There's a Snowman waiting in the sky

Today I decided to start Christmassy lessons, and what better way to give myself the chance to snooze at the back of the class than to put a video on! Ah, the video, that time-honoured saviour of the exhausted teacher. In order to give the lesson some semblance of a cultural link to the UK, I chose The Snowman, the classic Raymond Briggs animation from the early eighties.

I don't know whether it's a French thing or just a small child thing, but the kids all seem to love giving excited running commentaries of what's going on in films, with exclamations such as "He's going to melt!" being spluttered at the appropriate moment by at least three people in every class. My personal favourite utterance of the day came during the flying scene, when a whale squirts water out of its blowhole. One of the girls shrieked, "It's how they breathe!" Thanks so much for that.

Despite engaging most of the little 'uns, The Snowman didn't come out unscathed by the children's catty critique - during Aled Jones' famous solo, I was told that "that girl sings really badly," and I found myself at a loss to explain why the producers had shoehorned an awkward-as-hell David Bowie cameo into the start of the film...

"Er, urm... he was a popular singer at the time?"
"But it's about a snowman!"
"It was made by Channel 4. Now shut up and watch!"