Advent calendars and Nativity plays

Today was our first practice in church of our impending Nativity play. Doing it in the school hall is too easy. It's far more challenging to erect the stage in the hall to practice for two weeks, then to dismantle it and take it down the road to the church, walk the children down there each day to practice further, dismantle it again for the week-end's services before setting it up again next Monday morning for our first performance in the afternoon.
However, I digress. My job is the music, which entails manipulating a console which makes Dr Who's Tardis look like childsplay, so I spent most of my time getting to grips with that. "See, you're enjoying it!" says the 33 year old PPA teacher. "Imagine - learning something new at your age," he continued before hopping around in howls of agony as I stamped on his foot. (No, not really - not in front of the children.)
In addition, I was darting out to the front to ensure that the children sang the right verses in the right order, rather than following their natural inclination to repeat the first verse each time.
Where it did get slightly challenging, however, was when the Reception teacher suddenly announced in my ear that one of her children had had an 'accident' and she would have to take him back to school to change him, so would I mind assembling the shepherds and then the wise men in the right order ready to make their entrance? - with my second pair of hands, of course.
By this time, having lost the will to live, I just nodded silently and hoped that enough of them would remember of their own accord.
Oh what fun we had!
Back at school, the children were just getting ready to go home when one of the boys noticed that some little so and so had attacked our Advent calendars (two as it's a large class), ripped open several of the flaps and made off with the chocolates.
A job for Sherlock Holmes tomorrow...