Room 307

I teach on the third floor, in a classroom named Los Angeles. It was sparsely decorated when I arrived: a clock, a sprig of something clipped to the board, and three pieces of lined paper with the prepositions at, in and on written in capitals, blu-tacked to the wall. There's an oval table in the centre of the room, coathooks by the door, a CD player in the corner, and a window looking out on a peeling wall. A half-full carrier bag hangs incongruously from a nail twenty metres up, just below eye level when I stand at the board.

As classrooms go, it's better than most.