I had the most splendid morning.
It was Oliver’s carol service.
We were late.
We did not mean to be late. We left our house at half past eight, which should have been lots of time to reach Yorkshire by eleven, but as it turned out we only just made it, and came belting up the drive at a quarter to.
This meant that we were among the last to arrive, and there were no seats left.
They squeezed us in in different places, Lucy on one side of the chapel, Mark on another, and I was led forward to the sort of chair in the aisle that would make a fire officer grumpy.
Chairs had been placed down the aisle to accommodate latecomers, and mine was right at the front.
There were boys on either side of me, and I was barely a yard away from the choir, who were facing me from their rows of pews behind the headmaster, under whose august nose I was sitting.
I love the carol services, as you know, and this one was no different.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that this one was the most entertaining I have ever had the pleasure to attend.
Obviously the singing was brilliant, it always is, and the music master playing the organ could ignite passion in the most tepid of dreary souls. I sang my foghorn-loudest, but nevertheless was still drowned out by an over-excited choir, and by the headmaster’s enthusiastic baritone. However, these things were not the only reasons that this carol concert was the best ever.
The reason was that I have never before been in such close proximity to the choir.
From our usual vantage point, several pews back, the choirboys look collectively like angels. Demurely attired in blue gowns beneath crisp white surplices, they are a vision of obedient virtue.
How different things are when you are close up.
I don’t think I have ever seen so many fingers inserted into so many orifices all at the same time.
Ears, noses, mouths, all of these were thoroughly explored whilst the Nine Lessons were being read. One boy picked his teeth, another found a sudden fascination with the backs of his kneecaps. Some boys, mostly the teenage ones, slumped and scowled, others, mostly the little ones, gazed around them as though the chapel was a new world of thrilling visions, and not somewhere they spend at least half an hour every single morning.
I was captivated, and watched them with huge fascination. The music master was fully occupied with the organ, and the headmaster was facing out over the congregation, and the choir seemed to feel itself collectively invisible.
My finest point came when a boy on the front row of the choir reached forwards and blew his nose on the hem of his crisp white surplice.
I do not know how I managed not to laugh.
The headmaster was so close to me I could see the patch that he had missed whilst shaving.
I bit my cheeks and stared at the ceiling like a first former. The laugh was boiling up inside me like hot milk does when you take your eyes off it for a fraction of a second. I scowled and dug my fingernails into my palms, and somehow managed not to interrupt the reading, which was being done clearly, and solemnly, by Actual Head Boy. I held the laugh inside me until he had finished, and released it slowly whilst we sang Hail Thou Ever Blessed Morn.
I expect the headmaster thought I was quite mental.
All the same, I shall treasure the memory for ever.
Afterwards Oliver told us that the music master is always going on and on at them about not picking their noses. Clearly his words have fallen on uninterested ears.
We were all together. Oliver was free, and Lucy was still with us, and we had a merry lunch all together in the back of the camper van before setting off on the slow trek back over the Dales to Blackpool.
It was dark by the time we arrived.
We checked Lucy in to the Imperial Hotel, which was actually a lot better than I remembered, possibly because it was dark. We abandoned her suitcase and dived back into the camper to rush across Blackpool to the cinema.
I have been dying to take the children to see Bohemian Rhapsody ever since we saw it ourselves. I almost never watch films a second time, but this one was different. I have been hoping and hoping that it would still be in the cinema when they both finished school and we could all go together, and some artistically minded gods must have been listening, because remarkably, it still was.
The children loved it as well, and we all cried at the end.
We all squashed ourselves illegally into the front of the camper van to drive back to the hotel. We put Queen on the CD player and sang and sang, as loudly as we all could, for the second time in the day.
We had a film-enchanted drink and thoughtful talk in the bar, and then it was time to leave Lucy behind and make our weary way home.
The dogs were horrified to find that we had forgotten her, and have been pacing about under our feet trying to point it out ever since.
It is over. There will be no more Yorkshire Christmases.
It was the last Nowell.
