Knowing one's Station

Today, on Palm Sunday, the Stations of the Cross were enacted in church, taking in The Last Supper, The Arrest, The Trial and The Crucifixion.  That the service started with acclamations of joy and a hymn that reflected that it captured in a swift and sobering way, how Jesus Christ was raptorously welcomed into Jerusalem and a week later was executed as a common criminal.  Inbetween each station, we sang, acapella, a verse of Graham Kendrick's The Servant King, in the same progression as the hymn.  The solemnity of the final station of the cross, however, was slightly undermined by three incidents.
Firstly, one of the congregation playing Simon of Cyrene, carrying a wooden cross of not inconsiderable weight, when turning into the Lady Chapel at the conclusion of his role, bounced the cross off the bar that is a support in the glasswork that separates the Lady Chapel from the nave.  Juddering to a stop, he had to reverse slightly, lower the cross and then exit the scene.  This was merely the appetiser.
Secondly, a gavel and sounding block was used by one of the lay readers to symbolise the hammering of nails into Jesus as he was laid on the cross (before hoisting up in the air.  I think our volunteer to be Jesus was glad we don't follow certain customs in The Philippines where people really do allow nails to be sunk into their hands and feet and then are paraded around) But, in a manner reminiscent of Jeremy Hunt's demented bell-ringing on HMS Belfast before the London Olympics, as the gavel came down for a third and final time, the force with which the reader wielded it caused the head of the mallet to snap and fly-off a short distance.  It was a comic moment further heightened by the reader's own giggling at this ridiculous and unexpected turn of events.  Whoops!
Lastly, Kimberley had escaped the clutches of my mum and made her way to the high altar where the fourth scene was occurring.  Seeing me sitting there in the choir stalls in my server's robes, she instantly was drawn to me and so I sat her there on my lap, inducing her to be silent as much as possible, with either my finger on her lips or saying 'shh' to her, eventually giving her a palm cross with which she was distracted.  As another lay reader concluded the fourth station with "And Jesus was dead," Kimberley, with unerring timing, said, "oh dear."  Indeed.