THE SCHOOL I WAS SENT TO

Impossible as it seems now, when I was a child and  very poorly, I was sent to
an Open Air School 300 and more miles from where I lived. 
All the little girls, including me, slept in Wards with windows wide open every
night and had a routine which was totally, utterly foreign to me.  I was a Northerner
in the  midst of Southerners and absolutely everything was different.
You were discouraged from crying and it still physically hurts when I cry now.
However, because of that school, I’m here to tell the tale!  I wrote a book about that
year there, KNOCK AND WAIT, which is the second book in my trilogy
PRIVATE-KEEP OUT, KNOCK AND WAIT and ONE WAY ONLY, the book I wrote when
I got back home.   PRIVATE- KEEP OUT is available on PENGUIN Children’s Classics.

  THE SCHOOL I WAS SENT TO

The first time I saw the school I had been sent to,
I thought it was a school for witches,
For the great house leaning against the forest
Was dark as night.
With only its snaggle toothed windows blazing in the moonlight.

Of course, it wasn’t a school for witches.
They only visited.
Swooping in through the open tops of windows
On their broomsticks,
Trying to make out they were the shadows of trees.
Bumping to a stop in the middle of the dormitory,
Where nothing could move them.

Nothing, that is, until Sister Sweet came crackling in,
All fiery with starch and bad temper.
Her purple hands so big, entire cities were built on her palms.
She made them shift.
The only thing I ever had Sister Sweet to thank for,
In the whole year I spent at that school I was sent to.

                                                                     ©  2018 GWEN GRANT