The 11th year class are 10 minutes into an English lesson of a grey Monday morning in November. Are they “on message”? Who knows? Many are existentially elsewhere. Let’s take snapshot, a freeze-frame of a few of them, a nano-second of the 1,500 hours of their school lives.
Almona is from Kosovo and a survivor of savage wars. She fled here with her mother, who is a PhD and a translator and now a cleaner of rich people’s mansions. They live in a tiny hostel in Paddington and are still seeking some kind of asylum. Almona takes pills to get it. She could get sent back anytime. Click. She looks up blankly, smiles, and continues listening to Leonard Cohen’s Partisan on headphones.
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