# Night School

*Sample essay, written for this pack. The town and its teacher are invented.*

The town has a statue, a clock and a very fine bridge. When people from elsewhere ask what made the place, those are what they are shown.

They are not shown the back room of the fishermen's hall, where a retired teacher has opened the door at seven every weekday for twenty-six years. She keeps a kettle on and a lamp lit. People come to learn to read a contract, to pass a marine licence, to help with a child's sums. Some come once.

A monument tells you where a town has been. It does not help anyone get home in the dark. What actually steers a place is smaller and duller: a thing somebody keeps lit, every evening, for whoever turns up.

We have our sizes the wrong way round. We build in stone for the things that have finished happening, and we give a lamp and a kettle to the thing still going on. Stand at that door on a wet Tuesday and you will see which of them is the big one.