Founders' Day
For those of you (one, I think, out of all who read this) who are not familiar with the proceedings of the 1920's born tradition of ours', and the Boys' School. We all dress nicely, dresses, as women should be, I imagine, and ridiculous shoes, which is more a frowned upon thing than anything else by the people who watched us go down to the church. And so we went, teachers, robed, in tow, or littered among the myriad of colours and flowers and skirts. We filed in, seated in pews near the small chapel within the building separated by a wooden gate and winged things suspended in the wooden sky. It was lively; mouths moved frantically, as if trying to cram the air full of something like happiness, although it must have been too surreal for most people to act as cool as they had done. Afterwards, we poured onto the path and the graves on which we balanced cameras, I wager none of us thinking of the symbols of death as something eventual or unavoidable, or none of us were thinking about that at all. All we thought of was group photographs, and not getting our heels caught in the grass. Well, I'd had enough of mine by then, anyway. I scanned the graveyard and saw that the upper sixth boys wore red flowers in their button holes. We decided to leave the churchyard soon after emerging, and walked (stalked, and fell through the gaps in the cobbled streets) around town. We sat on benches and marveled at how people watched us pass, knowing what we were there for, and so, could be happy, too, as we were. Grace found some red flowers on the floor, fallen off of or discarded by some male sixth former and reclaimed them for her own, although we are unsure of their whereabouts now. We, fully circling, returned to the churchyard half an hour later when it was much less crowded and sat down and photographed each other standing up against the church's outer wall like a band. We walked to the restaurant. The waiter was Italian and we mimicked his accent, trying to be as swish as he. It rained once we were inside, and stopped once we'd finished. I faced the window and watched a housepainter colour a sign, the shape of the words 'Rosalyn House' forming as he carried on from left to right making the white blur into shapely letters.