A Bulb of Garlic and a Dream: Confessions from the School Christmas Fair Tombola
Photo: relux., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
There is a precise moment each December when the school hall stops smelling of floor polish and starts smelling of hot dogs, and you know the Christmas fair has arrived. It is not the fairy lights. It is not the slightly lopsided tree in the corner. It is the faint, unmistakable clatter of a tombola drum being filled with other people's cast-offs.
The tat-to-treasure ratio
Every tombola operates on a ratio nobody talks about. For every bottle of half-decent red, there are nine novelty pens that don't work, a small ceramic frog with a chipped toe, and a toiletries set that has clearly been regifted since 2019. The ratio is roughly one treasure to fourteen bits of tat, and yet we queue. We queue with a pound coin and a hopeful expression, because the tombola is not really a raffle. It is a communal confession: we all have a drawer of things we cannot throw away, and once a year we donate them to the school and pay a pound to win them back.
This year, I won a bulb of garlic. Not a bottle of wine. Not the hamper. A single, unpeeled bulb of garlic, presented to my child with the solemnity of a golden ticket. She was delighted. I was less so. But I have made peace with the garlic principle, and so should you.
The mum who has been stapling since 8am
Behind every fair is a woman — and it is almost always a woman — who has been in that hall since 8am, stapling raffle tickets to a piece of card with the quiet fury of someone who has already been asked three times whether the tombola accepts card. She has a lanyard. She has a clipboard. She has a look in her eye that says she has seen things, and most of them were in the lost property bin.
Be kind to her. Bring her a tea. Do not ask her where the glitter stall is, because she knows, and she is trying to protect you.
Field-tested tactics for the tombola of doom
1. Bring coins, not optimism. The card reader is a mythical beast at a school fair. Turn up with a fistful of pound coins and a fiver for the raffle, and you will be fine. Turn up with Apple Pay and you will spend eleven minutes explaining to a Year 6 child why the machine isn't working.
2. Deploy your child as cover. Children can win anything and be genuinely thrilled. A plastic whistle? Brilliant. A pack of felt tips with three missing? Excellent. Let them do the spinning. You stand back and preserve your dignity for the raffle.
3. Accept the garlic principle. If you see a bulb of garlic on the tombola table, buy a strip. You will not win the wine. You will win the garlic. Make peace with it now, and plan a nice pasta sauce.
4. Avoid the glitter stall. Glitter is not an activity. It is a lifetime commitment. It will follow you home, into the washing machine, and eventually into your child's school jumper for the nativity play. Walk past. Do not make eye contact.
5. Agree a tat amnesty at the door. Anything won goes to the charity shop by Tuesday. No exceptions. Not even the ceramic frog.
6. Buy a raffle ticket, not a Tombola strip, if you actually want to win something. The raffle odds are better, the prizes are nicer, and you do not have to feign excitement over a decorative spoon rest.
The real reason we queue
The fair raises about £400 and change, most of which goes on the year group's supply of glue sticks. The tombola is chaotic, faintly damp, and staffed by a mum who has been there since 8am and is now running on a mince pie and sheer willpower. It is not glamorous. But it is ours.
And when your child comes home with a bulb of garlic and a plastic frog, and tells everyone at tea that they won it themselves, you will remember why you queued. Roll up, roll up. Just bring coins.
