The view from here

Is not as pretty as it looks.
This tree blossoms from the end of December through to April. It stands outside my office window and has become a beacon of hope, guiding me through the bone chilling winds and driving rain. Throughout, the blossom clings to the branches like barnacles to a ships hull.
This is the last year I will see it as we are as a school finally moving. We are told we should be grateful, what’s not to love about a new purpose built school all sleek and modern? Well how long have you got? The air craft hanger they have given me is a soulless and very badly designed box. I hate it. We are perched up high on a hill and I am on the top floor with views of an industrial wasteland that is a Medway town. No trees just mile upon mile of sprawling urban landscape.
But from the end of March my current view will be no more. I leave what appears to many, to be a room of chaos, but I love it, there is a place for everything, I have spent 5 years fitting the room around me like a warm cashmere coat. Come rain or shine I can hear the war cries of the local boy’s grammar playing rugby, I watch birds and squirrels fighting for the last crust the girls have left after lunch. I watch new buds open into fresh luminous green leaves and then watch them turn a golden brown, before falling again. To watch the seasons pass from this window has been one of the small pleasures that gets me through the day.
I have tried so hard to leave this job before this moment, despite a fairly substantial pair of golden hand cuffs. But I am still here.
In an effort to look forward I am busy trying to work out ways in which I can humanise my new environment. If you have ever seen the film Green Card you may remember the greenhouse Bronte sold her single status for. It too was high up, but it was an oasis of calm and so I will let my ivy roam and try to create my own green house in the sky.
Well that’s the theory.