I found myself back in St James this week and once again that old building caught me by surprise because I have known it in so many guises across so many years that I sometimes forget how it reinvents itself whenever my back is turned. As I sat there I remembered my first visit, when I was about four, at my Aunt Hazel’s wedding in the days when St James was still a church. My shoes were far too shiny and my collar far too tight and although I recall almost nothing of the ceremony I do remember the building rising above me tall and echoing and full of light. It felt far too big for a small boy and I have spent a lifetime trying to grow into it.
It came back into my life when I passed the scholarship to Elizabeth College and we marched across the Grange for morning prayers in our hundreds, rain or shine, holding up the traffic as we went before funnelling through that great door. Hymns echoed around us and Latin responses murmured through the hall while adolescent feet scuffed and shuffled because silence was a skill we had not yet mastered. Then came the morning when we filed in as usual and found a coffin in front of the altar. A boy from the school. One of our own. We said our prayers with his coffin lying there and the building that had once felt too large suddenly felt too small for the weight it was holding.
Yet St James also holds lighter memories. My grandfather was stationed with the garrison when Guernsey still had such things and every Sunday the battalion marched to St James for worship. My grandmother stood outside to watch the red coats go by and as family legend tells it, one soldier among the rest caught her eye. From that glance came the long chain that eventually ended with me and sometimes I think the building knows this and waits patiently for me to remember it in gratitude.
All of that drifted through my mind as I sat in my seat this week for the Musical Theatre Group’s latest pantomime. It was a show very much for adults and certainly not something that would have featured in morning prayers. I had gone in with a faint worry that we now live in such puritan times that an adult panto might feel the need to tiptoe around its own jokes as if whispered innuendo were the only safe form of humour left and that someone somewhere would be ready to take offence. Yet St James had other plans. The place was packed and every seat was filled and the audience leaned forward with the eager anticipation that only appears when a community knows it is about to enjoy itself. Enjoy itself it absolutely did.
The panto was gloriously smutty and full of nudge and wink and sometimes more than that. It made no apology for its tone and thank heavens it did not because far from being offended the audience roared with the sort of laughter that shakes dust from rafters and brings tears to eyes and lifts spirits back into the world. I felt again that perhaps we are not living through quite the puritan age I had feared. People still know how to laugh at a naughty joke without demanding the whole world rearrange itself around their feelings. Joy still has a place in Guernsey and Christmas is still allowed to be fun.
I must say I never expected to see a full-size elephant in St James. Yet there it was. Inflatable yes, but vast and utterly convincing and so perfectly shaped and lit that it seemed to rise out of the stage like a great three-dimensional apparition that took my breath away. One moment the stage was empty and the next this enormous creature was towering above the front row, dwarfing the people beneath it and claiming the whole hall as its own. It was the true elephant in the room and I felt certain that the building itself was having a discreet chuckle at my expense.
The set for this amateur production was extraordinarily bold. Bright colours glitter and smoke filled the hall. Lighting danced across the old stone walls that once hummed with psalms. Costumes appeared that would have startled my old school chaplain into early retirement. Superheroes appeared from nowhere only to vanish again and the cast threw themselves about the stage with such joy and energy that infectious does not begin to describe it. I noticed how every performer kept an eye out for every other one, stepping in when a line drifted or a lyric escaped or a moment faltered. Mistakes became part of the act so naturally that they wove themselves into the tapestry of the show. This was teamwork in its purest form. Community in motion. Everyone wanting everyone else to succeed because that is how a night to remember is made.
MTG is made up of amateurs and volunteers and ordinary people with ordinary lives. Yet when they come together something extraordinary happens. The sum becomes so much greater than the parts that you almost forget how small this island is and how few of us there are. Nothing about it was West End nor should it have been. We are not London. We are Guernsey. We take what we have and we make it better by working together. MTG is a perfect shining example of that.
As I watched all this unfold I found myself wondering what might happen if a great star from the West End were to stride into rehearsal with a clipboard and a list of instructions on how things must be done properly. I suspect the magic would fade. Professional notes given to amateurs who thrive on instinct can chill the atmosphere and evaporate the chemistry. Natural collaboration stiffens when someone arrives to explain how things should be done by the book. The thought lingered with me because it reminded me of something else entirely.
The contrast with the States of Guernsey is impossible to ignore. Our deputies are likewise ordinary people doing their best, yet they are isolated by the structure they work in. They are told not to pick up a colleague’s lines and not to discuss committee matters unless they share the same board room and not to cooperate too closely in case some rule written by someone who has forgotten the purpose of politics might be breached. Committees hold back information not out of malice but out of habit because the system encourages them to behave as little islands rather than one island working for its people. Senior civil servants quietly reinforce these separations and step neatly into the gaps created by division. No production of any kind can thrive when the cast is kept apart.
There was a moment in the panto when toilet rolls flew across the stage and the hall erupted in delighted uproar. The audience threw them at the cast who threw them back like a snowball fight turned gleefully chaotic. MTG had even sold the toilet rolls as a fundraising idea which is exactly the kind of practical brilliance that Guernsey has always produced. A simple object gained two purposes at once. Fun for the audience and support for the production. As I watched the blizzard of paper curling through the air I had a wicked thought that perhaps the States should consider something similar. Imagine the public gallery armed with soft safe rolls ready to lob when a speech wandered too far. It is a harmless fantasy yet a tempting one and I daresay we could raise a small fortune and shorten a few meetings along the way.
Yet the deeper difference between the two pantomimes is this. MTG works because people look after one another and because everyone involved is trying to create the best night possible for the audience. There is trust and laughter and the freedom to make a mistake without fear. The cast pull together. The purpose is joy. The States is a pantomime of another kind entirely. There the lines are dropped and nobody steps in to catch them. Cues are missed and silence follows. Committees pull apart rather than together. The elephant in the room is the thing nobody dares acknowledge. We are left with news of money wasted and projects drifting and committees speaking past one another and a weary public wondering how an island that can create a show like MTG can still struggles to produce a coherent plan for itself.
That is why the question formed so neatly in my mind as I stepped out into the December night. Which was the greater pantomime? The dazzling uproarious MTG spectacular where every cast member pulled together to deliver, or the daily performance at the States where so much energy is spent and so little joy is produced? One pantomime brought the whole island together in laughter. The other leaves us wondering where our money has gone again.
Yet Christmas draws near and I am determined to end on a better note because this is the season when community should feel its connections rather than its frustrations. Watching that show reminded me that Guernsey still knows how to be a community. The people in St James that night knew how to laugh and how to support and how to lose themselves in something joyful created by their neighbours. That spirit is still here and still ours. It only needs a little encouragement to thrive again.
So I offer my Christmas wish to everyone on this island, whether you sit in a pew or never step inside a church, whether you believe in the Christian god or any other god or none at all. Christmas is a season of light and warmth and goodwill. None of these require a creed. They require only the willingness to share a moment of joy with others. I found that joy in an adult panto full of flying toilet rolls and breath-stealing elephants and smut well delivered and laughter echoing off stones that have witnessed more of my life than I ever realised. I wish the same lightness of heart to every one of you. A merry Christmas to you all. A peaceful and gentle one. And may the coming year bring more laughter, more community, more kindness and perhaps a little less pantomime in the States, and a little more of it where it belongs on the stage at St James.
