The thing is, you see, the teacher at my primary school who
orchestrated the Nativity play must have had a bit of a Cecil B DeMille
complex. He or she wanted a cast of thousands, so we didn’t just have a baby
Jesus, adoring parents, shepherds, angels, wise men, and a flock of oxen,
sheep, asses and other sundry farm animals. We also had rabbits. Three of them.
I played the part of third rabbit, complete with papier maché ears, and no
doubt approached the non-speaking role with all due sense of gravitas.
The experience stayed with me, and so did the ears. I kept
them in my toy box for several years afterwards, and would occasionally take
them out and reflect on those far off days when I was a star of stage, if not
screen.
It was a hard act to follow, you must agree, and follow it I
never did. I think that was the point at which a sense of anticlimax began to
set in, and the situation was further exacerbated when I returned home one
Christmas Eve from singing carols with the church choir at the local hospital
to find that the arrival of my presents had preceded the visit of Santa Claus.
My parents had failed to hide them well enough under the table in the hall, you
see, and my suspicions were duly aroused.
As for the other reasons, they naturally accompanied the
development of a curmudgeonly tendency as I gradually discovered that the human
race and its funny little habits are hardly worth bothering with. And the rest –
as Shakespeare remarked upon the death of poor Hamlet – is silence.
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