Except, of course, that magic doesn’t really exist. Only within the pages of fantasy books and fairy tales, and inside some rather overactive imaginations. It all started with a bang. Next came a puff of smoke and the lights went out. This was during Wednesday evening’s rehearsal in the Memorial Hall.
Barry, (aka Buttons), was, in his daytime employment, rather high up in Health and Safety at the council…well he said categorically that it wasn’t safe to re-enter the premises. Even after Sparkly, the cross-dressing Australian electrician boyfriend of Graham’s younger sister said it was all okay. No worries. His exact words. You may remember that Graham played a feisty back-end-of-horse in last Christmas’ panto. But I digress. Barry put his foot down and a new rehearsal venue had to be found.
The obvious choice was the library. It was next door and had long since stopped being merely a place where books were read and borrowed. Since the pandemic, and then the financial squeeze and the energy crisis, the library had expanded its remit within the community. Now it was also a welcoming hub for coffee-and-chat on Tuesday mornings, for pre-schoolers’ story times on a Thursday afternoon, for food bank on Friday mornings and for those who met for fortnightly switch-and-stitch, (the swapping and mending of clothes) on Monday afternoons. The library was warm, lit up like the Christmas tree in the foyer and Wednesday was one of their two late nights.
So with just over three weeks to go and with tables and chairs moved out of the way, the Stardust Players moved rehearsals of Cinderella to the library. The Head Librarian was on extended leave, a long anticipated trip-of-a-lifetime visiting her brother’s family in South Africa. Somehow, without her, the library leaped into the festive spirit, the thespian mood. Staff and volunteers were queueing up to work late, for their shifts to coincide with rehearsals. Mince pies were eaten; tea and coffee were brewed without complaint and most people smiled.
But it was not only the novelty of having a ringside view of the preparations, nor the glamour of greasepaint, nor the fact that, far away in Lapland, Santa’s reindeer were currently in strict training for the 24th, none of these things could account for, (either separately or in combination), the stories beginning to be whispered in and around the library. Some say it began in the cookery section, with the whippet-thin lady looking for ‘Exciting Vegan Meals for One’. Apparently, there was a note inside the book she was browsing through, and whatever that note said, she moved fairly quickly along her aisle where she almost collided with the bearded man perusing the library’s only copy of ‘Festive Vegetarianism’. Before long, they were swapping recipes like old friends, and, as they walked out of the library, with books duly stamped, someone overheard the man inviting the woman to a Mulled Wine and Carols evening two days later.
Another man, this time accompanied by two small children, was looking for ideas, Christmassy ideas, decorative ideas, ‘crafting’ ideas. The children were restless and bored, and the man was so obviously not sure where to find what he was looking for, that ‘hard-as-nails’ Elaine on the desk, who had vowed eternal celibacy after her last catastrophic liaison, softened a little, and left her post to assist him. And it is rumoured that when the man professed that, even with step-by-step guides to making your own nativity scene, table centrepiece and door wreath, he would still be utterly lost, Elaine offered to help him. Thus, amongst card, glue, pine needles and ribbons, romance was kindled.
When tales of these and other encounters began to spread throughout the town, there was an upsurge of interest in the borrowing of books. People came from their Christmas shopping, before their Christmas shopping, in the middle of their Christmas shopping or abandoned it altogether. People brought cards to the library and sat writing them, addressing and licking envelopes at the small tables and chairs in the children’s section.
Some of these new visitors found notes in books directing them to other parts of the library where they hadn’t thought to look before. Some admitted for the first time that they were hoping for love or friendship, or for some of the recent run of good fortune they’d heard about to rub off on them too. With so many people suddenly, as it were, concentrated in one place and receptive, to new books, new friendships, new experiences, and with the backdrop of Cinderella rehearsals and the absence of the sad-faced Head Librarian, something strange did seem to be happening.
The last piece of Christmas magic happened at the dress rehearsal. The Fairy Godmother arrived late. Her car had refused to start and the RAC man had taken forever to rescue her. When she arrived, dropped off by her rescuer, Doug, she invited him in to the library for mince pies and tea and to watch the rehearsal.
There was a girl standing in for her, one of the Christmas card writers from the children’s corner. She was wearing her own clothes, but with the addition of the Fairy Godmother’s tiara and wand. As she tapped the wand on the stool in Cinders’ kitchen, looking at the two people who’d just arrived, the lights in the building flickered. Doug felt a warm glow fill his body from the soles of his muddy work boots to the thinning crown of his head. He decided to leave there and then, take the broken car to the depot and come straight back. If he was sharp about it, he’d be back before they finished, and he’d have worked out what to say to the splendid woman who might, by then, be needing a lift home. As she’d have no working car, and people outside of fairy tales don’t generally have the option of transforming pumpkins. Or of wands that work…
When the electrics at the Memorial Hall were given a clean bill of health in the New Year, (this time by someone properly qualified, and recommended by Barry), The Stardust Players moved back to their usual rehearsal space in plenty of time for the Summer production. They’d gained five new members; there were three Spring pregnancies and two Autumn weddings were announced. The wand was put away in a props basket and the woman who was beginning to get to know and like Doug rather a lot, well, she decided just to help backstage for the next show, as her priorities seemed to have realigned themselves.
The Head Librarian did return, but just to hand in her notice. She was going back out to South Africa as soon as the paperwork was completed. Elaine, who was no longer ‘hard as nails’, was promoted, and though nothing quite as unusual happened again in the library, with notes and messages and suchlike, somehow the atmosphere had changed. It felt happier, ‘charged’, and positive. And if you didn’t know better, you might even call it magical.
