't you?

Like from the mother-in-law who's never done it but doesn't approve of home education. The best friend who says we're mad. The teenager at the florist with the NVQ who says school never did her any harm. Maureen at the pound shop who says you have to be a teacher. The little kid who says it can't be true! Now he's telling his mam because she says you have to go to school, it's the law.

But take a gander at the latest.

Baroness Deech. She's in the Lords, and she's just found out some stuff about all us little people who live in the UK.

Like did you know there are some children in this country who are educated out of school? My goodness. She's going to put that right. These poor children are being experimented on. They have parents who care not a jot for their child's rights or welfare.

Well she has a few solutions. All home educators should be visited. Every few months, and no messing about. There should be spot checks, physics, and interviews. Tinkertop aged 5 should be questioned by the school inspector. Tinkertop should not be allowed to have her mummy there. And if Tinkertop is frightened by the strange man asking questions about physics then how suspicious is that? Now there was nothing wrong with Germany making home education illegal. And shut up about it being a Nazi law to prevent children escaping the propaganda in the classroom. We don't want to hear any of that nonsense, thank you very much.

Baroness! I was joking when I said I tied Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to the radiator and poked them with fish! Did you think I meant it, love?

But it's too late, because Baroness Deech is now going to speak up for the rights of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger! She is their champion!

Well, Baroness Deech, I'll let them know your thoughts. And thank you from me, for providing me with enough material to last the year.

Fellow home educators, Grit finds this is really very positive. Because our bad speling and grammer obviously got to her. She has now to defend a position that she'll find very difficult to defend. I'm counting that as a great success. (And won't it make for great entertainment?)

Now wander about in home ed land, here, here and here.

Survival guide to home education: 'me time'

Someone asked me: when you home educate, do you ever have any 'me time'?

I'll be honest. I have a problem with 'me time'. But who doesn't?

It started when the sprogs burst from my innards like in Alien. At that second, the metamorphosis of my brain and body was complete.

Don't tell me you're any different. I bet, pre-sprog, most of you ladies tiptapped around in lovely patent shoes, wearing a shape alluring bra with hip hugging black skirt in tasteful Dior style. Then you idled around on the sofa flicking magazines and sipping martinis while your other half cooked a little salmon supper in a light white wine.

Post-sprog, you wear flat shoes. Bras that you can unzip in the shopping centre. And no skirts at all, because jeans are far more practical. Instead of the martini hour, you will be vacuuming the bread bin, monitoring the minutes of the laundry cycle, and disinfecting the sink. By 8pm your other half will be sleeping because you have put him on the 2am watch to make sure the baby stays alive overnight, even when you aren't watching.

And this defines my basic problem with 'me time'. Pre- to post-sprog, the 'me' has changed. Significantly.

(By the way, if you are first-time pregnant reading this, thinking, 'that'll never happen to me' just step back, open your windows, and listen to the knowing laughter of women all around this planet greeting your words.)

I freely confess that after babies I resented the loss of that 'me time' even though I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it was because, before sprogs, 'me time' was 'all the time'.

All the time me time meant having no-one stop me when I wanted to brush my black suede shoes in anticipation of an evening out at dinner. It was the freedom to spend two hours shopping for a bracelet that perfectly matched the red dress last worn at the opera. It was having only one narrator in my head at any one time, as opposed to the four-way battlefield I now carry around my severed brain and which struggles over stuff like did Tiger see the dog?

Now, in practical motherhood moments, 'me time' is the fourteen seconds it takes each morning to pull on the jeans I wore all last week. And why? I need to get them over my enormous backside in less than one second because Shark is crashing down the stairs for breakfast STARVING and will discover there is no milk. 'Me time' is then the one-minute run to Costcutter for 2 litres of semi skinned and a loaf of emergency brown before the police are called to the domestic incident now kicking off in the homestead.

Very rarely, everyone is quiet and no one needs milk, or socks, or food, then for an hour I might stare at the wall and think of everything I could do in 'me time' if only I knew what to do. When the hour's up, and someone needs help with spelling would, could and should, I'm kicking myself because I stupidly wasted the 'me time' when I could have cleaned the jam off the doorhandles.

My point is, 'me time' is not a struggle of home education. It's a struggle with motherhood.

When the years tick by to nursery and school time, I know women where 'me time' looks sorted. They have a quiet house for hours at a stretch. They go to the gym. They work at a part-time job. They shop. They organise stuff on committees and they dust the furniture. Then they get together and shake their heads over the lost luxury of 'me time'.

From which I can deduce that whatever you do - kids in school or kids out of school - the multiple consciousness, laundry, disinfected sink, guilt and night-time anxiety - they're all part-share of the mothering time, and it ain't going away from your brain. Ever.

You've already made the shift into motherhood, so how and where you educate your child makes very little difference now to how you'll feel about the 'me time'. The deed is done. Life changed. And with it, the woman.

In practical ways in the life of home ed, I can offer you consoling words, like spaces open up in the day. There are workshops, which you can take part in, if you must. Or you can hang about outside, drinking tea. There are times when you're shooed away by group leaders and instructors, so you'll kick your heels and find someone to chat to.

But then there is a more fundamental change. The change in your perception of the time you have. The paradigm shift. You have the same, but it's different. The spaces in the day are under your direction. Your control. You're no longer dancing in time to the school. You direct your own life. You decide the hours, what to do, where to go. You help your child lead the way. If you want to make cake at 7pm, what's stopping you? If you want to read until midnight, then sleep in till 10, you choose. You decide how to live your life. You can go anywhere. Do anything. You are with your child, and you have the most perfect, most thrilling freedom. Who gave you that freedom? No-one. You took it. Is that enough 'me time'?

The spaces stretch longer, the older the children grow, and the more self-directed their learning becomes. They rely less on you and more on the skills you have taught them. They read alone for longer. They say 'I'm busy'. They say, 'Let's do that later'. They learn how to learn, and they scuttle off and direct time for themselves.

But if it helps, for the record, this is how in home ed life, I get my 'me time' right now, today.

I watch Tiger's face, studious, concentrating, thinking. She's writing a story, and I think, she's never written a story before like this, and she's writing for hours and hours. That is my delight. I see Shark clean her desk and sit demurely, opening book after book, making notes; a miniature researcher preparing her PhD. This is my anticipation. I look at Squirrel's face as her eyes widen and she jumps into our conversation to tell us how she read that space storms create aurora displays, and now can we go to Norway? Here is my excitement.

I see my kids learning, and I love it. I watch them achieve, and I am proud. I follow them playing, their long hair streaming out into the sun and the wind, their bright cheeks and sparkling eyes, their messy, muddy clothes standing as a record of their life, and this is my 'me time'. It is my satisfaction with our chosen lifestyle. It is the freedom, space, and time I can take, to look at and learn from, my kids and my life.

This recipe should be a revenge

1) Bugger. There is no food in the house except dried chick peas and some tins. I'm not soaking chick peas now. It's dinnertime. Bugger. Bugger. We can't have a takeaway again already.

2) What's in the fridge? One rotted aubergine. I'm not eating that. I don't know why it's still in the fridge since November. It's not going to rejuvenate. If it did rejuvenate, we could say that's a miracle. No-one would believe us. Some one should throw that aubergine away.

3) It's too late to go shopping now. And I can't be bothered. I wonder what we have in the vegetable basket?

4) Why is it only me who throws out the plastic wrapping from the vegetable basket? It is confusing. It makes it look like the vegetable basket is full of food when really it is full of empty plastic food wrappers. Can humans eat plastic yet? Maybe we will evolve to digest plastic. I bet we won't evolve to do that in the next 15 minutes. Ah! Here is the dog end of some celery. One carrot. Two onions. I should be able to make a meal for five people with that. Let's get started!

5) Hmm. I have chopped up all the vegetables. Doesn't look very much. I will put them in a pan and boil them.

6) Boiling them didn't make them look much either. I will open this dented can of sweetcorn and put that in. I have two bashed up cans of kidney beans here. I will put those in as well.

7) Doesn't look very nice. What would make it look appetising? Here's a tin of butternut squash and red pepper soup. Why did I buy this? I don't like tinned soup. It only cost me 9p on account of the tin being dented, possibly by mallet attack. Could be Berserk woman in soup shopping drama. I'll put that in. But only half the tin, because I don't like tinned soup.

8) I wish I hadn't stirred that in now. It looks like sick. What can I do to disguise it, so it doesn't look like sick?

9) Ha! I will grate this old bit of cheese on top. There. Looks delicious. No it doesn't.

10) A twist of black pepper. That looks good. Voila!

Now it looks like a bowl of sick covered in melted yellow plastic with ant poo on top. If I don't say anything, I might get away with it.

Dinner's ready! It's your favourite! Stirred vegetable with a melted cheesy top!


Now everyone behave nicely over dinner, because if there's any trouble, tomorrow you get this, cold.

Tell me something worse

An unremarkable day. The sort of unremarkable day that wanders past my eyeballs and never utters a word. Perhaps this day hates me. Perhaps it is cruelly indifferent to my need to achieve something, anything, by the death toll of midnight. Perhaps it hasn't yet realised that if I do not create something positive in all the horror, the horror, I may hail the next bus to Beachy Head.

Well, thanks to its unremarkable passing, I shall get my own back on the day. I shall mark its irredeemable pointlessness; the day when I did nothing much, except be dull and pointless and unremarkable.

So this is what we did.

Grit: The lynch pin of the family. Without her holding everything together, everything is lost. Sadly, the lynch pin wanders about the house, glum and aimless, sometimes taking the furniture with her. This is called tidying up. Pointless.

Dig: Sits at computer and complains. Sits at computer and complains. Sits at computer and complains. Oh hang on, is it Monday? He normally does that Mondays. And Tuesdays. Wednesdays as well, come to think of it. Thursdays he might stand up and complain, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday, sits at computer and complains.

Tiger: Decides to construct cart for toy wooden horse. Surrounds self with essentials: cardboard, scissors, paper, straws, more cardboard, bamboo skewers, wheels, cut up cardboard, horse. Sets about task happily for ten minutes.

Meets design problem. Axle not long enough to connect wheels under cart. Design solution plan A? Ask mummy to do it. Mummy is strapped to furniture. Design solution plan B? Howl, long, waaahhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaahhhh type howling.

Everyone ignores her. Admittedly, mummy Grit may have set the precedent for sitting on the floor surrounded by cut up cardboard and other craft crap, howling, while resembling a bloated frog filled with snotty tears. After ten minutes, Daddy Dig comes in and makes everything alright. Strange, he never did that with me.

Squirrel: Living on Planet Squirrel. Makes fairy costumes from leaves and feathers and tiny silver scales. Sometimes hums. Everyone stops to say coooo and ahhh and lovely.

Shark: Roams about looking for trouble. Makes jellyfish out of chicken wire for papier mache project. Abandons it in bathroom. Makes fairy costume and declares fairies are evil. Wanders off to glower at stuff. Eats loaf of bread. Eyes Squirrel. Wanders about some more, sometimes wearing coat and scowling. Last seen in front room holding head of a koala.

That is what we all did.

Now, I do not want to know what you achieved today if it involves stuff like painting the kitchen, re-roofing the house with one arm tied behind your back, discovering the elixir of life with an old toothbrush and a bottle of lighter fuel, or simply saving the planet and everyone in it.

Go on, make me feel better. Tell me the most pointless moment you had today.

Our society is made up of little people

The home ed community is a fantastic one. It really is. Here in a scout hut we can amass fifteen diverse looking kids, an odd assortment of parents including one company director, a bus driver, two grannies and a passing Jack Russell terrier, and someone attempts to teach the lot of them the essentials of Javanese boat building.

This type of community - your 'hidden' home ed community - is one wire that helps hold together this society.

We disparate and different people, all ages, colours, outlooks and beliefs, will meet, talk, make time for each other, and share biscuits for an afternoon in your local hired room. We may bring in the eccentric to show us his collection of matchstick pyramids that took 14 years to build.

And I can tell you now, we won't have thought about vetting each other. We won't be looking at each other distrustfully. Not one of us will jealously whisper about which neighbour's kid passed what exam. We won't be wasting time fearfully eyeing up competitive worksheets, or suspiciously examining each other's lunchboxes.

We may talk about a sports day for all the kids on the cricket field come summer. We may pass around telephone numbers of local musicians who can teach kids once a week; we may exchange information on friendly French speakers, artists who'll run workshops in their studios, the chemistry club that runs every fortnight and is led by the bloke with the wall eye and the limp. We'll discuss stuff like that. None of it will be licenced, controlled, monitored or CCTV'd. We won't need that. We have our local knowledge. We rely on recommendations. We listen. We learn from each other. We trust each other.

Because here we are, home educators learning how to get along. We'll aim to know each other, find new connections, become part of a local community, build up our networks.

For those who may have been failed by the mainstream systems, here is the safety net of home ed land, providing social contact, social cohesion, the glue of people who'll take time to get to know you and keep an eye on Tinkertop while you feed the baby sister.

And isn't this the problem? Because usually to achieve their lifestyle, home educators don't rely on big business, packaged solutions, or OFSTED controlled outputs. We are people, getting on with our own thing, using our initiative, supporting each other, and making our unique choices in the best interests of some weird and wonderful kids.

That's surely very inconvenient in a world of global brands, large-scale business, and commercialised, packaged solutions 'provided at a competitive rate, tailored to your customer needs' (so long as they're the same as everyone else's).

I think that's what the government doesn't like about us. We home educators are miserably local little people, difficult to turn into a microbusiness, loud-mouthed, independent-minded, argumentative, and not afraid of standing up and pointing.

But I'm told that everything's to play for. That it's not a done deal. There are right now debates in government between the values of localism and globalism.

Forgive me for feeling glum about the outcome. Already in our oh so small way we have felt the pressure of that fight lay upon our family. If anyone is looking for proof of that, take the last year of this blog. One minute I am chasing Squirrel around chanting the nine times table, the next I am scouring Hansard.

I've come to the sad conclusion that by degrees this government has deliberately sought to undermine my community and eliminate our difference. They have sought to pick apart our trust. They have diagnosed my local connections and declared them suspect. They have asserted that I, home educator, cannot possibly be trusted as a decent and responsible woman carrying out a legal duty of education. Indeed, they say that trust cannot exist at all unless it has been box ticked by a government official.

It's through these processes and over these wearying months that I've come to see the mechanisms of the DCSF's controlling and centralising agenda. It's not one serves our purpose. It does not draw out the best from us as self-reliant citizens. It does not permit our mature engagement in local policy. It is steadily seeking the control to remove my right to make responsible decisions for ourselves and our children.

But I observe how it does have interests in selling me packaged curriculums suitable for European targets. It does have an interest in creating employment to monitor me and advise me on which vetted CRB checked tutor from a national database I should employ. It does have an interest in turning my family into a microbusiness measured on the international markets. It needs to draw me into yet another Capita-created database, and then someone can make money from me, and I can be accounted for, told where my weaknesses are, better targeted for integrated sales, and be all branded business-like, where, in the direction of this government, global educational services truly lie.

Well, what I have to say to this government with their global forces seeking to direct all my local living, is that I'm not alone in resisting you. There are, out here, in these villages, towns and cities, huge and diverse communities of home educators, like it or not. No matter what you do, some of them fancy learning about Javanese boat building. Some of them will send their kids off to the bloke with the wall eye and the limp. And some of them may even build pyramids from match sticks.

'Forget about the issue of home education. That is just a smokescreen'

I spend the day catching up on reading - between essential activities like chewing on mouthfuls of grumble, excavating the kitchen floor on hands and knees, and packing the gritlets off to join a roomful of junior RSPB kiddies watching videos of owl disease - so for today Grit's diary record is mercifully short.

But I'm placing this reference here, because at some point I may want to come back to it, and bugger will I be able to find it. Thank you, Birmingham Mail.

I have to come home. To the kids, Aunty Dee, and Aunty Dee's purple jumper

While we have been away - and I've enjoyed myself by amputating my own toes at 2am with a scalpel made of suede art - Aunty Dee has stayed back at the house and looked after the triplets of terror.

She has been on shift for a whole 26 hours now, alone.

When I hobble home, I half expect to see a bomb blasted crater where the house once stood. Smouldering wisps of smoke coil up, slowly, out of the pit. From that I can deduce Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have completed Round One of the argument over whose turn it is to make hoof shoes for the unicorn. They settled the issue by pressing the big red button we keep in the kitchen marked detonate.

You can bet Aunty Dee would have sat there calm and impassive throughout. She is maybe sitting there now, knitting, at the bottom of the pit, perched on the last splinter of sofa, thinking she will just let that argument run its course before she gets up from the perch and goes to make a cup of tea.

This is what is so brilliant and so frustrating about Aunty Dee all at once. On the one hand she has that astonishing ability to calm things down just by being there and suggesting that everyone knit nicely. On the other hand, she has the knack of not noticing when everything is starting to kick off and the police riot vans arriving. They might be spinning round those corners on two wheels at 90mph but Aunty Dee will totally ignore that; she may ask politely if someone would mind not winding the wool round someone else's face.

So there may be small moments of tension when I stagger in and survey the debris of 26 hours strewn over the house, but the griblets will have had that precious time with their best and most favourite aunty in the whole world, the one who makes them cry when she leaves just by her departure. And they will probably cry too for the knowledge that they had the great and glorious luxury of being able to act, and act up, just how they liked, and still be loved, completely, utterly and unconditionally.

Thank you, Aunty Dee.

The end of the evening

Out of respect to my hosts, I shall say simply that the event was well organised, the food delightful, and the dining company, enjoyable.

I know it's unlikely that my dining fellows are, right at this moment, creeping round the back of the computer to read pointless mummy blogs, but you never know. Once I thought it unlikely I would buy a secondhand book from the same gentleman I had yesterday rendered into a terrible hamfisted charcoal mess in a life drawing class. I blushed. It taught me that strange coincidences happen.

So here are some late night pictures of London. I have a cameraphone full, because after the event we decided to walk back to the hotel, but couldn't find it and got lost. I needed a record in case I had to prove something to the police.





Anyway, I had to keep stopping to photograph stuff. You try walking for 50 minutes with size 6 feet in size 5 shoes and then you know why.

Grit is a woman in the modern world

To enter the elite world of dining with posh people, clearly Grit must transform herself. From beatenupoldmotherbag to confident independent woman with fantastic personal style and no visible kids.

I have a tenner and 24 hours. Let's see how I do.

1. Beauty vitality: Complexion
Grit is assured that nothing says upmarket skin better than the application of creamy miracle fluid (£25.99).

In fact, capturing an essential flawless beauty shimmer (£12.99), with glowing translucent skin (£15.99), sparkling with radiance of fresh breeze (£34.50), while scattering and diffusing everlasting light (£18.99) in a single skin solution (£19.99) can all be mine from dawn til dusk (£22), and aren't I worth it? (£18.99).

Grit wanders off down Asda to see what choices her face gets for £1.99.

Not many. I could shove a lightbulb in my mouth to get the full glow effect but carrying a portable generator in my handbag might be difficult. As is filling my porridge chops with free dinner while clutching a light bulb in my teeth.

Lard comes cheap. I hear the Russians swear by it.

Cost: 49p

2. Beauty essential: Make up
Grit has less than an hour for this, so better make a quick choice. After fifteen seconds facing 2,300 make up displays, she realises time is more important to her than anything. Especially time spent agonizing whether or not to buy the rose pink or which of 15,000 shades of brown suits her eyelids.

I should invoice L'Oreal for the hours spent staring at the stuff. Give up.

Cost: zero

3. Looking fantastic: Eyebrow shaping
No way am I paying fifteen quid for a teenager to come at me eye-height armed with a pair of tweezers, reassuring me they are a professional eyebrow specialist, and one NVQ in beauty studies is proof of that. I shall attack my own monobrow thank you very much.

After ten minutes of working left to right I am bored and give in. Anyway, I hear the asymmetric eyebrow look is soooooo vogue.

Cost: zero

4. Glossy, healthy, shining Hair!
Grit is an old hand at this. Provide her with a bottle of Superdrug golden brown and she effects a miracle. So far I have not burned off my scalp, blinded myself, ingested deathjuice, inhaled toxic gases nor ended up in hospital. I mean, how difficult can hair be? Colouring hair at home cannot be any worse an experience than the time down at the hairdressers with the fire alarm when they sent me out into the street with a plastic bag over my head until the fire staff came.

And as for the trim, I have brandy and scissors. What can possibly go wrong? Ditto for the asymmetric cut.

It don't get much better than this

Cost: £2.99

5. Looking stylish! Clothing
Easy. Drag out from back of wardrobe same outfit from last year. Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

6. Every woman's secret: upholstery
(Underwiring, padding, girdling.)

The cost of a pair of plastic bags shoved under my boobs comes in around 5K and is out of my budget. I am also not out of my mind, and prefer my droops as nature has evolved them. Facing reality that my entire body is on the escalator heading south is life. Anyway, I'm mature enough to quite fancy bodies that are a little aged and beat up, although that is not a very fashionable thing to say, so don't expect to read me on the pages of Marie Claire.

And as for the upholstery, I'm sure I can find an assortment of rubber bands, cling film and craft wire.

Cost: zero

7. Every girl's true love: Shoes
Yes! Believe me on this, because I am no different from your average gal. I discover the most fantastic pair of black suede pointy pointless pieces of gorgeous gorgeousness. They are Divine. And a bargain at the charity shop. They are also size 5. My feet are size 6.

One must suffer for art.

Cost: £2.50

8. This season's must have item: the overnight bag
Simple. Get a sturdy plain grey plastic bag, a little like one that might be given to you at a charity shop containing size 5 shoes, and pin an assortment of old brooches to it. There. Mix of trash and flash, old and new, ephemeral and heirloom. Kate Moss will be seen with one like that next week, betcha, then you'll all be wanting one for 500 quid a pop.

Cost: zero

9. A little something from Tiffany's? Accessories
Daughters come in very useful. They buy glitter tat from Claire's Accessories, then you get to nick it.

(Hazard: do not choose the bracelet with a plastic teddy bear and BFF stamped on its head.)

Cost: zero

10. Ahhhhhh... Je t'adore le smell: parfum
Grit is on a budget here and deliberates whether she should spend her remaining coppers on a bottle of piss down the market or £50 for a bottle of ethanol from the swankiest shop in town.

She opts for a dab of pine disinfectant on the grounds that it carries the essential fresh forest scent and surely evokes visuals of sensuous longhaired nymph types running about in the rudeynudey at midnight.

Cost: zero

Voila! Grit now looks the bees knees and dog's biscuits, fully kitted out in style and allure, and smells like a particularly upmarket lavatory. And has change from a tenner. Let's hit town!

Couldbestreamofconsciousness

It's all quickquickspeed round here.

Maybe in blur I require list of day's events. And possibly short sentencing. (Not of prison variety. Although possible.)

1. Grit has a scanner shoved up her doodah. You don't believe that is possible do you? It is a miracle of modern science. I can say the NHS is very efficient. The nurse did not tut once when Grit gripped the door frame on the way into the X-Ray suite.

Terrified is an understatement. Simply being near a door labelled with the signature of Certain Death by Spooky Invisible Forces gives me the wibbles. And then there is the joy of meeting Dr Crippen and his hideous scanner shaped like a gear stick. It is horrible and he crunches that thing about like he is rally driving a beat up old VW Polo and the gear stick is about to come off in his hand. Indeed, no-one will ever shift gear again in my vicinity without me crossing my legs, I can tell you.

2. Aunty Dee is coming to stay for her annual sleepover in the mouse bed of misery. This requires preparation. And this year I will be clever. I will tell her that we have no mice and she has false consciousness about the scratching noise. What was that Aunty Dee? Can't hear it myself. Must be your imagination. No mice whatsoever. None. None that I need to bludgeon to death with a waste bin at midnight and run from the house screaming like last time, dearest Aunty Dee.

Anyway, in preparation for her arrival, today intermittently finds me in full house fumigation mode. I have attacked two kitchen surfaces with chemical weapons. They are looking good. For all of five minutes anyhow, until the griblets come home and cover them in mud, bits of cut up paper, and foam.

3. I must look beautiful and polished and upholstered. I have 24 hours. Aunty Dee is coming to child mind because shortly I must step into Dig's world and try not to be gutter while eating shithot dinner with people who lead Britain and other upper knobs. For this, I require shoes. Three charity shops later and I have a pair of Clarks pointy toes. In black.

4. I am not with children today. You can tell. I achieve so much (see points 1,2,3). While I am productive, children go into woods and build raft. I would provide a photograph of that, but somehow Dig's hard disk went crunchycrunchywhirrdie and this is implicated in no photos for grit's day.

That is all. But I need to know what happened. And when. Not sure why.