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.
Showing posts with label Isle of Wight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isle of Wight. Show all posts
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Friday, 18 July 2008
We are sailing
I have a lot to do today. And I've already managed to fold about a 100 years worth of laundry, tidied up my clothes cupboard so that I could fit my newly, not very well ironed clothes in it. I also tidied up the boys clothes cupboard, put on a load of laundry, unpacked the dishwasher, repacked it, washed a few dishes and now I'm ready to start work.
However, my computer is operating so slowly it's almost going in reverse. I think it might be because I have over 7000 items in my deleted items folder and I haven't defragged the machine for a while (mainly because I'm never too sure how one defrags a pc or what the hell it is supposed to do). So I am typing this while intermittently deleting more deleted items.
I've just checked out the weather forecast for tomorrow and it's going to be 19C with sunny spells and a 21 knot westerly wind. The reason this is important is because I am going sailing. In the Solent. On a 45 foot yacht. With no children. Quite frankly, even if the forecast had been galeforce winds and torrential rain coupled with sleet, I'd be ok with it because I am going to be on a boat in the sea with no children anywhere near me. Lovely husband bought me the sailing trip well over a year ago but I've not had the chance to use it. He was meant to be joining me on it, but as he'll be winging his way back from Seattle, I roped in a friend who is just as pleased to escape her children for a full day.
I grew up sailing. It's one of those things I'm sort of proud of. I can't play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language (well not one that counts - Afrikaans and Zulu are hardly going be universally useful are they.) I am athletically challenged in every way. I used to think I could sing, but having heard myself sing in a kareoke bar many years ago, it's apparent that I don't have that talent either. But sailing, I can do.
My husband doesn't like sailing with me. He thinks I become 'shouty'. I do. Particularly if we're racing and someone is going faster than us and my crew tries to impersonate a snail by moving really slowly and doesnt get his sail in fast enough. Or when there's about 30 boats crowded on a start line, sails flapping, waiting for the seconds to countdown before the start gun goes. And your crew - whose job it is to look out for things and warn the very busy skipper - fails to point out a large boat barrelling down on us so that we end up having an almighty collision resulting in a big hole in the side of the boat. Then yes, in those kinds of 'theoretical' situations I can get a bit tetchy.
But tomorrow won't be like that. Because tomorrow we will have a skipper and a crew and we can decide to help them winch in sails if we fancy it, or we can simply swan about and watch them work. We get to have a grown up, girly lunch on the Isle of Wight, and then we get meander back across the Solent again. Fabulous.
I'm very glad that husband will be coming back tomorrow. I'm growing rather weary of this single parent lark. For a start, the kitchen surfaces haven't been buffed since Erika the cleaner was here on Monday and yesterday I had to do the bins all by myself. Bins are a boy job. As is mowing lawns and ours are in serious need of doing. I'm sure he will be thrilled with his to do list upon his return. Then again, he's had a week of eating US sized steaks so he gets no sympathy from me.
I need to go and turn off the washing machine now because it's beeping at me and it's incredibly annoying. So fare thee well. I will return to report back on my adventures at sea.
However, my computer is operating so slowly it's almost going in reverse. I think it might be because I have over 7000 items in my deleted items folder and I haven't defragged the machine for a while (mainly because I'm never too sure how one defrags a pc or what the hell it is supposed to do). So I am typing this while intermittently deleting more deleted items.
I've just checked out the weather forecast for tomorrow and it's going to be 19C with sunny spells and a 21 knot westerly wind. The reason this is important is because I am going sailing. In the Solent. On a 45 foot yacht. With no children. Quite frankly, even if the forecast had been galeforce winds and torrential rain coupled with sleet, I'd be ok with it because I am going to be on a boat in the sea with no children anywhere near me. Lovely husband bought me the sailing trip well over a year ago but I've not had the chance to use it. He was meant to be joining me on it, but as he'll be winging his way back from Seattle, I roped in a friend who is just as pleased to escape her children for a full day.
I grew up sailing. It's one of those things I'm sort of proud of. I can't play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language (well not one that counts - Afrikaans and Zulu are hardly going be universally useful are they.) I am athletically challenged in every way. I used to think I could sing, but having heard myself sing in a kareoke bar many years ago, it's apparent that I don't have that talent either. But sailing, I can do.
My husband doesn't like sailing with me. He thinks I become 'shouty'. I do. Particularly if we're racing and someone is going faster than us and my crew tries to impersonate a snail by moving really slowly and doesnt get his sail in fast enough. Or when there's about 30 boats crowded on a start line, sails flapping, waiting for the seconds to countdown before the start gun goes. And your crew - whose job it is to look out for things and warn the very busy skipper - fails to point out a large boat barrelling down on us so that we end up having an almighty collision resulting in a big hole in the side of the boat. Then yes, in those kinds of 'theoretical' situations I can get a bit tetchy.
But tomorrow won't be like that. Because tomorrow we will have a skipper and a crew and we can decide to help them winch in sails if we fancy it, or we can simply swan about and watch them work. We get to have a grown up, girly lunch on the Isle of Wight, and then we get meander back across the Solent again. Fabulous.
I'm very glad that husband will be coming back tomorrow. I'm growing rather weary of this single parent lark. For a start, the kitchen surfaces haven't been buffed since Erika the cleaner was here on Monday and yesterday I had to do the bins all by myself. Bins are a boy job. As is mowing lawns and ours are in serious need of doing. I'm sure he will be thrilled with his to do list upon his return. Then again, he's had a week of eating US sized steaks so he gets no sympathy from me.
I need to go and turn off the washing machine now because it's beeping at me and it's incredibly annoying. So fare thee well. I will return to report back on my adventures at sea.
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