Reigate Christmas Fayre 2013

Quick Video highlight reel from the weekend (mostly Santa arriving in Priory Park via helicopter)! ;) Oh and we can't miss this one - Thomas coming down the Helter Skelter all on his own - He actually held up his hand to stop me at the steps at the bottom and said "NO DADDY - JUST ME - I CAN DO IT" (at this rate, Poppy is going to be skiing down Everest by the time she is four - the amount she is boiling with will to push past him at every turn!) -

Loads more pictures in the (growing) Christmas 2013 set over here... ;)

Borough Market Christmas Decorations...

...have started to appear over the last couple of days(!), these were first...

...although not all of them were illuminated, today these new objects appeared...


...(really will have to bring the proper camera in, the one on the S2 is terrible in even slightly low light)...anyway, it's turned into quite a festive walk into the office in the morning! ;)

Christmas decorations are up!

Ah, Christmas is almost here! We spent a very enjoyable Sunday (with Will Ferrell's hilarious "Elf" on the TV in the background) trying to work out how to reassemble the (German Christmas Market) Nativity (which Thomas completed for us by adding the purple hippopotamus which we had somehow managed to forget - Silly Mummy and Daddy!) -

- struggling to work out how to put together the (German Christmas Market) bell-candle-impeller-thing (sure they have a proper name, Christmas Chime or something, but I can't find it), which was totally illogical in it's construction (but we got there in the end, after only being knocked on the floor by Thomas twice, helping Daddy to start all over again-

- put batteries back in all the plush-noisy electronica and plugged in the fibre-optic nativity (which warbles a couple of cut down Christmas hymns far too noisily)-

- and ventured out into the trecherously icy garden to bring back in our live Christmas tree (now about to enjoy it's *third* year, warm and cosy in the house)-

- this is what it looked like when we first bought it back in 2008...it's practically doubled in height! :)

Anyway, the countdown is now well and truly underway, my last full day at work before Christmas is the 16th! Woo Hoo!! :)

Arty pictures of Christmas at Canary Wharf

Sorry, feeling a bit abstract at the moment...it's sort of liberating not to worry too much about focus (and things) for a while... ;)

Jolly Farmers Christmas Market

On Sunday we were lucky enough to spot this Christmas Market running at the Jolly Farmers pub/restaurant/deli/thingie in Betchworth (that link was from our last visit - a slightly disastrous day) on our way to the car boot sale to get some of our wedding pictures framed...We decided to stop by on our way back, pulling into the car park to be asked if we had made a reservation for lunch (we hadn't) and being directed into a muddy field as a result of our negative answer (even though there were spaces in the hard standing one) where we were met by an absolutely manic man (with a crazed look in his eye) as if he had been doomed to an eternity of trying to organise thousands of cars in hell, rather than (roughly) 1 car every five minutes for two days...

Obviously with Poppy the Beetle being all new (and just having been washed on Saturday) Flyingpops was rather loath to park where the mad, bellowing gentleman was yelling at her to drive (amid babbling assurances we wouldn't get stuck or muddy "It was perfectly alright yesterday you know!"), but as he started yanking large poles from the ground and twitching uncontrollably, she yielded...We slid our way across the car park (slightly frazzled) to the sounds of the guy shrieking at his next victim and struggled up the hill, past a chap who appeared to be making broken tent pegs from perfectly good pieces of wood -

- (as we passed him he commented, to no-one in particular "Oh no, now it's busy, that's when things normally start to go wrong", causing me to gaze with some confusion as he shredded more of the tent peg to one side with a large blade, wondering how it could possibly get any worse), and then we were into the market itself...


...which was actually rather good, lots of local produce (or so it was claimed), including all sorts of meats and fish -


- a good selection of tasting, including cheeses and Hepworth Beer from Horsham (so I know that definitely was local) -

- all sorts of crafts (including the wood some of which was for sale), Flyingpops was actually quite taken by the Christmas trees -

- (oh, and it turned out the tent pegs were supposed to be parrots) -

- an excellent selection of veg (shame we had already been to Tesco), (the extremely popular) mulled wine, and a Christmas BBQ of festive burgers and sausages (which no-one seemed interested in, but perhaps it was a little early for lunch)...

When it came time to leave, we *did* (as Flyingpops feared) get stuck in the mud, much wheel spinning (*covering* the car in mud), pushing and shoving (covering the windscreen in muddy hand prints) from me and the parking guy (serving him just about right), we finally managed to get back on the firm stuff and escape...

Parking aside, it was actually really good, and on the face of it, all very local produce...so one must applaud the effort and hope that they do a similar thing next year...

Bravo... ;)