The Roof is on Fire

I went to my very first 'roofing' party on Thursday. We're living in the middle of a construction site at school at the moment. They've knocked down the 2 old buildings out the front (the old headmaster's house, very sad) and have been building 2 new "state of the art" buildings in their place. This week they've finished all the concreting and hence the roofing party. (Apparently this is quite a common practice- finish the shell of the building, throw a party in it).

Well, a select few teachers in the school (Head's of Departments & Senior Managers) were invited. This in itself was extremely controversial, as those who weren't invited (particularly those of us in the rooms at the front of the school who are most affected by the drilling & other constant building noise) were understandably miffed at the lack of invite.

Anyways, I did get to go and it was an amazing sight to see. There's something very exhilarating about being in the shell of a new building, being there at its birth so to speak. The size of the new gym is unbelievable- they've dug down deep into the ground in order to facilitate it- only 300m from the District Tube Line! (you can feel the trains rumbling past) We have suggested to the Site Manager, Franc, that we create a new stop on the Tube named after the school, only needing to be open weekdays of course... Franc also says that he has researched all the structural work in the buildings in Victoria and this one will be one of the most sturdy- making it the place to go if there's every any bombing of London again! Good to note, we thought.

Even more interesting at this roofing was the fact that there were only 6* females and about 150 men. All the builders, architects, draftsmen, electricians, plumbers, caretakers for the school, workers for the building firm etc etc were there. It was a solid piece of evidence (if you ever needed one) of how few females are in these kind of workplaces. And of course, added to this list, senior managers (heads, deputy heads) of secondary schools!! Not one female.

*Head of Art, Head of Geography, Head of Business Studies, Head of EAL (me), the Head of Year 8, (who was only invited because she complained) and one of the French teachers who roofcrashed!!