No title forthcoming part 342

Last night could have been bad. We were singing at our first carol concert of the year, in a huge London church. One of the readings was a comedic poem about Father Christmas getting drunk. It was read by a lovely-seeming man standing high above us in the pulpit, who put a lot of feeling into the words while we sat on chairs on the well-lit stage below, looking up at him. And then the story reached its present-delivery stage, and the reader said a line that was, at best, brave. "Santa emptied his sack," he told us, without a glimmer of awareness that this might be a risky statement. Immediately, my throat clenched and I knew from the silence around me that several other people had been stricken. Slowly, I turned to my right and saw a wide-eyed Ed in the row behind staring round in disbelief, convinced as I was that there would surely be an outburst. Rob was looking down at his music but his grin indicated that he too was struggling not to erupt. I knew that any noise I made would be lethal. Trying to let the laugh out slowly, I exhaled through my nose, but the contractions of my giggling abdomen forced the air out in short bursts. And then - horrors - an audible murmer, the tiniest of hums, emerged. I knew this would be death for my fellow laughers, but I also knew that looking at them would be fatal. I bit my lip and thought about a kitten massacre. Very slowly, my heart rate returned to normal and finally I knew I was safe. After the concert, we poured out of the church and roared with relief, safe to rejoice in the double-entendre, and I was proud that I had managed to keep it together. We had sung well in places but my abiding memory of the evening will be that moment.

About 14 years ago, when I was in the school choir, we were told to learn a very long song with several verses in Latin. Before our debut performance at a nearby old people's home, few of us had managed to get the words off by heart, and decided that we would cut out the photocopied lyrics and hide them in our hands - eight or so squares each, a verse on each square, turning them surreptitiously during each chorus. Our choir master wasn't having any of this, though. Furious when he realised what was going on, he tapped the hands of the guilty very firmly during a verse, and one by one, snowflakes of illicit paper fluttered to our feet as we were forced to make up a Latin carol in front of a room full of elderly locals who were probably wishing we were singing It's A Long Way To Tipperary.

Some things never change, and that makes me extremely happy. I love singing in choir, but I love the opportunity it gives us all to indulge our naughty sides. I'm one of life's goody-goodies. I hate being told off. But I also can't resist a good laugh. Ultimately, if you stand up in public and read words aloud that conjur a mental image of a masturbating Santa, people will giggle. They'll know that it's naughty, they'll try and contain it, but the laughter is inevitable. And that is exactly as it should be.