Was thinking about going to somewhere atmospheric for a good carol service. St Martin in the Fields, St Pauls, should be good? The only problem is the last time we tried this it went horribly wrong.
The kids were little and we decided to go to York Minster, anticipating rorting out a few good carols at the top of our voices. Got there in a timely fashion, a minute before it started and found one of the few remaining seats at the far side of the knave. Silence decended, as we were giving the kids crayons, transformers, play dough etc, and a single chorister started Once in Royal Davids City somewhere up front (about a mile away) barely audible, so all the people around us were virtually holding there breath in order to hear it. "DAD .. WHO's SINGING" peeled out from one of our little darlings, shattering the mood, followed by quiet, but insistant hissed instructions to stop using a Transformer to attack My Little Pony quite so violently.
The next carol was for general participation, which was a relief, but the assault on MLP was intensifying.
The next carol was another long distance solo, and it became apparent this was not the place for 3 under 6 kids, so we decided to sneak out. We gathered everything up (I had a bit of a tug of war over the transformer with Jack, which he won) and we headed for the door, up the knave and then across to the South Transept. Things were going well till we turned the corner. We stopped dead in our tracks .. heading towards us was the Bishop and his entire entourage (alter boy outriders with candles, the choir, followed up by various large aggressive looking dignitaries, all wreathed in a cloud of incense). They looked as non-plussed as we did, but didn't show any signs of backing off or standing aside. I had visions of the headlines in the York Evening Press, "Father of 3 Spends Christmas in Durham High Security Wing after struggle with Bishop".
At the last moment a kindly soul pushed the other people on his pew along and made room for us to squeeze out of the way. phew, maybe we'll just go to the pub again.
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