Nativity

The school nativity play was obviously one of the highlights of the year. It was a time when parents appeared to discover their inner religiousness and could be heard muttering “Oh Christ! It’s that time of year again!” and everyone from first year infants to second year juniors joined together to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

For us kids it was a time to escape the boredom of normal afternoon lessons from the end of November to the big day itself as we rehearsed and practiced under the tutelage of Miss Dent, our somewhat earnest ‘Music and Movement’ teacher.

The format of the play was pretty much set in stone, there wasn’t much scope for radical change, Miss Dent was not noted for her avant garde ideas and the Pythons had not come up with the ‘Life of Brian’ at that point. As it had been for years of school nativity plays and continues up to this day, Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem, get put up in a stable filled with kids dressed in costumes vaguely resembling sheep and cows and the rocking horse from the pre-schoolers classroom disguised as a Donkey, are visited by shepherds aka more kids with their mums best tea towel on their heads, three wise men (more kids but those whose parents could make a better looking costume) and a bunch of angels (all the girls who failed to get the starring role of Mary in sheets and glittery wings made from coat hangers). At some point the infant Jesus is miraculously born, miraculously meaning skipping the childbirth thing lest it traumatise the parents and turns out to be a doll that lost an arm sometime round 1969 wrapped in a towel. All the kids sing some hymns in praise of this, the assembled parents go “Ahhhh!” and the teachers think “Thank God that’s over for another year!” and head home for a stiff gin. Not a lot can go wrong.

Well, not a lot can go wrong unless you decide to add a squad of Roman soldiers to the mix as Miss Dent decided to do. It was quite an innocent idea really, to have three Roman soldiers stop the weary Joseph and Mary on the road to Bethlehem and ask who they were so that Joseph and Mary could introduce themselves to the audience. During rehearsals this went fine, the centurion played by Damian simply said “Halt! Who seeks entrance to Bethlehem?” and Joseph answered “Two tired travellers, Mary and Joseph from Gallillee”

However, come the big day things did not quite work out so nicely. Part of it might have been my fault but much of the blame fell on Miss Dent and her quest for authenticity as she demanded that the Roman soldiers were armed with swords and spears to add to their military authority. Even aged seven I had a fair collection of toy weapons and two of these were modelled on the Roman Gladius so being the good schoolboy I was I volunteered them for the school play. I believe the rest of the class described it as ‘sucking up to the teacher’. That’s my part in the sorry debacle that followed. The rest of the blame fell squarely on Damian and Simon, the latter of whom was playing Joseph. A minor playground spat over some Matchbox cars had blown up into all out warfare with Damians ‘gang’ who happened to consist of the other two ‘soldiers’ and Simons gang constantly at each others throats.

So, come the afternoon of the play the local church hall that was used was filled with parents and grandparents, some of whom had not had several large drinks before coming to numb them to the pain of a primary school nativity, most of the teachers who were wishing they had had several stiff drinks and of course the vicar.

The lights were dimmed and the play began and began well with the Angel of the Lord beginning her narration and Mary and Joseph appearing from one side of the stage trudging their weary way to Bethlehem. It went quite well for about thirty seconds more until the Romans appeared. Costume problems meant that their breast plates and helmets were made out of cardboard covered with tinfoil so they looked less like Romans than a bunch of schoolkids who had gone a bit mental in the stationery cupboard. They were however, armed. Armed with my toy swords and a dangerous looking spear consisting of a cardboard point stuck to one of the caretakers broom handles.

“Halt!” cried Damian in his best centurions voice…and then in a total deviation from the script demanded “Your papers please!” in his best impression of a boys war comic Gestapo officer. From where the rest of us were standing in the wings you could see teachers beginning to twitch.

“Wha’? We haven’t got any papers.” Said Simon, confusion written on his face.

“Then you’re not getting into Bethlehem. Push off!” replied Damian poking Simon with his sword.

“Yes we are!” was Simons answer only to be told “No you’re not!” and rewarded with another poke of the sword. By now, the audience was beginning to pay attention, even the ones who had previously been planning to sleep off their several large whiskies. A number of the teachers had begun to move down the aisle.

“Don’t poke me with that again or I’ll duff you up!” snapped Simon. Poke went the sword and all hell broke loose. Imagine the scene in ‘Gladiator’ when the Romans are doing battle with the Germanic hordes. It was like that with seven year olds. Simon jumped on Damian, Damians two mates jumped on Simon. The shepherds who consisted of three of Simons friends rushed on stage and began battering the Romans with their crooks and the Angel of the Lord who was Damians older sister jumped from her podium and began to lay into them yelling “Stop hitting my brother or I’ll bash you!” in a most un-angelic manner. Fists were flying, glittery wings, tea towels and cardboard armour were sailing to the four winds and Miss Dent looked like she was about to burst into tears as several of the other teachers waded in to separate the combatants and cart them off to the room at the back of the hall.

With the loss of several of the leads the performance was doomed to conclude in a rather half hearted rendition of ‘Oh come all ye faithful’ by the non-combatants and afterwards we were sworn to “Never talk of this again!” by Miss Dent who was seen shortly afterwards buying several bottles of vodka in the local off licence.

I never got my swords back either.

Hurrah for Saint George!

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.

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.