The Headmaster said his farewell today with a good speech that reminded anyone who had been swept up in the growing trend of obtuseness, that the last eight years had been momentous; that things which happened never could have been foreseen. Terrorist attacks in this country and in his home town of Christchurch in New Zealand; the uncertainty of Brexit; the pandemic and more recently’ war in Eastern Europe. Enough to last a lifetime, let alone less than a decade. We’ll look back fondly at it all one day. The Headmaster did a grand job to steer us through.
I look back at the pictures of him when he started and see a much younger man; a man with plans and an ambition to take things this way or that and yet to find himself swept away in all manner of directions. I admire him and I know that I am not like him. I do not have his conviction or courage and I often wish that I did.
But we are what we are and the past few years have tumbled us all around. The world has changed. It has lung us apart and thrown us back together; it has made us fear and made us rejoice, doubt and celebrate, bang spoons on pots and watch in breathless silence the daily briefings.
I dislike goodbyes. The walk out with the dog was wet and dreary tonight; the raindrops tapped on my Tilly like a reminder of something I’d forgotten to do. I always feel this way at the end of term; like I have forgotten something, like I might have done more. That I don’t want to say goodbye when I never really spent enough time on hello.
But there it is. Welcome to my life. I have aged in the last eight years and what have I done? Ticked over. Brought up the girls. Kept up with the bills. Send a few hundred kids off to university and maybe made them se the world a little bit differently.
I don’t know why I feel sad. It is an achievement to reach the end of the school year with no bones broken again. It is a good thing that I am doing and it is me. That’s the bottom line. Things work out how they’re meant to I guess.
Felton Black - A Journal 