Seagulls and Savages

I've got a rare day alone today - well, apart from the dogs, phone calls from Katie and Susan at Number 30 trying to ingratiate her way in with me by handing over some cuttings from the garden "doing it all now before the baby comes!". David and Mac have been bitten by the boating bug and are once more in Rye where we spent a lovely Sunday last weekend lounging around on deck covered in suntan cream and listening to the sounds of the seagulls. David has been gripped by boat fever and has taken to looking for a "smallish boat to buy", urged on by Mac who took to sailing like, well, a duck to water. Our holiday this year will be spent sailing in Southampton where David was born and raised. Real boys own stuff - I plan to go to ground with lots of books and exhaust my beloved hounds on the beaches.

This morning the dogs and I were on Peckham Rye Common at 7am before it got too hot. Then I headed stable-wards for a ride on my beloved Blue and then back home for a mooch around the house and a luxurious lunch of smoked salmon bagels and Kettle Chips whilst re-reading one of my favourite books, Shirley Conran's Savages. I managed to wriggle out of having Katie over for lunch tomorrow and have stopped answering the door to Susan who keeps foisting dodgy looking plants on me.

Mac rung at just gone two to tell me all about his adventures - he spoke for ten minutes about the big boats and the little boats and the sails and the seagull that "pooed on daddy's car" without breathing. And then he said something which stopped me breathing. I asked him to repeat it, slowly. "I fell in mummy, and allbody started yelling about man overboard." At this point I swear I could hear David shushing him. Next on the line came my husband who assured me that Mac was wearing a lifejacket and was only in the water for "one minute, max" and was "none the worse for it, actually he thought it was funny". This did little to calm me down, especially when David said that he had to go as "we're off again." A hundred instructions died on my lips. Things like "don't let your son fall in the water again".

Of course, now I'm a nervous wreck. Savages has been put down, the entire bag of Kettle chips have been consumed and I've been nervously channel hopping. David's mobile is going straight to voicemail but there's been nothing on Ceefax about three year old children being swept from the deck of a yacht in the vicinity of Rye Harbour. I think I may be over-reacting here but I can't be sure.