We used to do them at school. This was the boarding school we were all sent to (well the eldest three). Even at the time it struck me as a rather antiquated form of entertainment, both for the actors and the audience. It was centred on the Nativity and we ‘struck’ scenes, holding our poses, wobbling and trying not to fall for the time that the curtain was open. I never got to be an angel, not having the required blonde hair (it was the 70s) and was mostly cast as a water-carrier or a shepherd, and usually with a glued-on beard. (My school acting career did reach a more giddier height than that when I was cast as Elvira in Blithe Spirit but that was sometime later and due to Mrs Plaice’s careful nurturing (up in that attic room) of what she saw as my talent.) But back to the tableaux. I thought of them this morning as I walked and saw various groups of figures, mostly students, in the dark. Most were still, leaning against walls, talking in huddles or, as in the case, of the two boys outside the corner SPAR vaguely communing, with one standing reading his phone as the other leant forward, his hand clutching a railing, being sick.
The White Horse has put up it’s Christmas lights – long trails of them flicking on and off. Nice. It challenges the darkness. I hope that there will be more to come.
It’s Remembrance Sunday today, isn’t it? I said to him this morning. I’d thought of it as I’d walked home. My head is so full of my own worries that I forget the loss, pain and aching of others all too often.
And my hyacinths are beginning to come through. It is too soon, isn’t it? There are just the smallest of pokings – a pin prick of green. Will they last till the Spring?
