The end of the year

No pupils outside the gates nor in the corridors nor outside the classroom.  No more snow on the mountains and just an old, tired looking man lying on a sofa in the empty exhibition room.

I open up the computer and take the register to an empty room and then take a few minutes to register this empty room which I leave every year thinking I'll never come back.  And then I do, or have done until now. 

Maps of the states mainly, and a reproduction of Rockwell's The problem we all live with.  I feel a little lurch of sadness at this always leaving and never knowing, but also knowing that my Mu will never be in this classroom again, even if I am in September.

Heyho.  I cycle back across the empty gardens, salute the sleeping man in the window and a magpie on a branch of the pine tree and make a couple of wishes as two hay trailers pass me by the Rumat lights.