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. 

Happy Birthday

I'm bored.

Like really really bored, i've been feeling like this for the past two or three weeks. Nothing exciting has happened. I'd been looking forward to half term for ages and it wasn't that great.

It's not that i don't have enough to do, i have so much to do. I don't really have time to be writing this even, i do at least one thing everyday after school and almost every lunchtime in school. Then there's the extraordinary amount of homework and revision i've got, but i'm still feeling so completely useless.

I don't know... bored with life just sounds so dramatic and miserable, pretentious teenagerish... oh. um... yeah... moving swiftly on...

I'm just bored with what my life is at this moment.

I need something ELSE to do. But i don't really have much time. Every free moment i have recently seems to have been spent talking to the cat or drawing pictures of squirrels (yes, i've drawn a worrying amount of these).

There was a time, just under a year ago when twitter took up an awful lot of my brain space, arguably too much -i still like it, but it's not quite as good anymore, it really upsets me that some people don't talk to eachother anymore and some people have left twitter completely and some people i used to talk to loads have unfollowed me.

But I'm not just writing this to complain - and if i were you reading this i'd probably want to hit me for being selfish and stupid - no, i want your advice: I need something else to use up all the spare corners of my brain. Another hobby or something, something that doesn't take too much time and something that won't cause me to hate myself if i fail at it. something that helps someone else...? Or something that would be incredibly useful in my future...? Anything.

Blue Peter (part 2)

1) decide to make cakes. decide they will be amazing.

2) realise there is nothing to make cakes out of.

3) go to shop. get cold. run. hurt ankles. hobble.

4) do difficult calculations (58x3)

5) buy chocolate.

6) walk home. get shouted at by strange men in cars.

7)


8)


9) chop stuff up into little pieces.

10) MELT!

11) Mess.12) stir. (quite a lot of stirring required here)



13) Place in cases. Decorate!


14) eat!

I CAN'T DO AEROBICS

I challenge you to find anyone less co-ordinated and more accident prone than me...

I can play hockey... and tennis and rounders and rugby... i can do athletics and gymnastics and to a certain extent, dance.

So PLEASE don't make me do aerobics!

I just can't do it! my arms and my legs can't do different things at the same time. I don't work like that!

By the time i've worked out how to do one stupid movement, everyone else has moved onto the next one.

The music doesn't help, it's fast and horrible, usually made by people who know more about aerobics that they do music - it makes me want to cut my own ears off.

I ALWAYS end up going the wrong way, people start tutting and i get hit in the face.

Then i'll fall over, i'll land head first on a pile of gym mats and start giggling so much that somebody has to drag me out.

All this time, my PE teacher is dancing about at the front of the room wearing a fluorescent green t-shirt that makes your eyes hurt and flapping her arms about so much that she looks like she's about to take off.

After an hour of this torture (yes, 1 whole hour!). Everyone else will go off to get changed and said PE teacher says "Stephanie, you looked like you were struggling a bit this lesson"

STRUGGLING A BIT???!!!!!!

What Beautiful Eyebrows!

I had my eyebrows waxed today.

I really don't know why. Now i think about it, it seems like a strange thing to do and a bit of a waste of time. My face is a mess, i have teeth that make me look a bit like a rat, an "overly pointy nose" - to quote a boy that i once fancied, eyes that can't decide what colour they want to be, wonky ears, my glasses are permanently filthy and hair that sticks up at unnatural angles, not to mention my skin-tone that makes me look constantly unwell. I don't mind, and I'm definitely not looking for sympathy - i think it suits my personality and even though i hate being called "cute" at least people don't run away screaming:

"MY EYES! MY EYES! WHAT IS THAT MONSTROSITY!?"

But now, to add to my badly thrown together features, i have very neat and pointy eyebrows. Which is odd. I'm sort of hoping that next time i go out, people will look at me and the first thing they will say is:

"Nice eyebrows!"

not because i like getting compliments - i hate compliments but it would make me laugh. a lot.

Someone who falls over as much as i do just sort of gets used to pain, i don't make a fuss unless something really really hurts. Having your eyebrows waxed really really hurts. Just a warning.

You may be asking yourself "why, if she thinks it's a waste of time, did she get her eyebrows waxed". Or you may not be thinking that, i don't know. Mrs Bodenham, one of the wisest people i know once told me never to make assumptions because they will ALWAYS be wrong. always.

Anyhoo, i got side tracked... Here is why: i was bored.

Honestly, i had absolutely nothing better to be doing, i have spent the last week, waking up at 12ish, then listening to music and staring out of the window for a few hours, going to the gym, doing a bit more staring, then going to bed at about 12.

So this morning, my mother came into my room and said, "Shall we go and play some golf today?" and i said,

"No. because golf is for old people in stupid trousers." I think that might have upset her a bit but she then looked at my face for quite a while, then in a very disapproving way said,

"You're nearly 14, you should do something with your eyebrows." Of course, i did think this was an odd thing to say, but as we've already established, in the land of the weird, my mother is the weirdest.

So, because i thought it might be an interesting experience, i said ok.

It wasn't really an interesting experience. Unless you think a woman with badly died hair and too much fake tan, looming over you with a paint brush is interesting. I didn't, i thought it was boring. Then we went to Iceland and i ran around playing "it" with my dad. That was much more interesting. (and i wonder why my mother despairs of me!?)

The picture is of me - i'm sure you guessed that. It shows me at my tidiest (i was about to go to my grandmother's house) it also demonstrates my dreadful mirror picture taking. Oh well, you're not really that interested, i can tell.