Unafraid

I started another three-week stint of teaching today but mornings only - very civilised. My teaching room - Oxford’s erstwhile court in the town hall - is quite small with raked benches so is an almost impossible space for groupwork. I must set up a legal role play.

When I emerged at mid-day, summer was busy booting out yesterday’s attempt at autumn. Such glorious sun that I had to put the washing machine on as soon as I got home then this evening drag my daughter out for some blackberrying, in which sport she has a black belt. So she went in the appropriate uniform – jeans, socks and sturdy footwear – while my sandals, thin trousers and bare arms meant that the nettles kept lunging at me and I could hear the bramble thorns chortling every time I got near. As a result, she picked supper and I got distracted by some lads jumping off the bridge into the lake. I was really pleased to see youngsters having fun and learning how to assess risk (they were talking about where the lake was too shallow to jump) – a skill too many of their peers know nothing about.

(Of course while I was watching I was working out where I’d leap in to help if one of them got into trouble, but that was completely unnecessary.)

I was moved to hear that words were doing Seamus Heaney's bidding to the very end. His last, in a text to his wife, were 'Noli temere’ (don’t be afraid).

Ar dheis lámh Dé go raibh a anam dhílis.