Audience of One

My final assembly: part two

The reality is actually far more entertaining than the dream. While the dream was surreal, short and bound to confuse (though enjoyable while it lasted) the real assembly was far too warm, contained bits of both boredom and embarrassment (and plain stupidity), was rather long, and quite excellent.

Some schools, it appears, have prize-giving ceremonies after exams. Ours has the prizes at the end-of-term assembly. I managed not to win anything (thank goodness) but was mentioned (sort of) in the crack about music tech students (“we were going to give an award for the most hard-working student, but there just weren’t any”) and played the piano for a few numbers with the rest of the band.

It wasn’t just prize-giving though, and the videos shown ranged from year nine history classes (including a thirteen-year-old Matthew Weston interviewing someone with a gluestick in place of a microphone) to a staff-created music video (“Is this the way to Cherwillo?”, mouthed by our very own head of year). We also had words of advice for the ball (“Please don’t get drunk or we’ll have to push you home in a wheelbarrow” or something – I wasn’t paying much attention as I’m not going to get drunk). The assembly ended in a rather odd fashion, with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” being played for all the Liverpool fans (who’d just celebrated winning the European Cup) and sung by two ardent supporters at the back, Liverpool F.C. scarf raised high. Most of the year seemed to think it was a stupid idea. Actually, most of the year probably didn’t care, but would have agreed that it was stupid if you went up to them raving in anger about it.

It made all of our other assemblies for the past few years worthwhile – but only because our head of year had also done an assembly on Elvis Presley’s house (which she’d visited). Most assemblies we’ve had have some moral which everyone ignores (or doesn’t quite catch because they’ve drifted off) – this one ended with a “pick your own message”. I picked the “become a teacher because you get insanely long holidays” message, as it was generally more amusing than the other messages (“money doesn’t buy you taste” being the other one I remember).

Anyway, with this assembly I ended thirteen years of regularity, and I can’t say I’ll miss it. From the assemblies at my first school¹ through to giving notices at the lower school this year, I’ll miss none of them.

Hmm. Looking back over this entry I feel like I should probably rewrite it to make it more clear, however I get the feeling that if I tried I’d make it worse. Hope it makes more sense than the last entry.

1. I have some interesting memories of these assemblies. The best one is when, after a minute or two of the kids being quite noisy and restless, a teacher stood up, shouted a bit to make herself heard and said “I want it quiet enough in here that we can all hear this imaginary pin drop”. She then proceeded to drop an imaginary pin; I proceeded to make a loud “BOOM” sound to co-incide with it.

Matthew @ 15:07, June 5, 2005 to Diary | Comments (4)