Our Songs, Our Story, Our Love.

Chapter 4.

The cold, winter's chill wrapped itself menacingly and cruelly around all the kids standing outside the wrought iron school gates. Flurries of snow also danced around aimlessly, carried along by the freezing cold air, refusing to settle anywhere but deciding instead to let the chilly Northeastern wind dictate their paths.
The path that these school children wished to take however, was back home but this had already been delayed now by well over an hour!.
School had finished early for the day because of the bleak and worsening weather conditions but strangely they were all still here. Even the ones who would usually walk home, for this afternoon at least, were being made to stay until someone could either come and fetch them or the bus would also  take them home too. The teachers had decided that no child should be alone to make their own journeys home, such was the severity of the cold, winters chill.
By now though, many of them would normally already have been at home, warm and cozy in the comfort of their living rooms and not still stood out here waiting for a bus that looked less and less likely to arrive. They were all by now cold, hungry, tired and  extremely fed up and annoyed. Some of the older pupils were now threatening to just leave anyway and to find their own way, regardless of how much the weather was now obviously deteriorating. They were however, very  strongly advised against any such action, for it would then manifest itself onto the younger, more vulnerable pupils and upset all of them.
Looking around the groups of  children, some  stamping their feet and shivering noisily, the teachers now had to think quickly to keep some sort of order going on here. Small groups of girls huddled themselves together in an attempt to keep warm whilst some of the boys had now started to mess around with one another, play fighting and pushing at each other.
They were extremely bored and the constant looking up the road, hoping that the next vehicle coming down it would be a bright, yellow school bus, was now wearing a bit thin!

Word soon got out however, that the school bus had actually broken down on the freeway and so wouldn't be able to get to the kids for at least another hour or so.
The teachers who had been stood outside with the kids, had also had enough of the cold and this news had really made their mind up now that they should all just go back inside and congregate in the school hall, to wait for another bus to arrive.

Excited voices and laughter rose amongst the children, mainly because a lovely central heated room was waiting for them, but the prospect of spending some extra time with your mates, was also pretty exciting.
That's if you had mates, of course.

The small, dark haired boy with the sore, fat lip had friends of course but mainly he chose to be alone for most of the time. He felt increasingly embarrassed by his height and also the fact that he'd received a beating because of it.
He touched tenderly at his mouth as all the children now filed into the assembly hall. He hadn't told anyone the real truth about how he'd got his swollen, fat lip. He just shrugged it off by saying that his basket ball had come up and hit him in the mouth and then he had thrown it away in anger and now didn't know where it was!
Of course his parents were hugely disappointed by this show of unnecessary temper in their son. Why take it out on his ball? And because of his foolishness he'd gone and lost it! Well, he'd just have to wait until his next birthday now before he would get another one, that was for sure.

The babble of excited voices congregating  together, echoed around the high ceilings of the assembly hall and bodies became instantly warmed by being inside once again and out of the cold winter's chill.
When  the arrival of some hot chocolate drink presented itself, complete with marshmallows on top for each of the children, it almost made the standing outside in the cold almost worth it.

Paul Simon gratefully cupped his hands around the warming mug, as he now sat on the floor cross legged. He still had his woolen gloves on and a fur lined hat was pulled well down past his ears. He did think, however that after a few mouthfuls of the warming liquid he would be able to discard both of these. But as he took his first sip, the heat from the mug, stung at his sore, tender lip causing him to pull it away quickly and thus almost spilling it.