EDDLESTON village was treated last week to a great take on the festive classic A Christmas Carol.

The pupils of Eddleston Primary School produced their Christmas Show: Mrs Humbug Sees the Light.

And going by the ovation following the final scene, it was a hit.

Each of the primary 4 to 7 pupils and their teacher, Fiona Taylor, had worked especially hard over the preceding weeks not only to learn their parts and the many songs in this ambitious show, but to design and paint the scenery that took the capacity audiences at both shows into the present, past and future of St Ebenezer's School.

P7 pupil Molly Melville took the lead role of Mrs Humbug, the Head Teacher at St Ebenezer's School, who has decided to ban Christmas as everyone else is too excited about it.

Molly sang and acted brilliantly, ably supported by a comic performance by P6 pupil Rowan Scott, as the ghost of her old deputy head teacher, Miss Penny Pincher, who warns her to mend her ways.

But Mrs Humbug is having none of it, nor of the efforts of her put upon teachers, played by P5 and P6 pupils Catriona Morton, Lucy Melville, Jennifer Brown and Rosy McCrann. One gentle pupil, played by Nathan Gilhooley P4, tries to help Mrs Humbug but to the horror of the audience is shunned again and again.

The miserable Mrs Humbug is visited by the Ghosts of School Christmas Past, Present and Future in the form of P7 pupils, Rebecca Haston, Rebecca Toolis and Niamh McInnes, who all also narrate the play.

Supported by the rest of the cast, including a walk-on part by all the P3 pupils, Mrs Humbug and the audience are taken to the happiness of Christmas when she was a child compared to how the children and staff are very unhappy with what is going on in the present, and the horror of a future where Mrs Humbug has become Prime Minister and made all schools very unhappy places with the use of robot teachers.

She finally realises the error of her ways and restores Christmas to the school.

Eddleston Primary School... take a bow.