Having spent most of the week struggling with using my old-skool Photoshop Elements software to insert bleed guidelines and crop marks in artwork for the printers, Sunday came as a much-welcomed day of rest. I was taking part in my first carol service since I was 8 years old. (I played a stroppy proto-feminist version of Mary who couldn’t see why Joseph had to be waited on hand and foot. He wasn’t heavily pregnant and having to ride a wretched donkey, so why couldn’t he do some housework? Plus ça change – but I can still recite the Magnificat. Still, my poor mother 🙂

This time, I was given one of the readings. Easy-peasy, Japaneasy. Apart from the fact that I suddenly became a nervous wreck which is amazing considering how lippy I am ordinarily. No problemo, I’ll just practise it over and over again. My first mistake– I usually read the King James’ version of the Bible. A couple of days later, I remembered we use the NIV at church. After a lifetime of hearing the same words in different versions, I knew the text enough to jumble all the versions up, resulting in an epic fail. Panic, panic. I must have read the NIV verses a hundred times in the last few days which unfortunately made my insane brain connect it to another work. Every time I started to read ‘In those days, Caesar Augustus decreed that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world‘, a crazy voice at the back of my mind echoed ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree‘. I was terrified that I would step in the pulpit and those words would come out of my mouth. Admittedly- excellent poem by opium-addled maniac poet vs revelation of the birth of the Messiah. Mixing them up, absolute nightmare.

Come Sunday, it was pretty much under control. Turned up at church to be met by one of the organisers, Lydia. ‘Glad to have caught you before the service. Just a couple of things, remember to pull the microphone down to mouth level’. Okey-dokey. ‘And project your voice’. Whaaat??? Project? What’s the microphone for? KLC design school, yes. RADA, no!!! ‘Don’t worry’ she said, ‘The microphone is on maximum anyway. It’s easier for us to turn your voice down than to turn it up’ (!!!!!) This did not help as I now had a vision of speaking thus, ‘ IN THOSE DAYS, CAESAR AUGUSTUS issued a decree…’ It would certainly wake the congregation up, but wasn’t really what I was going for. Full-on panic. Then Jill the church administrator told me we’d run out of room (lol) due to the size of the crowd,  and extra seats had to be put in. So, all of West London would witness my disaster. Quelle horreur. It was hilarious, not; my heart was pounding like a drum and I kept repeating ‘It’s for the glory of God, It’s for the glory of God’ to myself.

Of course, my tiny little part of the proceedings was hardly noticeable, and the participants as a whole played an absolute blinder. I managed to refrain from swearing, falling over the lectern or deputising as a booming voice from heaven. The service was wonderful, and the choir and solo singers were amazing. A couple of glasses of mulled wine post-service, and I didn’t care about Caesar Augustus or Kublai Khan. Thanks a lot for your blasted ear-worm of a poem, Samuel.T.Coleridge. So, make sure you attend at least one carol service this Christmas and have mercy on participants if they fluff their lines. It’s all to the glory of God. I leave you with some of my favourite paintings and if I don’t post again before Christmas, I wish you all a very merry and happy Christmas.

(Paintings: Holman Hunt’s Light of the World; Leonardo Da Vinci’s Virgin & Child with St Anne & John the Baptist cartoon; Sassoferrato’s Madonna)