I've got a new publisher! Serven House, bless their hearts, are publishing the next Jack book, A HUNDRED THOUSAND DRAGONS, (and beat that for a title!) in May. Poor old Jack gets put through it a bit in this one, but it all ends happily with the good guys on the right side of the ledger. So stand by your cheque books, everyone, because it's on it's way. May the (insert date here) be with you!
Talking of cheque-books, it was the Christmas Fair yesterday. The Fair (not a Fayre, thank God!) takes place in the primary school, is in aid of the church and is run by the parish. The fair has been going for years and only recently dropped its previous name of a Sale Of Work. One phrase and we’re in Agatha Christie and PG Wodehouse land. At one function you’re a consumer – a happy, charitably inclined consumer and the other you’re a creator. Sales Of Work, I remember from my youth, are where people sold tea-cosies, scarves, gloves and anything else that could be knitted or sown. There’s still a fair amount of handicraft, what with cakes and ingeniously made turned wood, but there’s bought in handbags and jewellery, even if (being a church function) the emphasis is on charity. I admired an ethnic-looking jersey and was told it was made by “Abandoned women in Peru.”
The image this conjured up is not, perhaps, what Shelia behind the counter intended!
I love these local functions, though. There’s an awful lot of public whittling now about community building and an awful lot of agonising about money. The Christmas Fair is a perfect example of doing both.
It takes a lot of work to organise and there’s nothing like working alongside someone to get to know them. And money comes in, through buying Christmas the Guides have made, having a go on the tombola, the whisky raffle, the cake raffle , to say nothing of actually buying the books, CD’s, DVD’s and tea-cosies, and a visit to Santa in his grotto which is the ice-palace created with paper and tinsel out of the computer room. I've always had a very soft spot for this particular incarnation of Santa, as I visited him in my Youth and, in rather later Youth, was a Christmas elf and handed out presents to the round-eyed children after Santa asked them what they wanted for Christmas. The spirit of Christmas? It’s alive and well and living at a Christmas Fair near you. Yo ho ho.
No comments:
Post a Comment