Xmas party at the school this Wednesday.  It is the day of the annual school play.  About 150 people show up.  Typically there are only 10 or 11 students at the school in any given year.  Even if they were all born of an orgy, 150 people wouldn’t have been involved.  I can assure you that I wasn’t!

So, why all the people in attendance?  I HAVE NO BLOODY IDEA!  But it is de rigeure.  If you attend no other social event on the Read Island calendar, you must attend the school Xmas play.  The women try to assuage the madness by serving a pot luck lunch and for many bachelors, it is an irresistible draw.  So we get the old recluse contingent with no attachment to anything but samosas and Bratwurst in regular attendance and that swells the numbers.

Which, in today’s social cesspool would be grounds alone for calling in the SWAT team.

When I was in Vancouver, the police ‘shut down’ Gladstone school for five hours and sent in dozens of ‘troops’ because an ‘unknown man’ had been seen entering the building.  Egads!  Can you imagine what those storm-trooper security freaks would do if they saw even the most respectable Read Islander entering the building, not to mention 150 of them!!!

We are a Motley crew at the best of times and, so far, I have not even seen the best of times. 

One year I was asked to write a play by one of the parents.  So, I did.  It involved the audience, had a dark streak and was a bit ‘quirky’.  I have not been asked to write one since.  Too bad, really, the next one was going to be about a do-it-yourself butcher shop that had a member bring in an ungulate with a distinctly red nose.  I was also entertaining a story about gay workshop elves that felt discriminated against by their surprisingly fat and randy but heterosexual red-suited boss.  But I am not likely to contribute ever again if the first audience was anything to go by.  Just as well, I suppose.  I was starting to get a following from some of the old bachelors.  “That’s the Santa I knew!!! Har, har, har!” 

Doors are on the Q-hut.  In my absence some actual progress was made.  The building is now enclosed and heated.  If you connect the dots in this blog, you will likely guess that after the play is over, some of the old geezer contingent, once sated on cous cous and what-all, will likely gather around the old wood stove down at the Q-hut.  We’ll stand around amongst the sawdust and look at the bare benches and think, “This was a good Xmas party!”