Yesterday found us camped on the school field, running a stall for the May Fayre. Our stall (invented by my better half) consisted of throwing balls onto a target to win prizes. While you might think it was a rather pedestrian idea, when faced with the opportunity to win rubber dinosaurs, novelty pencil erasers, windmills, and all manner of other junk, we had kids turning themselves inside out to win stuff all day.
In-betweenrunning the stall we took turns to cheer our kids on in the various activities going on - such as the space hopper racing pictured above. Our youngest (not pictured) would have won her age-group race by a mile if she hadn’t lost control of her space hopper in spectacular fashion one hop from the finish line. She didn’t seem to mind; she was laughing too much to notice everybody go bouncing past.
Strangest observation of the day - that lots of the Mums know my name?! I have no idea who half of them are, but regularly heard calls for “Jonathan?” during the day (usually as a request for somebody tall or strong to lift or move something). It’s the first time I’ve been at anything when anybody has known who I was. God knows what will happen when word spreads about what I do for a living - I’m guessing the phone will start ringing.
We finished the day off with friends coming round to babysit, and the very rare opportunity to go out for a meal with still more friends. Although I half dreaded this weekend - knowing what we were trying to fit in - while walking back from the pub last night I realised that it really is worth taking the time out, and spending a little money sometimes to remember that we have these great friends, and to remember who we are.
p.s. I had a mixed grill, and still can’t move now.