The Clappers

When it comes to school productions, there is usually a mixture of emotions; pride, embarrassment, pressure, discomfort, excitement and then there’s the enduring, irrational uneasiness around the attendant teachers plus the strain of making polite small talk with other parents, some of whom make you feel physically sick.

My children were never starry eyed about the performing arts or had any desire to become famous and they weren’t particularly keen on making their teachers happy either. They were just themselves, fairly quiet and philosophical, open-minded but ultimately hard working and not too much trouble.

They attended a religious school for different reasons, the main one being an ethos of caring. The school was big on music, drama and something called liturgical dancing. At each school production there were, what I call, the usual suspects, a handful of children who thrived on performance, dancing, singing. They never let the teachers down, their mouths opening wide enough to swallow the audience as they bellowed out tunes, never missing a line.

A couple of children followed mine up from nursery, primary school and into secondary school, one of these kids happened to be an all singing, all dancing child with very pushy and very religious parents. She was called Annabel Bray, she had curly ginger hair as did her brother and both her parents and also her Cocker Spaniel. 

She could sing really well but she was very overbearing and it was well known that her parents would march up to school if she happened to miss out on the main role in the school play. It was a given that she would have at least two solo performances in every school production. Her voice was shrill, not necessarily pleasant but she hit every note and her singing was accompanied by passionate facial expressions which looked like they might have been perfected in a mirror at home.

The school was very glad to have Annabel of course, she ticked so many boxes, being a great singer, a religious follower and all-round good girl, although my children informed me often that she was rather annoying and a bit of a show off. Also it was obvious to them that a few of the teachers found her very trying.

Perhaps more annoying were her parents and their special talent which was the ability to clap extremely  loudly. The Brays clapping was so loud that it was almost otherworldly. I wondered if perhaps they had attended a special clapping course, one where they trained hard, smacking the palms of their hands together until the skin hardened and caused an echo. Was it possible that they took part in clapping competitions around the world, was there such a thing?

It was unfortunate that they often seemed to be sitting very close to me as I attended school productions, usually perching just behind me as we all dibbled into the hall and found our seats in the audience. Another thing they did, aside from the volume of clapping, was to make sure they were the first to commence the clapping after the end of a performance and also the last to finish clapping, sustaining their hand smacking beyond the normal duration to ensure that everybody in the room was alerted to their clapping abilities.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much. Perhaps it’s because I find the custom of clapping strange and unsettling. To show appreciation for a performance, I understand, but the act of smacking hands together in unison has always seemed to me to be hostile and when carried out en masse, I find it a bit frightening. I wonder if disturbing the air to such an extent carries a risk, a risk of triggering small catastrophies in far-flung places or that it simply may cause somebody two streets away to drop an egg on their laptop.

I might be wrong but the Brays clapping in particular came across as controlling and passive aggressive. It was as if they were attempting to assert their dominance over the room by executing violent hand-smacking for excessive periods of time. Other members of the audience would often glance across at them, questioning their exuberant applause but this only seemed to thrill them for they grinned and continued with even louder, faster clapping. 

They clapped everyone with excessive enthusiasm and volume however after Annabel’s solo performances, they usually stood up to put on a show of their clapping; leaning back and raising one hand above another before smacking them together. The unspoken message being, ‘Look everyone, that’s our daughter up there singing. We’re her parents, hear us clap. We can clap as well as she can sing. We are the clappers!’

Thankfully I probably won’t have to hear the clappers claps ever again and although I don’t enjoy any element of their clapping abilities, I am slightly in awe of the volume they manage to achieve and their hand stamina. I wonder if they met on a clapping course or fell in love through their shared talent and love of clapping or whether the day that they realised Annabel could sing, they just practised until they achieved their unique ‘extreme clapping’ abilities.