The trauma of the Nativity Play

PICTURE the scene. There is a frisson in the air. The nervous chatter of anxious parents hums through the assembly hall. Out of sight, teachers make last-minute adjustments to swaddling bands, and halos are straightened. Yes, it’s that annual ritual of triumphs, tears and tinsel, Little Donkeys and dropped Baby Jesuses – the school Nativity Play.
You’d have to be a stern soul indeed not to be reduced to some level of teary-eyed nostalgia at the thought of all those six and seven-year-olds just waiting for the chance to shine in front of their families and friends. But while all you proud parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles are beaming with pride as your little ones take to the stage as Mary or Joseph, spare a thought for those who never make it into the spotlight – those for whom the school Nativity Play will be a source of perennial disappointment.
You might have guessed, then, that I was one of those children never destined to take to the Nativity stage. Granted, I was saved the ritual humiliation of being the shepherd who tripped over his lamb, or the wise man who forgot to hand over his box of frankincense. But a part in this lovely Christmas tradition was all I yearned for. Every year as the Nativity casting took place, I sat up straight, looked as pretty as I could, spoke clearly and loudly and smiled manically. But it was never going to work; I was overlooked every single year. Not because I wasn’t serene enough to have been an angel, or demure enough for Mary – although these may well have been valid reasons – but because I was just too tall. I may not have reached giraffe-like proportions as an adult but, when I was six years old, I towered over all but one of the boys in our class. And the same was true for several of the other girls too.
And somewhere along the way, one teacher or another had dictated that it would look much better if the short girls got all the plum roles. As a child I thought this was possibly the most unfair thing in the world and I would try to hunch down just so they might think that this year I was finally shorter than the boys. Of course I was 15 before that happened and the era of Nativity plays was long gone.
Not everyone could play a part, of course. These were the days when the Nativity Play was just that. The pure, unadulterated, Christian story of the birth of Jesus. There were the Holy Family, shepherds, kings, angels, the innkeeper and his wife, perhaps a donkey and some sheep, and occasionally a human star. But that was it. I’ve heard of modern Christmas plays with enormous cast lists, and ones that even feature Harry Potter and the Tweenies, just so that everyone can have a part. Ours didn’t even have a Santa Claus.
Of course, the teachers made sure we didn’t miss out entirely. We were positioned to the side of the stage where we sat cross-legged on the floor, beside the naughty kids and the ones whose attention spans were so short that their acting threatened to break into improvisation. We were given drums to bang, triangles to ting and tambourines to shake. These were particularly popular with us girls because we could pretend to be Agnetha or Frida from Abba.
And, of course, we were allowed to sing along with the carols and Christmas songs – although I have an old friend who told me that a perfectionist teacher once ordered them to mime to the songs because she wanted only the good singers to be heard. What a horrible thing to do to a small child. And at Christmas, too. Nowadays you could probably sue.
I did get to participate in our senior school carol concert, although quite how we had one I’m not sure, Derbyshire County Council having cast disapproval on religion in schools by that point. I think we were all right if we didn’t actually mention God. Anyway, our German class was required to stand before the rest of the school and sing the first verse of O Come All Ye Faithful in German: Herbei o ihr Glaugibigen, Frohlich triumphierend; you see, I can still do it. And for that one shining moment, we were the stars of the show. It didn’t impress my non-German-speaking classmates, of course. They just thought we were showing off. But it was our moment nonetheless.
I feel I should probably now make a confession. I did once appear in a Nativity Play, as the Angel Gabriel no less. And I had lines. But then I was in Brownies and we had no boys to tower over.

What's so awful about being nice?

THE recent final of the TV talent show X Factor, featured a young duo - a brother and sister known as Same Difference. Most people loved them because they were so nice. Yet a few others loathed them for the same reason.

So I'm wondering - what's so awful about being nice?

You might think that nice people are appreciated. But nice, it seems, is an underrated concept. Abhorred rather than applauded, nice people are uncool.

If they're so nice and happy, there must be something wrong with them, right?

Of course, that's not the case - these lucky people just happen to see the positive side of life more clearly than the negative one.

Some people even think that all this likeability is some sort of deliberate facade, hiding an almost Machiavellian heart.

But while we avidly listen to the latest bulletins from the gossips, wouldn't we rather it were only the nice people who talked about us?

I remember at school being told never to use the word nice because it was too vanilla, too non-specific.As if it weren't a description in itself, and yet it is.

It encapsulates something that no other single word does. So why does nice go hand-in-hand with bland?

Why does something, or someone, have to have a dark edge to be taken seriously? How often do we hear someone say they don't like a person simply because they're too nice? What's that all about? How can someone be too nice?

Can it really be that we are all so cynical that we simply can't trust anyone else to be genuinely pleasant? Have we so lost touch with the kindness within us that we can't bear to witness it in someone else?

I don't think either is true, and neither do I think that happy, nice people are born that way - I think they make a choice to be nice and to see the good in others, and I think it's a choice we could all stand to make.

The advantages of encountering such a person were brought home to me the day I ruptured my ankle ligaments. Having been told by the friendly A & E doctor that what I had done was probably worse than breaking my ankle, I was astonished to be told by the nurse who strapped my injury that I wouldn't be getting any of her NHS crutches because the best thing for me was to walk on it straight away. If only I could have.

Now, I understand that such things are in short supply because many people don't bother to return their loaned hospital equipment, but surely a woman who needs a wheelchair to take her to the car is entitled to some sort of sticks or something? Apparently not.

After several abortive attempts to get into the house unaided, I sank to the floor and shuffled over the front step and up the hall on my derriere. Clearly, I was going to need help, whether that nurse thought it necessary or not, and a family member was dispatched to purchase for me my very own set of elbow-crutches.

Several days' enforced house confinement eventually left me in serious need of some retail therapy, so I set off for town. Now, admittedly testing out my new hobbling-with-elbow-crutches skills on a Saturday afternoon was probably not the most sensible plan, but amid the thousands of people flocking into Derby that day, you might have imagined that one or two of them would have noticed my predicament and made some allowances. Not a chance. Sympathy? You must be kidding.

I was bustled, nudged and shoved. I had doors dropped back into my face while I tottered about on my sticks. I had car drivers tooting their horns because I wasn't fast enough across the road. I couldn't even get into one store because I got caught between two sets of heavy doors, unable to push my way in or out, and only released from my glass prison when another customer needed to use the doorway. And no, even they weren't sympathetic, but tutted at my dithering. Did they think I was wobbling around for fun?

It was a sudden and shocking realisation of how someone with a permanent mobility problem must find life - I don't know how they have the patience, or the will.

I was on my way home before I encountered my first Good Samaritan and the restoration of my faith in humanity. A fellow bus passenger took pity on me and offered me her seat at the front. She must have been well into her 80s, and none too steady on her own feet. I think she must have been one of those nice people.

You never know who you may turn out to be

WHO do you think you are? asks the popular television show, but you don’t have to be a celebrity to unearth a fascinating family story of your own. Ten or so years spent investigating my family’s past have thrown up a few surprises about our origins. Like the fact that my great-great-great grandmother, Mary Hargreaves, was born in Dublin. And while this doesn’t mean I’ll be celebrating next St Patrick’s Day, it is remarkable how much this kind of information changes the way you view yourself. As it turns out my once decidedly Derbyshire DNA has pieces from all over Britain. I still feel like a Derby girl, but I can no longer deny associations with other counties and even countries.
I’ve also learned how foolish the idea of social “class” is. On the face of it, my family is of sturdy “working-class” stock. We have blacksmiths, agricultural labourers and elastic weavers to prove it. But there’s also the occasional rich and aristocratic family member like Sir Richard Whieldon Barnett of Hales Hall, who is my fourth cousin. All very exciting; he was a competitor at the 1908 Olympics, a chess champion, an MP, but somehow just not as much fun as my great-great-great-great grandparents, Richard and Mary Wilkes, who worked as village rat catchers well into their dotage. And I can’t help thinking, if I were living in a vermin-afflicted cottage, who would I rather have as my neighbour?
Then there’s the possibility of inheritance. Not in the financial sense – I doubt rat catchers were ever high earners. – but perhaps I had inherited some hitherto unexplored talent from the several artists I had discovered. Sadly, I can’t even draw a convincing banana and probably have more in common with the long line of publicans on my paternal grandmother’s line.
I did find one living relative who carries the art gene – my distant American cousin, Judy, who is a talented painter. And there’s another joy of family research - encountering new relatives. Through Judy I have the pleasure of hearing about everyday life in the charming village of Ballston Spa in New York State.
Other relatives have their own experiences to share too. There’s third cousin Naomi, who runs a falconry centre in the Cotswolds; fifth cousin Julia, who lives in Australia; and seventh cousin Ulrich from Denmark. We have fun trading family news and Christmas cards – and the latest discoveries. Like our connections to Thomas Whieldon, the world-famous potter, and my first cousin (admittedly eight-times-removed); or George Rowley, the well-known china painter for Royal Crown Derby, and my great-grandfather’s half-brother.
Thanks to the dedicated research of these new-found relatives, I have sometimes been able to go back several hundred years in an afternoon. My earliest ancestors to date are William and Joan Whieldon of Ipstones in Staffordshire, who were probably born in 1582, the year William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway.
I’ve learned about places I’d never heard of before, like Chilvers Coton near Nuneaton, where my ancestors attended the same church as novelist George Elliot. I’ve researched life in the Lincolnshire fens when the early Rippons would have travelled from village to village by boat; studied the smart houses of Wimbledon where my great grandmother worked as a housekeeper; and investigated life at Welbeck Abbey where my great-great uncle Alfred was in charge of the Duke of Portland’s stables.
There have been countless mysteries, illegitimate births, untraceable marriages, lines that disappear into thin air, rumours and speculation, elopements and uncovered secrets aplenty.
And there have been tragedies, too. Great-great uncle Willie Rippon returned from the First World War with shellshock and was haunted by the horrors of his experiences for the rest of his life, while Frederic Rowley fell victim to typhoid fever at his Campion Street home. And my great-great grandmother Eliza Hough died, aged 30, having just given birth to her sixth child.
There have been the horror stories, too, like that of my great-great grandfather working down a Durham lead mine as a 14-year-old. And the sad story of my great-great uncle Alexander Craig, who was born in Bruges in the late 19th century because his father was a commercial traveller, but who returned to Belgium with the Sherwood Foresters in 1915, only to be killed just a few miles from his birthplace.
Researching my family tree has not only introduced me to a host of fascinating ancestors, but I’ve discovered a whole new me. So now who do I think I am? Not just a Rippon, but a Whieldon, an Entwistle, a Poynton. An English girl, a Scottish lass, an Irish woman. If you haven’t already delved into your own family’s history, it’s time you got started – you’ll probably be amazed at who you turn out to be.

There's nothing wrong with an "old fashioned" education

I WAS talking to a woman at the bus stop last week. She was concerned about the amount of homework her eight-year-old granddaughter had been given. “Homework? She’s eight – surely she doesn’t have homework?” I queried. And after a bewildering five minutes of key stage this, and Ofsted that, I discovered just how far primary schooling has moved on since I left Dale School, Derby, in 1980.
I was fortunate to have benefited from what even people of my age would consider an old-fashioned education. Our school in Normanton was run under the auspices of the always immaculately turned-out Miss Clarke. She was petite and ladylike and ruled the school with an iron, if perfectly manicured, hand.
While other school heads were embracing modernity, Miss Clarke made sure her boys and girls were brought up the classical way. No trendy educational ideas for her. From the moment the old school handbell was rung on the playground outside, and the chattering crocodiles of more than 500 children filed inside, we were taught on traditional, if occasionally quirky, lines.
Each morning the school, divided into infants and juniors, attended assembly. We entered the halls to the strains of classical music. The composer of the day was clearly displayed at the front, and woe betide anyone who could not read or pronounce his name. From Tchaikovsky and Brahms to Schubert and Liszt, we learned to recognise a huge range of music. Among Miss Clarke’s favourites were loud or stirring pieces, like Grieg’s Morning or Delibes’ Coppelia. It was all about instilling in us enthusiasm, energy and get-up-and-go. And it worked.
And each day there would be a poem to listen to – like Keats’ To Autumn – and always read with an almost fevered relish by Miss Clarke’s ever-jolly colleague, Mrs Smith, her foot tapping out the rhythm of the words. She read all manner of poems from writers as diverse as John Masefield, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. We started each morning with a hymn and a prayer, of course, and to my shame my primary school self never questioned what my non-Christian schoolmates thought of that. But I loved it, and I’ve always valued hymns and prayers for their use of language and poetry, as much as for their spiritual content. There was also the element of everyone doing something together, which just seemed to set us up right for the day.
PE lessons at Dale also had an interesting twist. Confined for most of the year to the concrete playgrounds on either side of the school, or in the assembly halls, our sports curriculum relied upon the equipment we had inherited from earlier generations. Indoors there was the usual gym apparatus with poles to twizzle on and rope frames to climb up, monkey bars to swing on and a range of aged benches on which to balance, all of which bore the marks of 75 years of children’s feet bashing and rubbing on them.
When it came to fresh air fun, there was a more exotic choice. Nestled among the skittles and canes, beanbags and hula-hoops were a set of ancient shinty clubs. Now, unless you went to Dale, or lived in the Scottish Highlands, you’re unlikely ever to have encountered that particular sport. It was a forceful and violent Gaelic forerunner to hockey and quite what this set of clubs, which resembled upturned and flattened out walking sticks, were doing in the PE cupboard of a Derbyshire primary school, no-one seemed to know, but under our teachers’ guidance we would, gently of course, tap a plastic ball up and down the playground around the obstacles laid out before us. It probably owed very little to the archaic sport, but it was utterly engrossing nonetheless.
But I think the most valuable lesson that Dale School taught us was the how to mark the passing seasons and seize the moment to appreciate the world around us. No matter how important the lesson we were having, there was always time to abandon it for a morning spent outside studying a frost-encrusted spider’s web, or a bird’s nest. Then it was back inside to write stories and poems inspired by them. It was fun, but it was learning too, and it never seemed like hard work.
I wonder, with all the emphasis, in today’s schools, on homework and breakfast clubs; with lessons in citizenship and technology; with ICT rooms and interactive white boards in most school; with websites, newsletters and class councils to keep pace with - all the undoubtedly wonderful and essential components of modern education – is there still time for our youngsters to experience the more esoteric aspects of life? It would be an awful pity if, amid all that technology and financial investment, they were literally missing out on smelling the roses.

I'm sure Wagon Wheels are getting smaller ...

SOMETHING’S been bothering me for a while now: whatever happened to white eggs? In any box of six, when I was a little girl, there would be one brown speckled egg and five of the purest white. But it’s not so much the eggs as the question that troubles me. Because I’m asking other questions too, like: “Why don’t they make fizzy Spangles any more?” and: “Are Wagon Wheels getting smaller?”
Worringly, they’re the kind of questions my parents’ generation ask. Does this mean I’m getting old? They say you know you’re getting old when the policemen start looking young, or you “remember when it was all fields around here”. And, while I haven’t yet reached that stage, I know I’m not a young girl any more.
I’m from that generation without a name: the offspring of the War Babies and the Baby Boomers, those who were born before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon (albeit, in my case, by only four months). And now I’m wondering: “Are the Lunar Generation turning into their parents?”

Then along comes Life On Mars to make the 1970s cool again. And many elements of 1970s family entertainment are back in fashion. Basil Brush and Bruce Forsyth have made comebacks. And what was Britain’s Got Talent mean to be if not 2007’s Seaside Special? And best of all, Doctor Who, is back in its rightful place on Saturday teatime telly. It’s the same scary family entertainment it always was – only now I watch from in front, rather than behind, the settee.
They say you can tell someone’s age by their favourite Doctor. Well, mine’s David Tennant, although that particular warm fuzzy feeling has nothing to do with nostalgia. Seriously, “my” Doctor was Tom Baker and I think I wanted to be him. For my eighth birthday my best friend’s mum knitted me an enormously long multi-coloured scarf, just like the one he wore. I can remember wrapping it six or seven times around my neck and waiting for it to get cold. Games of Doctor Who were considered more suitable for boys: girls (and yes, I was guilty of participating in this particular playground gender stereotype) were more happy playing Charlie’s Angels because it involved being pretty and swishing our imaginary long hair about. I did, however, own a toy gun: bought for me by my ever-rebellious Nana so I could be Purdy in The New Avengers.
And there I am again: remembering the “good old days”. I try to remind myself that I‘m reasonably “switched on”. I know how to text (admittedly a triumph of determination over manual dexterity); I use online forums; I can operate Sky Plus; and do most of my shopping via the internet. But just as I congratulate myself for establishing my virtual persona in the online world of Second Life, I find myself having to explain the concepts of the test card and wooden escalators to the impossibly young stylist shampooing my hair.
Then again, while it’s shocking to realise that I was at school with girls who have sons older than Giles Barnes, I’m happy I can remember when all yoghurt was Ski; when potatoes came in three varieties (old, new and red); and when olive oil was just for treating ear wax.
If you too are in your mid to late 30s, I’ll bet you agree that it was nice when mums had Tupperware parties and made cheesecake; when the Eurovision Song Contest was about music not politics; and when Brownies wore dresses and bobble hats and three-quarter length socks.
In Derby on a Saturday night, there are youngsters so full of alcohol that they’re incapable even of vouching for their own safety, and I’m glad I’m too old to join in. I yearn for the days when experimenting was limited to adding lime cordial to your lager, or Malibu to your pineapple.
I no longer get irritated by cute children on TV; don’t worry about making an idiot of myself at the panto; and couldn’t care less that I can barely tell my Arctic Monkeys from my Snow Patrol. I’m not embarrassed to tear up at the first sight of a Nativity play; I realise life’s just not fair; and I already know exactly which elements of the 1980s fashion revival are going to cause the most embarrassment in 20 years’ time.
Still, when I listen to my parents reminiscing about Al Read and Ted Ray, my instinct is to push aside my own thoughts of Crackerjack and the Disney films of Jodie Foster. Then I realise that all I’m doing is remembering. It’s nostalgia I feel, not age. I’m not getting old, just older. And that’s just fine.