Stories of the street - three

School children flow down the street in a mixture of styles. It begins with those who go to school some distance away. They are early walkers and bus travellers whose uniforms are rarely seen by the time children start heading for the local school. The street is a main thoroughfare for school children. If you want to know where your child is between 8 and 8.45 am look at the jumbled mix of kids crowding down this street.

Some walk steadily along the street either engrossed in discussions with others or in some more individual reverie. Some are on mobile phones, others are talking to friends on the street while conducting conversations on ‘phones and others are texting people who could be miles away or walking along next to them.

Pulled along by the general flow but encountering various forms of resistance are small clumps of children who stop in doorways or down the few alleyways found along the street. Some smoke, some adjust MP3 or CD players, others just chat. All of these clumps seem determined to delay the final moment when they are fully absorbed by the huge machine which is school.

Favourite places to stop along the way are the shops that sell sweets, crisps, magazines and cigarettes. With restrictions such as “MAXIMUM 3 SCHOOL CHILDREN AT ONE TIME, PLEASE!” on the doors of shops, there is a desperate and continuous struggle to minimise shop-lifting and disruption while maximising sales. Each group favours particular shops for their range of sweets or other items whose fashion and favour changes almost weekly. Others are favoured for the blind eye the shopkeeper has when it comes to selling tobacco to under aged smokers.

As the time progresses towards school bell and the closing of gates the flow thins out; some groups tarry ‘till the last minute while there are always those who are late and have to run down the street lugging heavy school bags huffing and puffing with the daily panic that brings them to a new school day.