Slowly running down…

The last week of the academic year always feels slightly unreal.

Examinations have finished, the leavers are itching to be gone and those lesser boys who must return after the long summer break have already lost their focus and motivation and are dreaming of other places and other personas.

The academic staff – racing against time to complete hundreds of reports and to assign thousands of grades – have become fractious and argumentative and are struggling to clear their desks before term ends on Friday.

The support staff do not get academic holidays and will thus be in School throughout the summer months. They scowl irritably, knowing that the next time they see most of the academics will be in the last few frantic days before the new teaching year starts at the end of August, when all manner of last-minute and barely-reasonable requests will be made which, with but a little foresight, could well have been met over the summer break.

As usual I fall between the two stools. The fact that I teach drama means that I too must report and grade, and that I am only too aware that my remaining classes are unlikely to attain the heights of a few short weeks ago. Then, in a few days – and with my IT hat on – I must co-ordinate a complex programme of summer works, culminating in the rush to be ready for the new year…

…or that is what I would be doing were it not that the Kickass Canada Girl is waiting for me (im)patiently in BC. In actual fact – when the boys leave at morning break on Friday – my deputy will drive me directly to Heathrow and I will be on a plane for Calgary – en route to Victoria – by 13:30.

Which is a very good thing – for this has without question been a tough year thus far. I – for one – have a pretty good idea how a battery might feel (should batteries have feelings!) at the point at which the charge starts to falter, the power drains away and the last remaining dregs of energy are no longer sufficient to to keep the system running.

I need a recharge…