Well let's play pretend. This experience is profound; a deeply moving and emotional one which musters both my mind and body to the exclusion ... OK then, let's not play pretend. There is probably nothing that can make a syntagmatic or paradigmatic-induced result interesting.
Which leaves Grit wandering intermittently through the house and picking up her diary, randomly, for July 2005.
Saturday: annual town carnival procession and fancy dress prize for best-dressed family! Tiger is a dragon, Shark is a mermaid, Squirrel is a fairy. Dig is the green man. The dragon is a damn good costume, even though I say so myself. The salvation army woman kept treading on the tail and bringing it off. Lucky I had my stapler tucked in my Medusa outfit. The snakes were a nuisance and kept falling off my head. Squirrel's wings stuck out over her head like rabbit ears. Shark's face paint made her look sick. Dig didn't complain even though he had insects crawling over him thanks to the ivy adornment. But it is all worth it because we win! We have to share the prize with the neighbours. There are only two families to have entered this year. This is OK.*
Scrap home-made costumes (remember to enunciate the 'S' there on 'scrap'). p.s. Grit is wearing wig and make up.
Sunday: Archaeology in the garden. Tiger's Roman amphitheatre is a death trap.
Monday: We visit the Heritage Motor Museum in Coventry. We were heading for Warwick castle but a mini cyclone forced us to seek shelter. When we got there we seem to get caught up in a Special Needs teacher convention.
Tuesday: Dig has some new hardware, so we make picture frames from the polystyrene inserts.
Wednesday: We are staying at home. The weather is rubbish and my eyes are like golf balls thanks to an allergic reaction to something.
Thursday: Everyone plants peas. It is a disaster. I have peas and soil all over the yard. Shark has already started to neglect hers. Thank goodness. She has watered them on and off for two hours now.
Friday: We watch ice melt.
Saturday: We try orienteering. We take a map and a measuring wheel and forget the compass and try to measure our way between the trees up Coombe Hill. We are badly organised, poorly prepared and could not find our way out of a paper bag. We need to do this one again, and next time, I'm going to take a map of the right hill.
All of which leads to me to the conclusion that things don't change around here, much.
Scrap home-made costumes (remember to enunciate the 'S' there on 'scrap'). p.s. Grit is wearing wig and make up. Sunday: Archaeology in the garden. Tiger's Roman amphitheatre is a death trap.
Monday: We visit the Heritage Motor Museum in Coventry. We were heading for Warwick castle but a mini cyclone forced us to seek shelter. When we got there we seem to get caught up in a Special Needs teacher convention.
Tuesday: Dig has some new hardware, so we make picture frames from the polystyrene inserts.
Wednesday: We are staying at home. The weather is rubbish and my eyes are like golf balls thanks to an allergic reaction to something.
Thursday: Everyone plants peas. It is a disaster. I have peas and soil all over the yard. Shark has already started to neglect hers. Thank goodness. She has watered them on and off for two hours now.
Friday: We watch ice melt.
Saturday: We try orienteering. We take a map and a measuring wheel and forget the compass and try to measure our way between the trees up Coombe Hill. We are badly organised, poorly prepared and could not find our way out of a paper bag. We need to do this one again, and next time, I'm going to take a map of the right hill.
*We won the year before because no one else entered at all.
3 comments:
Come now, there must be pics of the annual town carnival ? arn't there ?
added, one picture of the grit and dig family in 2005 heading off down a back lane to join the main procession (dig is the photographer).
last year there was no family event, partly because no family ever turned up in costume year after year except us. instead, the organisers got the kids from the local school to march along dressed as Victorian pupils i.e. dressed in black and white. (imaginative for a carnival, huh?) the samba band turned out, along with the belly dancers. both are mercenary and can be seen in most town carnivals if the price is right.
that's it. usually afterwards there are some awful bands singing on a temporary stage in the town square, some face painting and a kebab van. It's a local thing.
Smalltown's efforts are dwarfed by our neighbouring town which holds an annual folk festival and does it much better.
The costumes were fantastic - they high point of my day.
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