On parade

Once again we joined in the local Holiday Parade in our town, billed as possibly the shortest parade around at just 0.35 of a mile.  It was rather cold, so we processed at a fair lick and very quickly reached the end of it.  This year the entire family joined in, plus my friend J and her daughter, so that was a respectable number of us waving our little "I [heart] Fair Trade" flags (which I'd run up on the sewing machine in the afternoon) and handing out FT chocolate samples.

All the old favourites were in the procession, including the sewer truck ("Because nothing says 'Holidays' more than sewage," murmured J), but we saved our freezing fingers and toes and didn't hang around for Santa.  Instead we followed last year's tradition and went to be entertained by jazz and Christmas music kindly laid on by a local church.  We ran into a few people we knew there, and the kids got themselves a free dinner (if all-you-can-eat popcorn and cookies count as dinner).