Denis walks past on his way to collect his morning newspaper, his measured stride unvaried day to day. The time must be 9.20am. I note that he is wearing a jacket so the air will be chilly this morning. Village regularities can serve as time gauges and weather guides, momentarily making clocks and barometers redundant.
The children have already passed by on their way to school, perfectly illustrating Shakespeare's "whining schoolboy, with his shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school". Today's children are also snail-like in appearance with huge bags on their backs, they bend forwards as if against a storm. The bags are packed full of their school belongings with which they traipse about the building throughout the day, like nomads wandering from one classroom to the next. Forty-minute lessons are greatly reduced in time "it's such a big place, takes so long to find the classroom, then the teacher spends at least ten minutes vainly trying to get order among the pupils, - teaches us something for about fifteen minutes and then it's time for us to pack our bags and go in search of the next room".
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