A Day on the Prime Meridian

Greenwich. The name already stops me dead, after filling me with lo-o-nging for years. I just wanted to be there, stand on that zero point, where all space is measured from, in a way.

I first read 'Longitude', by Dava Sobel, a few years ago, but saw the Jeremy Irons TV show about it even longer ago. And living in Australia, a country which is founded in part on a reliable clock, just gives the place a very personal resonance for me. One of the earliest clocks was given to Captain Cook, on his trip to watch the Transit of Venus in ?1770 - he was considered a good seaman, someone you could trust with a clock, someone you could trust to take readings of longitude with it.

So, onto the train to Greenwich on a pale, bare Sunday morning. The Bean reading the Tube stops, the Pumpkin climbing the seats, me just humming at the prospect of making this pilgrimage on my personal map of the world.

Across the grounds of the Maritime College, into the Maritime Museum. Wowowowowow. Passing through the Titanic, opening cupboards on the marine uniforms, the Pumpkin wondering where the person talking about their uniform got to before he could open the door to see them. Nelson's coat, complete with hole from the day he died. Maritime histories of slave movements, waves of migrations in red arrows around the globe. My journey is part of one of those red arrows too. Shiny propellors, ship decks, a lovely cafe ( I could paint my walls that colour, stand a palm like this in my house!) and a playground - what more could we want. A toilet, poor Pumpkin has the trots, the same intense kind which Bean had over Christmas in Stuttgart, cramping. I get snapped with a statue of Captain Cook, only right. We toil on up the hill, to the Observatory. I feel I've reached a summit. More toilet stops.

And then, weaving with my boys and the queues, past the telescopes, the rooms inside, to the octagonal observing room, the living quarters and the clocks themselves. It IS a pilgrimage: I pay silent respects, and could cry for how moved I am to be with them: H1, H2, H3. The Bean is fascinated by a great interactive display, the Pumpkin heavy in my arms. I sit in the semi-gloom, the Pumpkin sleeps, the Bean opens and shuts doors, I reflect on this journey to this point in time. It is something I wanted, not about them, but made the more precious to be doing it with my two treasures, made so far away, over on 171 or so, not 0 as here. I feel triumphant as we ask another tourist to snap us right on the line, our feet on the Sydney point. We made it! Maybe the ancient mariners felt like this when they thought they'd fall off, get lost, run aground - and then didn't.

A loud, freezing, BRILLIANT high point racing on the ferry back to Tower Bridge. The boys screaming at the loud rushing water, me snapping, laughing, roaring at what IS possible for a mother to do with her young boys, at where it's possible to BE. Away upriver, along the old wharves, past the docks, past the new Canary Wharf stockbroker sheds, along the way they came back in after sailing bout the world, there's the Tower Bridge, the Gherkin, the Tower of London.

Did I tell you boys, I nearly fell out of a window there, before I was even two? The circle turns. The day ends with more Tube travel, a show - Marianne Dreams, more Tube travel, dinner with friends, a hooge day, but wonderful life.

A walk to Stanage Edge

What makes a day stand out? It's seeing something you thought you'd never see. It's finding a liberation in an hour, from days and days of being in the harness of humdrum 'ordinary' life..

Meeting Ivan. This uncle, zany, I'd heard about him for years. Finally, the day is on us, I'm dreading it and putting on a brave face - and curious too. There is a beautiful pink rose bush in the front garden, the house high on a hill in Sheffield. Inside, it's a-clutter with one man's stuff, not aired, cleaned or moved enough in a long time. A shelf for the tins for a rainy day - what's the other shelf of tins for? The walls covered in photos, prints of familiar places, like Hungary and Australia.

He's like those uncles of my mothers, that I used to have to visit when we stayed with Omi - a particular Continental sense of humour, wordplay that all know is clever, even though we don't always laugh out loud. Sentimental, referential to other times. So we get on GREAT, I play the mother role with absolute conviction, can just be as I am. Leathermanman says, wash everything, don't touch anything! But we get tea and fruit out, look through photos and his old cameras. The Bean is a PERFECT namesake, shows great interest in the old cameras, wants to know about this strange man, as much as the uncle wants to know about him. The Pumpkin gets hungry, we open one of the Rainy Days tins and eat soup, heated, direct from the tin. I can't write about the bathroom, but I'm touched and entertained, all at once. And I imagine laughing with my mother-in-law about it in future.

A walk to Stanage Edge in the Peak District. Like other walks with my elderly relatives in Germany, all set off, groups form for 'walk and talk'. The Pumpkin and the uncle have exactly the same pace, The Bean and I run, run in the wind over the stones on the edge of the Edge. Liberation. Leathermanman imagines himself bouldering, we are all liberated in this Australia-like expanse, our gazes stretching to a horizon, the view filled with grasses and heather, fields, stone walls, not buildings, not crowding close around us. In the photo you can't see, but LMM and his uncle have EXACTLY the same shape head!

Then we take Ivan back to Eyam Youth Hostel. He took the first photos of it, when they first started promoting themselves long ago - and is DELIGHTED to be out for a night. We fold children into their bunks and drink a bottle of wine outside in endless late summer light. There's much hilarity and tales of lives lived before we all met up today. Lovely.