Mirkwood banquet

[adaeze]

First, a huge thanks to all the organisers / caterers / decorators / tireless workers who made last night's Taruithorn banquet such a success.  I never cease to be amazed by the imagination and skill that goes into turning the hall into anywhere from the Halls of Mandos to Edoras.  The black butterflies on the wall, the cobweb maze and the spider pinata were particularly memorable, as were the cheesy-almondy bits.

Second, I want to record for posterity the conversation in which we all agreed how terrible it was the way modern electronic toys with fancy gizmos and bells and whistles were limiting children's play, when we were little we were expected to use our imaginations, mutter mutter mutter.  This debate was triggered by a small child putting a plain cardboard tube down on the table and announcing that it needed to be left to recharge.

And in my Cinderella-like dash for the penultimate train, I managed to leave my trousers behind.  Least said about that the better.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I've got a book by Steve Roud on children's playground games, which starts with a quote saying that children's nowadays have forgotten how to play, not like it was when we were young. It was written round about 1900.

Did you cut things so fine that the doors closed on your trousers, and you had to wriggle out of them in order to save your life? That sort of thing seems to happen in films quite a lot.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

phina_v found a similar quote in a book Pelago inherited from our grandfather, where the author complains that modern toys do everything for children and stop them using their imaginations; book published in 1800-something. Presumably Mrs Ugg complained that when she was a child she played with a plain stone and was happy with it, none of this knapped-flint nonsense.