I’ve made it through another school year! We had a pretty chill last two days, to be realistic, with just transition for the new classes, handover with their previous teachers and tidying up. On Monday the children attended an hour and a half meet-the-teacher session in groups of 15 (one in the morning, one in the afternoon) so we could comply with social distancing regulations. I had the full 15 in the morning but only 10 attended the afternoon session! They all seemed like a really nice bunch, with a couple of ‘interesting’ home lives that might prove challenging but otherwise hopefully no difficult ones. It helps that Katherine (who’ll be one of our support teachers next year as she’s also deputy head) has taught them in year 2, and our teaching assistant was with them for year 5. After school we had a brief gathering in the garden to say farewell to Whitney, the Australian girl who’d given me all the advice on the tier 2 visa. After feeling very far away from her family this year, she decided it was time to head home and amongst all the flight drama around Melbourne’s outbreak, she had to change her flights (after multiple cancellations) to Tuesday. She’s from Adelaide but has to fly to Sydney, quarantine in a hotel, then fly to Adelaide and quarantine again! We all said a big goodbye and then headed home early. On Tuesday the focus was more on administration and packing up the school for the holidays. The staff who are leaving looked after the last few key workers’ children while the rest of us had handover meetings with our class’ previous teachers, packed up our classrooms, and set up for a barbecue! We finished off at 12:30 with a big barbecue and a lot of Prosecco to celebrate a very strange school year and farewell the other leaving staff, including the head teacher, David. As the afternoon turned to evening we packed up the school/barbecue and headed down to the pub for some dinner. I got home at around 8 and Peter had already left for work (the first time he’d actually had to go to the office since March!) so I just read for a while and headed to bed early.

The rest of the week was pretty relaxed, just running a few errands around the place, doing yoga and workouts or going for runs. Peter was on nights so we had dinner together each night before he headed to the ‘office’ (spare room). One highlight of the week was getting to walk up to Hackney for a haircut on Friday! It was nice to do something that felt so ‘normal’ and my head definitely feels a lot lighter. Saturday was another very chill day, with just a few walks and errands to do.

On Sunday I caught the train a decent distance for the first time in a long time, heading up to Highgate Cemetery for a visit. It was the first time they’d opened up the West Cemetery without guided tours, as usually that’s the only way you can get in. The West Cemetery is the older original side, with some spectacular architecture and gorgeous overgrown tombs. After I’d spent about an hour wandering the cool and overgrown spaces, I headed over to the East Cemetery and found the graves of Sidney Nolan, Douglas Adams and Karl Marx. The East Cemetery was definitely more formally maintained, with far less overgrowth and less impressive family tombs, although more famous people were buried on that side. Once I’d had a good explore I headed back home and Peter and I cooked a delicious lamb and Greek potatoes meal to eat in front of the semi-final of Masterchef! Great start to the holidays, and I’m very much looking forward to next week’s week away.