Oh god, don't make me remember this
At primary school, we had a nativity show every year, in which every child had a part - in a school of 50 kids, that wasn't too bad, but it meant that I ended up as a sulking angel every year, as did both my sisters, whilst my brother went from sheep to donkey to sheep again depending on which teacher was doing the casting. It was normally shite, tuneless, and badly produced by the frumpy bints who spent the rest of the year shrieking at us about spelling and projects (whilst managing to fit in some borderline racism directed at the 1 black kid, and the few of us who had the temerity not to have broad glaswegian accents).

I'd somehow managed to block the bastard thing out of my memory, but a few years ago, a friend decided we should sit down together and watch a video her dad had made of the show when she and I were in our final year, and our various siblings were scattered through the ranks.

It started well (the video wouldn't start), but sadly someone got it working. 50 children, the majority of them with thick glaswegian accents, screeching their way through 'silent night', 'oh little town of Bethlehem' and 'Come all ye faithful', is not a pretty sound - imagine 50 cats dragging their claws across a burning blackboard, and you'll be close to the cacophany. One child kept wandering off stage left (sadly not being attacked by a bear), another had his finger rammed so far up his nose you could see a lump in his skull, two of the older kids kept trying to push eachother off the stage. However, what really seared the horror into my memory, was Mary W., a child from, shall we say, a slightly rough background, sitting at the front of the stage with her skirt thrown up, and her hands strumming on her knickers, little naked fanny shown to the whole school.

My friend's father has now destroyed the video, lest the police ever raid his home and find it by accident.

Oh, and apparently Mary W (who must be 25 by now) is in a secure mental facility, whilst her 2 children live with their respective fathers.

I'm looking forward to the day I can see my child in his or her first school play already...
( ascorbate, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 19:01, Reply)