Harriet Takes Marlborough

Tree-Trunk Legs, Tangled Dogs and a Thousand Metres

What happens when you give a ten-year-old a giant burger, a very good book, three dogs and permission to stay up as late as she likes?

You get Harriet’s first proper day in Marlborough.

And, as we were about to discover, letting her stay up as late as she wanted was perhaps slightly less generous when Grandad Bryan had already set the alarm for 5.25 the following morning.

Our adventure began in Cardiff, where Grandad Bryan and Dana had arranged to collect Harriet from Daddy at the Beefeater.

Harriet was already making sure she had enough energy for the journey. She and Daddy shared a double Beefeater burger, which was quite a serious amount of burger for anyone, never mind somebody who still had pudding to think about.

Harriet, however, had thought about pudding.

She followed the burger with a chocolate sauce, shortbread and ice cream sundae, because apparently there is always a separate space in a ten-year-old’s stomach marked ICE CREAM ONLY.

Once everyone had eaten enough to make moving slightly difficult, it was time to say goodbye to Daddy and head back to Marlborough in the Tesla.

Harriet climbed into the back seat with her book.

Within minutes she had vanished.

She was still physically sitting behind us, obviously, but mentally she was somewhere completely different. Whatever was happening inside that book was clearly far more interesting than anything Dana or Grandad Bryan had to offer.

Dana turned around.

“Harriet, are you all right?”

“Yes.”

A little later Grandad Bryan tried.

“Harriet, did you see that?”

“Okay.”

“What did I just ask you?”

“Yes.”

There didn’t seem much point continuing the conversation.

We could probably have announced that we had bought a giraffe and were taking it home to live in the kitchen.

“Okay.”

Harriet simply turned another page.

We crossed the Prince of Wales Bridge and headed back into England. Even more remarkably, it wasn’t raining in Wales.

This felt like something worth celebrating.

Harriet didn’t notice.

She was still reading.

By the time we reached Orchard Road, however, the book finally closed. Within about ten minutes of arriving, Harriet was in the bath and making herself at home.

That evening she was given what sounded like extremely good news.

“You can stay up as late as you want,” Grandad Bryan told her.

For a ten-year-old, these are wonderful words.

Unfortunately, there was a small piece of information hidden inside the deal.

Grandad Bryan had set the Google alarm for 5.25am because Harriet had decided she wanted to join him on the early morning dog walk.

Staying up late and getting up at 5.25 in the morning are two ideas that work brilliantly separately.

Together, they are less successful.

At exactly 5.25 the next morning, Google sprang into action.

Buzz.

Buzz.

BUZZ.

BUZZ.

Harriet did absolutely nothing.

Google became increasingly enthusiastic.

Harriet remained completely asleep.

Eventually Grandad Bryan climbed out of bed and dealt with the problem.

“Google, shut up.”

The room became quiet again.

Unfortunately, Grandad Bryan was now awake.

Harriet was not.

So he walked along the hallway and knocked on her bedroom door.

“Harriet.”

Nothing.

He knocked again.

“Harriet?”

There was a noise from somewhere underneath the duvet. It wasn’t exactly a word, but Grandad Bryan decided to treat it as progress.

A short while later, against all the odds, Harriet was dressed and ready.

By six o’clock we were walking through Savernake Forest with Poppy, Lola and Douglas.

At that time of the morning, the forest was wonderfully peaceful. The air was cool, the trees were still and the paths were almost empty. Birds were calling from somewhere high above us and everything smelled of damp leaves and woodland.

It was the sort of morning where you could imagine having a lovely, quiet walk.

Then the dogs got involved.

Poppy and Lola had been attached together on one lead, an arrangement that had seemed perfectly sensible at home.

Douglas, meanwhile, had wisely avoided being part of this particular experiment.

It quickly became obvious that neither Poppy nor Lola had been told about the plan.

Lola wanted to go in one direction.

Poppy wanted to go in another.

Douglas pottered along nearby, behaving as though he had never met either of them.

Grandad Bryan was attached to the other end of Poppy and Lola and was being pulled around as though he were taking part in a very badly organised dog-sledding competition.

Harriet thought this was brilliant.

Then Lola decided she needed a poo.

This presented a problem.

Lola stopped.

Poppy did not.

Poppy continued marching forwards with complete confidence, which meant Lola was now attempting to poo while being slowly dragged along the path.

“Poppy! Stop!”

Poppy ignored Grandad Bryan.

Harriet was laughing.

Lola was concentrating very hard.

Douglas stood nearby, presumably wondering why humans made dog walking so unnecessarily complicated.

Grandad Bryan was wondering much the same thing.

Somehow, Lola completed the operation.

It wasn’t elegant, but it was successful.

By the time we returned home, we had walked about 3.2 kilometres and completed roughly 5,000 steps.

Harriet’s Daddy, meanwhile, was still in bed.

Harriet seemed quite pleased with this information.

Unfortunately, all that early morning walking had created another emergency.

There wasn’t enough breakfast.

So we went to Tesco.

We returned with milk, cereal and pastries, all of which seemed like sensible breakfast supplies.

The pastries were eaten almost immediately.

Apparently they had travelled all the way from Tesco simply to spend three minutes in our kitchen.

Poppy, Lola and Douglas had their food and water and then collapsed around the house, exhausted from their morning adventure.

Harriet and Dana decided that the dogs had come up with an excellent idea.

They went back to bed.

Grandad Bryan went to work.

He opened one laptop.

Then another.

Then a third.

By the time Harriet eventually reappeared, Grandad Bryan was sitting behind three computers like somebody trying to control an airport.

“What are all those for?” Harriet asked.

It was a reasonable question.

Grandad Bryan wasn’t entirely sure.

By lunchtime everyone was awake again, so we walked down Marlborough High Street.

Marlborough is a long, busy High Street full of shops, cafés and old buildings, and our lunchtime destination was Waitrose.

We bought sushi and carried it over to the park, where we sat together on the grass eating.

For a while, everything was peaceful.

Then Harriet noticed Grandad Bryan’s leg.

His leg had been swelling and there was still some pus around it, so Grandad Bryan had decided that a trip to the pharmacist might be sensible.

Harriet examined it.

“Grandad, your leg always looks like a tree trunk.”

Grandad Bryan looked down at it.

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

She considered the medical evidence.

“You don’t need to see anyone about it.”

That was that.

Diagnosis complete.

According to Doctor Harriet, Grandad Bryan simply had his normal tree-trunk leg.

Grandad Bryan decided to visit the pharmacist anyway.

This appeared to disappoint Harriet slightly. There is nothing worse than giving excellent medical advice only for the patient to seek a second opinion.

After lunch, we drove to Swindon.

Our destination was TK Maxx.

This was exciting for Harriet.

It was exciting for Dana.

It was considerably less exciting for Grandad Bryan.

Dana and Harriet disappeared between the clothes and shelves and immediately began discovering things they hadn’t known they needed until approximately five seconds earlier.

Grandad Bryan followed behind, watching the shopping pile grow.

Eventually he decided intervention was required.

Dana turned to Harriet.

“We’ll come back another day without Grandad.”

Harriet grinned.

Grandad Bryan thought about this.

“I’ll lock Harriet in the cupboard.”

Dana didn’t even hesitate.

“I’ll let her out.”

“Then I won’t feed her.”

“I’ll feed her.”

Harriet burst out laughing.

Grandad Bryan realised his entire plan depended on Dana cooperating, which was clearly not going to happen.

The cupboard threat was abandoned.

Fortunately, there was one place left that day where Grandad Bryan believed he still had some authority.

The swimming pool.

We headed to Marlborough Leisure Centre.

Dana went into one lane.

Harriet took the middle lane.

Grandad Bryan selected the fast lane, naturally, because if there is a lane marked FAST, Grandad Bryan feels a personal responsibility to swim in it.

We decided we would all swim 1,000 metres.

Harriet had her own approach to completing the distance.

She swam two lengths.

Then stopped for a chat.

She swam another two lengths.

Then stopped for another chat.

Sometimes she chatted to Dana.

Sometimes she chatted to Grandad Bryan.

Sometimes she appeared simply to be having a rest while deciding who she wanted to talk to next.

Grandad Bryan continued counting lengths.

Harriet continued talking.

Slowly, the numbers climbed.

Four hundred metres.

Six hundred.

Eight hundred.

Then, eventually, Harriet touched the wall at the end of her final length.

One thousand metres.

A full kilometre.

She had done it.

Grandad Bryan was very pleased with her, although Harriet seemed more interested in discussing what we were going to eat afterwards.

This was understandable.

Swimming a kilometre creates serious hunger.

By the time we left the pool, Harriet was hungry enough to consider eating anything that couldn’t escape.

We bought kebab wraps and took them home.

Then the three of us sat in the front room eating them.

This was not tidy.

Sauce escaped from the wraps.

Bits of kebab fell out.

Napkins appeared everywhere.

By the end, it looked as though considerably more than three people had eaten dinner.

But nobody minded.

Harriet had packed quite a lot into one day.

She had crossed the Severn, ignored two grandparents because her book was too interesting, survived a 5.25am alarm, walked through Savernake Forest with Poppy, Lola and Douglas, witnessed Lola being dragged along while trying to poo, eaten pastries and sushi, diagnosed Grandad Bryan with tree-trunk leg, explored TK Maxx, swum a whole kilometre and finished the evening with a kebab.

Not bad for a ten-year-old.

The only worrying thing was that Harriet still had more time left in Marlborough.

And Grandad Bryan was already wondering what she was going to talk him into next.