Mrs. Culkin had put her birthday on the rehearsal schedule,
so we all knew it was coming up. During a rehearsal a while back, Taylor
suggested we should do something to celebrate. Of course, we were all on board
and in a group chat to do so quite quickly.
I played secretary, collecting money from people and
organising things.
The first thing we did was decide on exactly what it was we
would do for Mrs. Culkin’s birthday: we eventually made the decision to make
her a card, get her this ‘Oliver’ bag I found on Redbubble and make her a sweet
hamper.
After we’d found a hamper and ordered that and the bag, a
few of us got together to make the card, which we did in the
library one day after school, when none of us had a rehearsal. I didn’t do a
great deal on the card, but our collaboration looked great! Hats off to Milana,
Natasha, Georgia and Khadija! Special shout out to Khadija as she very kindly
donated her calligraphy skills, despite not being in our cast!
Misson 2 was for the sweet hamper. Taylor, Tasha and I went
on a trip into town and walked around Home Bargains searching for sweets and
jars and designing the hamper in the middle of the shop! Around this time, I’d
began to envisage us giving Mrs. Culkin the presents surrounded by balloons and
popping party poppers so I made a quick trip to Wilko while we were in town as well. Buying the balloons was a success, but I only realised my mistake
regarding the party poppers when the woman serving me asked to see my ID…
Now all that was left to do was get everyone to sign the
card and make up the hamper. The card was signed over a series of break and
lunch times and we were able to make up the hamper (which we decided we'd write "Food, Glorious Food" on and put jelly and custard in) pretty quickly!
Once the card and the presents were sorted, it was time to plan the delivery...
Despite my series of dreams in which everything went badly
(don’t ask), everything went well – except for the fact that Lee
(in my Drama class and ‘Oliver’) let Mrs. Culkin know that something was going on!
Mrs. Culkin was suspicious on Friday morning due to Lee’s
comment, but she was completely taken by surprise at lunchtime! As planned,
Mrs. Stacey (our R.E teacher), got Mrs. Culkin to go up to her room for
something ‘urgent’ around 1:35pm. At this time, we took the card, hamper,
balloons and party poppers (the bag hadn’t arrived yet!) down to the studio.
Once we were all set up, somebody went up to R.E to ‘let Mrs. Culkin know that
somebody was messing around in the studio.’
When she came in, we all jumped up
and yelled “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” before we sang it to her. She was so shocked and
she looked so happy! Once we’d finished singing, she admitted she was also a little
bit scared, which made us all laugh. The turnout was amazing and the atmosphere
was even better than planned; someone had turned the stage lights on and, after
giving loads of people a hug because we’re all “so lovely” and showing our
deputy head teacher the party we’d thrown her, Mrs. Culkin played some music
(“Can we play Musical Statues, please?”)!
To end our fun as “Be Back Soon” was playing, the period 5 bell went. Tahreem and I didn’t
want to go to English but, as we were ridiculously hyped up, that failed to have much effect on us!
I got home on Friday to discover the bag… great, right? You need a bag
for lunch time and it turns up when you get home from school! Anyway, I
took it into school yesterday and gave it to Mrs. Culkin at lunch time. As we all hoped, she
loved it!
-Zahra♥
-Zahra♥
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