Where have I been for the past few months? Why no posts or poems? Had I abandoned this lovely new platform which I had been extremely proud of when I set it all up last summer? The answers: For the most part, like so many of us, I hadn’t really been anywhere. This sorry fact leads us to the answer to question two; I simply stopped writing. In truth, there just seemed to be so little worth writing about. I could have produced another whinging moan about how unlucky we were to be stuck in and have life remain at a standstill but we weren’t really that unlucky in the grand scheme of things so I didn’t wish to put myself across as an ungrateful wretch. Speaking from a personal standpoint, I was just bored and had few things going on that were worthy of commiting pen to paper.
Come mid-August that changed most abruptly. Festival season had kicked in and I found myself armed with tickets, a group of fellow family festie-goers and not an ounce of worry or jitters about heading back out into crowded society. We all took lateral flow tests before heading to the event and then pretty much forgot our cares and society’s woes for 4 special days in the fields. The music, dancing, drinking, eating from the varied range of cuisines on offer from the foodstalls injected that spark of life back into our veins. Add to that the throngs of happy people with their smiling faces, the random art and light installations, the bands and theatrical performers, fire jugglers and the pyrotechnical finale and we felt as if reawoken from a long and hazy slumber. My thirst for life had been revived.
Following festival one, I had one day at home before taking another prerequisite LFT and attending a much larger event. This time in a completely different capacity. I became a steward, volunteering my time for one of the UK’s largest charities. This was an altogether different experience, nevertheless I found it altogether uplifting.
The mixture of work, play, meeting an abundance of cheerful and amiable coworkers, dancing and partying (of course), overcoming the slight nerves of heading off to this event solo, in addition, the responsibility of caring and getting help for the many teenagers and young people who (in their inexperience and excitement) had gone at it too hard and got themselves into a state (some of which were precarious) all built upon the sense that I had come back to life. It was glorious – the good and the bad.
Having returned and unpacked, I went back to work. A different school from the one I had walked away from in July. It occupies the same buildings but it feels different to be there. The students can move around and are not constrained to one area; they are allowed to play at breaktimes. The teachers can move around the classrooms, looking at work to check the level of understanding as they go. I feel that I can get back to teaching properly.
These last two to three weeks have been crazily busy. I still haven’t written any poetry; that will come in due course. This post is the first baby-step to refinding my creativity. Now I must go and do some housework and walk the dog before I head out to Bristol with friends. We’re going raving in Eastville park. It’s going to be banging.
Poetry for Dullards 