DREAMS ARE GOOD FRIENDS...so sings Vicky Leandros

   Its a well-worn cliche that there are only 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week...but when out of the blue, you get a little "pasella" (African language for a much-prized bonus/ freebie!)in the form of a Bank Holiday when you don't even work in a bank...well, you can have a little meltdown just thinking about all the things you could do with it!

I have been contemplating it for days...and finally it came together! I shall declare this little "pasella" a "Family Festival". Seeing I don't let the girls throw sickies (since they started school, between the two they have not missed even 4 days of school), I am going to claim a day back for "brownie points" and spend it as a "Mummy at leisure"!

For one, no alarm clocks...we shall sleep until we wake up! When we wake, we will go and jump puddles and chase sea gulls, then hike to the heated indoor pool for a few laps, have hot toast and superb coffee with my dark-eyed Venezuelan barista, Don Adan, with the chocolate velvet voice. (If you can't wake up next to him, at least you can make eyes at him over your morning coffee and newspaper! Wink-wink!)

Then...catch a water taxi to the Sydney Boat Show at Darling Harbour to teach little kids why dreams always come a few sizes too big..so you can grow into them!

To start them off on the dreamtime, I will be chartering a cabin cruiser as a surprise for Cub1's birthday party, and have lined up her Sydney classmates as crew! (Have told the boys to bring fishing rods too, though she assures me she knows more about fishing than all of them put together! EEEK, as long as I don't have to guide wriggley worms and smelly prawns onto hooks!) Its going to be interesting playing Capt Killian, chief cook and nanny without falling asleep from the seasick medication- but as usual, we will manage!

I am also planning to speak to a few international charter agencies about resuming what I did in my innocent youth...chartering skippered sailing yachts in the Med or Caribbean and making up a group for holidays. Think I'll focus on women customers only this time...imagine, a flotilla of babes in the Med...and from a distance, no-one will be able to see the wrinkles or cellulite and we can drive those hot-blooded blokes crazy!

To conclude with, perhaps a glass or two of champagne in the lazy winter sun and then off to the Dendy Cinema for more dreamtime up in Arnhem land on Ten Canoes or a dash of de ja vous with the solitary South African Academy Award-winner "TSOTSI", possibly even a trip down memory lane with the WAH-WAH or "The White Masai"

I have not planned much beyond that-must leave opportunity for a spot of spontaneity and serendipity- who knows what you might bump into? Hopefully not a spear-wielding Tsotsi!