Parking Lots

Mind must make up a story. But hard to focus with Adele playing and the coffee and the people sitting around.

Wasn't I meant to meet them for dinner? But I had been drinking champagne at the races. I was there with the French girl. Decked out in a silver chain, and white shoes, and a black shirt. I drunk, and smoked, and feigned interest. The horses ran round and round in the dust.

I couldn't face tallking to her, because what was she really, but a stranger?  Hanging on to Bob as we sped along the burnt road.

Stepped off the bike and there she was. Feeble with her walking stick in the middle of the desert. Dusk with the sea spread out around. The hotel pillars. The orange clouds.

What did we talk of?

Books.

Yes she was interested in books.

Came to me from nowhere in the conservatory this morning.

I think it was the butterfly floating around the roof that did it. It kept on humming and flapping and fidgeting, even though I had opened the window.

And then Gran said that about the cardboard on the glass, and Elizabeth sending her the butterflies "for the conservatory".

But it seemed funny to be sitting there.

And to think that a few months ago I was standing in front of the children.

...

S in my face shouting that I was picking on her. Crying and screaming and stomping and yelling, while I thought "This is not right, this is not right"

But they put so much effort into their work, and all they wanted was their teacher to acknowledge that they had. But the pile was so big.

That little dark office and that awful train.

Leaving it all just sitting there like I'd died.

I did care about them. Their little personalities. And some of  them were so good. Just to abandon them, to  abandon it all like that. And now to be here, drinking coffee. It just doesn't seem right somehow.

It was the Year 9's that did it. That girl shouting out " I don't fancy HIM".

Reading that damn book, just reading - because while I read, they were quiet. Losing track of how many names I'd written, sending out at random.

Malicious faces looking up at me, glowing like malevolent elves from some obscure horror film.

And then that office with all the paraphernalia on the walls

"Best teacher" - "Dear Miss C, thanks for making me love English".

Sitting there like a judge, this woman who I used to like, with her demands.

I was going to fail. She wanted this, and she wanted that and all I wanted was to sleep.

But no, this couldn't, this simply couldn't go on.
...

It was snowing outside and I was doing acrostics with my favourite class. They were so good, so proud to read out their little poems. After they read it they would wait and look up, slightly apprehensive...And I'd say "Brilliant! That was really lovely".

The room felt peaceful with the warm radiator, and the large windows, and the floating white flakes. They were all thinking of  Christmas, and presents, and warm fires.

Everything existed in that moment.

Something jars. An odd feeling. "Yes, you've won". Now I'm free.

But what did I lose?
...

The hearing impaired classroom assistant (tall, long black hair, wrinkled, slight lisp) came  to me after each Of Mice and Men lesson. Her mother was ill so she went to Australia. She was worried about Jacob, but he was lazy, and there was nothing she could do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20