8 December 2014

"I think I'll leave this evening or tomorrow. Can I go online and check whether I can change my ticket?" Siobhan asked when she returned from the bathroom. She'd already got dressed before Craig was up. He'd slept on the floor again after she'd been back from her walk the previous night.

He didn't reply but handed her his laptop from where he was sitting on the mattress on the floor. She sat down on the bed behind him and opened it.

"Are you sure?" Craig whispered with uncertainty in his voice. "You don't want to stay until Thursday as planned?"

"Why, Craig? It's obvious that we're over. I realised that last night." She sighed. "It's best for everyone that I just pack my things and leave. It'll give you more time to sort out what you want with your life. I'm not angry, Craig. You're a lovely guy, but I guess you're meant for something… someone else than me." She patted his head as she felt him crying. "There, there. It'll all work out for the best. I'm sure."

Neither one spoke for the next few minutes while Siobhan worked on the computer, looking at different flights. "Argh," she suddenly screamed out in irritation. "All of them are way too expensive. There's not a good ticket before Wednesday, and that's only in the evening. I might as well stay until Thursday then, no need to spend money, just to be back one night early."

"You sure?" Craig asked hesitantly. "I can pay some of it, if you need the money." He suggested.

"Thanks, Craig, but there's no need. It's not as if we'd kill each other if I stayed, right? I mean, I survived since Saturday." She laughed a little.

"So what will we say to everyone?" Craig felt his tears returning. "I mean, I can't… they can't…"

"What do you mean? They can't know that we've broken up? That I cheated on you? That you're still in love with John Paul? Is there any of this that's so bad in the grand scheme of things?"

Siobhan put the laptop aside and pushed herself down from the bed to sit next to Craig on the mattress. She took his head in her arms and pulled him towards her.

"Craig, this is just how it is. We can't change it. Let's just get it over and done with and tell everyone. If you want to I'll take the blame… with Darren. He'll get over it. Then we'll fly back on Thursday and deal with our stuff. Do you think you'll be moving back? To get him back?"

Craig felt calmer listening to her words. He moved away from her and looked her in the eye. "Do you think he'd want me back? After everything…?"

She looked back at him and smiled. "He'd be mad not to."

The text cheered John Paul up. He was on his way to class, one of the more difficult ones. The Roscoe twins were there, but the events of the previous school-year had made the evil one more subdued, although teacher and student alike remained aware of each other, ready to fight if needed.

Today, however, the young teacher entered this particular class with a lighter step than ever before.

"Morning! Take your seats, books on the table, feet on the floor, gum in the bin, attitude at home." He sang as he approached his desk and took up his own books and pens. "Today and the next few lessons, up until Christmas, we'll be discussion metaphors, what they are, where they're used, and how we ourselves can use them creatively. Then we'll look into a few different texts and analyse the use of metaphors there. Each one of you makes a short presentation, filmed with your mobile phones. I know you can all use them for other things, so let's use them for school this time around. I'll present that project in a few days, but note that it will be ten per cent of your final mark for the course."

He paused for a moment before asking, "So, what is a metaphor? Can anyone try to give me a definition?"

The nice Roscoe twin raised his hand.

"Yes, Jason?"

"A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object. Metaphor is a type of analogy and is closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association, comparison or resemblance including allegory, hyperbole, and simile." Jason poured out in a monotonous voice.

"Thank you very much, Wikipedia!" John Paul replied. "So what does it actually mean? Can you rephrase it in your own words, words that your mates here will actually understand?"

There was complete silence in the class room. Jason was clearly trying to disappear in his seat and his twin was glowering at the teacher who decided to ignore him.

"Not that Jason's wrong, of course, this is a good definition of the term, but what we need are words that help us understand here," he pointed at his heart, "not just kind of here," pointing now at his head. "When we are using a metaphor we are saying that something not only is like something else but that it actually is something else. You've all heard the Rihanna song, Diamonds, right?" He looked around the room and saw all of them nodding. "When Rihanna sings "You're a shooting star I see," she is saying that this person she's singing to, this 'you', is 'a shooting star', which of course isn't what a person can actually be, right?"

He looked around the class room and saw some nodding, but most of them looked confused. He took his marker and wrote the phrase on the whiteboard, 'You are – a Shooting Star'.

"Look at this. What does this mean? Is Rihanna claiming that a certain human being is actually a planet that burned up in space years ago?" He walked around the class room, silently egging his students to comment. He was surprised when his nemesis raised his hand.

"Yes, Robbie?" He encouraged him nonetheless.

"No, she's saying… I mean, kind of comparing the person to a shooting star, saying that he is like one."

"Exactly, she's comparing him to a shooting star, without using the word 'like'. So what does that actually mean, how can a person be like a shooting star? Which attributes do shooting stars have?" John Paul prodded his students to dig deeper.

A few hands shot in the air.

"Yes, Di?"

"We can make a wish when we see one, so…" she hesitated for a moment before finishing, "they give us hope?"

"That's one way to see it. Anything else?" he urged the others to add their opinions. A few minutes later, they'd exhausted all the possibilities John Paul had imagined, and some more, and by the end of the class everyone had found examples of simple uses of metaphors in the lyrics of their favourite musicians.

It was a smiling John Paul that replied to the text on his way back to the teachers' lounge. 'We're on. C u 2mo! 7pm Dog? xxx'