It is probably irreverant to thank heaven for the break when it is centrered around celebrating the rather troubling end and reappearance of the Lord in question, but the thought did go through my head.
The end of term is quite fun at school. I missed the last day before Christmas as we broke up on the Thursday when I don't work. But today I was there and we congregated as a department for toasting the holidays and consuming brunch foods before donning our gowns and heading off to church. It is fun to all dress up in our archaic gowns and multicoloured hoods. I'm MPhil Glasgow and mine is pink - which would normally match my hair, except I've not remembered to dye it recently so my stripes are sadly faded. Then we trot down the hill and find the prefects gathered in their long coats like in the Blake poem. It is our Thanksgiving Service afterall so it does somewhat match up with Holy Thursday, except our students aren't the empoverished flowers of London town and I don't expect anyone scrubbed their faces that morning. It might have been the case when the benefactors of the school set the place up in the seventeenth centry, but now more of them have iPhones than holes in their shoes.
As a side note - I quite like a bit of Blake. Initally I was utterly perplexed when I started teaching his poems to my first A-level set and it was the Lamb and the Shepherd and everything was so very basic - I didn't quite get it. But as you get a bit deeper into the book it all starts making a bit more sense and by the time you get to London - Blake is a bloody genius.
Back to today. Church was fun. We sang hymns, I sat at the front for a change instead of being squashed behind a pillar where I can't see anything. The church is a really pretty one, bits of it date back to the 12 century and there's been a church on this site since the 7th century, but most of it is from restoration and rebuiling in the 1850's. Its pretty well sized for a village church, but with most of the school present we do somewhat pack the place out, and today I got to sit next to my best work chum which just made it all a bit more joyful.
Then back to school. My classroom is tutor base, but I'm not a tutor - so I was in the English office. It was looking a little sad. We all run around all term and the place was over-run with stuff in the wrong place and folders that needed chucking and boxes that should be in the storage cupboard and all manner of other things. I wouldn't say I fixed it, but I did do a lot of cathartic binning of many old things - like 5 years of coursework for an A-level that no longer runs and tutor files for a member of staff that left three years ago.
We had a lovely staff lunch and then home where I found my new screen printing kit had arrived. It's for the Minotaur costumes - to jazz up the tunics a bit. New arts and crafts supplies - Happy Easter to Me!
