Sunny Grove School

Sunny Grove School
The name Sunny Grove School was singularly inappropriate. It was a grim, towering, blackened building surrounded by high brick walls set in a depressing inner-city environment of dirt and noise. From the high windows, shabby factory premises and derelict land could be seen by those pupils tall enough to peer through the grimy glass. Row upon row of houses surrounded the school; street after street of grey, gloomy buildings. The few houses that had been built in the last twenty years had acquired a look of drabness and neglect. Even the air had a sooty, dusty taste. It was a depressing scene of litter-strewn roads, graffiti-covered walls – a landscape devoid of trees and empty of colour. The bright morning sunshine did little to make the scene less bleak. The previous term I had marvelled at the awesome view from Hawksrill School – the great craggy fells, steep-sided gorges, trickling silver streams, lustrous pine forests, rolling green pastures and purple moors. It was a world away.
I was directed across the school playground by a large arrow, following the instructions for all visitors to REPORT TO RECEPTION. It was just after nine o’clock and the school assembly was in full flow.
As I turned a corner, I bumped into a small, grubby-looking boy of about eleven or twelve who was creeping around the side of the school, as if trying to escape from someone. He had long, lank hair, an unhealthy pallor to his skin and was dressed in a dirty blazer and grey trousers far too big for him. The boy looked up at me with a frightened wide-eyed expression – like that of a rabbit caught in a trap.
“Hello,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” He nodded. “Well, come along then, you can show me the way to the school office.” I motioned him to go before me. Head down and dragging his feet, the boy turned reluctantly towards the school entrance.
Sunny Grove School was built in 1901. It was a substantial, three-storey edifice of red brick built around a...