In a moment of patriotic fervour that nowadays would have a mob of the towns politically correct, sandal munching, lentil wearing brigade writing letters to the local council and picketing the school gates Mrs Smith, my 3rd year junior teacher decided that it would be a good idea to put on a play about St George and the dragon for our long suffering parents instead of the usual Easter pageant. If she had known the pain and anguish the change from the usual fluffy bunnies and chicks would cause she would have stuck to something safer like the life and times of Jack the Ripper, the battle of Thermopylae or maybe a recreation of the Normandy landings with real guns.
For most of us our acting careers consisted of the school nativity play or if you were really lucky a part in the summer pageant. I fell into the latter and as part of the school summer fair I got to be in the presentation about historical happenings. In it I was a sailor, not just any sailor, no, one who was to die of plague. Buying water from an itinerant water seller we succumbed to the black death in seconds, possibly the fastest succumbing ever and three of us spent the rest of the presentation lying on the tarmac of the playground wondering if this would get us our equity cards. Instead it got us a polite round of applause and a chance to skive off early and get the best of the pickings on the homemade cake and bric-a-brac stalls. However, Mrs Smith had grander designs and as part of our patriotic presentation I got to be the arse end of the dragon complete with diving flipper feet and that’s where I think it started to go wrong.
The dragon costume was fashioned from an old blackout curtain covered with tin foil scales and finished with a papier mache head made by the ‘special’ kids in the form that looked less like a dragon and more like the mutant offspring of a coupling between a penguin and a rhino. Myself, Dave and another kid called Mike made up the human part that made it move around in a vaguely dragon like way although it has yet to be proved that dragons shuffled around at about 1/10th of a mile per hour emitting the occasional half hearted "GRRR!" as they did so.
For most of us our acting careers consisted of the school nativity play or if you were really lucky a part in the summer pageant. I fell into the latter and as part of the school summer fair I got to be in the presentation about historical happenings. In it I was a sailor, not just any sailor, no, one who was to die of plague. Buying water from an itinerant water seller we succumbed to the black death in seconds, possibly the fastest succumbing ever and three of us spent the rest of the presentation lying on the tarmac of the playground wondering if this would get us our equity cards. Instead it got us a polite round of applause and a chance to skive off early and get the best of the pickings on the homemade cake and bric-a-brac stalls. However, Mrs Smith had grander designs and as part of our patriotic presentation I got to be the arse end of the dragon complete with diving flipper feet and that’s where I think it started to go wrong.
The dragon costume was fashioned from an old blackout curtain covered with tin foil scales and finished with a papier mache head made by the ‘special’ kids in the form that looked less like a dragon and more like the mutant offspring of a coupling between a penguin and a rhino. Myself, Dave and another kid called Mike made up the human part that made it move around in a vaguely dragon like way although it has yet to be proved that dragons shuffled around at about 1/10th of a mile per hour emitting the occasional half hearted "GRRR!" as they did so.
Okay, nothing too bad about that apart from the fact that Mike was form 3Bs champion farter. We were all convinced his mum must feed him nothing but baked beans and Brussels sprouts for every meal of the week. As soon as he got the slightest bit nervous or excited he would begin to break wind uncontrollably so as a result as soon as he was asked a question by the teacher almost every lesson would be disrupted by FAAAAAAAAARRRRPPP and moments later the kind of smell banned by several international treaties would waft across the classroom sending pupils rushing for the windows with watering eyes. As the back end of the dragon my head was to be uncomfortably close to the source of those emanations and all I could do was pray that his nerves would hold and he could control himself for the ten minutes we were to be on stage.
After weeks of practice and mercifully for me, no problems from Mikes rear quarters, the big day arrived, parents assembled in the school hall and as an extra special treat the inmates of the old folks home across the road were wheeled out and took place in the front row and so the play began. It all went quite well. The girls were suitably terrified by our first appearance, the choir sung their song about dragons and St George heroically set off on his quest riding his horse made from an old cardboard box painted in a horsey sort of brown with a hobby horse head poking from it and on meeting us lot in our dragon costume set about us with his sword somewhat enthusiastically and that’s when it went horribly, horribly pear shaped.
Whether it was the enthusiastic beating or just sheer excitement that our big moment had arrived the terror began…
“Have at thee!” yelled St George.
PHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP replied the dragon closely followed by my anguished scream of “ARGH! Fucking Hell!” as Mike let rip with the ripest, juiciest fart he had ever let rip with and I tried to escape the noisome cloud in the confines of the blackout curtain. Unfortunately the fact I was wearing diving flippers meant that going anywhere fast was difficult and as it happened, fate stuck its fingers into the mix and one of the straps on my flippers broke. Coughing and gasping and fighting to get clear the inevitable happened, I tripped over the flipper and the momentum of my fall toppled us off the stage and into the elderly residents of the old folks home who had up to that point been enjoying themselves. We landed in an explosion of papier mache, chicken wire, tin foil, dentures, Zimmer frames and walking sticks, flattening at least six of the poor old folk. Parents stood aghast as the teachers rushed in to save the elderly guests from a hideous fate in the form of a blackout curtain that was emitting curious FARP, FARP, FARP noises and from which a hades-like stench arose whilst two of their pupils crawled away to be sick in the rubber plant that stood next to the stage. At least two of the pensioners had begun having flashbacks to the Somme and had started screaming “GAAAASSSS!” and a third was poking the curtain with her walking stick, which merely inflamed the situation as Mike, tangled in the material let fly with another fruity barrage. Parents, pensioners and teachers alike began to evacuate the hall holding handkerchiefs over their noses leaving Dave and I to drag Mike from the curtain before throwing up in the plant pot again.
The next day the school hall was placed out of bounds and the windows were left open. Nothing was ever mentioned about the play again but we did notice the headmaster carrying large baskets of fruit and several bottles of wine across to the old folks home a couple of days later. Oh and Mrs Smith mysteriously left the school at the end of the summer term never to return or be talked of again. Presumably haunted by the day she almost managed to do what ‘the hun’ had failed to do and finish off several WW1 veterans in an unprovoked attack with chemical weapons of mass destruction in the guise of a school play.
After weeks of practice and mercifully for me, no problems from Mikes rear quarters, the big day arrived, parents assembled in the school hall and as an extra special treat the inmates of the old folks home across the road were wheeled out and took place in the front row and so the play began. It all went quite well. The girls were suitably terrified by our first appearance, the choir sung their song about dragons and St George heroically set off on his quest riding his horse made from an old cardboard box painted in a horsey sort of brown with a hobby horse head poking from it and on meeting us lot in our dragon costume set about us with his sword somewhat enthusiastically and that’s when it went horribly, horribly pear shaped.
Whether it was the enthusiastic beating or just sheer excitement that our big moment had arrived the terror began…
“Have at thee!” yelled St George.
PHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP replied the dragon closely followed by my anguished scream of “ARGH! Fucking Hell!” as Mike let rip with the ripest, juiciest fart he had ever let rip with and I tried to escape the noisome cloud in the confines of the blackout curtain. Unfortunately the fact I was wearing diving flippers meant that going anywhere fast was difficult and as it happened, fate stuck its fingers into the mix and one of the straps on my flippers broke. Coughing and gasping and fighting to get clear the inevitable happened, I tripped over the flipper and the momentum of my fall toppled us off the stage and into the elderly residents of the old folks home who had up to that point been enjoying themselves. We landed in an explosion of papier mache, chicken wire, tin foil, dentures, Zimmer frames and walking sticks, flattening at least six of the poor old folk. Parents stood aghast as the teachers rushed in to save the elderly guests from a hideous fate in the form of a blackout curtain that was emitting curious FARP, FARP, FARP noises and from which a hades-like stench arose whilst two of their pupils crawled away to be sick in the rubber plant that stood next to the stage. At least two of the pensioners had begun having flashbacks to the Somme and had started screaming “GAAAASSSS!” and a third was poking the curtain with her walking stick, which merely inflamed the situation as Mike, tangled in the material let fly with another fruity barrage. Parents, pensioners and teachers alike began to evacuate the hall holding handkerchiefs over their noses leaving Dave and I to drag Mike from the curtain before throwing up in the plant pot again.
The next day the school hall was placed out of bounds and the windows were left open. Nothing was ever mentioned about the play again but we did notice the headmaster carrying large baskets of fruit and several bottles of wine across to the old folks home a couple of days later. Oh and Mrs Smith mysteriously left the school at the end of the summer term never to return or be talked of again. Presumably haunted by the day she almost managed to do what ‘the hun’ had failed to do and finish off several WW1 veterans in an unprovoked attack with chemical weapons of mass destruction in the guise of a school play.
4 comments:
Being sick in a rubber plant. Are you related to Scaryduck??
Pseudonymph:
No, we just couldn't afford a hedge.
Please tell me that it is an artificial tree, not a shrub with contraceptives on it. Obviously you didn't go to a Catholic school!
It was definitely a 'Ficus Elastica Bali' as opposed to a Ficus Durexia Fetherlitus' and definitely not artificial as I think we killed it from nourishing it with regurgitated school custard and cabbage.
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