The day, the music died . . .

One year, nine months and 10 days have gone past. We cannot help but remember . . . the place has never been the same since. A truly gorgeous day in the middle of May it was, with azure skies totally cloudless. We were even remarking on it earlier in the staffroom, as I chased down a butty with a nicked carton of school milk. Ah well, face the inevitable and out you go. This was going to be no ordinary yard duty, though.

True, the infants gambolled as ever, the big ones laughed and jostled in pre-pubescent awkwardness and, in between, the others scorched of calories for all they were worth.

I rolled up my shirt sleeves to let the first sun see my pallid arms as I glided around the happy confusion. At the other end of our playground, our principal crouched down to hear the imprecations of a scatter of infants, about seven or eight little girls, prancing impatiently in their efforts to get justice from the system.

And that's when it happened.

I had a very bad feeling the moment I saw the man. I could do nothing and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have, anyway. six feet of brawn and bulging vein strutted across the bottom of the yard to where the principal still hunkered down amount the little flock. Falteringly, he stood up to see what had thrown the shadow over him. He could only have heard a few words when - BANG!!! - a full arc of fist crashed into the but of his jaw. The old man went down like a sack of spuds. Of the 10 dozen or so children in the yard that hapless day, probably 40 of them saw the attack. I would say in that one instant, their lives changed forever. Mine certainly did. For two other innocents there, watching their father swagger away, I could not even begin to imagine. As sensitively as we could, we helped our colleague to the staffroom. I took the green ice-pack from the freezer-drawer and pressed it on to the side of his face. (We used in mirth call the ice-pack "Big Mr Freeze" but, strangely enough, not any more.) He sat there, dazed and disbelieving, saying not a syllable. I remember thinking, "Is this the pay-off for 37 years devotion to a school and a community?" The decimation of a gentleman and a very, very gentle man.

I WOULD not wish to be accused of melodrama, but something died in our school that day. Innocence, maybe, I don't know.

In former times, on exciting days, the heart of the school would skip a beat. Now, the heart hardly beats at all. I would love to tell you the sequel to it all. some day maybe, when we are all less raw, some of us will have the bottle to shout it from the mountain top. Meanwhile, we carry on . . . living and partly living.