End of the academic year

The school's grounds are empty now, apart from a few lets from the National Youth Orchestra Scotland, but these young people aren’t quite as rowdy as the boys at my school! Term is over. Those teachers that live on site are squirreled away in their homes starting to do what ‘normal’ people do in the ‘real’ world! Outside, where there are normally people in movement all day every day, the birds have more or less taken over. If only the summer sun would bake down on the empty fields; so far all we’ve had is rain and the Water of Leith looks like it might burst its banks at any moment. Over in the Memorial Hall, some girls from NYOS are rehearsing, and the sound is carrying over to my flat. The end of term was marked with a farewell dinner/dance for those staff who were perhaps reluctant to let go of the year, or who wanted the chance to say goodbye before heading off to do whatever it is that they will be doing this summer. This was great fun! I've always felt strange about the end of the year. The start of school is a pure pleasure, a fresh start, a time of anticipation and eagerness, a chance to renew ties and catch up. The end of the year is pretty awesome too, bringing closure and perhaps some sense of satisfaction, but it is also tinged with regret, both for being what it is (as opposed to what it might have been). I always think of Edith Piaf whenever I contemplate regret and her potent rolling ‘Rs’ in ‘Non, je ne regrette rien,’ that even Major Ewing would be proud of! And then, of course, there is the saying of goodbyes. I've never been good at saying goodbye. I tend to shuffle and mumble and feel like whatever words I can come up with are inadequate to the occasion. If I can find a plausible excuse for ducking out, I'm gone and would much rather pen something on a card. An esteemed colleague in my department tells me that the all-time mega-über-maximum-full-tilt goodbye lyric is ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ by Donne. It’s certainly artful and beautifully realized: As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "The breath goes now," and some say, "No," So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we, by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion. Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do; And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. Anyway, I’m going to say goodbye for a few days as Sophie and I are heading to New York for a few days’ exploring to celebrate the end of term…