Odds and Ends

I used to write this blog. Here are some bits that never got finished enough to publish as a proper blog. The earliest is from 2009, so try to ignore the mistakes... Read them, if you would like.:


Hmmm... suspicious.

Generally, I'm not particularly observant, in fact, my parents once redecorated the kitchen and bought a new fridge whilst i was on holiday and it took me about a week to notice, but my father's recent strange behaviour has been totally impossible to miss.

Yesterday, when he came home from work, he kissed my mother (yuuuuck) then, as we were eating dinner, he said to my mother, for no apparent reason, "I love you , darling" AND he's just gone and bought her flowers.

This is:
a) very sick-making
b) not normal.

It's not like the hate eachother... ok, it's not like they hate eachother all of the time, but they've been married for 15 years, it's just not right.

Recently, I read Wilma Tenderfoot and The Case Of The Frozen Hearts by Emma Kennedy and from this, i know that i would make an amazing detective...

I put all the clues together and the first thing i thought was: He's probably having an affair.

And because i am rather indiscreet and had no better ideas, i asked him:

"Daddy, are you having an affair?"

His response was this:

"No, i don't have the time."

So, i crossed "having an affair" off of the list. then, to be honest, i was stuck, as "having an affair" was the only thing on the list.

Now i am stuck for ideas. It's still very suspicious behaviour... i mean, he bought her flowers!

_______


Apparently people can be divided up into "morning people" - those who enjoys mornings and "not morning people" - those who don't enjoy mornings.

I am not a morning person.

Actually, i'm not sure if i've ever met one of these "morning people". Do they exist?

I have managed to survive 5,409 mornings but in the last couple of months they have stopped being quite so horrible. You see, i've finally perfected a routine. My brain rarely need to actually start working until 9 o'clock, i thought i'd explain to you what happens every single weekday morning.

My alarm goes off at 6. It is a radio alarm, it's tuned to radio 2. I wake up at 8 minutes past six, i immediately turn the radio off and go back to sleep. I'm not really sure why i bother with that alarm.

At 6:50 my dad phones me. I leave my phone on my shelf above my computer before i go to sleep. I listen to it ring (it played the Big Bang Theory theme tune). Then he phones me again and i launch myself out of bed to answer it, usually smashing into a bookshelf, keyboard and wheelie chair on route.

Our conversation goes like this:

"Stephanie, are you out of bed?"
"Yes"
"Really?
"Yes"
"Ok, it's [insert day of the week] you need to remember your keys, phone, lunch money (latin folder, hockey stick, colouring pencils, pyjamas - depending on what day of the week it is)"
*short silence*
"Now, what is it you need to remember?"
"(repeats list of things to remember)"
"Good, now set to it"
*hangs up*

Then i get back into bed.

At 7o'clock i actually get up. My clothes are all set out and dress in about 2 minutes. If i'm feeling particularly cold/lazy i leave my pyjama top and shorts on underneath.

I sit and listen to the news on the radio then i wash my face and brush my teeth and stare at my face in the mirror for a while. I don't brush my hair.

I don't eat breakfast, it makes me throw up, but i stand in the kitchen for a bit thinking about making a cup of tea. Then i don't.

I pack my school bag, throw the cat out my room, close the windows and put a happy song on my iPod.

Then i wake my mother up. And say goodbye to her.

I put my shoes on and leave.

_______

I am 14, almost 15.

I like to think i know quite a lot of stuff.

Not everything, obviously, no one knows everything.

Not as much as someone who is 24, almost 25.

But still quite a lot.

The basics, you know, i can have a conversation without making a fool of myself (usually), i can pass tests and write a blog that a handful of people read. 

I'd say i learnt about 30% of the stuff i know from school, the rest from books, TV, the internet, other people. 

But there are gaping holes in my knowledge. 

For example:

- chav speak. It come so naturally to the people around me yet i have no idea what they're on about. If you stumbled across me whilst surrounded by my peers you might think i were mute. 

- how to deal with stuff. Mostly situations where my, or someone else's emotions sort of... take over. I just sit there, staring, completely frozen. In films people say comforting words, they hug eachother and everything is ok. It's physically impossible for me to move, my arms and legs turn to stone and though i can think of appropriate words to say, they refuse to come out of my mouth. 

- why are people ticklish?

- why am i scared of certain words and why does thinking about people's toenails bending back at right angles make me feel sick?

_____


I am in Somerset. Yet again. I don't really like it here, i like seeing my family (well, most of them) and i enjoy the occasional trips to Bath or Exeter or Glastonbury but apart from that, i find it a little bit scary. Someone on twitter, i can't remember who, might have been @katcal, said to me a while ago "why are you scared of somerset, London's much scarier". It's really not! There are 7 and a half million people in London and just 912,900 in Somerset with an area about 8 times bigger than London.

When i'm here, i feel... claustrophobic. People know me, we can't go into Morrisons at 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning without bumping into several people my Grandparents want to have a conversation with whereas where i live, i can go shopping for a whole day without seeing one person i know. And i like that, it's nice, nobody constantly knows where you are and what you're doing, as strange as it sounds, with so many people, you have privacy. You can listen to your iPod and be nicely isolated for hours on end, never having to stop and speak to anyone.

Yesterday we walked into The Old Vicarage, i've mentioned it before, it's a lovely cafe/hotel where my grandparents hang out. We were greeted by Paul, the manager - "Morning Charlie, morning Jean, morning much talked about grandaughter". After going bright pink, we sat down and he brought us over our drinks. A cappuccino for my grandmother, a double espresso for my Grandad and a hot chocolate for me, "How did you know i wanted a hot chocolate?", "I remember your Grandad once mentioning you like hot chocolate". It was really nice, just... surprising. and a little worrying, these people who live hundreds of miles away from me get told things about me and REMEMBER them.

My Grandad's computer had a virus, which he mentioned to Paul whilst drinking his coffee, Paul recommended that he go to a computer shop in the high street, "there's a nerd in there, he knows everything about viruses", so off we went to the computer shop. I explained the problem to the humourless greasy haired nerd, who then turned to me and said "did Paul tell you to come here?" to which i replied "yes, who did you know?", "oh, he mentioned that Charlie's grandaughter was coming to stay, i assumed it must be you, i haven't seen you before" now THAT freaked me out.

Paul is gay. I have always known this because my grandparents always refer to him as "our gay friend Paul". It's not that they're against homosexuality, they're not, they just find it a little difficult to understand. Whereas a fair few people have made a point of not going to the cafe after finding this out. I find this attitude completely baffling and i think that this is what scares me most about the people round here. Of course i know one or two people who think that way who live near me but they're mostly just my mother's middle class friends. Other than that, i can't see a cafe owner's sexuality making a significant impact to business in London. Can you?

I was with one of my cousins the other day, he's a few months older than me and doesn't intend on staying at school for 6th form or going to university. We were talking about what he's going to do once he's left school when he revealed to me that for the last few years all he's wanted to do is be a chef. He'd only been brave enough to tell his dad a few months ago and his dad had laughed in his face, then told him it was a "gay" thing to want to do and that he should "get a trade, like a proper man". I thought that was sad, very sad.

It's not only homophobia but racism too, i'm not sure if it's intentional but it makes me feel very very awkward. There's very few people in this town who aren't white. Three of my cousins all go to different schools and in a discussion the other day revealed that they only know one black person, and she's the person who works in the Co-Op near their house. INSANE.

_____


Do you know what i mean by a complicated situation? I'm not sure you do, they usually occur when the rest of the world fails to understand the unique thought process that lead to an action i took.

Like when a member of your family walks into the bathroom to discover you holding your own face into a sink full of water and automatically jumps to the conclusion that you're trying to drown yourself and demands you explain yourself.

I find that in a situation like this, it's best to start from the very beginning, or they'll just ask questions and it will get difficult.

It started when I was staring at my arm. I have a freckle, just above my elbow, i was sure it had moved. Anyway, I noticed I have very dry elbows, something I always have and, in an attempt to fix this problem, I went looking for some moisturiser. The moisturiser I usually use lives in the bathroom but it seems that someone left the lid off and there is now a muddy cat paw print in the middle of it. So I went to the cupboard to find some more but got distracted by a bottle of olbas oil....

National Gallery

I'm tired and I need a wee but I'm staring at a painting. It is a painting from the 1500s, I think it is silly. A woman side steps towards me, she is wearing a shirt and a name tag that suggest she works for the gallery.
"Do you like it?" She says, nodding at the painting with a smug smile.
"Not really" I reply, glancing at her in my best 'leave me alone, I'm tired and need a wee' way. Her smile becomes more smug, she knows something about this painting that she desperately wants to share with me, because it will make her seem clever. I don't let her. "I think it's silly," I continue, "Jesus doesn't look like that".
She says: "hhha", it's not a laugh, but a word she uses to illustrate the fact she finds my comment amusing, "how can you know what he looked like?". I can see she's the sort of person who likes to ask questions that she thinks people can't answer, it makes her feel special.
"Because I've seen him." I say slowly and loudly, like my Grandad would if he were talking to someone from another country. I look at her face and raise my eyebrows slightly.
Still smiling, she turns and shuffles away. What a rude lady.

The National Gallery makes me sad, there's too many paintings. If it were a person, it would be waving it's arms around going "LOOK, look at my paintings, aren't they brilliant, they're worth billions and billions of pounds. LOOK AT THEM, no, don't ACTUALLY look at them, they're all the same, that's why we've put them in these rooms all on top of each other and next all to each other in rows, APPRECIATE THEM. NO, what did I say - don't LOOK at them, just know that they're worth more money than you could ever imagine, walk quickly round so that you can *say* you've seen them and feel all arty and clever, I mean, what more could you want? The boring ones are in big sparkly frames so you don't have to stop or think about them at all. JUST APPRECIATE THEM."

However, I do like the National Portrait Gallery. I don't know why, it's just much better. I like all the faces looking out of the walls at you, I like the fact you can walk into a room and see some of the most famous writers, artists, actors and politicians all together, like an incredible party, you can imagine what they'd be saying to one another and why Noel Coward would be standing next to Vanessa Bell and who would be most likely to get thrown out for fighting, who'd be the most drunk and who would be sitting in the corner looking lonely...

On the other hand, something upset me deeply. I saw a portrait of James Joyce, painted in 1935, he was... old. And ordinary looking, and a bit sad. He's one of my favourite writers ever but it never crossed my mind that he was actually a man, with a face and a comb-over and... trousers, he was just the thoughts behind the words in the books. Not a person. It makes me feel sick to think about.

Exam

I had a Latin mock today, it was ridiculous. It wasn't particularly difficult, except for the questions that I had no idea how to even begin to answer.

You get a bit of a story in Latin then questions about it

Questions like -

"Part A: Why was he arrested?
Answer - Because he beat a man to death for trying to steal his cow."
Part B: Why do you think this was wrong?
Answer - erm... BECAUSE HE BEAT A MAN TO DEATH FOR TRYING TO STEAL HIS COW?!"

"Part A: What does the King call his son?
Answer - 'my son'
Part B: Why does the King call him this?"
Answer - because he is his son."

I left the exam feeling confused and misled. Not a feeling I like very much.

Yesterday I was revising History. I drew a mind map.

If this is what the inside of my mind looks like, it's no wonder I spend so much of my life feeling baffled and a bit lost.

Green

Walking into an empty room, thinking of not very much at all, I suddenly announce: "I don't even like Paul Weller" So surprised by this outburst, I automatically touch my own face, to ensure that it is me speaking and not somebody else whose body I accidentally came to inhabit. It was me. I don't particularly like Paul Weller but it was truly the strangest thing to ever tumble from my mouth, and believe me, I talk some utter nonsense at times.

My friend Hayley thinks I'm weird, she doesn't say that, she says I'm "funny" or "different", but that's just because she's polite. I think she's weird too, she has an obsession with Xena: Warrior Princess, which I don't understand, but together we can do a really great impression of the Dr Who theme tune. She looks like the girl in the Lynx advert - the one where it's all rewinded and two people meet in the supermarket, then run home, discarding their clothes as they do so. I tell her this, but she refuses to believe me. She's also REALLY smart, she does everything at the speed of light then sits and draws pictures of Xena: Warrior Princess characters in her notebook, although her handwriting does look like a person sat on it, then shuffled round a bit (all slanty and squished and uneven).

A person sat on me today, they didn't shuffle around at all, they apologised, then stood up.

I have a thought for the day for you, here it is: If you participate in something no one else can be bothered with, you will win.

Why I wouldn't be a great journalist:

A conversation with a friend about someone I quite like:

"...and he smells really nice, I noticed that today. I almost told him, but then I stopped myself."

"You should have told him!"

"But then he'd think I was sniffing him."

"You WERE sniffing him."

"You really don't get it do you?"

It would have been weird to say, right? I can't be sure because I always manage to get things like this wrong.

The other day during a conversation with someone I had met for the first time that day, I exclaimed "Wow! You're 44? I never would have thought that!" She looked a bit surprised, then asked me how old I had thought she was, to which I replied "um... like, 41?". She frowned, everyone else we were with laughed. I don't get it, I thought people liked to be told they look younger than they are?

Generally, I find the way other people think of things quite abnormal. Particularly things regarding the news and other current affairs.

Earlier today my father came rushing into my bedroom "Stephanie, there's 5 police cars in the road! Let's look out of your window" and my reaction was "meh, if you want". There's always people getting arrested or murdered somewhere outside, I don't see why I should look. If, however, there had been a man with an interesting hat or an dog with a handsome face, I would have looked. They're nice things to see, things that you can't read about in a newspaper everyday, yet most people don't think this is worth looking at.

I liked the Royal Wedding being in the papers because it was so beautiful and happy and exciting! I didn't believe it would ever be over - it just seemed like a constant, then it happened and we were all "WOW!" and now it's gone and we're like "hmm... ooh look, someone just got stabbed and we're all going to be killed by terrorists - AWESOME!"

I am aware of these things, but I can't help thinking it's best not to get too excited about them, just ask yourself if there's anything you can do to help, if not, move on. Bad things are always going to happen, but people making lots of money from it and obsessing over other people's misery doesn't seem right to me.

Or maybe I'm the one with the abnormal view of the world?

Shhhhhhh

Somebody down the road has one of those tree mashing things. You know, it's a sort of machine that you feed a substantial lump of tree into one end then receive a squashy-lumpy-barky sort of thing from the other end. I am not too sure *why* the people down the road have said contraption, or why they think that now is the appropriate time to use it, but I do know that it is making a noise.

The noise sounds like this: " ;;;!;!:!:;;;nnngggg;;;;{{{{!!!!!!{{{{?????clunk////////nnnnggg/,,,,,,." (and repeat)

But that's okay, I'm cool with that. Probably because that is a pretty accurate description of how the whole of today has sounded. From the very first noisy little bastard bird shouting it's head off through my window at 4 o'clock this morning to the stopclickingyourpenoriwillstabyouintheeye anger in maths to the "PLEASE. CEASE. BLOWING. YOUR. NOSE" desperation on the bus coming home - today has been one long head-achey, irritable chain of Stephanie-hasn't-had-enough-sleep-ness.

My day started with an early-morning Latin class. Everything about that sentence upsets me. I then had to face an after-school Latin class. There are few worse things to sandwich a day between than 10 girls reciting verb conjugations and questions about The Death of Germanicus. More and more often, I find myself wondering what was wrong with me when I decided taking Latin GCSE, in one 6th of the recommended time, was a good idea. (Although, the word "gerundives" never fails to bring a smile to my face)

My point is, that some days you should be allowed to wear headphones constantly, and listen to something beautiful, like Elbow, or maybe Fleet Foxes.

"I do realise this is a Heston Blumenthal recipe," I say, taking a pretzel out of the cupboard and biting into it, "but is that leg of lamb supposed to be on fire?"

"FUCK" 

"That's a 'no', then?"

---

Today I have dressed as minnie mouse and moved slowly through the house, thoughtfully reading a play and occasionally eating biscuits. My Father, on the other hand, having been instructed to decorate the exterior of the house has, well... decorated the exterior of the house, whilst my mother has dug up the flower beds in the front garden, wearing a ridiculously oversized sun hat and her pyjamas. 

At the same time, the family across the road have participated in the most competitive egg hunt I have ever witnessed. For 2 hours, I observed toddlers being cheered on, praised and berated by their overly enthusiastic parents as they raced from the tree with the bird feeder in to the front doorstep before finally lifting the newspaper on the garden table to find yet another chocolate encased in foil. At one point, I definitely saw one pensioner point her grandson in the direction of the next prize and although I considered reporting them for foul play, I decided against it. Who am I to judge?

And finally, some art, that is not only relevant to the time of year, but edible. YUM:

Farm cake. Omnomnomnom.

HAPPY EASTER! 

Words and Music 2011

I find that often, it's the things you look forward to the least that you enjoy most.

I was positively dreading the Words and Music concert at my school on Thursday evening. I'm not going to say it was the best experience of my life. But it was okay, at least, not as bad as I had expected. 

Let me explain: every year my school has a Poet in Residence, some people go to workshops with them and write poems, these are then performed one evening alongside music composed and played by GCSE music students and anyone else who wants to join in. 

Being a geek, i was doing both some Words and some Music. Neither of which were very good. 

The evening was... long. But it gave me time to reflect on the fact I was actually quite lucky to be able to do it and in rehearsing for HOURS with my mental English teacher and my very stressed music teacher a confused-looking poet, i had actually learnt a lot.

This year, our Poet in Residence was Jay Bernard (here is her website). According to my mental English teacher she is "very very famous". I'm not sure about that. I'd never heard of her. However, that didn't detract from her awesomeness. 

About 15 of us spent 5/6 hours dotted across a few weeks writing poems, looking at poems, reading poems, making a mess cutting up magazines and gluing them to bits of of paper (no, I didn't get that bit either) and at the end of it, I feel like I know so much more about writing. Not that I would ever consider being a poet, but it was fun and pretty useful all the same. 

I feel really privileged to have been able to learn from someone who is so good at writing, so enthusiastic and positive and completely unpatronising. I wish more people i encounter had that sort of attitude towards young people.

A Blog? What?

Hello there, remember me?

My name is Stephanie, I'm 15 (AND A HALF) and I live near London. I will always live near London, the idea of living in the country is very nice until you really think about it, then it's terrifying.

When I'm a grown-up, i want to be an angel. Failing that, I would like to be a writer.

I write.

But I don't often let people read it. If you were particularly interested (stalkerish), you could read some of the boring crap I've written about pressing local 'issues' on the News Shopper website. Other than that, I've been almost silent since the start of this year.

Why? Because I'm tired of that horrific sentence...

"I read your blog"

*silence*

I'm fed up with these people then staring at me, REALLY staring at me, like they're struggling to stop their eyeballs actually crawling inside my head and having a good poke around in there.

It doesn't matter if you're some random from my RS class or my Aunt or my Dad or someone I see everyday on the bus but don't really talk to (because, seriously, you're one of the dullest humans I've ever met), I will have replied to these 4 words and intrusive mental scan with a blank expression and "oh.".

Here is what "oh" means:

Well done. You typed my name into the internet (like a pervert/somebody who has far too much time on their hands), did a bit of clicking about, probably found my twitter, then this. I'm not sure what else you want me to say, it's not a secret, I'm not ashamed of it, I wrote a blog because I wanted people to read stuff, it probably isn't aimed at you but go on, read it, comment on it if you like... just don't seem so surprised that it exists. I'm positively flattered that people read what I have to say - I don't waste my time with things I find boring (that probably includes your formspring/tumblr/other places where you write about your made-up sex life and post badly photoshopped photos of you and Justin Beiber)
I know it's shocking that I have thought of things, then written them. But, you know, I do think. I know I often have a vacant, starey look on my face, maybe it's because I think too much. If you asked me a question, you would get a response, I would express my opinions the same as I would on the internet. But you don't ask me, so I don't say anything. People who know me well, will know that I don't feel the need to talk unless there is something to be said. In all likelihood, I feel a conversation with you will detract from my day rather than enhance it.
Seriously, I'm not just the slightly-posh girl who spends her lunchtimes doing homework, who will, every day without fail, hit her head on the utterly pointless shelf in the form room, who doesn't like walking down a corridor on her own in case people look at her, who enjoys sitting at bus stops.
NO!
I am a slightly-posh, geeky, clumsy, paranoid, distant-looking girl WHO ALSO WRITES A BLOG.

So there.

Happy Communist Martyrs Day

Valentines day is rubbish.

It's a special day where people who are already happy because they have people that love them, are made to feel even happier and reminded that they are loved.

First of all, I disagree with special days that not everyone can join in with.

I also feel that the overuse of the 'heart' shape is quite vile. Please try to remember that it is representing the mushy, blood soaked squeezy thing that keeps people going and doesn't have very much to do with love at all. If you are going to use it to represent your feelings for someone else, at least have the decency to send them an actual heart, human or otherwise...

Furthermore, I think that if anyone deserves a day dedicated to making them feel happy and a bit smug, it is the people who don't feel loved by anybody every other day of the year. What sort of long term satisfaction will a person with lots of friends and a parter get from a box of over-priced chocolates and a bunch of flowers? Not much. But what will a very lonely person get from a hug and a reminder that there are people who care about them? A LOT.

Now, i'm really busy... so if someone else could organize that? Great, thanks.

In other, more exciting news - 314 days until Christmas!

12 months have gone already... where?!

Apparently 2010 didn't live up to people's expectations. I'm sorry, but what WERE people expecting? I thought, overall, the good days of 2010 outweighed the bad days by far and I had a very nice time.

Here are some of the things that made 2010 special:

Matilda.

This lot.

Paris.

iPhone. Nom.

V Festival (The most gorgeous photo of me ever taken - mostly just wearing other people's clothes)

A terrible play with the most amazing lovely funny kind talented cast.

So last year I made a list of everything I wanted to achieve in 2010, here's the updated version:

1) Learn to play the piano well. So that when i say "i can play the piano" i won't feel like a complete liar.

Well, i certainly improved. My piano teacher told me I could be "So talented, if only i put a bit more time into it". That made me both sad and happy.

2) Learn to like vegetables. and potatoes. so that i can go round to people's house for dinner without them wanting to murder me.

I like chips now, and jacket potatoes and I will eat aubergine without complaining.

3) Make my handwriting readable.

4) Cry less.

I think i managed this, i should really have bottled all my 2009 tears and all my 2010 tears and done a comparison. 

5) Make at least 5 new friends.

I made lots of new friends, at least 20 of them. And they're all brilliant.

6) Meet someone famous.

Erm... Does Boris Johnson count? 

7) Follow 116 new people on twitter.


So close, but forgot about this until New Years Eve - maybe I'll do this by the end of 2011?

8) Meet some more of the people i talk to on twitter.

I met the lovely Katcal and Regfrog and we went elephant hunting in London then spent hours in Victoria Station chatting. It was a most enjoyable day, even though it was so hot i thought my face was melting.
9) Spend less time on/thinking about twitter.

Look at that! Amazing!

10) Brush my hair more often... like, at least once a week.

I think I've managed this, my hair's shorter now anyway and I've stopped leaving the house looking a mess.

11) Smile at at least one random person each day.

People don't often feel like smiling back on a bus at 7 o'clock in the morning :(

12) Raise some money for charity.

Hell yeah! I've done a lot of volunteering this year, we raised £130 for Harris Hospice, I helped at a summer fair which made about £4000 for Help for Heroes and I helped Barry raise £250 for cancer research.

13) Get a new hamster.

14) Spend less money on music.

Discovered the joys of borrowing CDs rather than buying my own. 

15) Buy a new phone.

16) Read all of the books i got for Christmas.

17) Do my Latin homework. always... (although this one might have to start next week 'coz i *forgot* to take my Latin books home for Christmas)

I have my Latin GCSE in 5 months, I'm just a little bit terrified. 
18) Stop letting certain people be horrible to me.

2010 - The year I learnt to stand up for myself.

19) Stop being so concerned about my ugly face.

My brilliant cousin Em pointed out to me that nobody is looking at my face, they're all too concerned about themselves.

20) Write at least 1 blog a week.

Hmm... I wrote at least one blog a week but I didn't publish 4 of them. FAIL.

SO, 2011. What do I want to do this year? I think 2010 but with more glitter (and good exam results) would be a good place to aim for.

HAPPY NEW YEAR lovely blog readers. x

Untitled

You know when something bad happens, i don't mean like the cat eating the Christmas turkey or something you've been looking forward to being cancelled because of the damn snow, i mean something really horribly bad. When all you can do is sit and cry and think 'why's this happening? Why my family, my friends? this isn't fair!'

I think there's only a certain amount of times you can feel like this, especially in a relatively short space of time. So it gets to the point when something else dives head-first onto the massive pile of things you're carrying round, you put your head on your desk for a minute or two, consider feeling sorry for yourself, then wipe your nose and think "fuck it, we've dealt with shit before, we can do it again, you've learnt that crying does nothing other than make things soggy and irritate your eczema, get on with it".

So I'm getting on with it.

And that's what i've learnt these last few days.

I Hit My Head On A Shelf

It's been a long day. Actually, it's been a long week.

A long month.

I am very very tired. But also rather over-excited.

I had a bit of a break down in Physics today. I couldn't quite get my brain around the whole stupid idea of the earth moving.

The earth moves at 18 miles per second. BUT I AM SITTING STILL.

My Physics teacher was going on about trains - if you jump up on a moving train, you land in the same place. apparently. I don't believe this and i won't until I've seen some proof, surely, SURELY you will land a bit further back than you were originally standing. No?

It resulted in me standing up and shouting "Don't even TRY to tell me that somebody standing still is travelling at the same speed as somebody in a car going 150 miles an hour!" Then bursting into tears. It was quite bad.

If someone would like to explain this to me... possibly with some diagrams, i'd be very very grateful.

In other news, I'm going to see Tim Minchin at the O2 tomorrow. I'm ever so excited!

My Day.

Hey, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to choose a town with pretty bad transport links.

I'm going to choose a very tall and inaccessible hill in this town.

This hill must - 1) go up and down a lot. 2) be at least a mile from the nearest train station. 3) have pretty reckless drivers living nearby.

I'm going to go to the top of this hill - where there is a wood - *obviously* (complete with dog shit and flashers)  and i'm going to build something there...

But what shall I build? A prison? (i mean, it would be pretty hard to escape!) a mental asylum? (ditto) maybe some offices?

NO!

I've got it! A school!

Should we open this school for the local children, i hear you ask?

NO!

Let's make it so that girls from various places across the borough and even central London can commute here!

Hooray! What i good idea! I can see no flaws in this plan at all.

Snow? Ice? What on earth do you mean? I have never heard of these before in my life...

-_-

That is all.

I hear... Screaming

I'm not liking this whole November thing.

I am having enough difficulty finding the energy to have a conversation with my fellow humans at the moment let alone thinking up a readable blog.

However, earlier today someone said something and i thought, as i often do, about a TV show i saw when i was little. I think about this TV show a lot, i was really young when i saw it, i don't remember what chanel it was on or why i was watching it all i remember was that it was terrifying, i had never seen anything like it, i had nightmares for weeks and weeks and i still remember it as brilliantly terrifying. The only difference was that today, for the first time in years, i remembered the name of it - Are You Afraid Of The Dark.

So, obviously, the first thing i did was google it. They made 7 series of it! It's quite likely that someone reading this will also have seen it, i quickly found the episode i saw - it aired in 2000, i would have been 4.

I know people say you should re-watch things you saw when you were young because it will ruin it but i HAD to watch it.

Here it is, if you have a spare 25 minutes http://www.megavideo.com/?v=XENJUHG7

WELL, it was actually quite creepy, i mean, it's really cheesy and probably won't give me nightmares but i enjoyed it (perhaps not as much as i did when i was 4).

I think maybe that was what started my strange fascination with the disturbing. I remember when i was about 7, my dad showed me a website with short films on and i would spend my evenings glued to the computer screen watching half an hour long obscure horror films and i LOVED them, programmes like the Mighty Boosh (not really horror, but a bit odd) and psychoville make me laugh more than anything else and Stephen King is one of my absolute favourite authors.

And I really want to go to the Hunterian Museum in London but nobody will go with me.

On a completely unrelated note - Anonymous commenter - I love the playlist a lot. Thank you. x

Panic.

Panic Attack: n. The sudden onset of intense anxiety, characterized by feelings of intense fear and apprehension and accompanied by palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, and trembling. Also called anxiety attack.

I've panicked about things before, trembling a little, feeling short of breath and a bit dizzy, it's inconvenient and a little scary. But not terrifying. 

I can tell you what is terrifying...

Let me set the scene for you:

It's about 10.30 on Friday night in Paris, it's raining outside but you don't know that, you're curled up on the floor of Chateau D'Eau metro station hyperventilating, sobbing and shaking. Your eyes are closed because everything is spinning. Crowded round you are 20 other girls and several drunk and/or homeless French people and they're STARING. Kneeling next to you is a concerned yet very awkward language teacher. You wish they'd stop staring. You feel like you are going to die. Somebody puts their hand on your shoulder and you retch, in that moment you thank every God that you don't really believe in that you'd had the sense not to eat anything that day - there are very few things that could make this situation worse, one of them being throwing up. 

Basically, it wasn't nice. It was traumatic and embarrassing and I'm finding it hard to write about it.

I've always been a little bit claustrophobic, but only a little bit. Underground trains in London don't bother me very much at all and I have honestly never been so frightened by anything before.

It started when we got on the metro after dinner, it was quite crowded and i was squished in the middle of a lot of people. It was uncomfortable and I began to shake, at every stop more and more people got on, there wasn't room for them but they kept getting on. It was awfully unpleasant, I was shaking quite a lot by this point. But then something else happened, two angry French people started shouting at each other quite close to where I was standing, the shouting turned to pushing the punching, they were having a full on fight and there really wasn't room for it. I was so squashed, I thought i was suffocating, everything was blurry, I could only hear people screaming and shouting and swearing in French. My legs gave way but we were so tightly packed into the stupid train that I didn't fall, I just stayed wedged between two people I didn't know. We were so close to our stop but someone had pressed the emergency button and we weren't going anywhere. I actually can't remember between then and when we reached the station and people began to move, someone (i later found out it was one of my friends) noticed me, grabbed me by my coat and dragged me out of the door where I fell onto the platform. 

I don't know how long I sat there for, It could have been a very long time, It could have been just 5 minutes and I don't remember anything else until a lot later that evening.

It might not sound that bad to you but it was, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. We had to go on the metro what felt like a thousand other times over the weekend and it didn't get much better. Although I could mostly get over myself once we got out of the station and onto the street, I think I cried more times over the weekend that I ever have done before. One of the teachers told me I was really brave, I didn't feel brave, I felt stupid and irritated at myself for not being about to do something simple that everyone else could do so easily. I was so scared of throwing up that I didn't eat between Friday morning and Monday evening - I'm not sure if that made the situation better or worse, all I know is that I'll be very happy if I never go on the metro ever ever again. 

It was one of those times where everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong for our relatively small group of 30 students and 3 teachers, we made this list:

• missing trains
• people forgetting passports
• people getting left behind at St Pancras
• delaying Eurostar
• lost luggage
• not enough hotel rooms booked
• breaking windows
• getting surrounded by scary men in an alleyway before the French teacher came and chased them away
• people getting lost on their own in Paris
• allergic reactions
• two people throwing up EVERYWHERE
• asthma attacks
• panic attacks *ahem* 
• stolen money/phones
• one of the teachers stepping in unnatural amounts of dog poo
• lost metro tickets and passports

I think we were cursed. But I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the trip, because I really did, I made new friends and learnt so many new things, had opportunities to do things I'd never get to do or even think about doing otherwise. The teachers were supportive and caring and everyone was so lovely to everyone else, we all became so close and without the bad stuff it wouldn't have been nearly as funny and exciting and memorable. I don't regret going one bit, I loved all of it... well, most of it. 

I Write Poems For The Sheep, I'm Sure They Enjoy Them.

Happy National Poetry Day!

I wrote a poem today, it's a bit shit:

I Am Very Bothered

I am very bothered when I thinkof the bad things I have done in my life.

Not least that time when i was 6 

we were by the sea, playing in the surf,

laughing with me,

I grasped your hand, swore never to let go

before sinking my teeth deep into your flesh.

O the chilling scream of a wounded boy

your blood slid over your wrist and down my chin.

Sharp little teeth and an evil grin. Scarred.

An everlasting memory.

I’d be lying if i said sorry

as it gave me such delight 

eyes flooded with your plight

and just that once, the only think you could think of...

was me.

You may have noticed that it is based on my favourite poem by Simon Armitage. When I say "based on", i mean copied.

When i was little, this was my favourite poem:

Missing

Has anybody seen my mouse?

I opened his box for half a minute,

Just to make sure he was really in it,

And while I was looking, he jumped outside!

I tried to catch him, I tried, I tried....

I think he's somewhere about the house.

Has anyone seen my mouse?

Uncle John, have you seen my mouse?

Just a small sort of mouse, a dear little brown one,

He came from the country, he wasn't a town one,

So he'll feel all lonely in a London street;

Why, what could he possibly find to eat?

He must be somewhere. I'll ask Aunt Rose:

Have you seen a mouse with a woffelly nose?

He's just got out...

Hasn't anybody seen my mouse? 

Another favourite is this one: 

It pleased my greatly today when i had the opportunity to say to a year 7 "stop doing that or i'll cut your fucking feet off and while you lay there bleeding i'll use your feet... to kick you in the head." I think i might have scared her.