Saturday 28th April 2007
This will be a short post as my memory of the day is buried under 3 years worth of other, more interesting, memories.
The School's annual Spring Fair was held in the compound of the British Embassy. Stalls included the cake stall, which I failed completely to contribute to, various junk stalls - read "stuff that people want to get rid of" like toys etc. There were also simple competitions for the kids such as tombolas and hook a duck.
The latter press-ganged me into helping out whereupon all the other mothers disappeared for an hour, leaving me alone with what seemed like hundreds of small children. I didn't like this. In the end, I just gave out gifts to any kid that had a go. The look on their faces if they didn't win a piece of plastic crap wasn't worth the hassle.
I spotted another mum from the same class, grabbed her to run the stall and scarpered to try and find Tim and Rhiannon. But I was distracted by a rather fascinating "outsider" stall selling table runners made from antique obi material. Beautiful items, so I treated myself to a couple.
Then I spotted a very large sheep. No, I wasn't hallucinating - I poked it to make sure. It was definately a sheep. A very large one (but I forget the breed now). Attached to it was a man who ran an organic farm somewhere near Fuji. I'm afraid I rather monopolised him for a while as I do like sheep (my best friend runs a sheep farm in Wales) and the ludicrousness of seeing a sheep in the middle of Tokyo, albeit the British Embassy, really tickled my sense of humour.
We were treated to a haunting musical interlude by some kimono-clad ladies playing traditional Japanese instruments.
Finally I found the rest of my family just in time for the raffle. The prizes were excellent, flights, hotels, really high-level stuff. We didn't win anything, of course. Just as the last ticket was drawn, a huge crash of thunder boomed out and the heavens opened.
I've never seen so many people leave so quickly.
Too late I discovered there was beer and Pimms stalls. Ah well...
