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Posts Tagged ‘Multiculturalism’

An inner city advantage

Posted in Inner city, School, tagged , , , , , , on 22 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

In the last three weeks of term the Curate and I attended three school Christmas productions. The first one we attended was performed by the morning nursery.

The Engineer was dressed as an elf and had to work in Santa’s workshop, rather gruesomely using a saw on the teddy bear he was carrying. The nursery children enthusiastically sang along to Bob the Builder’s ‘Can we fix it? Yes we can!’ as the Engineer and his friends ratherly sullenly appeared on the stage area. The Engineer looked like he felt it very much beneath his dignity to perform for us.

The Engineer looked about as grumpy as this elf

This elf looks cheerier than the Engineer did

As well as Santa and the elves, we had a snowman dance, a Christmas tree dance and and a full nativity scene, complete with a laughing angel and Mary broadly smiling from ear to ear. The children sang ‘Happy Happy Happy Birthday to the Baby Jesus’ and the nursery teacher reminded us that the Baby Jesus is the most important thing about Christmas. There were children of many different colours, nationalities and religions in the show and everyone there was very pleased with the performance.

My friend Sunshine, who lives in a beautiful university town, has a daughter who is also in a nativity play this Christmas. Her school, however, thought it should send an apology and explanation, I guess because they were concerned that parents would object. They reminded the parents that the nativity play happens only rarely, and asked for the parents to indulge them this year.

What a blessing to have kids in a church school in a happy city, where many cultures are able to celebrate Christmas without anybody feeling the need to apologise.

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A Trip to the BarBars

Posted in Family, Inner city, tagged , on 1 October, 2008| 3 Comments »

On Monday, on the way home from school, I decided that the Joker and the Engineer could do with a haircut, so we called in at the BarBars (their pronunciation).

We like going there. The haircuts are swift and cheap, although I seem to have no control about the final look. I am trying to go for the slightly long-haired-sweet-little-lad-who-surfs effect, the sort you might find in mini-Boden – I am middle class, after all).

But stepping into our barbers is stepping into an Indian barber’s in Delhi, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. A telly showing cricket or Bollywood movies, a picture of a Hindu god/a Sikh guru/a verse from the Koran, a pungent smell of some strong cologne, some tatty newspapers in a swirly-lettered language I don’t understand and some magnificent barber’s chairs, upholstered in vinyl. The barbers themselves have elegantly coiffured hair, gold chains around their necks and a gold tooth or two.

Our barbers know how to cut hair and they don’t get the Boden catalogue. So despite my attempts to describe the look, my boys always come out with the hair cut that the barbers like. And what they like is a traditional short back and sides. The only variation (after going a good few times now) is that it gets left longer at the back. This time only the Engineer got that version. And they both got gel.

Last time we went I took a few photos of the barbers at work. And this time I took a shot when we got home to show why my boys would fail to make the Boden catalogue but are still gorgeous. Enjoy.

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