Breaking Up
School’s out for winter:
Tomorrow, teachers will go back in as usual
to take down the displays already, with Spotify on
and their own music playing: Swift, or ska,
or heavy metal; songs with no educational value.
This early afternoon, the streets are full
with children, unmoored and aglow,
the secondaries on a sugar-rush,
ramraiding the newsagents five at a time,
and the primaries with their parents,
having cleared out their drawers at the end of term
now laden like the little donkey with artwork and bookbags,
and those of a certain age all with violin cases,
a mob of weary, anxious-looking gangsters
contemplating the rat-a-tat-tat
of the showdown, the shootout, the bloodbath, yet to come.
I don’t work in a school anymore, so I’m a bit surprised to have found myself returning to the educational sector for today’s Door, but having witnessed the above scenes in Witney while walking the dog this lunchtime, it felt like a natural subject for a poem.
I also visited two schools as Mayor yesterday, and got the briefest flavour of the exciting, barely-held in chaos that is the last week of term, so maybe that’s been percolating in my tired old brain over the last 24 hours too.
Seeing the parents staggering down Corn Street today with violin cases tucked under their arms put me in mind of Bugsy Malone, which is one of those films that isn’t a Christmas film but is such a fondly-remembered classic that it could easily nestle amongst the schedules across the festive season, a la Wallace and Gromit, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Great Escape. Four very different films there. If only the latter had featured splurge guns, the course of history might’ve been quite different.
I’ve always wondered why we expect primary school age children to learn the violin? Or the recorder, for that matter. Why always the instruments that sound pretty hideous unless you’ve really mastered them? You can’t fault their effort, or enthusiasm, but blimey, sometimes “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sounded more like a fire at the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.
I’m off to Oxford tonight to see a play at the Old Fire Station, with Luci and our wonderful friend Rachel, so that’s all I’ll say for this evening. Have a lovely night folks, particularly if you’re a teacher putting your feet up for Christmas. Here’s to you.
Screeeeeeech. Five days to go…
Owen x
The Poetry Advent Calendar 