WISHING ALL MY READERS A HAPPY AND HOLY NEW YEAR

WISHING ALL MY READERS A HAPPY AND HOLY NEW YEAR

Gene

Well, folks here's wishing you all you wish yourselves for 2017.

Everything feels a bit unreal for me for the last couple of weeks. That amazing farewell do in the Good Yarn - which was packed to capacity and here I'm talking about one of the largest pubs in West London. (One of the staff has since told me that bar takings more than doubled on that night.) Those glowing tributes both in the Good Yarn and in the school staffroom on the last day of term.

If you are reading this Church of England Busybody - and I know that you are - he who laughs last laughs longest.

One of the highlights of that Good Yarn night was meeting for the first time since Oxford days my old friend *******   *******. Life has not been kind to ******* with MS beginning in his late his twenties and confined to a wheelchair for the last nine years. But undefeated. I said goodbye to him outside the Travelodge at Uxbridge bus station  where he stayed overnight and we promised not to leave it another thirty-eight years before we met up again.

Important day today for me in terms of transition. This is the day my contract as a teacher officially ends.

From next week I shall be stating on any paperwork that requires it the following:

Name: Gene Vincent

Occupation: Writer