Friday and time for some wine

Hello chaps, sorry it's been a while. This has been because I bought series 5 of Entourage, which Hubby particularly likes. So between Dr Who/Disney Princess after school and Entourage after kids' bedtime, the laptop has been in use. Oh, I know I could do something during the day when kids are at school, but I'm trying to be disciplined and spend that time writing the next great novel (or tending to ill children, or picking up my new dress, or going to book club - or this morning, selling cakes at the Big Brew cake stall, which I couldn't get out of because it was All For A Good Cause).

The Next Great Novel, or NGN as I shall now refer to it, is moving along quite slowly. At least our heroine is finally onto plot point one, and on the plane to Nepal. However, there are a few scenes missing in her first Act - about twenty pages of them - so I'll have to go back and fill the holes later. Interestingly, it turns out she has an evil godmother (I didn't plan her, she just popped up), quite the reverse of the Cinderella version, whose job seems to be to try to scupper everything for our heroine. She's in her seventies (the evil godmother, not the heroine), and she smokes cocktail cigarettes and wears too much lipstick. Worryingly, she's sort-of how I see myself at that age, like an elderly alter ego.

Anyway, today I have been far too busy to write anything because, as I mentioned, it was Big Brew (raising money for forces charity) day on the British Camp, and in addition, just to ramp up the adrenaline levels, International Day at the British School. Ooh, I thought the kids would explode with the excitement of it all. They got to wear Union Jack clothes to school, run about buying food from International food stalls after school, and then go to camp and run about some more buying hideous cuddly toys and demanding fizzy pop. And to top it off, I couldn't drive home on the normal way, as there are suddenly huge holes in the road (nothing as helpful as a road sign warning of this, though, just a sudden crater, marked with a spindly branch stuck in the hole - because a few leaves really is equivalent in safety terms to cones, fluorescent tape and a several men-at-work signs, wouldn't you say?).

Quite tired after a day of charity and cultural awareness - might even have a glass of wine in a bit...Hubby is already in bed. He went to bed at the same time as Son (before 8pm). This is because he stayed up very late last night playing geekily with his new mind-mapping software on his mobile phone (did you know, you can print it out - how exciting is that?), and then the neighbourhood dogs apparently barked all night. I say apparently, because I didn't hear them. I was asleep, having happy dreams.

My great excitement this week was having a jersey dress made up locally (sorry, yes I am that superficial - I may read Nobel Peace Prizewinner's autobiographies, but nothing really matches the thrill of a nice new outfit). It wasn't massively cheap, but it looks like its just popped off the pages of a Boden catalogue, and at less than half the price, hurrah. I shall wear it to Hubby's work's Deshain function tomorrow. Thank the Lord they haven't asked me to dance again this year, so I won't end up dressed like Danny-La-Rue-goes-to-the-Himalayas. I shall instead probably look like someone called Charlotte from Islington, or Poppy from Truro or something (I won't look like me, because as my NGN has shown, the real me is a mix of Cruela deVil and hmmm, shall we say, Anthea Turner).

Right, I'm off to find that bottle of wine now xxx