Today I went to Alkborough School to spend an archaeology, art and drama day with the infants. To be honest I was rather nervous about the whole thing as I felt less than fully briefed and prepared.
Rachel (last minute substitute for Vicky who had a hospital appointment) and I started with a walk down to the maze where we talked about its history and the fact that there is lots more we don't know about it than we do. We field walked for archaeology and found palaeontology in the form of 'devil's toenails' (probably just as well since it is a scheduled site and we would have had to put back any archaeology, but as it was we could take our finds back to school with impunity). Then the children went in to assembly followed by playtime while Rachel and I set up for an archaeology session with a whole collection of Roman artefacts - mostly original, but some reproduction - for them to handle, identify, draw and label. Next we read through the ballad play I had written about Lady Julian who was captured by the guardian of the maze when she walked widdershins around it - her brother tries to fight the guardian, and her sister is seduced by sweets, but finally John the simple country lad who loves her from afar rescues her and the others. Most of the children had just a couple of lines and everyone had something, but the narrator had most to read. I had thought I would have to do this myself, but there was Tom, a seven year old boy - a masterly child who could read not only fluently , but also audibly and expressively - who did the job superbly.
In the afternoon they all made masks - the faeries were going to wear theirs in the play - decorated with leaves, and scraped together the costumes I had brought from my dressing up box (Yes, Liz, the same ones you and I played in over forty years ago!), two boys learned a simple sword fight and we tried out some movement in the classroom. After playtime we went into the hall, managed a quick rehearsal, and performed the play for Reception and Juniors.
Some of them were reading their lines, but I think many experienced adult actors would be hard-pressed to put on a play from scratch in less than a day. The narrator was excellent, and overjoyed when I gave him my master copy of the play to take home together with copies of my source material - The Story of Childe Rowland and Burd Helen (Jacobs', not Browning's difficult version) and Allingham's "The Fairies" which we had talked about earlier in our discussion of wicked fairies rather than fairy godmothers and tooth fairies who are a) good and b) real, unlike our baddies.
It was a lovely day and a very nice school with some of the friendliest and politest children I have ever encountered - not just the little ones I was with, but the big ones I met in passing. I wish I had the slightest hope that some of their parents might stumble on this blog.
I got home to learn that while everyone was out next door, Joe's television had caught fire and Jacob, coming up from the stable yard, had heard the smoke alarm, rushed in, grabbed the kitchen fire-extinguisher, and saved the rest of the house though part of Joe's room is badly damaged and the rest of it is smoke, water and powder damaged. Joe hotly denies that he had gone out leaving the television on stand-by, but it does show that, even with modern TVs, my father's rule about unplugging the television at night and when out still makes sense. If he did leave it, the loss of his huge collection of British film and TV comedy classics on video is a pretty severe punishment for a moment's carelessness.
