Tales From the Bearpit

The Christmas Market also had real reindeer, who seemed pretty unfazed by all the attention. There were two donkeys too which the children could feed. Four-year-old Samuel, who was our excuse for visiting the animals, had a string of questions for his dad (in Spanish so this is a rough translation)- when were the reindeer going to be working? was Santa getting ready to go out now? when would he load the sleigh? were these all the reindeer? what would the route be? and so on.

I have just come back from the chaplaincy Christmas party where the games included 'pin the red nose on Rudolph' and a quiz with a question about how many reindeer do pull the sledge- leading to some heated debate about whether Rudolph took over from one of the others or was an extra. If you want to help choose this year's team go here and you can also help find Santa.

But maybe don't try and take a picture of Santa and the sleigh on Christmas Eve to sell to the papers. Following hot on last week's story about professional photographers being made redundant by all us enthusiastic digital photographers comes a story about the ways the press exploit amateur photographers and pass on the risk re libel etc. (You may not get to it from this link as it was in yesterday's Media Guardian- by Emily Bell- and I had to go through the most ridiculous registration performance to get to the media section online. ) Belll was also raising the issue of copyright- if I take a picture of a famous statue, then apparently that picture might breach copyright if I publish it.. I'd be interested to know what people think about that.

# posted by Mary Plain @ 10:47 pm