Carols in the Park

 Last night I took my Stalky self off to the park for our town's "Carols in the Park".  I made sure to smother myself in bug repellent first, snaffled Mystical Roo's camera and off I went.  I've been to a few events in the park but this certainly seemed to draw the biggest crowd.  There were people everywhere!  Even walking to the park was crowded and I had to do some serious dodging to avoid collisions.  I found myself a hole in the crowd, a vacant spot of grass, and homed in on it before plonking myself down whilst cursing myself for wearing a white skirt.  Foolish Stalky.  I was on my lonesome for about half an hour until I located Bob-A-Roony, Duke and Squishy and joined them on the blanket.  It was a great atmosphere in the park and I think about a quarter of the town had turned out to listen to various folk do some singing on the stage.  There was something very surreal about sitting in the heat, watching the ocean, whilst listening to Christmas songs.  I still can't get my head around associating summer with Christmas.  There were some great voices there last night, including one of our favourites, Penny from Penny and the Mystics.  There were also some not so great voices.  One dude massacred Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)".  He did an ok job until he went for the high notes and never made it.  You could feel the crowd cringe.  Bless him, he kept asking us to join in, I think to cover this up.  Well I don't think we were going to do much better.  It was kind of nice though.  A mix of good singing and squiffy singing made the whole event more...homely I guess.  There were glow sticks in the hands of most of the kids and by the time the sun went down the park was amass with flickering lights.  It looked so pretty.  I did try to capture this moment on Mystical Roo's camera but I have a notoriously shaky hand and actually don't know how to use the camera so some of the shots came out a bit blurred.  Mystical Roo tells me this is because I didn't have the flash on and the camera was taking slow shots to absorb as much light as possible.  Oh, I see.  He's so wise, that Mystical Roo.  Ammy and and Treacle also joined us, along with Mystical Roo's grandma who is here on holiday.  Mystical Roo was returning from a trip in Brisbane so alas was not present for Carols in the Park.  It was a nice evening and maybe helped push me to feeling a little more festive.  It's great that the town can put on events like this that are free of charge to the public and take advantage of the wonderful location of our little town.  I think a good time was had by all and I only came home with two extra mozzie bites.  Result.