Donkey work

RESOLUTELY ignoring the old show business adage about never working with children and animals - not to be confused with Mr W C Fields's observation that he quite liked children but couldn't eat a whole one - the church of St Gregory, Bedale, held a Palm Sunday family service involving rather a lot of one and a farmyard full of t'other.

It probably explains why they expected it to be over in 35 minutes and it lasted for exactly twice as long.

It was wonderfully effective for all that. The road to Jerusalem was never meant to be straight and narrow, the Last Supper to win a Michelin star nor Calvary to be attended by the Co-operative Funeral Service and by a two minute silence.

The service was held at Big Cow and Little Sheep, a visitor farm near that North Yorkshire market town's recently reopened railway station. Mr Peter Parlour played the crowd, only slightly deterred when a sheep started eating his script. The column seemed typecast as Scribe, if not necessarily Pharisee.

Opened in 1989, Big Sheep is run by church member Carol Clark, wet-eared lambs presently adding to the attraction but also underlining the necessity to tell farming like it is.

"The lambs are lovely, but we still explain to the children what happens to them after three or four months, " said Carol. "When I was a girl you could go into a farmyard and farmers were accepting of you. Now they don't want children in because of the compensation culture, but they're still captivated by the experience of being genuinely close to animals."

Commercial necessity, they also have a shop that, among much else, sells little wooden aphorisms like "It's a dog's world, adjust" and "The dinner's ready when the smoke alarm goes off".

It was there that we crowded for coffee before the service - "Group therapy for claustrophobics anonymous, " said the Rev David Paton-Williams, Bedale's rector.

They were also discussing the annual Good Friday procession through the town. "It's a very interesting fact that when we started the shops were closed and the streets deserted and there was hardly anyone to witness to, " someone said. "Now on Good Friday it's full of tourists and shoppers."

Should the Church ever launch the St Luke award for spin doctors, they have their first winner already.

The venue was perfect. "Once we saw the upper room, it all came together, " said Mr Paton-Williams. There was a green hill, a Garden of Gethsemane which looked a bit like a building site - it was never meant to be a picture postcard - and even a donkey called Dusty, ridden by a young lady called Charlotte.

Charlotte was one of several children who played Jesus as the re-enactment made its way around the farm, each in turn wearing a headdress that had come from the Holy Land and was thus infinitely superior to the Marks & Spencer tea towel which usually suffices on such occasions.

Though Dusty behaved impeccably, it has to be said that Charlotte looked rather less at ease in the saddle than the chap - Slippers, or someone - who'd won the National the day previously.

The service had been begun by Margaret Hirst, a reader attached to St Gregory's. Jesus would have wanted to make a big impression when he rode into Jerusalem, she told the bairns, so what would he have ridden on?

"A Ferrari, " piped a five-year-old voice.

"Apart from the fact that Ferraris hadn't been invented, " said Margaret, kindly, "Jesus wasn't that kind of a king."

As if by way of aide memoir, we sang "We have a king who rode a donkey". In an age of inclusivity, it seemed wonderfully though no doubt inadvertently appropriate that it was to the tune of "Hooray and up she rises."

It began at 11am. "We reckoned by now we'd be nearly finished, " announced Mr Paton-Williams at 11.20.

The Last Supper was celebrated suitably - "Wine tasted remarkably like Ribena in those days, " said the Rector, though he may never have learned as much at theological college - the Garden symbolic save for the bit about the disciples falling asleep. None was going to manage that with this lot.

The little lads playing sword fights with their palm crosses may have been missing the point, too.

"We're going to have a little bit of drama, " said Mr Paton-Williams as the passion play reached the foot of the cross, "though the Royal Shakespeare Company don't normally have to compete with this banging."

Nor, perhaps, with kiddies on toy tractors.

William played a soldier, no one played Judas. There was a purple cloak and a crown of thorns and even a cock which crew twice, though - forgetting the bit about quitting while you're ahead - it crew quite a lot more, as well.

We sang There is a Green Hill and Lord of the Dance, ended with the biblical injunction about feeding my lambs and with titty bottles for the enchanted infants. It was when Palm Sunday became farm Sunday; big and small will remember it for many an Easter to come.