Christmas meets Colin the Caterpillar

Colin the Caterpillar

These photos show you Colin the Caterpillar - described as "extremely chocolatey...chocolate sponge roll filled with chocolate buttercream, covered in milk chocolate with a decorated white chocolate face and sugar coated chocolate beans:. Colin contains no artifical colours or flavourings.

Colin has joined me for Christmas Eve in my lonely little room. I found Colin in the Marks and Spencer shop on Charing Cross railway station, reduced to 3 pounds, on my way back from.....well there is where the story lies really.

I decided that I was a boring old f**t. Here it was Christmas Eve day and what was I doing? Wandering around the Sainsbury's supermarket in Forest Hill, just down the hill from the flat. On the spur of the moment I jumped a train and decided to visit my favourite Holbein portrait in the National Gallery. I have chosen one of the few times when the National Gallery is not open. It must have shut at lunch time. But, goodness me, where am I? In Trafalgar Square. What else is there? St Martins in the Field church of course!

A family Christmas service was about to start in this beautful and very recently refurbished building. The gold leaf shimmered. There were mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers with lots of small children. How warm and fuzzy it felt. This was a quite different London to the one I had just left south of the river. This congregation was no multicultural London. This was white and middle class. 99% white, with two non-white people, who it turned out where not regular attendees - one was a carer for a very elderly infirm lady (and left before the service began) and the other was a tall and handsome man playing the part of one of the 3 wise men. Who was wise here??

Let me shudder now.

This service was more like attending one of that strange breed of English stage productions called the Pantomime. Yes we were coached in calling out " Ba Ba Ba" (we were being sheep at the manger), and "No No Follow the star".

I kid you not.

The actors were the Rev Richard Carter and the Rev Rosy Fairhus. Their talents extended to playing Mary and Joseph complete with costumes. Joseph's line for a laugh was "Jesus Christ" when Mary tell him she is pregnant and he asks who the father is..... and she answers "Whgy yes, how did you know his name"..this was truly truly truly bad stuff. How could they do it?? To give you an idea of the rest of it, here are the lines for one of them playing a 3 wise men part......

" I'm hot and sore what a fool
I should have stayed by the swimming pool
Watching X Factor ont he box
Instead of all this sand in my socks
I don't need to follow this star
I'm already following Borck Obama"
[we then come in with "No No Follow the Star".

We were taught a Christmas carol/song before the service began...all bouncy and loud and meaningless. Thanks be to God we were allowed to sing some of the all time favourite childrens carols. Tears began to run down my face when we sang 'Away in a manger'. It was if I was a child again, remembering the wonder and the specialness of Christmas when it was much simpler. I had thought the whole service might be a bit like this.

How could they have done this in that beautiful beautiful church, where the choir (or a very small part of it) sent a few soaring notes to the heavens, but otherwise had to belt out the bouncy stuff.

I am glad I went. It was my one Christmas thing....one reminder of what all this was supposed to be about.

So Happy Christms all