The Honey Trap

There I was this morning, my day panning out to be a near perfect example of my parasitic lifestyle. First I dropped the children at school. As no-one in my car load is now in Junior 1, I don't even have to walk them up the steps to the school any more. I take them across the car park past the dangers of the tiny blind women in the huge cars and wave them goodbye from the foot of the steps. After that I went for coffee with the Second Wife. She filled me in on the gossip from the parents night I missed last week, we bitched about one of the teachers, then I went to the gym. So far so little contribution to society.

The gym I go to is at our local university which is also an elite centre for Scottish sport. Or a centre for Scottish elite sport, or a centre for elite Scottish sports - curling, anyone? As the beginning of term approaches it is filling up with students again which means it is busier but also means there are more people to look at. My favourite students to look at are the young fit male rowers, the young fit male footballers (more lithe and narcissistic than the rugby players), the young fit male swimmers and the young fat female students who are there to lose weight. I may envy the girls their plump faces but I don't envy their plump backsides, their thunderous thighs or their muffin tops. It gives me a nice warm glow and mildly accelerates my endorphin rush to be stones lighter and years fitter than them.

Full of the righteousness of the recently exercised I made tomato-faced for Sainsbury's where I ambled the aisles picking up everything I needed for cooking this weekend. I even found polenta in our understocked outpost. I almost had everything when I remembered that my daughter had requested a new jar of honey. I buzzed back to the jam shelves. The British honey which I would usually go for was the most expensive - the fault of the dreadful summer I am told - over three quid. Too much. The Australian was a pound cheaper. But too many air miles. The blossom honey was the same price but was the product of more than one country. Yuck. (Not as yuck as a bag of salad leaves from more than one country but still yuck.) The organic was organic but expensive and who told the bees? The same person who told the salmon? I don't think so. At the very end of the shelf was some Mexican Fair Trade. Cheap, clear conscience and half the air miles of the Australian but from all over Mexico so no good. I read the backs of jars and jars, squeezy bottles, tubs and pots. The honey almost robbed me of enough time when I got back home to have lunch at the deli and ride my horse. But I managed to fit both in.

I have some work coming up over the next couple of weeks so I'll be justifying my existence while my children are at school for a change. I'm going to be ghost writing commentaries for a group of estate agents for their in-house magazine. I expect they will be putting a positive spin on conditions in the housing market. I won't be contributing much to society (except possibly to the gaiety of anyone who reads it) but at least I'll be paying my way.