I Bring You Gold, Baby

The rain will wash us clean, they say. Well, I'll be sparkling like a gold-plated plate, bold as brass, give me a gilt complex it will.
We did the final dress rehearsal today for the jesus play in front of the Infants School including Elizabeth who waved at me a lot. All us kids voted for the best costumes, guess who won. I am one of the 3 Wise Guys who are kings from the east: I am the gold king Melchior. We babbled happily all the way home until Error #1 was discovered.
Error #1 was lunch. I failed to eat it for the third day in a row. Well, I ate the Wotsits (cheese-flavoured air crunch) and the 1/2 egg from the 1/2 Scotch egg. This is because Ben came over and did the "Pickled Piper poked a packet of plastic poppies" thing over and over and I can't eat when anything's happening. The emotional skies darkened.
So I was tasked with doing my homework while eating a replacement lunch. In it, I was required to number all the letters of the alphabet - A=1, B=2 etc, and write out my spelling-words-of-the-week as spy codes in corresponding numerals, an introduction to cryptology. I labelled all my letters but only got up to 23. It rapidly became obvious that I could not recite the alphabet, which is a pre-school key-stage achievement, Year R at worst. The emotional skies hailed barbs and arrows of outraged frustration. It's difficult to come back from 5-0 down.
Suddenly, it was the Year 3 play. The "jesus play" bears little resemblance to the original myth or indeed the filtered, reconstituted and reformed story but does involve angels, shepherds and wise kings. We walked through the rain because the new traffic calming system had rendered all local roads impassable.
I am Wise King #1 which means I do gold and astronomy. The other wise guys had the only 2 provided telescopes for their stargazing so I borrowed Blind Uncle Len's binoculars and Great-great-great-grandfather's 18ct gold fob-watch chain with added signet ring, approximately £800 in gold, worn as a necklace, nobody noticed. All the parents and associated elderly relatives (more on that later) and noisy-fidgety younger siblings filed in to the main assembly hall and the whistle blew (whistle not included) at 1830.
The problem is, everybody in Year 3 has to have a part, regardless of ability, so some people had to be assistant angels and second-rate shepherds but in the end, it was managed splendidly with many of the more competent contestants having 2 roles. I guess it's way better than last time when some of my colleagues were grass, rivers and yes, bricks.
Erin H herself started it all as first narrator and ex-Puddler Erin W (sneezing angel) was particularly good, spreading Angel Dust amongst us. The troupe of singing angels was talented but their wings were somewhat detachable. Mary, Queen of Teeth wowed us all dentally and Back-up Shepherd 3 spent the whole song spellbound with his mouth open, re-animating only when the piped music ceased. The joyous and upbeat music itself was supposed to be provided by Finn but he kept deliberately playing the wrong track so he was terminally redacted.
The twin Guiding-Stars Liberty and Valance-Bodice were very athletic (plenty of future in panto) and then they introduced us wiseguys. We had our own song and I got my part kinda-absolutely correct and I was just doing some freeform physically inappropriate Ibiza-style dancing when George (Wise-king 2) started randomly with the Big-box/Little-box rave moves and I just had to assume the double-teapot position and say WTF you doin', this is a serious thespian scenario here, stop it.
This got the only real audience laugh of the night and I was propelled into eternal fame (eternal flames later).
Then, once some minor roles (Gabriel, god, babyjesus) had done their stuff, the headmistress did an unreasonably effusive speech about how we'd be snapped up by Simon Cowell and we all filed out to unending applause. OBoy, I could do this for a living, as long as I have Willie Nelson's accountant so I don't have to ... count.
I had a late pasta supper and was just starting a Horrendous Henry book when it was half past 10 ... lucky I don't have to get up tomorrow.
ps. The running order was designed by future first-wife Erin. It is now a collector's item.