Elvis... is NOT leaving the building....

Huge changes.
A school finally closed.
We had to return today as we will several times this summer to collect and sort various things...
the first time we had been since it finally closed it's doors a week ago.

Inside this now desolate and abandoned building there are years of teaching, of children and their memories, the library, books, desks, work, reminders of lives lived, of the fact that people live inside schools too, they don't leave the outside world behind when they walk in in the morning and collect it on the way out as they leave... it comes in with them, and stays, affects them during the day, colours their view of everything that happens.

Friends, relationships, experiences. Names written ~ some carved on desks and chairs, momentoes left, marking the passage of time, but also of lives, children's lives as they grow and develop.
Important years as they mould into who they are, and find their way.

It was a moving experience in both senses of the word...sad, and sadder in some ways that the last students have had to try and carry on as normal for the past few months while their teachers pack up the school around them. Everything is divided and labelled awaiting transport to it's new resting place at one of the other existing schools...art work that has adorned the walls is now gone, the whole energy of the place has altered.

So, I smiled as I turned the corner up the stairs to see what could only ever be a creation influenced by R... the only piece of art left, and there to stay till the bitter end....

You can take everything from a place or a person, but feelings, emotions and memories can never be erased.