The Morning the Bell Broke

The school bell at Pennfield stopped working at nine minutes to nine on a Monday.

Feliks was the only person who noticed straight away. He was sweeping the front steps with a big brush when nothing happened. No bell, no doors, no eight hundred children. Assembly was at five to nine. He checked his watch twice.

First he tried shouting. He stood in the middle of the long corridor and called out the time, and the corridor stayed empty. The classroom doors were thick.

Then he found the old hand bell in the drama cupboard and rang it hard outside the office. One class heard it, decided it was break time, and went out to the playground in the rain. Their teacher went after them.

So Feliks walked. He carried the little bell to every room on the timetable and rang it at the door, one room at a time: assembly, first lesson, break time, chemistry, lunch. It took him the whole morning. By twelve his arm hurt and he had climbed the back stairs nine times.

At three o'clock a man came and fixed the bell in about four minutes.

There was a copy of the timetable on the wall of every classroom that day. Nobody looked at it once.