It’s been a pretty decent week, all told. The weather’s been half decent, we had an outing to Bubble’s Nativity production and we capped the week with a Bubbleicious Sleepover – who could ask for anything better than that?
We went along on Thursday evening to Bubble’s Nativity Play at her primary school. It’s been a very, very long time since I attended a primary school nativity play but this one was very, very good indeed. The production was entitled “Lights, Camels, Action” and it was terrific with lots of foot-tapping songs and dancing. The show was modelled around a reality television program such as “Britain’s Got Talent” – I’m not sure what the American equivalent is called. Each participant or group would come out to centre stage and perform a song and dance. This was followed by the Judges’ comments and then each judge would hold aloft his or her score for that particular act. The judges were played by the Innkeeper’s Wife, Caesar and the Donkey. Unfortunately, the Donkey was overcome with an horrendous attack of stage fright and every time it came to one of his lines, he scowled and shook his head vigorously – no way was he going to say anything! So, after a suitable pause to see if he recovered his nerves, his lines were read by one of the teaching staff so that the narrative could proceed. He did, however, secure a thunderous applause every time he held his scores aloft.
Annabelle shone in her performance as one of the townspeople of Nazareth. This involved a song and an intricate and sophisticated line dance with lots of action and wheeling around arm in arm. Absolutely marvellous.
One thing that did strike me during the performance – 5 to 7 year olds clearly cannot stand still for any period of time. As you watched them on stage it was like a sea of perpetual motion. Each child in turn would fidget, scratch his/her tummy, pick their nose and inspect the contents carefully, wave frantically to their mother and father and/or in our case, the dutiful grandparents. How teachers of students at Key Stage One cope is well beyond my ability to even begin to understand.
Then, on Friday we had another treat as the delightful Angel that is Annabelle came for a sleep over which is always great fun. She arrived dressed as an Angel and Nick came up with the excellent idea of grabbing a quick photo, printing and cutting it out to produce an angel for the top of our Christmas tree – a great idea!
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Annabelle brought Chippy with her for the sleepover. Some of you will know if you are “friends” with Lucy on Facebook, Chippy is Bubble’s “Elf on a Shelf” who somehow gets up to incredible mischief every night when Bubble is asleep. Apparently we were assured that Chippy would be good as gold during his visit and would not get up to any mischief in the night. Oh, how wrong we were to trust him. During the night he somehow managed to find his way into the refrigerator where he proceeded to gobble a stash of bread sticks. We spent some considerable time on Saturday morning looking all over the house for him before he was eventually discovered.
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Christmas cards have started arriving in our letter box which means, I guess, that it’s about time for us to get our Christmas act organised. The tree has been acquired from the farmer down the road and erected in a suitably festive spot in the lounge. Cards have been purchased, address labels printed, and an account of the past year has been prepared. All that remains is for Ms Playchute to write the individual greetings for each of the thirty-seven hundred cards! You can expect yours to arrive about Easter, I reckon.
Much love to you all,
Greg