It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Yesterday, my family and I attended my brother’s school’s Carol service. It’s a little tradition of ours; we may complain about how cold it is, how the teachers talk too much, how there are too many children, but in truth, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without it.

This year we were first subjected to a performance from the handbells.  The handbells are arguably the most pointless instruments in the world. Perhaps if the children could sound the bells at the right time, or even just fill the silences it would be better. But no, instead we hear a ‘ding’ from one child, wait five minutes, and hear a ‘dong’ from another. Whether or not they were meant to be playing a ‘dong’ is a completely different matter. Sometimes you want to shout out “That shouldn’t have been a dong. That quite clearly should have been a bing. You have a choice of maybe 4 notes, and YOU CHOSE THE WRONG ONE” .Nevertheless, the rest of the music seemed superb in comparison to the handbells. Perhaps that was their plan all along.

After every couple of performances from the pupils, the organ started up signalling that it was the audience’s turn to provide the musical entertainment. And so we reluctantly stood up, grabbed our programmes, and mouthed the words to various carols while a minority of overenthusiastic parents did the singing for us. The sheer high pitch of the songs provided entertainment enough for me, especially as my mum next to me was trying her hardest to hit those notes.

I was battling my way through a particularly long rendition of “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” at one point, my voice was failing me, my interest was elsewhere, when we suddenly reached the line “Appeared a shining throng”.  I know it’s not funny.... I was even thinking “I’m sure some idiot will laugh at that”, and then I don’t know what came over me. I couldn’t stop laughing. I was in a room of primary school children and I was the only one to laugh at a word that sounds like ‘thong’.

Towards the end of the night, the boys choir sang ‘Let it snow’.  They were all dressed in little suits with ties, looking very smart. And there was my brother wearing a T shirt and a trilby. As nice as it was, my mum was right in saying “He looks like a farmer”. For the rest of the performance I couldn’t stop thinking of the combine harvester song. Why couldn’t they be singing that?
I'll suggest it for next year.

Vicky x