A big change

There is always change every day in tiny ways things change that we hardly notice. However there are big changes which we do notice, and sometimes remember and impact on us for a long time.

It’s the last week of school and I can hear the children from the junior school next to us out in the playground and they must have a mixture of excitement and a little nervousness – excitement for the holidays, and nervousness because next term they will have moved up to the next year.Maybe some will have a new teacher, maybe some will have a new class, but for the oldest now in the juniors, next term they will be a whole new school! They will have some of their friends and old schoolmates with them, but there will be hundreds of new children and all new teachers. From being the top of the school, the oldest and probably biggest, they will become the babies of the new school.

I changed to a new school when I was eleven, we moved house when I was fourteen, we moved to a different town on the other side of the country when I was sixteen, I went up to Manchester when I was eighteen, I had different jobs and then became a teacher when I was twenty-four, I changed to another school this time in London, I returned to the north this time to Oldham, I married, I had children, I left teaching, I returned to teaching, I gave up teaching I became a full-time writer… change, change, change…

When I was born I was the third oldest in my family of cousins, and then more cousins were born… we all married, we all had children, our grandparents died, our own parents died, life changes and we changed.

Now there’s going to be another change… maybe a minor change in comparison to others – we are getting a dog. This will probably seem not much to many people… but to us it is a big thing, and for me it seems a major change in the way we live and how we live. No doubt it will all be positive, but being so responsible for a creature is daunting. There’s so much work to do (especially in out r untidy house) to make it a safe and comfortable place for him. I’m sure like any positive change I will embrace it… I’m just feeling a little nervous… like those children about to go to big school!