A Fete Worse than Death

Last week while Tim was in CA I had to drag the kids thru the "Summer Fayre" at Sara's school. It was very earnest but SO disorganized. They'd been planning to have it on the playground, but it was pouring, of course, so they were forced to cram themselves into the corridors and classrooms and 2 small gym halls. They had a bouncy castle in one hall and a magician and refreshments (along with 3 different raffles, a plant stall, paint-your-own flowerpots, bake sale items--yes, you can sell baked goods if parents are coming along to supervise their nut-allergic kids in buying). One of the disappointments was that the visiting fire engine had to leave to put out a fire ten minutes after it got there. Mark and I got to watch the firemen putting on their suits and then speeding across the playground with siren wailing--and ten kids running after them, JUST LIKE in all the classic pictures of fire engines. Sara came out of the school building about thirty seconds later and said, "Where's the fire engine?" and we told her, "It had to leave to put out a fire."
-------------------
In other news:

Mark (5 years old): Why is your eye so small but it can see big huge things? My eyes are very small but I can see the whole of you, and you're big.

Tim (45 years old, pompously): "The eye is the window of the soul."

He wasn't trying to be helpful when he said it, but I took that ball and ran with it. "Look, the window of our house isn't very big, but you can see all of Perth and Kinoull Hill out there! Your eye is like a window!"
--------------------
I just adore Fullmetal Alchemist. It is so gorgeous and sweet and melodramatic and irreverent. Sara likes it too.

Incidentally, is there some special significance to the enormous array of manga characters who are blind (or nearly blind) in their right eye? I have got a character in an unpublished novel who is blind in his right eye (Dark Secrets of E Wein)