Jarbola! Or, Santas on Strike

Day 2 of our enforced exile to the Art Room. I am getting used to having to climb the stairs.

But none of this matters when it's school fair day. Jof is on the Friends-of-the-school team so when I raced out of class, she was busy telling everyone what to do and Bud and I were special helpers again, this time on the "Jarbola" stall. So far, we have sold out-of-date air fresheners and unisex gloves, slices of home-made cake and the chance to hook a duck and win prizes galore as long as they're sweeties out of the bag. It's always hectic with a hint of those special mushrooms and today was no different.

We had been placed next to the Lady of Dubious Personal Hygiene and our task was to sell tickets at 50p per 3, any ticket ending in a 5 or a zero wins a jar, the paying customer getting to choose which jar. At the beginning we had about 60 jars to flog.

The jars themselves contained a random mixture of sweets and small giftoids that by definition could fit into a jamjar. Jof had warned us in advance that we'd get kids holding up ticket #217 and going "have I won?" because of the innate stupidity of my fellow students and O yea, we were not disappointed.

Braddles bought 12 and didn't win, mostly people bought tickets in sixes and someone went away with 3 jars in one go. They had to pick the tickets out of a plastic bag and put used ones in the bin and in the end, we had to empty the bin right back into the bag again. It was loud and strange and sticky and like last orders with people holding out money and they kept pushing the trestle table forward and squishing us. I kept up the sales patter for I have kissed the Blarney Stone and like people to do as I tell them.

But when we ran out of jars, we were free, our duty done. We'd taken £53 or so out of the total of £640-ish. I went to the cake stall and got 2 marshmallow moomintrolls and hey presto, they won the cake competition so it proves I've got good taste. I also won a pencil in the lucky dip, hurrah for me.

One thing we didn't realise was that the guy who was due to play Santa (brings his own suit) was a no-show. So Jof had to trail round the shops of excitingly trashy 'North End' and buy a Santa suit for popular teacher Mr B who totally refused to wear it because it was freaky and sitting on a Freakazoid telling him what you want, what you really really want, might ruin the magic of a school fair held in the assembly hall so the most iconic representative was missing from our fair.

We didn't win the raffle but Lucy's dad can play decent piano. In gymnastics we warmed up for half an hour and played hide and seek in the foam pit, always a gas. I found everyone when I was seeker but as hider, I became as one with the foam and nobody got me.