Today’s Berwickshire has a page on the annual Gavinton Pantomime ‘Jock and the Beanstalk’ It would be good if Hutton and Paxton could get together to produce something similar now that the Nativity Play is likely to die with Hutton School.
‘Jock and anything’ is a bit too Scottish perhaps for villages with a high proportion of English incomers and the songs performed at Gavinton might not resonate here: “Ye cannot Shove yer Granny off a Bus” is merely a statement of the obvious in the absence of a proper Bus service and where most grannies have their own cars anyway. “There s been a murder in the Chop Shop” not appropriate for villages without any kind of retail outlet and “There’s been a murder in the Cross Inn’ lacks something.
Anyhow the Hutton Think Tank have come up with an outline suggestion-topical, relevant and accessible’ to summarise the 14 page introduction.
'Sinbad the Asylum Seeker’ The story of a man from an unnamed Middle Eastern Country desperately seeking refuge in Eyemouth is intercepted by Portuguese Fish Farm Workers and misled into thinking that the Whiteadder is the entrance to Eyemouth harbour. He is found by a local lassie trying to clean himself up in the river below Paxton Village (Song:
Wash these lice out of my hair) Initially he is an object of suspicion and fear-is asked to leave a meeting of Knit and Knatter and refused a fourth drink at the Cross. He is desperately home sick (Song:
the brown, brown grass of Home) but earns acceptance when he strikes up a relationship with the local laird and persuades him to abandon plans to develop a local field with low cost housing. The Home Office give him permission to stay and he is allowed to bring his family to Paxton. There is a touching, if a bit risqué, reunion scene (Song
Stop your Tickling Tariq Aziz’) His 14 children of Primary School age are enough to reverse the decision to close Hutton School, and his wife a nuclear physicist on the US’s Most Wanted list volunteers to teach Science at Hutton School. His fund raising activities (song:
Euros
From Heaven) gets Hutton its new hall, and two more benches. There are one or two satirical scenes about incomers unhappy with the scents and smells of rural living (Song:
The Slurry with the Whinge on Top), and everyone lives happily ever afterwards.
