AIBU to be baffled a mum had no idea the school fayre was happening?

[xAwaywiththefairiesx]

Today my daughter's primary school had a spring fayre after school on the school field. Ice cream van, face-painting, various stalls with games, the usual. All arranged by the PTA to raise money for the school.
There was a mufti day today, and the children were asked to bring a donation to the school as an exchange for the mufti, something like cakes to sell or a teddy for the tombola or a bottle of wine as a prize or something.
One mum wanders onto the field after school, with both of her kids in mufti, looking around bewildered saying "What's this? Is this a new thing they're doing? Will it be every week?"

And this is so weird to me because the spring fayre has been organised for months. We have lots of emails asking for donations, several more asking for volunteers, we've had at least three leaflets home about it, and she obviously got the memo about mufti, the whole point in which was for the school fayre!

My phone own child has been banging on about it for three weeks.

How can she get so unaware? I'm not judging, honestly, I'm just baffled how it got past her.

Is it just me? Could you miss something like this after all that communication?

This!! If someone mentioned “mufti day” to me I’d probably assume the same, that they were talking about some sort of fanny convention 🤦‍♀️🤣

'Mufti, is a word very commonly used in the UK.

It is local slang.

It 100% is not a word I have ever used or even heard of until today on MN. Just not a think where I live in the NW of England.

I must be overly invested in this one, as I just put a message in my friends group chat and not one person has responded saying they had ever heard of it or used it. 1 of them has worked in schools all over the Middle East and another one who has worked in the Channel Islands (neither have heard it used in those places either).

I think this whole conversation on mufti is a contender to replace cancel the cheque 😂

Can’t be that common because there’s an awful lot of people on this thread who have never heard of it.

It's not local to any particular part of the UK. It was used across the British Army and spread from there across the country and to Australia, New Zealand and other places.

It may, for some reason, have dropped out of common usage more in some areas than others now but its origins are not localised to a particular part of England.

I asked my 79 and 80 year old mother and father today and they had never heard of it either.

And my 77 year old mum uses it regularly. Not sure what that tells us!

Ah you caught me. It's the latest PTA event.

I bet if we sent home leaflets advertising the PTA's fanny convention, all the parents would know about it 😜

Again, that it’s more of a regional thing rather than a nationwide one that has slowly died out. Like I said a few minutes ago, if anyone said “mufti day” to someone where I live, they would most likely assume it was some sort of weird fanny convention. We use the word “muff” around here as a slang term for a fanny and that is probably what would spring to most people’s minds where I live!

But what region? I know it partly from my parents using it as a regular word and a lot from books. My parents are from, at various times, Kent, Hertfordshire, North London, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire and the West Midlands. I don't think it's tied to any of those places or would have been unusual in any of them.

It might be dropping out of use faster in some places than others. But its origins and earlier usage are not regional within the country.