Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Let’s do this together
COMMUNITY CORNER Edited by SIOBHANMCNALLY
Nothing says Christmas like a bit of light anguish and despair.
It was Year 9’s festive drama evening last night, and The Dark Lord was putting on a show.
Among all the other reworkings of seasonal stories and fairy tales, she was performing one of her own pieces called, rather darkly, Self
Loathing and Consciousness.
But first I had to get through a very long line-up of other shows – The Dark Lord was on right at the end and I’d already been clapping for an hour.
Obviously the first rule of putting on a show is all the girls have to wear flat caps and all the sniggering boys must wear skirts. And each scene change must begin with the sound of scraping tables and chairs being dragged across a stage.
A few actors froze and had their lines whispered dramatically from the wings, and there were plenty of prop fails, like the huge white cardboard duck that kept flopping over as Hansel and Gretel made their river escape.
But there was also genuine laughter from the audience, especially when some older Year 10 kids did excerpts from a play about a 1980s’ comprehensive.
There was a scene with teachers drinking cider and snogging at the school disco, and a drunk history teacher telling the class that Norman the Conqueror won in 1066. So far, so very much like my old school.
Finally The Dark Lord came on, and I fixed my face with one of those impermeable mummy grins as I had a feeling the poem was about as far from the Nativity as you could get.
It began with her drinking from a shot glass at a bar, and I looked around me hoping nobody would think that I was her mother.
I had just about recovered from that and was beginning to appreciate the passion of her words, when I heard her say, “And your mother keeps her emotions locked away in a filing cabinet.”
She brought the house down, but while I clapped, I thought to myself, “Just wait till I get that little creep home. I’ll give her emotions.”
After the show, I stood outside and greeted her as she came out.
“Darling, how marvellous,” I gave her a hug, then added through my teeth. “Although, I do hope that wasn’t me in the poem – or I shall be sending you to the orphanage.”
Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.
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Pastel-coloured cottages hug the rocky coastline above the azure-blue Mediterranean waters in this pretty painting of a traditional Sicilian fishing village by Salvatore Rullo.
“My name Salvatore is Italian, but I’m a local Swansea artist,” he explains. “Salvatore is the name given to the Christ in Italy and means saviour.”
The 67-year-old amateur artist is inspired by his love of the sea and often paints his local coastline of Bracelet Bay on Mumbles head.
He says: “Now that I have time for myself, I love to paint. And I’m amazed at what can be achieved with just a paintbrush, paint and canvas.”
Calling all photographers, artists and crafters – send snaps of your work to siobhan.mcnally@ mirror.co.uk and don’t forget to include a selfie, age and location, and tell us what inspires you.