A red fish standing on its tail, holding a big yellow pencil against its body, with one green fin raised as though it were waving you in. It has a peach face with a wide smile, a green nose and a blue crest sweeping back over its head, and the words Back to School are raised in black letters across the red body. The tail spreads out wide at the bottom.

This is not a teaching chart and does not pretend to be one. It is the piece a school puts on the door or the entrance wall in the first week of term, when the corridors are empty and the youngest class is arriving frightened. A friendly face at child height does a job on that first morning that no printed chart does for the rest of the year.

The banner it comes with reads FISH CARTOON, which is what the manufacturer calls the shape. The words on the piece itself are Back to School, and that is what it is for — so if you are searching for a fish for a sea-life display, this is the wrong one. It is a greeting, in the shape of a fish.

Everything about it is built up in layers rather than printed: the face sits on top of the crest, the pencil on top of the body, the raised letters on top of that. Seen from an angle you can count four or five separate thicknesses, and that depth is why it still reads as a character rather than a sticker from across a hall.

Being one self-contained piece makes it easy to live with. There is no set to assemble, nothing to lose over the holidays, and it comes down in one movement when the term settles and the door needs something else. Schools that buy it once tend to put it back up every September.

There is nothing adhesive on the back and no size is printed on the piece or the banner, so we claim neither. Safencia sells it at Rs. 690 with Cash on Delivery all over Pakistan, Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi included — WhatsApp us and we will confirm stock, measure it and give you your city's delivery charge before dispatch.

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