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Saturday, October 26, 2013

Pinky's Guide to Ideas for Fete Stalls.

                             Rach, Pinky and Emma.

“So what type of stall are you doing at this year’s fete, Pinky?” queried an indifferent Scotto on the eve of his eighth effort of helping me out at my school’s annual fete.

Scotto has endured working on stalls spruiking ugly, clay pots made by my class of six year olds, lampshades decorated by a similar demographic, cake stalls, a second-hand book stall, a haunted house, showbags and a plant stall.

“We’re doing glow-in-the dark stuff and helium balloons,” I replied nervously.

“I’ll agree to sell the glow-in-the-dark stuff but I’m not going near any balloons,” my big, strong, tough, globophobic manly-man spluttered.

Scotto, you see, is frightened of balloons.

Rach, my teaching buddy, Emma and I, had spent a good part of the hot afternoon preparing our stall and were set to go. The fete was set to launch off at 5:30pm and we waited for the onslaught of excitable midgets to descend like a cloud of bats at dusk. We secretly hoped we’d be sold out of stock by 6:00pm.

So… we waited… and waited… and waited.

Apparently glow-in-the-dark paraphernalia is only appealing when it actually gets dark. Who knew?

We could hear our prospective clientele shrieking in exuberant thrill on the oval where the jumping castles and rides were and the sugar-infused hobbits had no intention of visiting our fine stall in any forseeable future.


A couple of world-weary parents rocked up to help out, so Scotto and I decided to go for a wander and check out what creative inspiration the other teachers had dreamed up.


In order to ensure the rugrats were sufficiently hyped up, psyched up and 'sweetened' up, several of my fellow teachers had decided to act as logistics specialists...


         Bea at the chocolate toss... no losers here!

        Fluffed up, multi-coloured sugar! Yay!

               Feeling thirsty after all the salty sugar?
       Try the soft drink toss with Greggles and Kristen!

                                             Or the frozen version!
                        Slushies with Kaz and Jodye...

And of course some take-away sugar via the tombola stall run by Gilly!

Suitably staggering in a zombie-like sugar-coma, the kids were then free to colonise other fun-filled stalls, for instance...
                  Face painting a-la Glenys Da Vinci

             Mystery sock (pick a sock to find a surprise)
             So that's where all those bloody socks go!

          Stick in the Sand (pick a stick to win a prize... I'm                                seeing a pattern here)

And of course entertainment for the parents...
An auction of all the works of art created by their progeny.

The home-made cakes and slices stall manned by Adele   and Emma!

                And of course... the BOOZE BARROW!
(Scotto making a dodgy agreement with Geoff that he'd win the raffle... we're still waiting for the call though.)

The only other stall (apart from ours) which didn't seem to be seeing any action was the plant stall. I wonder why?
               Lee-lee, Dylan and Kyles working hard for the money.

Finally, at 8:30pm the oval was abandoned and the flying monkeys flocked in noisily; surrounding our stall, thrusting sticky fingers clutching crumpled five dollar notes at us, pointing to the various glowing swords, skulls, aliens and fairy wands and jumping from foot to foot in hyperactive mania.

Scotto was so happy when the night was at an end he wet his pants...

No... he didn't really. Not being accustomed to hanging around schools he mistook the water trough for a bench and sat in it!

Oh well, at least it's over for another year.