This week I’ve been doing my GCSE mock exams. I’m on Study Leave, which means I only have to be in school during the exams, then I go home. This means that I have to get up waaay to early in the morning, drag myself across town to get to school, scribble some essay questions, then stumble home by noon. As everyone else in my family is out at work, this means I get the house to myself for the remainder of the day. Great.
Today, however was different. As I dragged myself toward school I met a friend, Toby, who told me that school was closed. This, I thought, sounds unlikely. There is no flooding. There has been minimal snow fall. No earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or meteorite impacts are in evidence. It is damn cold though. Thus, I thought, the school is probably open. Toby is either wrong, or just fucking with me. Either one could be true without really surprising me. So I carried on dragging myself toward school.
As I got closer to the school I was informed by more people, some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn’t, that school was closed. With this new information (or rather, the same information given more credibility because it came from multiple independent sources) I decided that at least some part of the school was probably closed. I remembered that on Tuesday the school heating had packed up for a while, and students in the main part of the school had been sent home, but the mocks had been held anyway. As I was pretty close to the school by then I decided to go in and find a teacher, who would know definitely whether the exams were on or not.
As I entered the school grounds, a teacher drove past, slowing down to tell me that school was closed. Unfortunately for his credibility, I knew he was a Geography teacher. Geography teachers are usually wrong about this kind of thing, so I ignored him. I saw my English teacher ahead, so I asked her instead. She confirmed that the entire school was closed, and that the mocks were off for the day. So Toby was right. I still feel entirely justified in ignoring him though.
I returned home with a smile on my face. I’d actually got pretty tired of grinning by the time I was halfway home, but the sub-zero headwind had numbed my face to the extent that I had no choice in the matter of facial expressions.
So I’ve got an unexpected one day holiday.