The Empty Measuring Place

The hall of a junior boys' school in Southampton on a bright morning, against the wall bars a flat matt aluminium base plate on the floorboards, on it a short upright rail and a small aluminium housing with a knurled screw on top and a single thin red line, from it a plain steel tape drawn straight up to a small flat head bar, the measuring place bare and empty, a woman's hand in a mustard cardigan holding the head bar level, along the wall bars a row of small black and brown school shoes with grey socks inside, a chair with a clipboard of blank ruled sheets, sunlight through tall windows.