To market to market

It has been all go here for the last few weeks. As well as the marking I have been making cards to sell at three days worth of markets. Megan very kindly went down to Corowa and did that market alone so, on Friday, I took the day off work to go to the CMRI (Children's Medical Research Institute) markets.

It is a Christmas market held over two days each year at the racecourse. The weather has been mild up until now but it was getting very warm on Friday so we appreciated the cover.

I was with Liz to set up from just after 8 and apart from an hour when she had her children and took them around the stalls, we worked together. We saw lots of people we know and many people recognised me from the library.

While Liz was away with the children I served a lady with a Scottish accent. Of course I told her that she has my very favourite accent ever and she told me that she lectures and has come to accept that her accent is part of her appeal as a lecturer. It started to dawn on me that she might be my biology teacher from Year 11 so I asked her if she used to teach at Barker and when I told her my maiden name, she remembered me and told me all the people from my year that she still sees! It was a delightful meeting and it is so extraordinary that she could remember a girl she taught for one year, in 1989! For those who knew me at school, I quite enjoyed biology and liked Mrs Philps so was very well behaved in her class. If I were to run into my English, Maths or French teachers........

Two people told us that we had the prettiest stall. I said thank-you even though it is all thanks to Liz and Megan! I provide the Wedgewood boxes which act as our money tin and refill box, and a three tiered Willow pattern cake plate. On Saturday morning I went in alone as Megan and Liz have much smaller children and had no babysitters for the morning. I didn't have a coffee because I couldn't leave the stall to go to the loo!

Now we don't have any more markets till next year so I have free evenings without compulsory marking or making! I celebrated yesterday afternoon by finishing off Mary S Lovell's The Churchills. It was brilliant and I wish I could talk about Winston with my Granny. Now I'll concentrate on The Hare with Amber Eyes and I need to read my book club book again (How Proust Can Change your Life). Our final book for the year is The Paris Wife which I have been very keen to read. 

On Thursday I had to attach silver ribbon tape to 65 Christmas tags so did it in front of a movie. We read Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) for book club a few months ago and it had mixed reactions. Sonya had seen the film and enjoyed it so when I found it at the library I grabbed it to take home. Andrew was less than excited by the cover and even the fact that it is science fiction didn't make it appealing (actually, he didn't believe me) so I watched it alone. I think they did a brilliant job of interpreting the book. A few things were done differently, as is to be expected, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. I think the book's story about the song was far more poignant. In the film a young girl is given a tape by a boy she likes and is seen listening to "Darling never let me go", swaying and holding a pillow. Her friend sees her and we later see that she knew the young girl was in love and took the young man for herself. In the book, the song has the word 'baby' rather than darling, and she cradles a pillow as though it were a real baby. The person who sees her is Madame and she is moved to tears. The film obviously chose to focus on the romance at the expense of some depth but it was a lovely adaptation. I'm not a great fan of Keira Knightley and so it helps that her character isn't completely sympathetic.

My Fair Lady opened last night and was, by all accounts, brilliant. We are going to see it on Friday night and I can't wait, though I am a little apprehensive about Bethany staying up until after 11pm. Tonight we are heading down to the river for dinner with a large part of the cast and orchestra for the show. Actually, it's just the Shephards but four of them are in the show! I'm not looking forward to going outside because we are in that fabulous part of the year when one can be too hot and sneezing and scratching one's eyes out. I'm hoping it will rain so we can go to the Shephards' and play Just Dance 3.