So sadly, soggily true

Going to a school in a town known to the rest of the world only for its extraordinarily high rainfall, I hear you sister. I most especially empathise with the desperate hope that the rain would cancel sport: Saturday morning sport, Wednesday afternoon sport, and any time PE was scheduled sport. I hated 'em all. But perhaps even more vivid in my school memories was the heaven of going back in Term 3 (none of these fancy four term years in my day) and finding that it was September, and Spring, and there were daffodils and pale new green leaves. There would always be a breeze blowing on that first day back and it wasn't quite warm, but it felt like cool water on your skin - so different from the Term 2 gales that sent the rain sideways into the corridors and wet your bags on the bench outside the classroom. I share the wet uniform smell of school winters. In spring it was more like fresh earth; nothing had been dug, but the thick red volcanic earth had been pounded for months with heavy rains and it still let off a smell as it healed under the spring grass. The best smell of all was Day One, Term One: nothing inspires a fresh start like the smell of an entire football field of freshly mown grass. None of the above schmaltzy sentiment should be taken as any kind of endorsement for growing up in a small country town with an under-resourced high school and a disproportionate number of students able to show two left thumbs and only one set of grandparents. mtc Bec