ho! and does anyone know what day it is today? first day of school! and i don't have to go. *smug* lying in bed reading till 11, and every child on this island between 5 to 18 has had to get up at dawn and struggle into their school uniforms and onto the bus. oh you always know school has reopened from the way orchard empties of people and public transportation overflows with uniforms. it's not that i had ever disliked school but the way the holidays wind down unpromisingly to the night where you must iron your pinafore and look for clean socks and, if you are under 12, apply shoe-white with a sponge on a stick onto your bata velcro shoes, stuff all your books into your eastpac and set your alarm for 5.30 and going to bed rather earlier than you had been wont, and the way adults will say to you, "so, school reopening tomorrow ah" - as if it wasn't a fact already too well-known, not, in anycase, as though you wanted any reminding - is much like how nesbit described the onset of term as the time where "the jaws of school now gaped for its prey". this national cloud of collective doom begins to drizzle on the post-christmas days until the dreaded tomorrow's the day. i'm terrifically glad all that is behind me - the bell between classes, morning assemblies, receiving your timetable and learning when to keep a ear out for your place in the new register, (chan chen fung han heng hor - i remember, was the way the 4-12 register began) getting into trouble for forgetting your badge or tie or nametag - no more of all that! i hadn't minded while i was there, but i am immensely glad not to ever have to go through any of that again.