tis the season to be jolly...

Well, nearly.

Although it is still only November and I absolutely REFUSE to think about Chrimbo till 1 December, it is resolutely forcing itself into my periphery vision.

Viz today, when doing the housework, I picked up a letter from the infant school detailing the plans for the Christmas Fair, which occurs this Sunday. I'm already down for helping on the cake stall for an hour. Oh joy. That's what comes of going to a mums' coffee morning. I knew there was a reason for not going.


The letter has been sitting there for over a week. It came with a picture of stockings for the kids to colour in and enter into a competition. The school do this every year and every year my kids dutifully colour them beautifully, and so far, after six years at the school not one of them has won. That maybe about to change. As last night no 3 announced that the stocking had to be in today. At bedtime natch. I was on the verge of saying, tough luck, but Spouse is much kinder then I am and as it was an emergency allowed no 1 to cheat and colour the stockings in for her. A ten year old colouring instead of a six year old? Our chances of winning have just doubled. (Considering most of the kids who win look like they've had help, I will only feel marginally guilty if we do win).

The reason I nearly missed the deadline, was because I am still in It's Only the Middle of November I Refuse To Think About Christmas Mode. Had I not been burying my head in the sand, I might have been taking notice of why there seemed to be a group of very active members of the PTA hanging about the school gates for the past week. I read the vital letter which has only been knocking about for a fortnight (in my defence, four lots of letters every other day takes some reading and I often fall down in this department, plus quite frankly six years in the school Christmas Fair is of even less interest to me then when no 1 started there. I think I am suffering from a sever case of Christmas Fair Burnout).

Anyway. Turns out (which of course I would have known had I looked) the enthusiastic PTA members have been collecting stuff for the fair for the past week. Plus selling tickets for Santa's Grotto. This is a new departure. Normally you buy tickets on the day, so I usually whizz mine in straight away. However, in an attempt to beat the queues Santa is seeing children at intervals of ten minutes and won't be selling tickets on the day. I envisage a disaster here, as someone somewhere will be even less aware then me and not have picked this piece of vital info up, so their will I suspect be some very disappointed children on Sunday. Thanks to my dilatoriness all the tickets up to 4pm have gone. And I'm helping on a stand till then. I was in a panic as my name appeared to be down twice, so I thought the kids were going to be deprived of Santa which would have taken some explaining. Luckily I just managed to get in on the 4.10 slot, at which point my ire about the whole thing was raised even more to discover Santa now costs £2.50. So that's a tenner gone before I've even started. Coupled with which I am expected to part with another tenner for raffle tickets for each of my offspring at the school, so now we're thirty quid down. As I've just spent twenty quid on a sponsored dance I balked at the raffle tickets and said so. Now I realise I am becoming deeply deeply sad as have just spent ten minutes berating the poor chairman in the playground for changing things that worked perfectly fine. As a veteran I know these things... But I am distressed that I seem to care enough about them to even have the conversation. Aaagh... I need to get a life. And fast otherwise I risk causing world war three in the playground.

I haven't yet tackled the junior school where they have a Christmas craft fair (groan) and more raffle tickets. (Double groan).

Or Brownies/Guides who are carol singing twice and having a nativity play in which no 2 seems to be taking the part of a wise king.

And that's without no 4's nativity, no3's Christingle and no 1 &2's Carol Service.

Do you think it would be acceptable to emigrate?

Preferably without the children...