The pupil who has written this piece has asked to remain Anonymous.
Stubby bits of
blue-tack are pressed against windows securing the homemade posters - ‘Thank
you NHS’. Windows creep open and tentative faces peer out like hibernating
animals from their burrows. I guess that's what we are, for now - hiding,
afraid, lots of us unhappy. But grateful.
For the first time
in what feels like forever, the mellow humdrum of life seeps through our locked
doors. We’ve forgotten what noise sounds like, replacing drunk chatter from the
streets with rhythmic clicks and taps on our phones. We long to be allowed a
trip to the rubbish dump or the bank or the key cutters or anywhere that used
to be mundane. But we should be happy. Boredom is a privilege in a time of
national emergency.
More cracked and
dry over-washed hands appear, wrestling the window latches open. People are
staring at each other, as if bemused by moving and unfiltered faces.
The first clap.
The sound barely
reaches my ears before the eruption of applause. Like a city of cheerleaders,
but the team we love and support is the NHS. Yells, screams, drumrolls. They
all envelope our ears as we join in, banging the table and losing our voices
into the night.
There is so much
love we didn’t realise.
A warm glow fills
my heart, the type that makes your ears and toes tingle with fuzzy joy. It’s
like happiness is bursting out from every window. Eventually the clammering
thanks dies down and windows are bolted again, solitude returning. But we don’t
return to our phones. Our phones that blink at us to say someone has bothered
to tap a little red heart on our photos. That someone has moved their thumb a
couple of centimetres to message us. Our phones that distract us all. Instead
we all stay poised like clumsy Jenga blocks trying not to fall down. We want to
feel the real connection, laughter, love, stories, joy, sadness, grief and pure
zinging emotion for as long as possible, untainted by glaring screens and
united by our nationwide appreciation for the incredible NHS.
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