Why I'm not working

I am sooooooooooooooooo supposed to be working right now. Press list updating and accounts. Woohoo. Could my evening get any more exciting? No sirree. But instead of working, I have been watching this over and over:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7763822.stm

Because I am very proud to say that it's all about our little local school which was featured on the BBC tonight. (Sadly, despite my PR profession, I had nothing to do with it thanks to me keeping my head well below the school governors', PTA's and anyone else with a slightly authoritarian role in the school's radar.) It's a piece on how the school dinners are so excellent that the local OAPs join the kids for lunch once a fortnight. I'm very glad that the meals are this good because it means I don't have to make packed lunches.

My son even features in it, briefly, eating with nice table manners (well done son, yes, it's all thanks to my excellent parenting - funny how it doesn't happen at home.) He's not the little boy who decides that the school dinners are actually not that nice because they keep serving 'sprockley' (which I think is Broccoli) - has me in tears each time I watch it.

I've also spent much of my evening looking at properties on the Isle of Wight. This is because friends of ours are probably going to be moving there. I'm not a kind friend who's viewing properties on their behalf. No, I am a shallow, never happy with my lot type of person, who also wants to live beside the seaside. So I just thought I'd take a look and see what type of properties we could afford, possibly with a little bit of water frontage, a mooring and the possibility of buying a yacht. (Obviously this is all incredibly hypothetical and completely unrealistic but I indulged in a bit of real estate porn.)

Sigh. I have a husband tied to the city of Londinium. And Heathrow. So really the Isle of Wight would be completely impractical. But it does have the sea and boats. Have I ever mentioned that I like boats?

You see I used to sail. I was forced into small dinghies called Optimists (so named in honour of the parents of the small children sailing the boats backwards). I spent many a weekend in howling gales, crying with a boom clashing and clanging above my head, my father yelling from the bank trying to make himself heard and me wishing I was a townie. I then progressed onto bigger boats and got reasonably proficient. I even won the odd medal or two. A friend and I did particularly well sailing together in our early teens as our joint weight didn't add up to that of one normal size adult so we literally flew across the water - cheating really.

But despite having spent most of my weekends as a teenager sitting alongside windless dams somewhere in South Africa, I've not been able to sail much since becoming a grown up. For a start, I had more important things to do like get drunk, study, find many boyfriends, then a husband, travel, career, kids - you know, stuff. None of which involved towing a boat around with me. But now, I feel it would be quite nice to have one. My boys are starting to approach the age that I can shove them in an Optimist while I shout from the bank with a loud hailer, them hating me, me thinking they're rubbish, that kind of thing. All good family fun.

And we could do all of this very, very easily if we had a property on the Isle of Wight with water frontage. Perhaps someone will spot my son in the school clip and think he's got super-model/good table manner etiquette guide potential and we can make a fortune out of him and all our problems will be solved.

Or not.

I'd better get back to work.