The Desk

The classroom was virtually unchanged from when the school was built in 1905. Pairs of oak desks ascended in tiers like a small lecture theatre. They had inkwells and fifty plus years of carved initials in inconspicuous places. The contents of each desk was like a mini museum of the past, with grubby sweet wrappers, aged stained books, abandoned pens and sometimes the scribbled notes of previous pupils.

Some were now on the dole and some were town councillors. The roulette wheel of life had spun them out.

Luckily, our teacher was a rare decent sort, wise and supportive. He had a short back and sides haircut, permanent five o'clock shadow and was widely believed to be an ex-U-Boat Captain. On Friday afternoons he would read aloud a poem, or a chapter from a novel, adopting a variety of different voices a la radio drama. These ranged from screeching Dowager Duchesses to sonorous African chiefs.

But back to the desk....

On the inside of the lid there was a mysterious collage of green splodges, rather similar to an impasto abstract painting. After a year or so, one of my classmates informed me that his brother used to sit where I was, and he would routinely empty his nose inside the desk every winter morning.