A Tale Of Two Parents

The Hub wears a new t-shirt to the play and is ‘awesome’, ‘best dad ever’, admired by all of Spud’s friends.

I pay a teacher a compliment and I’m banned from ever speaking to anyone Spud ever knows for the rest of his life, ever.

Here’s the Hub’s shirt:

Here’s my compliment to Godspell’s choreographer:

Wow!  Spud told me the dancing was really naff but I think it’s great!

I don’t understand Spud at all.

I Cried Yesterday

Click on the photos to enlarge them

Actually, I cried the day before yesterday but I wrote this post yesterday so the title was correct for yesterday’s yesterday but not for today.  Anyway, me crying at all except at the end of Love Actually is such a rare event, I felt I had to blog about it.

As you must know, because I’ve bored you to death about it for months now, Spud is playing Judas in his school production of Godspell.  The first night is tomorrow tonight.  I can’t get the songs out of my head and as I was preparing his sandwiches for tonight’s tea between tweaking-rehearsal and performance, I sang Beautiful City to myself.  I suspected I might be allowing it to take over my life when I came to the line, We can build a city of man and sang, We can build a city of ham…

Yesterday (‘s yesterday) was the dress rehearsal.  The Hub is an excellent photographer and took some great pics of the last three school productions Spud starred in (no bias here, honest).  He gave them to Spud’s drama teacher and she loved them and asked if he would go along to yesterday’s yesterday’s dress rehearsal to take photos of this production.

The Hub has M.E. so of course he needed his loving and supportive wife along to hold the spare camera batteries.  The fact that I got a sneak preview of the show was purely coincidental.

We had front row seats and we needed them, because my heart swelled with so much pride it took up all of the space between the audience and the stage.

I know he’s my son and I’m biased and all that rubbish, but Spud was fantastic.  He began as a happy, hopeful man and changed over two hours to anger and betrayal via confusion and doubt.  

He sang, with music and without.

He cried in Jesus’ arms the moment before he left to betray him.  He sobbed on the floor after the crucifixion.  

He was totally believable.

Teachers made a point of coming up to tell me how good he was and how he should pursue acting as a career.  But better than that, the director told me that, for all of his talent, he is a lovely, lovely boy and she hopes her own son will grow up to be just like him.

Can you blame me for blubbing?

Guests

I thought Toby was scratching at my door at his usual five a.m. the other night. He never wants to go out; he wants to remind me that his breakfast is due in two hours and forty-five minutes.  I am never allowed to forget it: he will growl at me several or fourteen times between then and quarter-to-eight.

It wasn’t Toby; it was Spud, trying to slip a note under my door; and it wasn’t five; it was sometime after one.  He came in, as I was now awake, for spare bedding.  He said ‘Excuse me’ but I was half asleep and didn’t register until he knocked me over, having expected me to move.

The note was to explain, in case I woke up in the night and wandered around in confusion, that two of his friends had phoned at one a.m. to beg a bed.  They had been to a party which Spud had decided not to attend because of travel difficulties (three buses there; three buses back) and, because they live several towns over, had nowhere to sleep once they were kicked out.

We are not the sort of people to see teenagers on the streets, so of course the Hub had said ‘yes’.  Besides, they are both in Godspell, with Sam playing Jesus.   We want it to be a success and a destitute lead is not in the remit.

Spud was given his instructions by the Hub and, when the boys arrived some time after two, Spud opened the door and declared: ‘Sorry.  There’s no room at the inn.’

We might be kind but we will have fun at your expense.