School Room Memories

The setting for this week’s short story, Home Time, is the school room from the primary school I attended in the 1960’s. It was my classroom from the age of seven to eleven, and every detail is burnt into my memory.  It was a large, old-fashioned, tall-ceilinged room, which hadn’t changed a great deal in a hundred years.  The classroom clock was on an end wall of the room, and under it was a black and white marble plaque. The plaque commemorated John Horsey, an ex-headmaster of the school, who had drowned in 1888 whilst trying to save a child from the river.

In retrospect it was a morbid thing to have in a school-room, but it didn’t seem strange to us at the time. Like the main character in my story, I spent many hours looking at the clock, waiting for the school day to finish. Because of it’s position  under  the clock, I must have read the plaque thousands of times while waiting for time to pass. I often used to wonder what kind of man John Horsey was.

The clock and plaque were the inspiration for Home Time, and figure prominently in the story. Home Time is set in the early 1940’s,  during the second world war.  In the story I wanted to try and convey the idea of a place frozen in time, I’d love to know whether you think I’ve managed to achieve this.

Thank everyone too for your comments, on this  blog and elsewhere.  Last week’s book review seems to have prompted a wave of nostalgia, not only about books we all read as children, but about reading habits too. I wonder if there’s a relationship between reading under the bedclothes with a torch and the fact that all my friend seem to have rubbish eyesight?

Next week it’s photo essay time again and I’ll be publishing some photographs taken in Malta earlier this year. It’s a slight different take on the Island, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

In the meantime keep commenting and share this blog with your friends.

Regards

Dave