I have continued to receive so many lovely messages from so many people. There was one particular one from a young pupil who sent me a “Happy Get Well Card” which I think is a wonderful idea. I love happy cards! On the card was a message telling me that “we missed you” and a picture of a smiling bald-headed man cloaked in a black coat or cape, maybe even a gown, with a flamboyant purple tie. His hands are clutched together and from them a black line extends downwards to a wonderful furry black dog! No wonder I feel so much better.

I have no doubt that problems with backs and other illnesses have physical causes, but it’s easy to underestimate the power of the mind in terms of healing and recovery. The power of the messages received has been extraordinary and has put a real spring in my step – so to speak. Barring a catastrophe, I’ll be back on Monday and I look forward so much to seeing you then.

I have been quite struck by how quiet things have been – I’m used to a life full of background, and indeed, playground noise! But quietness does have some advantages – it’s easier perhaps to listen - and listening is something which is always important for teachers to do. As I write, the wind is whistling about, the rain lashing against the windows and the trees swirling around – it reminded me of that extraordinary poem by Ted Hughes, Wind.

“The Fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. ”

Poetry is perhaps the most powerful way of expressing the truth about the human condition, but it is not perhaps the easiest route. It requires time and concentration and it requires some space and above all some quiet. Poetic words need to breathe, to be given respect. My slower pace of life over the past two weeks has reminded me of this and I have been considering some poems amongst the other things which I have done. For what it’s worth, I was struck again by the beauty and power of a wonderful poem by the 20th Century poet Philip Larkin. One of his greatest poems is a meditation prompted by a tomb in Chichester Cathedral. As with many mediaeval tombs, the Knight, in this case the Earl of Arundel, and his Lady lie side by side beautifully dressed, he in armour, she in a gown. Unmoving they remain just as they did the day they were carved. But the detail which Larkin picks on and which is so striking to all those who see this wonderful tomb, is the fact that the two are holding hands. Larkin writes:

“Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand."

The poem is an extraordinary mediation on the time that has elapsed since the two figures were carved but it ends with one of those lines which rings down the years and whose impact never ceases to impress:

“The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true-
What will survive of us is love. ”

That surely is a line worth remembering and perhaps one which will shape the way we live.

Another sentiment which struck me was a line from the Secretary of State for education’s speech at the Labour Party Conference last week - she said “Education is about the people of tomorrow. ” On Monday morning I look forward very much to seeing some of those people on Brewer Street – whether by that stage they will have become the people of today is another question.