Lowewood Academy

THE END.

Music swells…..the audience depart.

All are momentarily lost in the magic of what they’ve seen. Until they reach the rainy street outside and the feeling of wonder dissipates into the mist hanging over the street….and only the feeling of happiness remains.

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Lowewood Academy took what was begun as an ‘experimental’ blog and has somehow along the way, gone global. But now, after three school years, we feel it’s time to close. Well, not close in real life. Lowewood Academy will continue to meet in its discreet location in England and deal with all the naughty girls that are lucky enough to come and visit it. But I’m afraid, my dear readers, that our blog has reached the end of its natural life and so we are officially going off-line….Mr Shaftebotham has finally pulled the plug on the school computer.

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The dull toll of the morning bell broke through my sleep with the finesse of a wrecking ball.  Headmasters are not supposed to have emotions.  Headmasters are not supposed to have weaknesses.  Headmasters are supposed to rise from their repose and transform instantly into their professional, scholarly and austere personas.  Not this one.  This one dragged his unwilling body out of bed by a force of will only marginally stronger than the opposite pull of the warm sheets.  Just like every day of the seven years of his headmastership.  If only Mr Letchmostly hadn’t run off with Morris Minor all those years ago, life might have been easier.

But as consciousness gradually displaced somnambulism, I remembered that today was not just like every day, and my appetite for it grew.  Today was to be Speech Day, and the last day of term: a day of emotion and lasting memories, a day of moment.  I could still remember my own last day of school – not, as some of the girls would have it, before the invention of the motor car, but nevertheless a good few decades ago – and the realisation that for all the girls and boys who were leaving us, today’s memories would live with them throughout their lives, even after most of them had lost touch with each other, was touchingly poignant.  The Last Day, like the distant wave of a lover left quayside by a parting ship, is the abiding memory which encapsulates all the highs and low, dramas and tears, friendships and fights, romances and adventures of whole years of schooldays.  Do our final year pupils leave the school, or, as they each follow the path life has set out for them, does the school leave them?

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“Hip hip, hooray!
Hip hip, hooray!
Hip hip, hooray!”

The Dashwood sixth form contingent joined in the cheers heartily. It was a long-standing tradition, this, for each house to commandeer the Prefects’ Common Room for a night in the last week of term for a house celebration. Dashwood’s turn had eventually come around, and here we all were. It’s meant to be a genteel occasion – no drunken debauchery here, just enough fizz for a flute each with which to toast Dr Higgins and Miss Golding – and for them, in turn, to wish us all the best.

Alex had led the toasts, as House Captain, and I stood proudly by as I watched my husband – husband!! – do his duty. I’m sure in two months’ time, when we move on to a rather larger educational establishment, it will feel a little strange to be small fish in a big pond, rather than the other way round, but of course I’m looking forward to it – anonymity can be a good thing too!

My thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the shoulder.

“Penny for them?” asked Miss Golding, smiling at me.

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