In true style of school fetes and English summertime in general Saturday, when it mattered, the weather was grim, on Sunday the weather was fine.

My mother, stalwart of the PTA, had organised the annual May Fair at my brother and sister’s school. Weather stricken set piece of suburbia. There was a dearth of volunteers, so I was manning a stall where children filled jars with coloured sand; I suppose channelling bleak 1950s style holidays on the Isle of Wight. I've never been to the Isle of Wight, I imagine it's bleak. I’d thought children today were consumer savvy sophisticates, but no, sand in jars remains very popular.

I can understand. When I was 7 my friend Alex brought me back a jar of coloured sand, which I treasured until I dropped it climbing out of a downstairs window. I was running away from home and had decided to begin my new life as an itinerant with my collection of china ornaments. I soon gave up on the idea. Mostly when I ran away I just skulked by the side of our house, by the privet bushes getting impatient waiting for my parents to notice I'd gone.

So Saturday it drizzled, was sullenly dry with a grey sky, threatened to drizzle again and then it rained. A man made announcements over the tannoy, we huddled under a tree shared by our sand stall and the plant stall. Some children danced around the maypole, to the same maypole dancing music cassette tape they've had since I was at the school (and schools still used cassette tapes). My brother won a coconut from the coconut shy and one of the classrooms was converted into a reptile house, where an iguana did a poo behind the book case. There was the sorriest white elephant stall in the world, a terrifyingly food poisonous cake stall of sunken charred fairycakes and a tombola.

After the fete I went to work, normally I do all day Sundays not Saturday afternoons but there were two birthday parties in so my boss switched my hours. Anyway, less said about that the better. Couldn’t go out in the evening because I was on brother care duties, and he was having a hissy fit because mum hadn’t taken him ice-skating with Sister B and her friends. By hissy fit I mean he cried for abut three hours solid, in between fits of shouting and sullenly watching Doctor Who while I brought him cups of jasmine tea.

I’ve been ice-skating five times in my life and each time I’ve gone I’ve got worse. Once when I was a child and was relatively fearless. Then when I was 15 with K (heart stopping coming out novel moment, she held my hand and dragged me around the ice, if only I’d had a sequel with someone else since it would be less pathetic). The other times have been at Christmas with friends.

Anyway, I had Sunday free so I met AC in town and we ate cake sitting by the river, and walked in the park to the horses. We sat on the grass, chatting shared a pomegranate which I produced inexplicably with a flourish from my handbag. I’d had to prise it open without a knife, and ended up sitting cross legged, barefoot in my long white dress with a half of a pomegranate in each hand and seeds on my lap, looking like a symbolist painting. And that made us laugh and everything made us laugh.

I still need a decent novel to read. I am reading 'Wilderness Tips' and although I love short stories (and Margaret Atwood, of course), I haven't read an actual novel for months. Actually, that's untrue- but I've been rereading novels. I need something new.