Danskcolin: Sunday February 4th 2024

Dear Reader, do you ever feel embarrassed? [Only by you, Colin! - Ed]

It's an awful feeling isn't it - that feeling that everybody is looking at you, every eye in the room is watching your every move. It's a feeling that seems instantly to rob many people of all their skills and talents, and they start acting like complete idiots,

But there's been good news for embarrassment-sufferers recently, and it emanated from this local area, believe it or not. The message is that you can to an extent reduce your embarrassment in advance by practising a few routines that you can swing into action when "red face" begins to bite, like when you are dancing, say.

Pretty simple, isn't it, but this approach could be a lifeline for chronic embarrassment-sufferers, that's for sure.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's wind the whole story back a bit, shall we! Imagine it's 8 o'clock in the morning - Lois and I are just beginning to stir in our bed, it seems like a normal Sunday morning.

Little do we know that we may soon be facing embarrassment "in spades", and in only a few hours time - yikes!

It's another pretty early start to our morning, and once again Lois and I can't take our time in bed today as we'd like to.

Lois wants me to drive her to her church's 2 Sunday Morning Meetings in Tewkesbury. Usually she contents herself with going to the second of the two meetings - the breaking-of-bread service, but this weekend she's on the rota to prepare and serve lunch to the church's dozen or two Iranian Christian refugees: fellow church-member Lucy is doing the main course, and Lois is doing the dessert.

the British members of Lois's church,

seen here with some of the Iranian Christian refugees

who have joined them

The Iranians' dessert today is going to be the cake which Lois baked for them in our kitchen on Friday, plus the plum-heavy Laxton Tart tart which, tired though she was, she baked last night when we got home from a day spent with our daughter Sarah and family in Alcester.

flashback to Friday: Lois showcases the walnut,

date and honey cake she's baked for the Iranians

What a trooper Lois is - my goodness!

11:00 We arrive at the village hall, where services are held. David R., this week's visiting preacher from Birmingham, is setting up his stuff. Lois and I take advantage of the hiatus to get a warming cup of coffee, which is nice!

David R. (left), this week's visiting preacher from Birmingham,

sets up his schoolteacher-style flipchart and sits down at the table

ready to start giving his first address...

....and meanwhile, Lois and I warm ourselves up

with a hot cup of coffee: we're keeping our coats on too,

just to be on the safe side! Brrrrrrr!!!!!

When David R. starts addressing the meeting, we soon begin to suspect that he's a schoolteacher - you can always tell, can't you!

Clue number one - David obviously feels very much at home speaking to a crowd, and doesn't stumble or mumble. Not content to sit at the "preacher's desk" on the virtual platform, he's continually "moving about" restlessly among the congregation.

He's got an engaging preaching style too, but I sense that he feels uneasy if he doesn't get dialogue going with his congregation, and he's looking for almost continuous feedback from them. As a result his address is lengthened considerably by his asking questions of his audience, and also getting them to "come up on stage" and help him with various demonstrations.

What madness !!!!!

As for me, I try to shrink as much as possible down into my seat and avoid all eye contact, so he hopefully won't call on me, or pick on me for anything embarrassing. The preacher's theme is the Resurrection, and he calls first on 3 male attendees to come up on stage and play the parts of, respectively, Pontius Pilate (Roman governor of Palestine), a Roman centurion and Joseph of Arimathea, the rich guy who paid for Jesus's burial.

This is typical schoolteacher stuff, isn't it, getting people to come to the front and take part in some malarkey or other! Our grandchildren's teacher is always pulling stunts like that.

(left to right) a tall Iranian, playing a Roman centurion,

Alf playing Pontius Pilate, and David S. (today's president) playing

Joseph of Arimathea, and (standing rightmost) David R., today's visiting preacher

Next, 3 female attendees, Janet, Gill, and Angie, are called on to come up. Poor Janet - and she's in a wheelchair !!!! However frankly I don't really understood what the women are supposed to be demonstrating.

Perhaps the preacher was trying to ensure a gender balance. Is that compulsory these days? It isn't totally clear. I've got a sort of feeling that the victims this time may have been playing the 3 women who the New Testament says saw the risen Jesus, but I'm not totally sure. Whatever it is, the 3 women aren't asked to say anything (is that a church rule for women?), and after their "five minutes of exposure", they all sit down in their places again.

the 3 poor female attendees, including poor Janet in

a wheelchair, are called on to come up to the front in order

to demonstrate something or other - what madness !!!!

Altogether the morning is an embarrassing ordeal for Lois and me, two very shy people, because we are sitting right at the front, next to the virtual "preacher's platform", in full view of the rest of the congregation.

And although, happily, we manage to not get called on on this occasion, for 2 hours we feel everybody is looking at us and wondering why we're not being "fingered", like everybody else is. We feel sure we're going to become just 2 more of David's victims, at any moment, but we continue to avoid eye contact with everybody in sight, and David doesn't know our names, so that's a help!

In my entire life I must say that I've been lucky in never having been invited to "come up on stage", but in 1978 there was one occasion - famous in our family - when a young Lois and I, in our early 30's, were sitting in the front row of the stalls at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, watching a performance of the musical "Godspell".

Flashback to 1977: Lois and me in our early 30's,

with our 2 daughters Sarah (just born) and Alison (nearly 2)

the original 1978 programme for the performance

In the middle of the show, without any warning, a scantily-clad dancer jumped off the stage and onto my lap, tweaking my ear, pulling my tie, and draping her boa round my neck, which was a bit embarrassing, to put it mildly, especially as I began to realise from some odd "visual effects", that a "spotlight" had been trained on me.

a typical dance routine from the musical Godspell

typical scenes in the front row of the stalls during a 1970's

performance of Godspell the Musical, as a dancer climbs

onto an audience member's lap, tweaking his ear,

draping him in her boa, and pulling his tie

I never saw the woman again fortunately, after that night. I had "played it cool", most admirably, throughout the embarrassing ordeal. These encounters can be dangerous, though, can't they, in the wrong hands.

Remember this recent local story from the little village of Bell End, Worcestershire, the story that subsequently "went viral"?

I wonder what happened - did those two "hook up" in the end? Bell End is only a tiny place, with only a limited number of strip clubs, so the two would have been bound to have run into each other at some point.

If you know, drop me a line, won't you - postcards only please, as usual!

the tiny Worcestershire village of Bell End

16:00 Lois and I finally get home about 4 pm, five and a half hours after we left here this morning.

It's all taken much longer than usual because it turns out that there had to be an extra meeting after the normal two, as well as the compulsory lunch-break - the extra meeting was for members only, to do with some members' personal problems. At this point I get the chance to have a nap in the car, out in the car-park, hugging a bag of caraway-seed flavoured chocolate cakes. It's a bag somebody brought in for the Iranians, but it turns out that they don't like them, and I overhear church-member Mari-Ann telling Lois - "Give them to old Colin if you like. Alf and I are fed up with eating them all up every other Sunday!".

Well, their loss is my gain haha!

flashback to earlier this afternoon: I get some peace and quiet

in the car, to have a nap and try a couple of those caraway-seed-

flavoured chocolate mini-cakes that the Iranians don't like

[You're so shallow, Colin, aren't you! - Ed]

At last Lois and I can relax on the couch with our copy of this week's Radio Times, turning first, as always, to the puzzle pages.

See how many of these "doozies" YOU know the answers to !!!!!

We score a respectable 7 out of 10 today on both "Popmaster" and on the intellectually more prestigious "Egghead" questions, which is nice.

There you are, you see. I know that Lois and I look "past it", I have to admit that, but you see, when it counts, I think you'll find we've still "got it"!!! [WHAT exactly have you got, again? - Ed]

21:00 We wind down for bed with tonight's edition of Antiques Roadshow, the series where members of the public come along to some park or stately home, bringing treasures and heirlooms from their attics, to be discussed and maybe valued, by antiques experts in the relevant field.

Tonight's show comes from Roundhay Park, Leeds, and this local couple have brought in a vintage Mickey Mouse doll.

Mickey Mouse was where Disney kicked off in 1928, when the animated film "Steamboat Willie" came out, the first ever cartoon film with synchronised sound.

And after "Steamboat Willie", lots of people were looking to buy Mickey Mouse dolls, and that was when the merchandising started.

The doll this couple have brought along is an authentic toy, the show's expert says, and worth about £300. It's made of the right kind of cloth for the period, so it looks to be a genuine 1936 Knickerbocker Toy Company Mickey Mouse Doll. The Knickerbocker Company was based in New York, and the company started making Mickey Mouse dolls around 1934.

This couple are Disney-crazy, no doubt about that. But what lengths have they gone to to "live the Disney dream", do you suppose? Well, it turns out that they live in a rather unusual house.

Yikes! This leaves Lois and I a bit puzzled, wondering what this couple's house actually looks like inside - and we discuss what Disney themes we would choose to decorate our rooms - the kitchen-diner, the living room, the bathrooms, the bedroom? What would YOU choose for YOUR rooms?

Luckily tonight we don't switch the TV off immediately we hear the bars of the show's signature tune starting up, heralding the end of the show, because the show's presenter Fiona Bruce has a bit of a postscript in store for us on the Mickey Mouse couple.

Awwwww, how cute !!!!!

22:00 As we get into bed, I do a final check on my phone, and I find these ideas on the Internet. Could Lois and I make our home a Disney home too?

I wonder.... !!!!