Today was the Christmas Fayre at Jake's school! Due to circumstances beyond their control, namely a foot or more of snow, the original date just didn't work out, and so it had to be postponed. But, the show clearly had to go on, eventually, and so today was the day. Someone on the organising committee had at least managed to come up with a new name for it, so, whilst there were still lucky dips wrapped up in Christmas paper and such like, it was now to be known as the Winter Fayre.
It was on from 10-12 this morning, and we managed to sneak in during the last half an hour. For Jake and me, mornings are not really our strong point! We came home with assorted sweets from some of the children's stalls, a selection of cakes, a bottle of wine (Jake picked the right bottle on the stall meaning we won wine rather than water), and Jake's prize from the tombola turned out to be a whoopee cushion.
This afternoon Jake has been doing a fine job of entertaining his friends. They, and their Mum and Dad, are having a rough time at the moment, so they are round here for a bit of light relief, along with comfort food for Saturday tea - toad in the hole, mash, peas and gravy followed by ice cream creations.
This morning I finished reading Orwell's 1984, inspired by a mention of Winston on Kate's blog (*). Pretty scary stuff! I'm still trying to decide what to make of it all. In some ways, like other books written about the future in the past, there are some bits that make you chuckle (work arriving on your desk in paper bundles by pneumatic tube - but I suppose we can forgive Orwell for not predicting the advent of PC's and email), but then there are others which seem alarmingly accurate and on the money. Clearly written as a warning as much as anything else, it reminds us that we must cherish our freedom and fight to hang on to it.
Having been reading a lot more of what we might call popular fiction in recent years, I had a vague hope going into the last third of the book that somehow Winston might manage some sort of happy ending, or at least some remnant of hope would survive, but I couldn't really find much there. They broke him. Doubleplussungood.
(*) - we are told that today was the last edition of Kate's blog. I am going to be lost without it - was the first site I looked at each day.