Christmas in Marlow-land

[sheep-noises.livejournal.com]

This time o' year always reminds me of

1) The Christmas Play in Wade Minster, from "End of Term" (which I don't have atm as my copy gave up the ghost and fell to pieces >:( ) ;

2) The unconventional Christmas Dinner in a cave, with poor old Ann staying home in case the phone rings :( , from "Run Away Home"; but mostly

3) "Peter's Room". For me, this is the most magical of all those magical books. I must admit I've always skipped the bits in Italics, so I still don't know what fantasy it was that they acted out that Christmas, even though I've read it dozens of times. Don't care, either. The wonderful descriptions of the day-to-day Marlow (and a bit o' Merrick) winter doings are enough to keep me going :)

Comments

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Of course, owing to the somewhat Miss Keithish idea that my headmistress, Big O, had, to the effect that gels doing exams shouldn't have distractions you were only eligible for school plays as an actor in Lower Sixth and Fourth forms (and, exceptionally, 1st or 2nd forms when they needed a Moth or Mustardseed) so I expect part of the problem was that there was only the same limited pool of actors to choose from and our year wasn't very good at acting.

Fortunately Art Club got to do sets, backstage and noises off irrespective of our ages or exam commitments - my finest hour was being exploding tomato cans in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Oh, ours was much more of the Crommie school of thought that one ought to be able to take exams in one's stride without any fuss. I was definitely in a school performance of Blithe Spirit when I was in Upper VI. The backstage crew had lots of fun with that one. And, actually we had lots of fun with it too - not least because we had been allowed to 'borrow' two boys for the male parts from the local boys' school.