But the art is excellent

Squirrel, Shark and Tiger must be pouring all that anger and rage at each other. Because it's not showing in their art, which today is stained glass.


Well, in the wake of the battle over the unicorns, glass would be foolish. We use acetate instead.

The house of pain

Girls, you are playing with the unicorns. I'm not celebrating.

When you, Shark, run to the toy box and pull out the furry unicorns, one after the other by the horn, mane, tail and hoof, my heart sinks. Squirrel screams in glee and Tiger claps her hands. I was truly, honestly, deeply, hoping, that you had forgotten about the unicorns. Despair can sweep through this land like it blows holes through my heart.

But you'd think that little girls playing with their fluffy unicorns was cute, wouldn't you? OK. It starts cute. Listen to this.

Lovely! Her tail is sparkling!
She will dream of having that wedding photo took.
She hasn't been asked to marry yet. She needs everyone's permission to marry!
Why?
Because she is a princess and there has to be a proclamation.

Sounds cute, doesn't it? Now listen.

Aliche the unicorn hasn't chosen who to marry.
She wants to marry Col...
No, not that one. That's the one we dangled by the tail.
The one we put in prison so he couldn't get out.

You see? Things are taking a sinister turn, aren't they?

I have a nice tail brush. I'm putting more wax on that.
You can't relax with wax on your tail, can you?
Tie it down.
Strap that to his legs.

I can't bear to look.

Can he see anything?
Put this up his nose.
Use a stick.

Right. I'm taking a peek.

Good grief. My kitchen looks like an operating theatre. They've got a unicorn staked out on the table, tied up with orange wool. They're stabbing at it with a cocktail stick and hitting it with a wax candle. When I ask what's going on, I'm told this is Furryhorn, and he's at the unicorn beauty parlour because he's getting married later.

I'd like to say it gets better at The House of Grit Beauty Centre, aka Sweeney Todd's.

Look how she is shining!
Doesn't she look beautiful!
Not when you're soaking wet.
No! She goes under the water and tumbles down and down.
And stays there.
Like she is dead.
And falling apart.
And then can't get out!
Then she has to eat her tail.

Oh my God. Now we are not satisfied with killing and dismembering the corpse. Now it turns into a cannibal tail-eating zombie fest straight from Night of the Living Dead.

I could set about writing an academic paper on triplets playing with unicorns. I might conclude, girls, that these little furry monsters are really extensions of your personalities, where you can use them to build friendships, nurture enemies, settle scores and explore deep, dark, places of your eight-year old psyche, like fears, liberations and control; or your sense of duty and loyalty; your loves and responsibilities, your feelings of power and powerlessness; your who you are.

Now because I know these kids and their unicorns, I would hazard a guess to say that in the next five hours, play will evolve like this.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will move from the let's talk about it stage to the let's do it stage. This is the soil and oil down the toilet moment. Let's move the unicorns to the beauty bath! Here they can play in the mud which we will bring inside! Now add foam and leaves! Then in jumps Danceyhorn because he doesn't want to get married anymore and he is hiding. Look! All the unicorns want to hide from the princess bride! She's going to take the bath because she has eaten beetroot soup that we made from mamma's food colouring!

Of course you are thinking Grit! Make them stop! Don't let them fill up the bath! Of course I will try that. I will try and distract them with a rotten apple or a few beads. But if I attempt to interrupt any unicorn play, then take cover. Because this is deep, intense, stream of consciousness play. And if the intruder seeks to swing it their way, they must get in there with Danceyhorn and Lem and Col and all their type. Because if you just try to come along and say STOP! then you may as well plant firecrackers in everyone's shoes because at that word these kids will be screaming and tearing about this house like Hurricane Misery on acid.

From here of course, I have to watch. The next step is a furious row. Probably between Lem and Danceyhorn. Troublemakers. They'll fall out over something like who gets to marry Lem first. Then, because we are now talking betrayal, disloyalty, powerlessness, torn promises, revenge, the beauty parlour will be spoiled, the tears of hurt will fall and the insults fly.

But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are too far mired in deep structure play with the unicorns, and cannot stop playing, no matter now how sharp the pain, scarred the walls, or broken hearted is mama while mopping up the beetroot blood spatters.

The final spark will be a control over meaning, over a unicorn, over the words of the unicorn marriage ceremony. The deeper intent will be loyalty, need, rejection, humiliation. A real fight will break out. Tiger will lock herself in the bathroom, howling. Squirrel will spin off to Planet Rage. Shark will snatch all the unicorns to stop cruel mama taking them from her grasp. Cruel mama will end up on the floor, clutching the back end of a wet unicorn covered in bath foam and beetroot.

There is only one outcome for today. Screaming. Throwing objects. Groundings. The whole house will be in uproar, the bath will be full of mud, the unicorns spinning in the washing cycle, a zero sense of achievement, a face full of tears and a day torn apart.

Danceyhorn and Sparkle get married. The beginning of the end.

I apologise to cat lovers, everywhere

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger do not like cats. Not at all. These quiet, creepy-about creatures, slipping silently under gates and round doorways, slinkysliding under bushes, watching, waiting.

What more evidence is needed?

If these contemptible creatures were honest, upright and honourable, they would march up to the front door, try the buzzer and wait! The householder comes out and the cat must ask politely, May I wait under your privet for your favourite blackbird to appear so I can pull off its wing, preferably while you are watching from the window? Then, of course, the householder could answer, Certainly! or Be off with you! and this would be the proper thing to do.

So forgive Squirrel, who has experienced cat trauma, for today adding the following tomato-based slogan to her vegetable soup bowl.


But Squirrel! we cry. You cannot eat kittens! People would be outraged! To which she answers, I would like to write Piss off. But I don't know how to spell it.

Hotel de ant

This is a hotel. Squirrel created it yesterday from a foam block, some bits of plastic junk, unwanted wallpaper and a broken up cocktail stick.

Not anyone can stay in this hotel, of course. No. You have to be an ant. It is a hotel for ants. And it is on the lawn right now, waiting for guests to check in.

To help the ants find their way to this new and stylish place to stay, Squirrel has adorned the dining room with a slice of rotten banana.

I can truly say this makes life worth living.

Triple the joy

I have triplet issues. So I cruise the triplet blogs. Seeking advice. Looking for information. Hoping for the epiphany, a light bulb moment. The sentence and when we faced the jealousy, we did it this way.

But I cannot get past the joy.

It is quite depressing. Light emanates from this monitor screen. Sometimes the light is direct from the divine, so I assume God will provide the solution to that insane jealousy over the cork bottle stopper scavenged from the kitchen floor. Sometimes the light is from a huge, boundless, parental love; that honeymoon of thirty newborn toes, wiggling simultaneously.

I am not saying that this joy is not true. I want these Olympic 3-times gold medalist triplet parent people really to have that total joy in their lives, god given or otherwise. If there were not parents of triplets out there who did not write about how much joy their brood gives them, then I think I would give up entirely. So thank god you are in joy. Continue to be so. I wish it could be packaged up. Then one of you could start up a mail order business, parcel some of it up neatly and send it to me through the post.

Neither am I saying this triple joy is not deserved. I can see people go through years of despair, much deeper than my own, in seeking these elusive children. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are not IVF. I didn't weep through the years of trauma and misery, nor have those shovey-up bits into my doodah. If I had done so, I would feel I deserved those years of uninterrupted triplet glee. In fact nothing would stop me balancing out the pain with the joy.

But no. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger just came along by themselves. They decided to be. This is a consolation, knowing the human body is capable of spontaneously exploding into mini versions of itself. One in a million. One in fifty thousand. One in a hundred. More conceived than born. More common as you get older. In the end it doesn't matter. I can stare at that skinny thirty something whose career voice is dripping with Dior and I think, one false move from you after a third glass of chardonnay and this triplet life could be yours, sweetie.

But there's still the joy. Perhaps it comes about because parents can rest, have other lives, school their offspring, do not live their life on the triplet coalface, up against it. Many live with help.

Here I am, looking at a real life triplet mom and hoping for some ideas and thoughts and solutions and answers and approaches, and then the author writes casually, like this is real life and so normal, So when I get weary I drop the kids off at my mother's and go and catch up on some sleep! I reread that sentence a thousand times. It makes me feel lonely, like a cold hand is gripping my heart. The day after Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were born, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And because that year an abandoned angel took up residence on the roof, spreading out its malice and breathing its stinky breath, Dig's mother was diagnosed with cancer too. If all the diagnosis wasn't enough, a friend of twenty years died a slow and miserable death of bone cancer. Can you believe that? Three in, three out.

So I do not mind saying that I find, everyday, to be the mother of a triplet set thrown suddenly into this world, screaming and yelling, amidst all the pain, misery and death, that this job of parenting is monumental hard work, both physical and emotional. And it is quite a labour to find support, or even understanding, for the issues we face. These are not three siblings, having difficulties rubbing along. Neither are they a single being with three heads, whose names people can't remember, or faces they can't tell apart. Here are three unique people facing issues about identity, competitiveness, jealousy, power, frustrations of togetherness, frustrations of separation.

And after the joy, there are the fine lines we must tread. Here are siblings who have dedicated their lives to identifying inequalities; the inequalities and unhappiness, the trauma and the pain that you, foolish triplet parent, might create and confer at any unwise, unguarded, unconscious, thoughtless moment. Like when you passed that cork bottle stopper to one side of the table, rather than the other.

Dream kitchen

YIPPEEE!!! Here I am, standing in a charity shop next to Squirrel yattering away about the possibility of peanuts and what should come on the radio but an ancient track from twenty years ago which plunges me straight back driving round the twisting back ends of Woburn Abbey, singing along to a kitchen.

Go here for the most useful review to this most wonderfully English of bands, then cruise Frazier Chorus on youtube. Meanwhile, I'll pop down to the library to make sure they stock Sue. I can rip it into my ipod and singalong to the glory that is a dead pigeon, a little Chef, and Shake 'n' Vac.

Ahh! The exuberance of youth!

So of course I have made resolutions

1. Eat more crisps. They are delicious. Why resist their crunchy charms?

2. Make my marriage work, and be gentler and kinder than I am. I will not throw tins in Dig's direction, even when he may deserve it, nay has asked for it, because husband, I love you.

And it is probably too awkward to have to explain to the ambulance staff why you have a dent in your head and are covered in baked beans and tomato sauce.

Twenty four hours

Several years ago I sat in a locked car in a layby, at the edge of a field, in the darkness. I thought about how I would kill myself. Now it would be straightforward, because here were the wilds of the countryside, and it was dark. I would step out of the car and stand, there, in the middle of the twisting road, miles from anywhere, and a driver, any driver, would appear round the corner, be unable to stop, knock me down, and kill me.

I didn't think about the driver of that vehicle, about how they would react or feel. I did not care. I had no emotional life in me worth keeping alive. There was nothing positive, nothing there. Then I watched headlights come round the corner, disappear into tail lights, and thought to myself how I missed that moment, how long before there would be another.

Perhaps after an hour, I started to imagine what would the driver do, if they felt a whoomph against their car. I wondered what I would do with the knowledge that I had killed someone on a dark country road, perhaps as I was making my way home, perhaps after a good day, a family waiting, an evening to enjoy, and then it would all be taken away in a breathless instant by the cruel, thoughtless woman, standing motionless on the road. And then I thought of course my solution would not work; I would stop this horrible emptiness in my life, but I might pass it to another. Because here was some great poisoned disease that I could not be rid of.

I am over that deep dead depression now. It's gone. It was another part of life, and I hope it never returns. I suspect it might, on another day, in another form. Living past that period was not by a sudden jump, or a sharp awareness or clear insight. It took a long hard slog, of one day at a time.

The fragment of sense that helped was, wait twenty four hours before putting any plan into action. That is what I did. I thought, if I feel exactly the same way in twenty four hours then it is the right decision, the right thing to do. But in the twenty four hours there was a responsibility on me, a duty, an obligation, to find something, anything, that would keep it all going, just for another twenty fours hours. And another.

Give it twenty four hours. Look for anything. It might be the shape of a leaf or the sight of a flower, or a sticky up twig. It was rarely people, nor what people could achieve, like art or literature. These things did not matter. They had no place. The wind on my face, possibly, as I stood, staring to the skyline, tracing the cut out shape of a black leafless tree against the blue sky. Then I did feel glad, privileged, to be alive to see that shape. And that, day by day, is how life was.

Two years on, we all went travelling for a month. I cannot say it was a wonderful time, although I have happy memories. It marked another changed time, a time to make a new decision to accept the life I had now rather than mourn the life that was gone. And that is where the daily diary comes in. This blog, when it started, I told no-one about, and like many other bloggers, for months did not care whether it was read or not, because like so many of us will recognise, these blogs are therapies and workings out, a public way of saying thank you or I love you, to find common bonds, to say hey, it's possible to survive. It's possible to survive unwanted knowledges, a blasted marriage, cancers, deaths, sadnesses and life sentences.

It is probably unwise to post all of this. After all, I am honour bound to share life with my husband. World of strangers, your job is to poke me in the ribs and call me a melodramatic old cow. That will be OK. Life is good like that. Experience, and perspective, have stripped me of dignity and self importance, and made me virtually immune to offence. It has ensured I do not worry too much about failures, remorse, regrets, loss, the mess in the kitchen, the £1000 fine from the tax office, the way Tiger writes her b and d the wrong way round. All of these things are petty frustrations and challenges that irritate me when I see no obvious solution. And after I have kicked the bin and slammed down the wine glass, I can laugh at myself doing that. Because I know that none of them really matter, in the end.

But do you see that magnificent tree, stretching out its fingers to the sky, just across that field?

Somewhere there is a plan

Grit goes beserk in IKEA and buys tables. She then thrashes around at home, throwing herself to the floor, weeping, gnashing teeth, wailing and tearing clothes before springing up and becoming irrationally aggressive, demanding hammers and screws that work.

On the plus side, she now has tables with legs.

Saviour

Typical. I wait all year for a saviour to come along and then two arrive at once.

After yesterday's Hat, today comes the children's Aunty Dee, driving at ten miles an hour from Wales, probably. So if you were stuck behind her on that narrow, winding stretch of B road today, apologies. She was coming to entertain Shark, Squirrel and Tiger while I involved myself with other matters. Like hiding in the office pretending not to be home, trying to keep a clear head to think about the year to come.

When Aunty Dee arrives, she is greeted by the gritlets like she's someone divine walking on earth, and have they waited an age for this appearance. They're over her like a rash, which is some testament to the strong relationship she has built up with these three squabbling little beings since they started rampaging around this planet eight years ago. She keeps on coming back to see them, yet they have thrown mostly everything they can right at her - bar sex, drugs and rock and roll, but that's only because they haven't thought of those yet.

Since year zero, they've thrown at her head a torrid mix of projectile vomit, temper tantrums, wheeled vehicles, chickenpox, books, insane jealously over access to her knees, paint, and a selection of ear piercing screams (which might actually account for her deafness). Yet still she comes. This is an astonishing feat, and really, I am in awe of that. Most people do not come back after the first triplet assault, but to drive for hours so she can 'pop in' and see her gritlet nieces is wonderful indeed.

Well Aunty Dee is popping in today and tomorrow and then popping back up to Northumberland for New Year's Eve. I hope she'll be seeing in the New Year smashed on Bolly and rolling about in a Northumberland gutter with a semi-naked young man. She's probably not doing that, but might opt for a sweet sherry along with her early night.

And this is Aunty Dee. She lives life quietly and neatly and gently and carefully and brings these qualities to the gritlets in a way that I cannot. I bring chaos, disorder, a big shout once a month and yesterday's cold bowls of pasta. The gritlets can see Aunty Dee's qualities too. Because the quality they yearn to learn from her more than anything else is how to KNIT.

I cannot knit, am driven criminally insane by the thought of knitting, would stab myself with the needles before I had the first row, would want to die, slowly, over a spit, rather than be forced to knit one perl one. Aunty Dee is my opposite, yet I am so glad of her skill that I might kiss the hem of her hand-knitted garment if she would let me. There she sits on the sofa, knitting away, chatting about birds in hedgerows and hot water bottles, and there the gritlets all sit circled around her, devotedly, devoutly, knitting away, quietly chatting about birds in hedgerows and hot water bottles, and from the bottom of my heart for all your gentle, calm and slow approach to life and more, for your remarkable ability to KNIT, I want to say, Aunty Dee, a big THANK YOU for making life quiet and gentle and clearing a space for my head, for saving me and us today.

Thank you, Hat

The Hat arrives for dinner. Thank God for The Hat. I can be on my knees with the tolling of Christmas and in she breezes, distributes three tins for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger and saves us all.

The tins, stored in her cupboard, flew in years ago from Iran, Iraq and IKEA in London. They each contain the same assortment: a Chinese Christmas tree ornament, an M&S body lotion, a thick chocolate biscuit, and a hand-sewn bag from Kuwait. With that eclectic mix the gritlets are absorbed for hours, putting the bauble in the bag, taking it out again, nibbling the biscuit and smearing body lotion on their heads, thinking it is exotic hair oil.

Bringer of gifts, bringer of cheer on cold winter nights, and delightful dinner guest, even with lentil slop and peas. The Hat claps her hands at her plate with an expression like I just served Raymond Blanc's finest, so good natured, warm and delightful she is.

She leaves us about eleven o'clock because she says tonight she's going to bed. She's had too many late nights. I don't really want The Hat to go. She reverses her car, crashes into the Vauxhall behind, lunges forward, crashes into the Citroen in front, swings out into the road, wildly waves out the window, and is gone, Happy New Year! ringing down the street.

2009 she says is special, because it's her 60th. She's right. Special.

Another one for the Oscars

At last!

Yes, I know it was filmed in May. But the producer went off to be important in Asia, and it was on his computer.

Now forget the excuses. Things like that happen in the major studios, I believe.

Well today the producer is at home, and had a pointed stick waved at him and told that if he didn't put out Tiger's work to the general applause of the nation, I would kill him.

So here it is.

Applause!

No good parent

I just cannot behave like a parent. The type of jubilant and happy parent required by Christmas. We need a type who does not growl, nor mutter under alcoholic breath as stinky as a dog's backside, Bah! Humbug!

No. At this dark time of year we need a type who springs out of bed each public-holiday morning, strewing spirited toy joy in gift-wrapped sparkle for their adorable young offspring who, incidentally, may be blue-eyed, blond haired, and not arguing.

I really hope this parent exists, the Christmas variety. If they do not, then they are simply the advertising constructs of a marketing director's brain. I may then have been deceived by that image so completely that were I to discover the truth - that there are other stinkyfoulmisery parents like me - then this knowledge would be like so much horrible torture I would have to lock myself in the bathroom, inject drugs, and not come out until Christmas is all over.

So I want you to exist, you happy 6am parents bouncing down the stairs delighting in your children's faces on discovering they possess the latest Destroyer Commando Death game. Please exist and, better still, declare yourselves, so that you can inspire me to carry on. One day, I can always hope, I may be like you.

But there are, of course, certain problems given by a morose and melancholy temperament that I would have to overcome.

First, the antisocial tendencies. I have a reason for choosing any one course of action. Usually, it is the opposite of what everyone else is doing. So if you all want cherry pie for tea, I'll have blackcurrant. And Christmas is no different. Here I am, sensing that there is one acceptably social way to enjoy this turkey-present-singsong-party fest. So sod that.

Worse, we are not religious. I have read the gritlets the nativity story from the children's Bible, and we fell about bemused. What did the shepherds do with those sheep? Did they leave them in the fields while they followed the star? Or did they take the sheep with them? Didn't anyone stop them, wandering off to Bethlehem with all the village sheep? We never get answers to stuff like that.

And then there's Santa. Now we have never told Shark, Squirrel and Tiger that a fat man dressed in red enters the house and leaves presents. Sorry. I never got over my mother's cruel betrayal. And I know some will say I am snatching away the lives of children. You should be happy then that when Squirrel, Tiger and Shark are smacked out on coke cocaine and hanging on street corners I will blame myself, not Santa.

So that gets me to family. Most of the Grit and Dig family have decayed, shrivelled, dropped off and died. The ones who are left are disturbed or dysfunctional, what with living in the attic or flogging harps and evangelism and all, so understandably we tend to steer clear. Aunty Dee will come round in a couple of days. It will be lovely to see her, but we don't need Christmas as an excuse.

I have a lot to overcome, right?

But there's still the turkey. Shit. We blew that too. We're vegetarian. On Christmas day we do baked potatoes. Every year. Either that or baked beans.

And we don't do armfuls of presents. Quite frankly, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have enough stuff. They are constantly having their rooms restocked, resources refreshed. Come on, you home educators, isn't this a problem for you too? Here we are, equipping three gritlets with Playmobil, plasticine, material for a flower arranging project, resources for art projects, jigsaws, dressing up clothes, audio equipment, something, every week, every month, all year round. Because this is how we do home ed. It's Christmas every day, isn't it?

Now I have kicked out the religious stuff, family rituals, food and consumer stuff, there's nothing left but a long holiday. Here we are all expected to do nothing. Except loll around in front of the TV. Which bores me rigid.

That's a lot of anti-Christmas sentiment to overcome. It may be too much. I am lost forever. I can only pretend to be that happy Christmas parent.

But in my defence, I'd like to say that I melt a bit inside when I see Squirrel quietly sat at the table dressed as a fairy in a paper tiara she made herself, slowly writing out words from a magazine to practise her spelling. I am soft and foolishly smiling when Shark becomes suddenly motherly and offers round the apple juice and frets that Tiger hasn't had enough. And then I fall in love all over again when Tiger smiles her shy, shy, smile when we smiled. She didn't scream or hurl plates, she just realised that she said stack when it should have been stuck, and where once this moment would have made a monumental change in emphasis in this household, from happy gathering round the dinner table to uncontrollable fury while hanging from the stairs, today Tiger simply shyly smiles and it is beautiful.

And those moments happen all year round, and not just at Christmas.

Just because it is free, doesn't mean it is good

Ha! Mummy Grit secures a two hour free skate at the local ice rink for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

Which shows how super cool is mummy Grit.

Actually, she is more than cool. She is totally frozen. Because in her haste to snatch up this Christmas day bargain, she forgets that she has to sit at the side of the ice rink at -10C for two hours.

The only consolation in this misery is that Dig gets to sit alongside me, and thus I subject him to the total frozen experience too. We sit there for two hours and discuss the advantages of marriage.

As opposed to divorce.

Choosing the right present

I have to come up with a plan. Otherwise, daddy Dig may get a repeat of the present from last year, and that is a toilet roll with glue smeared over one end.

Toilet rolls, used or wrapped, are not good Christmas presents.

For a start, any bare cardboard inner tube, torn from a wrapping used to wipe anyone's bum, does not do justice to the huge variety of craft activities his daughters Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have achieved for the last eight years.

For all this time, Mama has entertained and educated these small agents of mass destruction in life skills that range from doll's house furnishing, face painting, papier mache and woodwork, to costume making, puppetry, beading and balloon modelling. And that was probably last month. In fact now is one of those rare moments that I intend to blow my own trumpet, because mama has been quite frankly bloody amazing when it comes to leading bizarre and ambitious crafting projects. Girls, I'd just like you to know that. Because in a week's time it could all go belly up when I lay down across the railway tracks. And if you come up with a toilet roll smeared in glue to demonstrate your craft skills, make that five days.

What's more, we cannot run a craft project to provide presents for Dig without him knowing about it. He will be inundated for demands to help find the glue sticks or where is the hammer or can we leave this half-built model of a pterodactyl on his desk. This cannot do when the whole point is surprise.

Then there is the problem of what to do with the ruddy stuff once it is made. No matter how I follow the Happy Mummy Craft Activity bible with kids, let's face it. The process of construction is fraught with hazards, littered with dangers, and punctuated routinely by screaming fits and declarations of the world's end. Then the final result is crap.

So far so good. At this point I must not blurt out the awful truth that actually the pterodactyl looks like a toilet roll, or things really go downhill. So I am a good mummy. I say it is lovely. I photograph the toilet roll and declare it a wonderful likeness of an ant/sunrise/pterodactyl/ whatever you say it is, and at the first opportunity, I bin it.

Unfortunately, I might have to stare at the toilet roll on the mantelpiece for a good month until it is overtaken by the bookbinding project, which results in one book nailed to the kitchen table by accident and a book we can't open at all because Squirrel glued all the pages together.

So I am doing the sensible thing. I am taking all the gritlets down to the Agora shopping centre with a budget of £1.50 each and I am telling them to choose the best present for daddy Dig.

Tomorrow he is going to be the proud owner of an egg cup, a hammer with a wobbly head, and three plastic screwdrivers.

Happy Christmas, Dig. Just remember it is the thought that counts.

Will the joy never end.

In the spirit of the season, which Dig tells me is goodwill, I have screwed the front door knob back on.

Eat cake

Stop what you are doing.

Gather your children. Go and make these.

Ginger pudding cakes*

If you have a Shark-type child, you can confidently help them measure out the ingredients then set them going with the following instructions, reasonably confident they will neither set themselves on fire, nor burn down the house.

Heat in a large pan to a simmer:
300g golden syrup
180g black treacle
240g butter
360g caster sugar

In a bowl, mix together:
360g plain flour
2tsp ground ginger
1tsp mixed spice
1tsp bicarb of soda

Look for a different child to do the next bit because if there isn't something for everyone to do, there'll be a fight. Child number 2 is passing. She can help make a satisfying gloopy brown slop by adding the flour mix to the liquid mix and stirring well.

Make sure, if there's a Squirrel-type child making the gloop, that you remove the mix from the heat. You probably did that anyway. Squirrel will set herself on fire stirring anything at the hob because she is dressed as a fairy, and they are flammable.

Now add two beaten eggs and 170ml boiling water to the brown gloop and beat. The mix, not the child.

Obviously don't let Squirrel pour the boiling water. You pour that in. Honestly, that child's a hazard.

Now the good bit because they get to spoon the gloop into deep muffin tins and they are quite excited about that. If you have a Squirrel-type child, they will ensure the mixture is evenly spread over the kitchen table. When you are done with tutting, scoop it up and slop it back in the muffin tins. No-one will notice. Bake in oven about 175C/gas mark 4, 20 mins, or until all smellynice.

Grab child number 3 who is sulking because they weren't invited to do anything interesting like watch treacle melt and make the brown slop.

Instruct child number 3 to make the icing. They will demand you get the food colouring out. Argue. You know that one lick of that berry red colour is the mental equivalent of injecting crack cocaine straight into their brain.

After twenty minutes, give in and find the food colouring muck. Quite frankly, all we want to do is eat the ruddy cakes, not have a pitched battle over an E number. Slam the bottle on the table and silently resolve to throw the effing berry red food colouring away by accident on purpose.

Don't watch what happens next. There's white icing all over the place and with that berry red stuff it looks like a bloodbath.

Thank goodness! Cakes! Feed to children. Tell them they can only have three each. Better still, remove all remaining cakes and tip over them a large mug of brandy or rum. That'll stop the little critters noshing them. This, by the way, is a very good strategy for all types of foodstuffs. Except cornflakes.

* I ripped this recipe from the Independent magazine Mark Hix cookery slot, and it's from a woman who markets herself under the name cookie girl.

Cookie girl does not supply small children to help in the kitchen, even though she seems to dress herself like a four year old. She bares her bosoms a lot. I suppose that is Nigella style. In fact next time I cook these I might take my top off first.

Just once more at the local museum

Here we are, wondering if we can get in without paying at the local museum on the night of the Victorian Christmas celebration. You think that's mean? Well here's a confession. We've not paid all year.

But of course I have an excuse.

Eight years ago I blundered through the door (sideways) pushing triplets in the widest buggy known to humankind, and demanded of the old lady custodian propped against the museum desk that she sell me an annual pass, right there and then, otherwise I'd be paying several hundred pounds in entrance fees.

This demonstrates these twin qualities of grit. Naivety and stupidity. Annual pass? flaps the old lady. I don't know anything about an annual pass! Is there an annual pass?

Grit is determined that if there isn't one, there soon will be. She has promised herself she will get out of the house every ruddy day. It is either that, or die, walled up behind 20,000 used nappies. The local museum is one of those out-of-the-house destinations. Five minutes by car or a twenty minute walk. Ideal for a despairing woman unsure of her own sanity and three small beings who don't give a toss where they are, so long as they can feed, sleep and burp. And it's either once a week touring the local museum, or going crazy and offering the walls another slice of raspberry cheesecake.

But this is a local museum you understand, with six visitors a year and a school party come July. Such items of paperwork as Application for an annual pass do not exist. Until Grit arrives to torture the old lady by waving babies at her and threatening to cry hysterically unless she can come once a week to look meaningfully at a Victorian shovel.

Six weeks after this demonstration of need, I receive in the post a laboriously typed bit of paperwork to which I add a cheque. In return I receive a small card. Museum Entrance Ticket 001.

Now I did renew that annual ticket every year. 002. 003. And so on. I am pleased to have done so. Under its new director the local museum is going from strength to strength and no longer is it a display of three shovels in a barn. Now it has a mocked up Victorian street and wheelwright and pharmacy and everything.

The gritlets have grown up with the confidence of running straight in, and the old lady just waved us through and no longer bothered to look at the card. She sort of assumed we still had one. And we did. Until the last one expired. And we had every intention of replacing it. But things take a while round here.

Well today it's the Victorian Christmas celebration, when we can drink mulled wine and Tiger can show off her skills with a Victorian hoop. And we are left with the slightly awkward situation that we will turn up at the desk and the old lady will try and wave us through.

Because we are not quite that mean, we will offer to renew our annual pass tonight. Even though we know the old lady will be so busy she won't be able to deal with the paperwork right there and then, and will wave us through, and we will promise to her that we will pop back and buy our pass when she's not so busy and she can find the form.

And we will, too. Honestly.

The only place for Christmas presents

Really, I should prepare a travel plan. Like, if I don't return home by 6pm, I am dead.

But be happy. Because you will know I have died in ecstasy. I will have died and gone to a heaven made out of hand crafted paper with leaves and bits of twig. Cover me in sparkly sequins and scraps of pointless satin ribbon that you have to look at with a microscope to see, but when you do see them, they will be woven into exquisite and delicate floral effects, suitable for sticking on Invitation to our Wedding. What else you do with them, I do not know. But I love them. Glue them to my headstone and call my spirit immortal.

This destination of joy, this nirvana, is of course, Hobbycraft, and there is a branch near you. Hobbycraft is perfect for Christmas presents. Dump Christmas. It is perfect for presents, all resources, bright and sparkly things and every crafting joy.

Now I know there are some naysayers out there. The sort who go POOPOO Hobbycraft. Ridiculously expensive and FOR WHAT?

Well, you doubters, ye unbelievers, just don't go. Leave the aisles to me and my kind so that we may process up and down in rapt adoration, dribbling.

Because Hobbycraft is not just offering craft resources. Of course not. I can get some of that stuff anywhere, and at half the price. What they are whispering to me, the glorious reward they are proffering, in return for my ragged soul and all Dig's money, is hope.

Here, everything is possible. I can be not the incompetent fool covered in glue, with glitter stuck to my face, but the careful and delicate crafter, creating flawless designs that are not only perfectly conceived and executed, but which result in items of such beautiful delicacy, they arouse intense delight in the eyes of the beholder.

And to joy, there is no end. I look at my children with new eyes. No longer these feral beings roving around my once ordered home, setting about my upholstery with two litres of PVA and six litres of unwashable acrylic paint. Not here, not here at Hobbycraft. My image is of Squirrel, transformed. Suddenly able to absorb and understand the complex instructions on the latex rubber mouse moulding set. That's possible. She can also read the warning instructions about pouring plaster of paris down the bathroom sink, and all the ones about microwaves, water, staining paint and glue bonding.

And Tiger! She will be able to knit! Shark will speak fluent sugarcraft dolphin set! Dig will be an inspired and involved parent, enthusiastically wiring up doll's houses to illuminate perfectly reconstructed Georgian interiors!

It is all possible, because we are in Hobbycraft, where everything makes sense and we will never again produce stuff which looks like this:


Or this:
And this:


Thank you, Hobbycraft!

Help in the garden

After yesterday, I have booked a four hour session with the gardener.

I'd just like to pause here in the hope that you think this is Grit in hot sex with Mellors down the potting shed.

It isn't.

Glastonbury the gardener comes round twice a year to prune hedges and to help hack bits off trees and the tallest shrubs. I am incapable of doing these things. The power saw got stolen. Anyway, if I had hold of it I would probably fall from the wobbly step ladder and be killed by a stake of holly through the heart, or I would sever my own arteries by accident. That would be typical. The only safe way now is for Glastonbury to do these things instead of me.

Really, I would like to think Glastonbury is an actual gardener, with a gardener's attention to detail, like can this plant live or die, but every time he opens his mouth he confirms to me he is not. He is a man with a chainsaw.

And that's what he does today. Chainsaws his way through overgrown trumpet vine, takes down the branch of the fig tree that's stopping everything from doing anything beneath it, and makes sure we can actually walk through the rose arch without having to crawl on our hands and knees, Colditz style, to get onto the lawn.

The only advantage to this carnage of the shrubbery is that I get to rest after my labours yesterday, and watch someone else do the same job but with much greater speed. Glastonbury does not have to pause his garden work to minister to a sickly Tiger on the sofa, nor feed a hungry Squirrel, or placate a steamed up Shark who has locked herself in the bathroom and won't come out without an apology.

And I know that the idea of having an old gentleman gardener tenderly pruning overhanging shrubs in a rambling Victorian garden may be quite appealing. But I suppose there are some advantages to watching a young man grunting and swinging a chainsaw about. And if it were not this frosty mid winter but the dog days of summer, then who knows? He might possibly arrive with his chainsaw, half naked.