I’m very sad. Mini Seymour has just wriggled and gurned her way through her last nativity show. She may be my smallest Seymour, but she’s getting big now.
The Nativity Extravaganza this year was very current. There were hashtags and iPads and the language was rather “down with the kids”. The French lullaby was my favourite part. How very multi-cultural! (Is it too late to cancel Brexit..?)
Yet despite all the modernity, there was still just the correct number of small kids mutually thwacking each other, angels’ tears, microphone issues and forgotten lines to make it perfect. One would expect no more and no less from a stage full of 4-7 year-olds at the end of a very busy term.
Mini Seymour confuses me though. One moment, she is singing her heart out, expressing every word uber-facially and getting down to the beat of the funky song about the Three Wise Men, and the next, she’s rolling her eyes as if she’d rather be somewhere else. And when Grandma E made the mistake of applauding the lullaby too loudly and hollering “bravo!” in her own unique French patois, she was given short shrift. Mini Seymour was sitting right in front of us in her homemade tea-towel and over-sized shirt combo, held up with a hair band at the back, and she simply said, “You’re embarrassing yourself, Grandma”. Then grinned.
But that’s it! No more nativities. The Four Little Seymours are finished with them now. Key Stage One is nearly done. How on Earth am I supposed to deal with that?
“I know!” said my Inner Self, A.K.A. The Annoying Voice in My Head. “Keep busy!” It went on. “How about, erm…., oh, let’s say, for example… why not start up a kids’ French Club! That would be fun!”
“Really?” I said to my Inner Self. “But I am not sure I know how!”
“Oh, of course you do. Just write a scheme of work over Christmas and you’ll be fine! Do it! Keep busy! You don’t want to dwell too long on the passing of the years now, do you..? Boredom is the enemy…”
My Inner Self won. I have volunteered to run a French Club. But I would just like to point out to her that boredom is no threat to me. Once I have recovered from the lack of Nativity-aged children, and written a scheme of work for French Club, then done all the Christmas Stuff and all the other nonsense we folks have to do these days, I have my next novel lined up. This one will be based upon a strange phenomenon that is baffling me at the moment. Mini Seymour may not be doing any more Nativity plays, but she does appear to be able to time travel back to 1940s London on a regular basis. Her double (and the likeness is so strong it’s disconcerting) can be seen in several end-of-Blitz photographs, wearing oversized dungarees and waving a flag in the rubble.
Who is this little urchin? Why does she look like she’s mine? What happened to her? Or are we living on two strange parallel bombsites: the Blitz one, and the building site one, and Mini Seymour belongs to them both..?
Oh, the fun I will have working this one out. It’ll certainly detract from my Nativity Blues. The journey will be long, but I will find out the story behind these photos, even if I have to make it up myself. And on this, my somethingty somethingth birthday, I vow to see this through. (Yet I can’t help but think it might just be a whole lot easier to have another baby.)
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