We sat in the car for ages outside this church wondering what to do. Was it going to be filled with white middle class bible goers who might get a bit of a shock when we walk in with our rainbow bags and hats? After much deliberation we decided to go in; after all just think of the experiences you could miss if you don’t be brave and jump in. Leaving the car we made our way cautiously to the door of the church. The door was closed. Should we knock? Should be just barge in leading to the silence as everyone turns round? We opened the door tentatively and was greeted by a very smiley vicar man; rather camp with a bright red nose. It wouldn’t be right for me to assume he had been a bit too liberal with the communal wine!
We were asked what name had we booked under. Booked? I rang up for some information but didn’t know I had actually booked. The vicar man then said ‘ah Kate isn’t it’? He was either psychic or we were the only ones there who were not part of the established church going clientele. We were shown to our table which had a sticker on it with my name on; ah how sweet. On the table we had scrap pieces of paper to make notes throughout the play, and a guess sheet to lay down our ideas on who the evil murderer was. Then the vicar stood up and starting talking about how this was a novel way to celebrate Harvest Festival. What? This was Harvest Festival?? What happened to just donating a tin of peas at the back of the cupboard. Oh no, we were trapped. The doors had been shut. Still we were here now, so we should make the best of it and enjoy the live theatre.
The play started. It had obviously been a quick production because all the actors where reading from scripts. The acoustics in the church meant the words were pretty inaudible. I had no idea what was going on, and didn’t even realise when someone had been murdered! I tried, I really did, but I just ended up using the scrap paper to pass notes to the ‘mrs’ like when you were in class at school. It’s amazing how much you want to giggle and release gas when you are not allowed to. In short the play was awful, but they were trying hard bless em’. My favourite character was the oldest member of the cast who kept forgetting where she was supposed to be and jumped every time one of the prop people let off a noise, like a car horn. Bless!
During this long hour, while getting a numb bum, we were thinking about ways we could leave without being too suspicious. Soon there would be a break for a ploughmans so maybe we could slip out then. But what excuse could we give? Well we could pretend that our friends were still stuck as the locksmith had failed to materialise. That sounded plausible. At the break we were handed a paper plate with a role, two blocks of cheese, a cherry tomato and some lettuce. It was time for our escape, but not before I had eaten the bread. Hey this evening had cost me £9 with the tickets and the obligatory raffle tickets, so I was going to eat my bread.
After this the ‘mrs’ made a telephone call to her friend to see how she was getting on, making sure the table next to us heard the words “do you need rescuing?”. The reality was the locksmith had arrived and they were inside, but mrs nosey britches next door didn’t need to know that. Gathering our stuff we made our way out. Just as we got to the door we were accosted by the vicar man, to whom we regaled the story of the friends left out in the cold. We thanked him for a lovely evening and were given a booklet about the church, with an invitation to not be a stranger. We then took our chance and escaped. We had lied to a vicar. Shall we be going to hell? I don’t believe in hell so I am going to say no, after all he’s just a man in a frock. So it would be like lying to a drag queen surely?
After this we made our way to our friends house for some diet coke and chats. So after all it was an interesting social evening, that we can laugh about.
