Lowewood Academy

“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.

(more…)

There’s only so many things you can do in an exam room.

They take all the posters and whatnot off the walls, just in case anything contains any hints, so there’s nothing to read or admire.

If, like me, your surname comes towards the beginning of the alphabet, you end up with a desk near the wall, not near the windows. So no peering longingly out, counting the gravel in the courtyard or looking for shapes in the clouds.

And there’s only so long you can spend gazing at the back of your best beloved’s bonce, feeling sad that your aim with a paper aeroplane is only bettered in its awfulness by your talent at making a paper aeroplane in the first place.

So… you twiddle your thumbs. And you re-read your answers. And you wonder whether you should edit them, or go with your first choice. And you try your hardest to remember whether ‘limen’ is the Latin word for harbour… or the Greek one. Or whether it means something entirely different indeed.

And you marvel that time can go so utterly slowly.

(more…)

“A week! A sodding week!”

“Nine days, actually, honey.”

“Oh, stop being so pedantic!”

“Well, stop being so silly! You’ve got nothing to worry about, you’ll be fine. You always are.”

“Harumph!” I snorted.

“Seriously, though,” Alex continued. “Look at that. No one else has got one of those. And I’m damned sure no one else follows one of those to quite the level of accuracy you do.”

I followed his gaze, to the space above my headboard that’s usually reserved for my print of Seurat’s ‘…La Grande Jatte’. A space which is now occupied by a rather less attractive mural made up of 12 sheets of A4 paper sellotaped together, and covered with the most intricate and colourful revision plan I’ve ever made.

(And I have form.)

(more…)