Rich gentlemen have it, boys!

On the last day of school, my class - MY class, the one I'm the main teacher of, the one I theoretically have the power of life and death over (or at least a say in what happens to them next year) - seemed rather excited. So did everybody. The holidays were to start in four hours, after all. They chatted to each other, both to their neighbours and across the room, got up and down, refused to sit in their places and seemed somewhat disinclined to calm down.

Once they had all sat down at least once, they started getting up again one by one. The first girl came up to my desk and gave me a soft and slightly smelly object wrapped in aluminium foil. By the time I had unwrapped that to discover a dark slab of cake, another one had arrived with two slices of something wrapped in kitchen paper. And they kept coming. A biscuit from one, an individually-wrapped slice of cake from another, a sweet from a third. Two or three got up and came to my desk, two or three leant over their tables and handed whatever it was up the line of kids until it reached me. One girl waited until the end of the lesson and, when everybody had gone out, held a biscuit out to me, saying: "This is for you, miss. I'm sorry, I've eaten the others. I was hungry".

I wasn't expecting anything and I know how poor these kids are, so I went bright red from the first present onwards, which made them laugh. But honestly, food. Sweet food, therefore highly desirable food for these teenagers. This is more food than some of these kids eat in a week. They gave me some of their meal, and it's not as though they have very many of those. I think a present like that is worth much more than anything they could have bought.