savethelastdance

Am so busy at work, doing stuff at home too and just haven't had time to write anything.

Haven't got time now, but thought I'd write a quicky saying am still flicking through pages on here and reading all my freinds stuff. Just sporadically at the mo.

Will take some time out on the weekend and update on life over the past few weeks.

Happy Blogging Pals x

Two years ago I witnessed a parent hitting her child. She came into my classroom shouting about his reading ability, she screamed at him, then hit him around the head. She followed this by graabing his ear and dragging him to the ground.
I placed myself between the two of them, shouting at her to stop, covering him with my arms. She threatened to do this to him infront of the school if he did not start to read.

I went to the headteacher, she called social services. They did nothing.

Two months later a policewoman arrives at the school asking me to make a statement about the incident in my classroom. She explains that the boys brother turned up at school with no shoes on, no money and marks on his body and face.

The young boy had been made to walk to school barefoot, was not allowed to eat or drink anything, and was late because him and his brother had been tied to their beds naked and whipped because they hadn't done the washing up properly.

The two boys were taken into care, and the police started a case to prosecute the mother with child cruelty.

The boy in my class had never been happier, he was living the life of a ten year old; football and ice cream and new trainers at the weekend.

The social worker assigned to the case felt that the mother should have the children back. The mother claimed cltural differences. The family are from Zimbabwe.

Two months later, and whilst the police are still putting the case together the children arrive back home.

I was summoned to attend the court case.
The boy was still in my class.
The mother had threatened me on the one and only parents evening she was allowed to attend.
I was petrified, and said that I did not want to go. They offered me a screen and police protection from the evidently volatile woman.

On the day of the court case she pleaded guilty. Was told to go on a parenting course and to abide by the laws of the country she resides in.

I still teach her son.
She demanded that he stay in our school for an extra year as he is achieving low levels at school. Our headteacher agreed to this. He should be in high school this year, but as a staff we felt that he would be safer with us; we could continue to look after him whilst in our care.

He's a lovely boy, really sweet and kind, if not a little nervous.

A week last Tuesday I was signing his reading record and noticed that it was written in what I now know to be Shona. I asked him what it said and he replied that he wasn't sure.

A week last Friday the headteacher recieved a letter, which was accidentally placed on my desk, accussing me of racism towards her and her son. It accused me of stealthy and underhand tactics to make him feel stupid and weak, it accused me of underhand measures to make her son lose his identity.

The letter continued in this manner for two pages.

I am well aware she is a bully.
I am well aware that she blames me for the past two years of her life.

She believes that what she did to her children she did out of love.

For the past week there has been an investigation involving the local authority.

I had their full support and backing, my headteacher was outraged.

There was a meeting today, a formal investigation into the matter, which his mother attended.

The door the the entrance hall had to be locked as last time she was in school she assaulted a social worker.

I sat in my class, waiting to find out what was said.

I have been in pieces this week.

I know I am none of the things she outlined, many of which I have left off here. It is so painful though, to know that she has waited until now, waited until the case closed, which was a week last Tuesday, to begin her revenge.

She is a bully, and everything she wrote has been broken down sentence by sentence and all accusations have been recorded as unfounded.

She has been asked to apoligise.

Tonight is the first time in a week I will hopefully sleep.

As weeks go, this has not been my best.

The boy is still in my class, she is still in my life, though I will never have any contact with her and she is not allowed in the building past the head teachers office.

I have never felt so scared of someone. She made up so much stuff about me in her letter, she lied and conjured up situations that hadn't happened. I am lucky I work with two other staff in my room, and that there are always 26 other children around to tell it like it is.

I am pleased with the result, and knew this was the only way it could possibly go; it's just that all consuming worry that nestled itself last Friday that I now need to shake off.

The weekend is beckoning me and I am rushing towards it with outstretched arms.

Can I be so blase as to say, "All's well that ends well."

Haven't written for a few days.

Am having a really rough time at work.

Started Friday and just havent been able to think about anything else. It's all a bit much really.

Not to say am not still reading everyones stuff, just mute at mo.

When it is resolved I will tell all, but for now, am all consumed.

Hope all is well in the land of blog.

Gxx

Wilfred Owen's First Encounter with the Reality of War
On 30th of December 1916 Wilfred Owen, having completed his military training, sailed for France.

No knowledge, imagination or training fully prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front line experience. Within twelve days of arriving in France the easy-going chatter of his letters turned to a cry of anguish. By the 9th of January, 1917 he had joined the 2nd Manchesters on the Somme – at Bertrancourt near Amien. Here he took command of number 3 platoon, "A" Company.

He wrote home to his mother, "I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last four days. I have suffered seventh hell. – I have not been at the front. – I have been in front of it. – I held an advanced post, that is, a "dug-out" in the middle of No Man's Land.We had a march of three miles over shelled road, then nearly three along a flooded trench. After that we came to where the trenches had been blown flat out and had to go over the top. It was of course dark, too dark, and the ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an octopus of sucking clay, three, four, and five feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water . . ."

DULCE ET DECORUM EST1

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

We walked for miles, that night in forever.
No destination, just a glittering hope that we would find our way.
I held onto you, like you were the last man on earth.
So bold, unyielding against the raging storm
entering our hearts with each stumbled upon pathway,
there was nobody to stop us, no warnings.
We went the wrong way, both of us expecting so much more.
With a promise that we would never let go
of the feeling that in that second crept silently inside of us.
The sea glistened in the moonlight, reflecting our souls,
and you with a devil may care arm slung precariously over my shoulder
captured the moment with your comfortable pen in my over worn notebook.
The journey is just beginning; you spoke so clearly through the pounding rain
I pretended you meant those words for me.
Our footsteps disappeared in the sand that was leading nowhere and
as the water smoothed our history into a memory
I trod carefully, hoping to create our future with my confident step.
The sun threatened to rise, I fought against it, shielded my eyes
against an oncoming reality.
I wanted to go the distance with you, I wanted to take you
away from all the pain and open your heart with the beauty of the night.
Shadows whispered in the darkness and you swayed to the sound of obscurity.
You weren’t alone with me, solitude engulfed my weeping heart
and you spoke of loneliness into the future I was praying for.
We walked for miles, that night in forever.
No destination, just a glittering hope that we would find our way.

This is a poem about the end of a relationship. Possibly the end of one of my relationships, but more so, I am trying to write about how anyone may feel as you break apart from someone. I want people to read my work and think, yes, I have felt that, I know that feeling. Sometimes they are autobiographical, but mostly they are a mixture of feelings I have experienced with my heart ever since it started beating.

I use the sun, the rain, the beach, hope and dreaming in a lot of my work. This isn’t to say that all my emotional experiences have been in the sunshine or the rain.

Anyway, I never do this, and after thinking about it last night I wanted to look again at this one poem in particular and see why I wrote it. What I wanted a reader to feel, and how it makes me feel. I’ve pulled it apart in the hope that when it is put back together it will read differently.

We walked for miles, that night in forever.

This could be any night, the use of the word forever shows that the night is never ending, a symbol of time spent with a lover that has no limits.

No destination, just a glittering hope that we would find our way.

This is a reference to all my relationships, failed and otherwise; that there is always that hope that things will work out. By saying no destination it shows a feeling of not wanting there to be a finality to something that isn’t working. This links to the night being in forever. My forever sometimes feels like the longest journey in the world, and other times time just disappears.

I held onto you, like you were the last man on earth.

A metaphor for how I am when I get into a relationship with someone, acknowledging to myself that this is a destructive trait.

So bold, unyielding against the raging storm
entering our hearts with each stumbled upon pathway,

The raging storm is inside of the lovers in the poem, not a physical being, that feeling you have inside when you know things are going wrong and you don’t know where to turn next.

there was nobody to stop us, no warnings.

With every relationship there is only the two of you in it, only the two of you that can know what you are feeling and what is really happening.

We went the wrong way, both of us expecting so much more.

When you start off and fall for each other everything seems perfect, you think that things will be right between you forever, and then you lose track, your expectations don’t mix with the way your lives are heading.

With a promise that we would never let go
of the feeling that in that second crept silently inside of us.

Even in the end, even when you know that things cannot carry on and won’t work out, these two lines show that you still make those promises, and hold onto whatever love is left between you, even when it has silenced.

The sea glistened in the moonlight, reflecting our souls,

I feel calmest when I am by the water, be it an ocean, river or lake; I believe that in the darkness, open water holds a magic. I use it in poetry a lot, being able to talk of reflections and glistening is purely an indulgent line where I love the beauty of the image created.

and you with a devil may care arm slung precariously over my shoulder
captured the moment with your comfortable pen in my over worn notebook.

After talking of souls I wanted the next part to be lightened, using the words devil may care represents one of the lovers easy going nature against the turmoil of the other lovers soul. Linking your and mine with writing is something I like to do, I could have written holding hands, as this is the closeness I wanted to create with that image.

The journey is just beginning; you spoke so clearly through the pounding rain
I pretended you meant those words for me.

This is the realisation that you are being told it is over, the rain is used to show the mood of the lines, the use of pretending is meant to show we all hear what we want to hear when we are hurting.

Our footsteps disappeared in the sand that was leading nowhere and
as the water smoothed our history into a memory

These are my favourite lines in this poem. The washing away of the footsteps show the end. That the relationship will from now on just be a memory.

I trod carefully, hoping to create our future with my confident step.

This is a direct link to one of my past relationships, where I knew what was coming and I spent the entire time trying to appease and pretend things were ok. The words carefully and confident together show that an appearance can be deceiving.

The sun threatened to rise, I fought against it, shielded my eyes
against an oncoming reality.

The threat of a new day shows the heartbreak nearing the end of this poem. Fighting and threatening are meant to indicate how harsh breaking up can be, how much it hurts and how we all look away.

I wanted to go the distance with you, I wanted to take you
away from all the pain and open your heart with the beauty of the night.

There is always one person in the relationship that holds onto the want that they have created. Though the relationship has been hard the ideal view is clear; with the beauty of something simple everything else could fade away.

Shadows whispered in the darkness and you swayed to the sound of obscurity.

You weren’t alone with me, solitude engulfed my weeping heart
and you spoke of loneliness into the future I was praying for.

Again, this is from a past relationship where he had already found someone else.

We walked for miles, that night in forever.
No destination, just a glittering hope that we would find our way.

The repetition of the first two lines is purely to round off the poem, and bring the reader back to the beginning of the relationship's end.

We walked for miles, that night in forever.
No destination, just a glittering hope that we would find our way.
I held onto you, like you were the last man on earth.
So bold, unyielding against the raging storm
entering our hearts with each stumbled upon pathway,
there was nobody to stop us, no warnings.
We went the wrong way, both of us expecting so much more.
With a promise that we would never let go
of the feeling that in that second crept silently inside of us.
The sea glistened in the moonlight, reflecting our souls,
and you with a devil may care arm slung precariously over my shoulder
captured the moment with your comfortable pen in my over worn notebook.
The journey is just beginning; you spoke so clearly through the pounding rain
I pretended you meant those words for me.
Our footsteps disappeared in the sand that was leading nowhere and
as the water smoothed our history into a memory
I trod carefully, hoping to create our future with my confident step.
The sun threatened to rise, I fought against it, shielded my eyes
against an oncoming reality.
I wanted to go the distance with you, I wanted to take you
away from all the pain and open your heart with the beauty of the night.
Shadows whispered in the darkness and you swayed to the sound of obscurity.
You weren’t alone with me, solitude engulfed my weeping heart
and you spoke of loneliness into the future I was praying for.
We walked for miles, that night in forever.
No destination, just a glittering hope that we would find our way.