Moving On

Trrrrrrrrr-ing trrrrrring.

That’s my (rather ineffective) translation of the school bell which sounded at fifty-minute intervals throughout the day during my long-forgotten high schooldays, marking the end of each lesson with a five-minute interval to allow kids to move to their next classroom as appropriate. The precise mechanics and logistics of the chaos and mayhem that followed has been lost in the mists of time, but I recall that the manoeuvres became a tad more orderly as we approached the final year.

Trrrrrrr-ing trrrrrr-ing.

“Thank you, girls and boys. Let’s stop there, and tomorrow you can hand in your answers to questions 41 to 50,” the petite Miss Jackson sang, as she dusted off the masses of algebraic gobbledygook chalk inscriptions from the green blackboard, marking the end of the day’s lesson.

Now for the next lesson.

I recently watched an episode of Dr Who, in which a particular character dies and lands up in the “Nethersphere” which is the Great Beyond, the next step of existence after Earth.

While the script-writers toyed with the possible implications of such a situation, my mind wandered over some instances I’ve noted recently of other people being faced with “the bell” and I reflected on how many bells actually ring every day for many people all over the world.

Personally, I have had a few (relatively minor) bells in my life recently. The number of hairs on my head have begun to disappear on a regular basis at an increased rate; my ears hear less and less as the month flash by and the degree to which my eyes see double images is so much more than a year ago, when I had an eye-test at the AA for my New Zealand driver’s licence.

Am I therefore now if the Baldosphere or Deafoshere or something?