I have worn many tea towels. Some clean, some very, very dirty. You had to bring in a tea towel from home, so you always knew that the kids with wealthy parents would be bringing in pristine white tea towels from only the very finest of department stores.
My parents would give me a market job tea towel that looked like it was a leftover bandage from the Falklands war.
Seriously. It would be stained, burned, torn. My Shepherd would end up looking like Rambo with that tied around his head. MY head.
And I was always a Shepherd. Always. It was as certain as the stars in the sky.
Same as when we were playing football; no need to tell me what to do lads, I'm in defence. The more macho kids were always strikers. We'd have a game of seven-aside and I'd be on a team made up of six strikers and me in defence. Oh, and one of the strikers would also be the goalkeeper (as I couldn't be trusted with that).
But I digress,
The year that this picture was taken, and published, I would have been six years old.
I remember the day that I found out I was going to be Shepherd #3, I was picked up from school and went to my Gran's that afternoon. I was sulking and upset, and I told my Gran that "I had a stupid part. I'm a Shepherd."
I then had to sit there for what seemed like an eternity while my Gran lectured me on how Shepherds are very important. As it happens, and little did I know, my family comes from a long line of Shepherds (and Gravediggers in their part time).
She then went and got Grandad and said something like "Tell Jamie why Shepherds are important."
Poor Grandad just explained to me that Shepherds stop the wolves from killing the sheep (the lying ba....), and that the Queen owns all of the sheep, so the Shepherds have to take good care of them (the dirty, lying, or possibly deluded? ba.....).
It didn't help. I was having none of it.
In the run-up to the play, we had rehearsals. I didn't even get a line. Shepherd #1 got to say something like "Look! A star! It's a sign! Let us follow it"
My sarcasm had yet to develop at this stage.
We had been making props all week. I had in fact made one of the boxes that the Three Wise Better Acting Roles would carry. Well, a teacher made them, but we got to finish them. I think I did the Frankenstein one? All I remember was that we got to use this AMAZING gold sticky card. It was brilliant. I wanted it. I needed it. I think I got more in my bag than on the actual box. For years after, I was finding these weird offcuts around my house where I had hidden this valuable gold card.
During the first rehearsal, we the Shepherds got to take our first look at our sheep.
There were three of them. Handy. To be honest, it was more like two and a half. While two of them were very passable as plush sheep, the final one; the last one out of the box, was an absolute horror. And you could see that the teacher knew it too, because she tried to hide it behind the other two.
If this was a sheep. It was an aborted, mutant sheep. Possible spawned by Satan. It was the stuff of nightmares. It was hideous. It was like a bear had got it on with a penguin. It looked like it had been born to a sheep mother who then immediately rejected it for the far cuter afterbirth, and it was then trampled by the rest of the herd before ending up in our prop box. And it wasn't a store-bought toy. Oh no. This thing had been "hand made".
This was special.
I can only imagine that this toy was lovingly made for a child that maybe had trouble sleeping and might perhaps awake in the night. Not to reassure or comfort the child, but to be placed in the child's doorway to stop it from leaving its room.
Look at the picture. See the Wise Actors with their gifts? See the Angels with their wings?
See the Shepherds with their sheep?
No?
See the traumatised look on my face? Third in from the left. See Colin's? Second in.
We were told to pick up a sheep and we would go through our lines (all one of them).
I knew that the other two kids had seen what I had seen, and I knew exactly what they were thinking.
It was a race to the sheep. I was quick on my feet and made it to the best looking sheep. Colin ended up with the anti-sheep. I remember him picking it up from one of its five legs and holding it at a distance.
The teacher told us not to be silly, and promised that we would have better sheep for the actual night. These weren't the final sheep. These were just the rehearsal sheep.
SHE LIED!
Half an hour before curtain up on opening night.
Sell-out.
Nice.
I was just getting my tea-towel wrapped around my head when Shepherd #1 walked past with the best looking sheep. My sheep from rehearsals. Oh god! They had started dishing out the sheep. Where's Colin?? Where's the beast/sheep??!!
I raced to the prop department (toy cupboard) and there was "almost cute sheep" and "THE SHEEPLING THAT TIME FORGOT!"
I scooped up the ACS and cackled like I had never cackled before (quite unnerving to hear a six year old cackle.)
Curtain up.
We were on. I think at the last minute, Colin was making an impassioned plea to the Director as to why he should be a sheepless Shepherd, but there was no time, and we walked out to face our mums and dads.
We walked to the centre of the stage, placed our sheep in the middle of the floor, and then Shepherd #1 delivered his line. Line delivered. We were then supposed to pick up our sheep and leave. Suddenly Colin discovered a previously unknown burst of speed and made it to the sheep and picked up the ACS, I fumbled for the other sheep....NO! The boss Shepherd had it.
I turned to Colin and shouted;
"COLIN! THAT'S MY SHEEP!"
But he was already outta there.
I think I booted the sheep foetus off the stage.
I got a laugh apparently?
That may have been the first time I had made an audience laugh. It doesn't happen often.
My parents later told me that my "line" was the only part of the play they could remember.
As it turns out, Jason Simmonds completely stole the show as The Donkey.
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