Bunty Takes Sanctuary at the Manor

  CAROLS AT ST APPOLONIA'S 

The carol service started at 4pm this year. Early enough for the children to stay awake and late enough for us to digest our Sunday lunches before the off. 

The church was very beautiful. Candles everywhere. My window looked very elegant if I dare say so myself…the poinsettias from Aldi still looked fresh…they were quite good enough. There's no need to splash out at Waitrose when the sill is so very high up and nobody looks that closely. 

The Sunday school had decorated a rather sparse Christmas tree (its needles were already dropping) with paper stars and other tat that they’d been working on, and with the lights switched on it was almost pretty. 

We started with the first verse of Once in Royal sung as a solo…by Tanya Hooper of all choices. 

Her voice was truly sublime in the darkness and gave me quite a festive tingle down my spine. If she hadn’t been picking her nose when the lights came on for verse two, the performance would have been perfect. Still, onwards and upwards, the readings began with the story of Adam and Eve and moved on to the foretelling of Christ’s birth and the Annunciation.

At St Apollonia’s the tradition is to pause at this point for the nativity play.

Tanya starred again as Mary, betrothed to five year old Oliver Proute who played the part of Joseph, with a patch over one lens of his glasses giving him a rather piratical air. They made their way to the front accompanied by another child in a donkey suit that had seen better days. 

‘No room, no room,’ shouted the Inn Keeper adjusting his tea towel head dress. ‘You’ll have to go round the back.’ 

The congregation laughed at this tiny joke.

Shepherds next…more tea towels and a moth-eaten sheepskin rug, before the procession of kings. 

Gold (a gaudy jewellery box) and Frankincense (a jar of bath salts) were handed over with due ceremony. But Balthazar, AKA Russel Proute, aged 4 and younger brother of the diminutive St Joseph, refused to part with his gift. 

‘Myrrh is MINE!’ he shouted, clinging on to his tea caddy with both hands. 

Well, there was no way the Holy family was going to let him get away with that!

 Joseph planted a right hook in his brother’s eye and Mary knocked off Joseph’s glasses whilst making a grab for the Myrrh. Balthazar gamely fought back and gave the Blessed Virgin a good shove in the stomach, her elbow catching the donkey on the side of his head and knocking him against the Advent Crown. This toppled the burning candles over the Vicar, who had by now arrived to play umpire, and set his surplice alight. 

Thank heavens Norma had the presence of mind to run up to the front with a saucepan of mulled wine or we might never have got the fire out. The wine was already up to temperature of course, but one doesn’t think of these things in an emergency.

It was decided to abandon the play under the circumstances, and while poor Rev Colin mopped the sticky red wine from his vestments, and ran his scalded hands under the vestry tap, Mrs Rudhall struck up her own special version of Silent Night on on full organ, and we all joined in.  

Despite our lusty efforts, the carol failed utterly to drown out the wailing angels at the back of the church. Their moment of fame had been cancelled. All that tinsel had been for nothing.

I think most of us also heard a less than sotto voce ‘FFS’ and a slam of the door as they were taken home by their father.

The rest of the service passed without further incident and when we had raised our voices in the last carol complete with screaming descant…Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the New Born King, we all agreed that it had been one of the best carol services ever. 

The truth is we all prefer coffee to Norma’s boiled out mulled wine anyway.

Crichton comments 

What sport! A boxing match and human immolation all rolled into one. 

I expect poor old Colin Childers will stink like an alcoholic tramp for days. 

If all church services were as exciting as this, the C of E would have no trouble packing the aisles on a Sunday morning. 

Thank God, we didn’t have to drink Norma’s disgusting mulled wine. It’s absolute poison and the bits of twig and grit get stuck in my teeth.