Achieving the dream

Once you've been a teacher certain days during the year still have great significance for you. The last day before breaking up for six weeks was always wonderful.
 In the morning we had end of term assemblies, followed by tearful good byes to school leavers, and then in the afternoon we played rounders. Staff versus children. It could go on all afternoon with much shouting and excitement all round.

Then it was home to the caravan which I'd left already packed with food and clothes for us all before going to work. The children gave me just enough time for a brief sit down and a cup of tea and then we were off along with thousands of others to join the queues along the motorways .
Our designation was Cornwall and it was a long drive from Lancashire so it took several hours of driving. I marvel now at the woman who could teach, play rounders and then drive most of the night but the adrenaline kept us all going.
Some times we slept at service stations for an hour but often we got there early. Once we slept on the beach at St Agnes, tired but happy that we'd achieved the dream kept going for a year during the darker days of winter.
Cornwall was always our dream and the little church at St Just in Roseland was a place we visited every year. Its beauty and its peace always  overwhelmed us.
Had anyone told me then that I was to become a priest right there in that church I would have laughed and yet here I am.
The memories of by gone ends of term are bitter sweet  since my daughter died.
We always wanted to come to live here but it was one of those day dreams that seemed  destined never to be fulfilled...
Yet here we are. My son lives in the next village. My daughter's grave is in the graveyard near to where I shall be marrying people tomorrow.
Safe journey to anyone travelling later...if you are coming to Cornwall we shall welcome you all , now we have achieved the dream.