People power

NEARLY two years into our time here in Bury St Edmunds, things start to fall into familiar patterns. The seasons take shape and begin to repeat themselves, not only in the fasts and feasts that we share with the rest of the Church of England, but in our more eccentric local ones as well. The commemoration of Jankyn Smyth, town benefactor and church builder, rolled around again with its associated procession and cake-and-ale ceremony, all according to the will of a man who died in 1481.

Last year, I had researched and performed Smyth’s story myself; this time, not wishing to fall into a new repetitive tradition, I wrote it as a short play and gave it to the local primary school to perform. With only a few weeks to rehearse, they pulled everything together remarkably quickly, and turned up for the dress rehearsal in a marvellous assortment of semi-medieval garb, gleaned from parents’ wardrobes and the school’s nativity box.

The Abbot looked magnificent in a magus’s cloak and my husband’s biretta (which was due an outing, as he has never yet worn it himself). Smyth sported an undergraduate gown, and three girls managed to convey that they were monks in brown T-shirts and cardboard crosses, without the need for tonsures.

One girl in a long white nightie was eager to explain that it was her Hallowe’en costume, assuring me that she had washed the blood off it first. My favourite, however, was the child playing a member of the Guild of Bakers, who turned up in a chef’s hat and matching apron covered in little penguins.

There could have been no better picture of a motley group of townspeople coming together in their refusal to conform to the cruel demands of the Abbey rule.

Lateral thinking

AS THE school year nears its end, there have, of course, been all the related end-of-term events to attend. My daughter’s specialist school puts on a sports day like no other I have ever seen. They certainly do have a handful of athletes, excelling at long-distance running and the javelin; and it is their day to shine, while the rest are simply encouraged to have a go.

My daughter had been signed up to “throw something”, which, in the event, turned out to be shot-putting. She had never done this before, but was happy with the advice “Just lob it as far as you can.” She trotted back from this endeavour with the proud announcement that they didn’t have a “4th” sticker, so they had given a second “3rd”.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching everybody else do their best in equally unfamiliar circumstances. I particularly appreciated the child in the hurdles race who approached each hurdle, stopped, carefully dismantled the obstacle, laid the bar neatly to one side of the track, and then ran through. It may not be a winning strategy but, when you stop to think about it, it’s a lot more sensible than the usual approach.

Full circle

MY OWN turn to “throw something” came at my son’s school fair, where there was a paper-plane competition: the challenge was to make a plane and hit a prize with it to win. I was confident of success, because my son is a 12-year-old aeronautical engineer; so we agreed to enter as a team. Halfway through folding his unbeatable precision dart, however, he was called away to mind his own group’s stall, and I had to finish the wings and tail.

Wanting to do him justice (and to look as though I knew what I was doing), I made sure that it had some elegant folded-up bits on the tail. When it came to my turn, I recalled advice previously given, and lobbed the plane as far as I could towards a prize. It performed an elegant 180-degree-turn in mid-air, floated back, and landed neatly and precisely at my feet. I had somehow accidentally invented a boomerang.

More than magic

CHURCHES Together in Bury St Edmunds braved the British weather to hold an event in the Abbey gardens, various churches providing music, talks, testimony, prayers, and entertainment. I went along to tell the story of “Joanna and the lots of pots” (Elisha and the widow’s oil), which involves a magic trick: a little refilling jar that can keep pouring. (“That’s not magic: that’s science,” my son said as he watched me rehearse.)

I went on stage after a very good magician, which meant that I immediately regretted my choice. As I told the story, I realised three things. First, the audience was far too distant from the stage to see what was going on with my little jar, anyway. Second, I found that it didn’t matter at all, because the power of storytelling is that everyone can see the jars filling up with oil in their imaginations, and the children in particular looked amazed. Third, I reflected on how strange and good it was that an omnipotent God’s solution to the widow’s poverty involved her borrowing empty pots from all of her neighbours, and, therefore, was directly proportional to how many times she was prepared to ask others for help.

A miracle that brings together a community and relies on a ragtag assortment of whatever is available is exactly the sort of miracle that I want to be looking out for every day.

Amy Scott Robinson is a writer, performance storyteller, and ventriloquist.