We held our regional Christmas Lunch for BRA Members and guests at the ‘Fork & Bottle’ restaurant which is situated south of Zürich city centre at Brunau.
We were served the traditional British Christmas turkey meal with excellent fresh birds obtained from a local farm.
The restaurant’s British chef offered the full range of vegetables and the main course was followed by homemade Christmas pudding served with custard and presented to the diners engulfed in flaming brandy.
The opportunity presented by the lunch was used to remember Barbara Carnt a longstanding member and musician. Barbara was a concert pianist, whose passing at 97 in the old peoples home in Pfäffikon in 2019.
The occasion provided the opportunity for members to reminisce, recalling happy times at school and the almost inevitable Christmas Nativity play.
One member whose name we are with holding to avoid embarrassment recalled what was a rather painful incident for him, ‘Memory wakes with all her busy train swells at my breast and turns the past to pain.’ In a change away from the usual Christmas themes, Dickens, Scrooge and Tiny Tim his school decided that Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ would be suitable as a Christmas offering. Time for rehearsal was however very short and the main obstacle was the need for actors to learn, perfect and understand their lines. There was no time to practice moving around and performing tasks on the stage.
One member whose name we are with holding to avoid embarrassment recalled what was a rather painful incident for him, ‘Memory wakes with all her busy train swells at my breast and turns the past to pain.’ In a change away from the usual Christmas themes, Dickens, Scrooge and Tiny Tim his school decided that Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ would be suitable as a Christmas offering. Time for rehearsal was however very short and the main obstacle was the need for actors to learn, perfect and understand their lines. There was no time to practice moving around and performing tasks on the stage.
The play started and Caesar, a large individual, was impressive as he insisted on going to ‘The Forum’ (not apparently the name of a cinema). At The Forum, dressed in his purple fringed sheet (Toga), he was duly murdered centre stage by the senators, an act involving liberal use of tomato ketchup. Brutus made his speech saying that as a ‘Dictator’ Caesar had it coming to him and then rather stupidly left the stage allowing Mark Antony to declare “Friends, Romans, Country men, I come to bury Caesar not to praise him” (the only line in the play most of us knew). The crowd, now suitably enraged, left the stage with Mark Antony leaving the body of the dead Caesar to be carried off by ‘two Roman Soldiers’. As one of the soldiers (both were non-speaking roles), I can confidently state that this was the point at which the play hit a problem. Caesar was far too heavy – we could not move him.
For the audience comprising mostly of schoolboys bored out of their minds, this difficulty was exactly what they had been waiting for. The laughter started. Our difficulties increased. We knocked down a piece of scenery with our efforts – a cardboard Roman pillar. Eventually the dead Caesar had to help us move his body by using his all too visible legs. This finally brought the house down – even Monty Python could not have done better. The laughed for five minutes (probably ingenuously).
Two days later the head master singled out the taller of the two Roman soldiers for special comment. Apparently I had changed Shakespear’s tragedy ,’Julius Caesar’, into a farce to this day I think that comment was unfair.
With these reminders of times past the luncheon party departed into the wintry, Covid restricted, Zürich afternoon, to enjoy Christmas.
Bob Dean