Panto

I think the reason this amused me so much is that in Britain, when you go for a teaching job in Modern Languages they have to draft someone in to conduct part of the interview in your languages or languages, because obviously you can't trust a mere university to have checked that you actually speak a language before handing you a degree in it.
We always used to bleat,
'But they don't make tech teachers put up a shelf at their interview.' And they didn't.

But that wasn't what I wanted to drone on about today.

Last week, I noticed a poster advertising this Christmas's panto at the theatre in Woking and I was rather surprised to notice that John Rhys-Davies was going to be in it, billed as 'Lord of the Rings' John Rhys-Davies' because otherwise no-one would know who this accomplished actor was, not like he has a list of credits as long as the river Nile or anything.

Anyway....sorry, just can't miss an opportunity for heavy sarcasm, and now you need to pardon the pun, but I was surprised that someone of his stature should be doing panto.

But NOW I understand, it's just damn fine fun.

In Britain, maybe the United Kingdom .... and probably the Republic of Ireland too, oh heck, most likely the whole of Europe, everyone has an early acting career thrust upon them from the age of rising five, in the form of the nativity play. If you are a blonde kid you get to wear wings a lot. The majority of British etc kids at that age are blonde, so the birth of our Lord was pretty heavily attended, I know I knew the inside of a sewn-up white sheet quite well.

That was it for me though. Oh yes, you get to do a lot of acting in teaching, the difference between survival in the classroom and attendance at Accident and Emergency can often be the ability to act anger rather than to actually experience it.

But not until yesterday have I had to appear in anything. The play we do in the school programme 'Bees in the Bog' is not unlike a panto. There are only two characters, Betty, the worker bee, and Darwin the Drone. The part of Darwin is a sweet deal. Betty has to do most of the actual work, just like her real counterpart. She feeds Darwin the lines and Darwin gets to just mess about on stage, hamming it up as much as possible. I swear if we were doing it longer than just tomorrow, Beth - Betty the Bee and another Brit - and I would have them singing out, 'Look behind you!' and 'Oh no she's not!'
I've had a lot of fun playing Darwin these past two days, so yes, I get the panto thing now, it's that audience participation, the being able to really enjoy yourself with the character AND the banter.

Beth is brilliant, absolutely brilliant and what a challenge it must have been for her to come in and take over that part. Lori and Joanne were fantastic as Betty and Darwin, so I was worried about doing it, well we're not Lori and Joanne, but like I said, we had great fun and I think the kids got that.

Ok, so what's happening with the footie? England won, yeah, like I need to tell anyone that. I hope Threshers (off-licence) in Scotland are helping to clear up the leftover drunken fans. I read that England may be having a sleepless night last night (yeah, the WHOLE country) as their fans were standing outside their hotel worshipping them very loudly. I also noticed that the Guardian's 'most read articles' yesterday were ALL about the World Cup. I thought there was one that wasn't because it seemed to be about someone called Big Ron, but no, footie still.

So, well done lads. And well done fans.

And lastly, and yes, I've had to edit this after publishing, Simmi sent me this, it is rib-achingly funny, but if you're at work, please turn your speakers down low, then load it up again later when you get home because the song is brilliant.