And when I go back to skool I hear

The clatter of feet on bare boards, painted black again over the summer, the shrill voices of boys in the dormitories with no furnishings, other than the rows of metal beds along the walls and the chairs on which our clothes had to be folded neatly and then inspected by Mrs Snell; and the smell: polish and disinfectant- that was upstairs – downstairs the classrooms smelt of old wooden desks and ink, spit, rubber, wood, dust, latin primers, pencil shavings… and the ‘far-awayness’ of home.