A Day in the Life of a School Site Manager

5:55 a.m.

Alarm goes before it needs to. He's awake anyway. Kettle on, one strong tea, radio low so he doesn't wake Karen. Out by twenty past, roads still cool and empty. Going to be a scorcher; he can tell already.

6:45 a.m.

First on site, the way he likes it. Alarm off, lights on, that hush before four hundred children arrive. He does his walk, then gets stuck into his first task. Windows open on every side while the morning air's still cool, blinds angled against the sun before it climbs. Dozens of stiff old frames, and he'll reverse the lot mid-morning when it's hotter out than in. His shirt's sticking to him before half seven.

7:30 a.m.

Second tea, tablet out, an eye over the day's list. He'll be honest: when the trust handed these out he thought it was more admin he didn't need. Now it's the thing keeping his head above water. Gary's been off a fortnight with his back, so the whole site's his this week, open to close, and without the app he'd have no idea which of Gary's jobs were done or due. It's all there: red, amber, green. And the reds are Gary's.

8:40 a.m.

Children in. On the gate, morning to the ones who say it first, signs for a delivery round the back. Good start. Might even be a day he gets ahead.

10:30 a.m.

He rings the contractor about the kitchen extractor. It packed in on Tuesday, and the kitchen's been on the contingency menu ever since: sandwiches and jacket potatoes, the cook giving him daily grief that they both know isn't really aimed at him. Voicemail. The bloke said he'd call back by the end of yesterday and hasn't. Mark doesn't take it personally. In this heat his list is probably as long as Mark's own. He leaves another message and moves on.

11:15 a.m.

A wedged fire door: a chair shoved under it, a teacher chasing a breeze down a stifling corridor. He gets it, he honestly does, but that's the one door that keeps smoke out of the escape route if things ever go wrong, so the chair comes out and he has a friendly word. Briefly the least popular man in the building. He gives the door the once-over while he's there and logs it on the tablet — tap, photo, done.

12:30 p.m.

Ten minutes with the head and business manager that runs to twenty-five. The new estates portal's live now, up on the screen. But nobody in the room can say with any confidence what it actually wants from them. Loosely worded, not much help, and the honest answer to "so what do we do differently?" is a shrug. On the walk back he mutters it to himself. Not cross. Just the shape of things.

1:40 p.m.

Lunch is a sandwich on his feet, because the afternoon is for the legionella flushing and it won't do itself. Standing at the taps nobody uses, running them through, jotting the temperatures down. Dull as it sounds. On a normal week he'd have split it with Gary; this week it's all his, and by the third sink he can feel the fortnight in his legs.

3:15 p.m.

Bell. He stands by the gate and watches them all stream out, every one of them fine. No injuries, no incident—nothing happened, just as it should be. The wins in this job are mostly the bad things that quietly didn't. He'll take it.

6:10 p.m.

Long after the last car's gone he does the lock-up, the whole circuit Gary would normally have halved. Windows, gates, alarm set, that deep echoing quiet he's oddly fond of. He docks the tablet and watches the day sync, the reds and ambers turning green one by one.

Then he sits down properly for the first time since lunch and makes a builder's tea: strong, the colour of a conker, none of that flowery stuff the teachers keep leaving in the staffroom. Through the window the after-school club are tearing round the new trim trail, the one he pushed for and got installed a few weeks back. He watches a minutes longer. He got that done. They're using it. That'll do.

9:50 p.m.

Home long since, dinner with Karen, a catch-up about nothing much, then the sofa for some TV. And then, apparently, asleep, because the next thing he knows she's nudging him: "Come on, love. Bed." He doesn't argue.

A day that could have gone either way, and went the right one. Content, aching but content.