Saturday 11 July 2009

The Really Big Move

Packing for the really big move officially began on Friday, although unofficially staff have been packing for days now. The arrival of 1,000 crates on 1 July made it feel very real. The move is an enormous logistical exercise. Virtually every room moves either into the new block or out of the old block into temporary accommodation, with the added complication of some rooms changing function (e.g. from general classroom to science lab or office). The Science Technicians have drawn up an enormous list of chemicals in need of disposal, most of which I've never heard of, and are labelled with frightening attributes such as "corrosive", "toxic" and "explosive". I'm curious about what the "unknown solid" might be.


Friday was good humoured, despite the lack of labels, bin bags, crate seals, bubble wrap and cages for the multitude of odd shaped items in art and music. Amazingly, despite half the school packing, we managed to re-room and cover all the lessons and theoretically had a whole school in. Early next week we should finish off the task of labelling every single stick of furniture as either move, leave, store or throw away. Only complete junk will be thrown, and I'm pleased to say a lot of the old furniture, much of which is wooden and installed in 1969, will be shipped of to a school in Cameroon. It's amazing how attached some people are to certain pieces of furniture, and I've felt so cruel telling them they can't have it in the new building. The wooden desks seem to particularly inspire fierce loyalty. I've decided it's definitely best to label things unobserved.

Recently I've had dreams that I don't need an analyst to explain. A couple of nights ago I dreamt the wrong type of chair was delivered. Last night I dreamt the builders ran out of grey carpet tiles, so were forced to use brown 70's splash patterned carpet. I'm looking forward to this all being over so I can get back to dreaming about my teeth falling out or missing a flight.

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