Dearest blog followers, what do you all get up to on Friday
nights? Anyone been roped into judging two beauty pageants on consecutive
weekends? Nope? Nobody else? OK. Just me then.
No word of a lie, this is quite honestly what I spent both
last Friday night and yesterday evening doing. The first event was the
secondary school hostel’s annual Miss Funny competition, where the boys
essentially dress up in the girls’ clothes and take part in a mock beauty
contest. As it has to be judged by staff other than the school’s teachers,
Caitlin, Jenita & I were given the absolute privilege of becoming judges
for the evening.
We were expecting silly outfits, arbitrary scoring not to be
taken too seriously and just generally having a bit of a laugh. How foolish we
were, to think that this was not going to be a massive deal. Handbags at dawn
doesn’t even cover it – the bling was on, the struts were out and the inner
divas were unleashed on the dining hall for the evening. Each contestant had a formal introduction AND
three outfits, meaning a total of four trips down the catwalk and a very
detailed score sheet. For them, it may have been fiercely competitive, but that
only made it all the more hysterical for us. Tears were rolling as these
enormous secondary school boys – some of whom are older than me – navigated the
makeshift catwalk in heels that my father probably wouldn’t let me out in,
pouting and sashaying all in the name of Miss Funny 2013.
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In the end, only four could win, but I rather feel that we
got the best deal out of the evening. We
must have done something right, as we were asked to judge a second
pageant last night. This time, it was the primary school girls’ turn to compete
for the title of Miss Beauty 2013. The evening was a fundraiser for our
community’s youth development group that all of the volunteers are involved in,
which is excellent news for the group and it was great fun for all involved.
The difference with this pageant is that it was most definitely not a joke –
this was business. This was war (in kitten heels).
Four rounds were closely fought, and although I found myself
cringing at their questionably appropriate modelling, you could certainly never
say they hadn’t put in a lot of effort and were all really enthusiastic. In the
end,We genuinely had tears. I wasn’t entirely sure whether they were tears of
disappointment with a mere Miss Personality or 1st Princess title,
or tears of elation. Fortunately for us, it was the latter – the winning four
were so chuffed that they jumped on us when we congratulated them. The mother
of the girl who came 3rd was so delighted, she even ambushed Caitlin
with a hug! Given that I cannot imagine these kids ever hugging any of their
other teachers, I think we’ve certainly won over a few students . Hopefully
they will come to our rescue when we’re faced with the cold shoulders of the
other four girls who didn’t win, and are probably furious, on Monday morning at
school.
At school this week, we’ve been marking World Health Day in
our Arts and BIS lessons, but I feel that this deserves its own post – I’ll
write another update as soon as I can. Before then, I absolutely have to thank
every single one of The Breakfast Condiment Burglars at PwC for your marvellous
contributions to the latest parcel from home.
Jam here is a strange business: either you spend a small fortune on
proper jam in a proper jar, or you buy the cheap stuff in a tin and make do
with whatever fruit/food colouring counts as ‘mixed fruit’ this week. I had
asked Mum to send a few pots from home and when she couldn’t find any to buy in
Tesco, one or two colleagues were organised to take a few extra on their next
work hotel trip. Word quickly spread, and the PwC masses rose to the challenge,
pinching 8 pots of jam and 9 packets of Nutella for me. I am most amused,
utterly delighted, and very grateful to all of you. Baie dankie!
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