Little by little!

Time ticks on in this slowest of all ends to a tired term.

The dawns, which I watch from the eyrie of the staff room in building 1 become progressively more spectacular with a great swathe of ochre orange splashed across the sky sandwiched between bands of black and dirty purple lapsing into a military looking blue-grey, until the sun finally arrives in all its resplendent vulgarity.

Today is my six period day giving me no pause for thought to dwell on what the management might say tomorrow in the meeting (after school of course!) to tell us just how much worse off we are going to be in the future.  A future that looks increasingly precarious for the country let alone for a privileged, though for this sector, a fairly considerate school like ours.

Taking my cue from Marie Antoinette I am rising above the chaos all around me by steadily listening to the half price EMI operas that I bought from El Corte Ingles.  “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” yesterday and “The Turn of the Screw” today.  Both of these are splendid productions with excellent voices and a world away from the screeching unmusicality of a highlights of “Turandot” I suffered last week with a cast of consonant heavy eastern Europeans with ululating vibratos whose visual representations would not have looked out of place in a vertiginous ride in a Disney theme park.  One of my more laboured metaphors there!

It may be psychological rather than medicinal, but I do feel marginally better this morning after a few puffs of my new inhaler and I look forward to continued improvement so that I can break the series of Christmas Days when I have been feeling hors de combat.  Our Christmas meals are so delicious it is a culinary crime to miss out on any morsel!

Now that the sky has turned colour yet again and the military greys have become soft violets or mauves I think it is time for my start-of-the-day cup of tea.

The staff room of building one is at least partially removed from the morning scream of children.  We are one floor up and at least two if not three closed doors away from their piercing voices, so the start of the day here is not so trying as it is in the other staff room where the separation of kids from staff is non-existent.

To my mind there is nothing worse than the easy acceptance of pupils entering the staff room.  In this school pupils seem to think that they have an absolute right of entry.  Part of the problem is that the pupils’ “breakfast” is kept in the staff rooms for pupils’ representatives to collect for the morning break.  This should not happen, but I seem to be one of the few teachers who are even remotely concerned about it.  But let it pass, let it pass.  There is the meeting on Wednesday to worry about which puts the appearance of pupils’ faces into perspective.

The last two periods today were less stressful than normal with the pupils shunted into the computer room for the last period trying to analyse the shots used to produce commercials.  Nothing like making the pupils think!

The hours left in work are rapidly (I’m saying that to convince myself) dwindling and the glorious release of the holidays is well within sight.

The remaining horror is the reality of what might be said in the meeting tomorrow when the full extent of the parsimony of the school and government are laid open for inspection.  I still have residual faith in the school doing the right thing – though what the right thing to do is at this time is not entirely clear.

Tomorrow will clarify the position and give me pause for thought.