Number of days since Friday: 3.
Number of emotional headfucking problems reeling around in the brain before the sixth form ball: many.
Number of pieces of bad news received just before the ball: 1.
Number of solutions to this: 1. Alcohol. Lots.
Amount of fun had on the Dixie Queen paddlesteamer: a lot.
Number of times attacked buffet: 4.
Number of teachers caught dad-dancing to The Proclaimers: 3.
Amount of crazed dancing done: lots and lots and lots.
Number of pictures of me doing crazed dancing currently floating around the internet: thankfully only 1.
Number of times Tower Bridge went up for us: 2.
Number of terrible pictures of Tower Bridge taken on camera phone: 17.
Amount of alcohol consumed: good question.
Amount of time spent flirting drunkenly with someone I really shouldn't have: too much.
Consequences of this: disastrous.
Number of people who persuaded me to come to the afterparty: 4.
Verdict on afterparty venue: YUCK.
Verdict on afterparty music: YUCK.
Verdict on afterparty drinks: YUCK.
Amount consumed regardless: Erm?
Amount of time spent making the aforementioned flirtation even more complicated: about an hour, in total.
Number of solutions to this: 1. Drink. More.
Amount of dancing done to music I hate in the middle of a heaving mass of sweaty people: a lot.
Number of guys who attempted to take advantage of my distinct lack-of-brain: 3.
Number of times rescued by Harriet: 3. (Boy do I owe her one.)
Number of solutions to this: see above.
Size of ego by this point: non-existent.
Number of times I was made aware of how incredibly skanky this club actually was: 1000.
Number of gangs hovering in and then eventually outside of the club: 1.
Number of gunshots made at the club while I was at the window: 2.
Number of glass shards on cheek: 2.
My reaction to this near-death experience: non-existent.
Number of minutes it took me to realise it would be a good idea to move away from the window: about 5.
Final reminder of how disgusting the place was: then. At which point we left.
Time of arrival at home: 7am. Ish.
Number of muscles not aching for the rest of the weekend: like, maybe 3?
Number of minutes not spent hating self: maybe 4.
Number of thoughts about HIM: 398,762.
Overall verdict: oh fucking god, what have I become?
Monday 28 May 2007
Tuesday 22 May 2007
"a leftover baked potato can be damp, slippery, and simultaneously gummy and crumbly"
The sun comes out, everyone runs to Primark to buy brightly-coloured vests and sunglasses and stupid hats, businessmen drip ice-cream down their suits, toddlers turn strange shades of sunblock green, teenage girls get arrested for shoplifting. This is what I saw in town this lunchtime. (And it's the second time in a month I've seen a teenage girl get arrested for shoplifting in Primark - dear oh dear, what is happening to humanity etc. etc.)
Meanwhile I'm consuming tea and satsumas and crumbly baked potatoes (not with Patrick Kavanagh, as the Galway Kinnell poem goes), reading Heart of Darkness in a bad Italian accent and not really having much contact with the outside world. Facebook doesn't count. I had a conversation in normalspeak with Harriet yesterday, but it was pretty short and went something along the lines of
"I'VE FORGOTTEN ALL MY GERMAN!"
"Do you have an exam tomorrow?"
"YES!!!!"
"Well, good luck."
"I'M GONNA DIE!!!!"
"Stop it."
"I'M GONNA DIE!!!!"
"STOP-"
"EXAMS!!!!!"
"EXAMS!!!!!!!!!"
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
Not exactly in-depth. I keep meaning to ask her if I can go to her house on Friday before the ball to get ready, because going straight there from home and having to get squashed by buggies and wheelchairs on the bus while wearing a dress is probably not wise, but I feel a bit funny about doing it because I know she's bringing Hugh and if he's at her house too there'll be a bit of a gooseberry situation. Not that that would bother ME that much - I could keep out of the way, talk to her parents or something (not her crazy dad though, last time I saw him was when he said to Alex B, "My God, you must have a MASSIVE cock!" - I can't remember in what context this comment was made though). All I really need is a place to get my hair in order and plaster myself inexpertly with make-up and try to make sure I look nice and not just like some weird velvet aubergine.
And maybe with some company around beforehand I might actually feel a bit more excited about the whole thing than I am now. I don't know why I'm so unbothered by it - everyone keeps talking about it, and there have been a few good rumours spread about people in advance so there will probably be some kind of drama that'll keep us all entertained for the next month and a half. And it looks good on the leaflet. It's in a BOAT. There's a dining room that looks weirdly like the one in Titanic (hopefully not an omen). The tables have all the napkins folded into that funny fan-shape. There are cocktails. There's a live band. Tower Bridge will open for us. And the name of the boat is the Dixie Queen. I mean, that is a BRILLIANT name. Why am I not thrilled to bits by this?
Maybe because I sort of know how the night will turn out - not badly, in fact probably quite well, but at the end of the day I just KNOW there will be a feeling of anticlimax. Harriet will spend the night getting off with Hugh and then running to the toilet to tell me she wants to break up with him. Sophie is going to try and pull Mr Amy because she thinks he fancies her because one time he said she looked like Mischa Barton (this whole episode is going to be weird and wrong...but maybe funny). (For the record, she doesn't look anything like Mischa Barton.) Then Immy&Alex will be intertwined with each other all night, Sam will be sexist, Dom will make awful puns on EVERYTHING in sight, everyone will be manically happy and everyone who is 18 will be drunk. I will eat/drink/dance/laugh too much, while wishing that Raaheel or Boris were here because they probably wouldn't be taking it as seriously as everyone else. (They're both shunning the event on the grounds that they have better things to do, and good on them.) If the headmistress comes and if she makes a speech like she did at the modern languages dinner I will kill myself. And then it'll be over and everyone else will go to the afterparty (in Catford! Rock on!) but I'll go home via the insane night bus because the next day I'm expected at KING'S CROSS, PLATFORM NINE AND THREE QUARTERS, for a way more enjoyable day and evening.
What is wrong with me? I'm not usually so pessimistic.
Well, anyway. In other news, I've written half a poem. There's no last line and the first verse is a pile of ew, so I'm trying to change it and then I'll show it. Once again, it's a poem that isn't about me. At all. Maybe the ball will inspire a few poems, who knows...
Meanwhile I'm consuming tea and satsumas and crumbly baked potatoes (not with Patrick Kavanagh, as the Galway Kinnell poem goes), reading Heart of Darkness in a bad Italian accent and not really having much contact with the outside world. Facebook doesn't count. I had a conversation in normalspeak with Harriet yesterday, but it was pretty short and went something along the lines of
"I'VE FORGOTTEN ALL MY GERMAN!"
"Do you have an exam tomorrow?"
"YES!!!!"
"Well, good luck."
"I'M GONNA DIE!!!!"
"Stop it."
"I'M GONNA DIE!!!!"
"STOP-"
"EXAMS!!!!!"
"EXAMS!!!!!!!!!"
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
Not exactly in-depth. I keep meaning to ask her if I can go to her house on Friday before the ball to get ready, because going straight there from home and having to get squashed by buggies and wheelchairs on the bus while wearing a dress is probably not wise, but I feel a bit funny about doing it because I know she's bringing Hugh and if he's at her house too there'll be a bit of a gooseberry situation. Not that that would bother ME that much - I could keep out of the way, talk to her parents or something (not her crazy dad though, last time I saw him was when he said to Alex B, "My God, you must have a MASSIVE cock!" - I can't remember in what context this comment was made though). All I really need is a place to get my hair in order and plaster myself inexpertly with make-up and try to make sure I look nice and not just like some weird velvet aubergine.
And maybe with some company around beforehand I might actually feel a bit more excited about the whole thing than I am now. I don't know why I'm so unbothered by it - everyone keeps talking about it, and there have been a few good rumours spread about people in advance so there will probably be some kind of drama that'll keep us all entertained for the next month and a half. And it looks good on the leaflet. It's in a BOAT. There's a dining room that looks weirdly like the one in Titanic (hopefully not an omen). The tables have all the napkins folded into that funny fan-shape. There are cocktails. There's a live band. Tower Bridge will open for us. And the name of the boat is the Dixie Queen. I mean, that is a BRILLIANT name. Why am I not thrilled to bits by this?
Maybe because I sort of know how the night will turn out - not badly, in fact probably quite well, but at the end of the day I just KNOW there will be a feeling of anticlimax. Harriet will spend the night getting off with Hugh and then running to the toilet to tell me she wants to break up with him. Sophie is going to try and pull Mr Amy because she thinks he fancies her because one time he said she looked like Mischa Barton (this whole episode is going to be weird and wrong...but maybe funny). (For the record, she doesn't look anything like Mischa Barton.) Then Immy&Alex will be intertwined with each other all night, Sam will be sexist, Dom will make awful puns on EVERYTHING in sight, everyone will be manically happy and everyone who is 18 will be drunk. I will eat/drink/dance/laugh too much, while wishing that Raaheel or Boris were here because they probably wouldn't be taking it as seriously as everyone else. (They're both shunning the event on the grounds that they have better things to do, and good on them.) If the headmistress comes and if she makes a speech like she did at the modern languages dinner I will kill myself. And then it'll be over and everyone else will go to the afterparty (in Catford! Rock on!) but I'll go home via the insane night bus because the next day I'm expected at KING'S CROSS, PLATFORM NINE AND THREE QUARTERS, for a way more enjoyable day and evening.
What is wrong with me? I'm not usually so pessimistic.
Well, anyway. In other news, I've written half a poem. There's no last line and the first verse is a pile of ew, so I'm trying to change it and then I'll show it. Once again, it's a poem that isn't about me. At all. Maybe the ball will inspire a few poems, who knows...
Saturday 19 May 2007
Watch out, the world's behind you
It probably wasn't the best idea to start this while in the depths of Exam Hell, since for a while (20 days and counting) all I'll have to say is stuff like, "Got up, wrote an essay, revised Latin, ate lunch, panicked, procrastinated, continued procrastinating, ate dinner, revised Latin, tried to write a poem, was too tired, went to bed". This is the kind of cycle my days are starting to take, and I doubt it makes a great read.
Nevertheless, I feel I should keep writing in here, if only because I'm in the middle of the Post-Lunch Procrastinating Period (PLPP) and don't feel like writing another Fart of Darkness essay just yet. This is what my Saturdays have turned into. I'm trying not to get miserable about it, since misery, as Thursday afternoon showed, just leads to chocolate marshmallow bingeing and yelling at younger brothers. And if I were to divide everything into nice, sensible lists, I'll see everything is in fact more fine than not fine:
THINGS THAT ARE FINE
1. I'm not dead.
2. There are just twenty tiny little days until Exam Hell is over, and all that's required of me is just to get through them one at a time.
3. I have an outfit for pruuuuuuuuuhm (aka the sixth form ball) next Friday, which I finally pieced together today.
4. I won a poetry competition yesterday. And OK, it may have been with a poem I LOATHE TO THE UTMOST DEPTHS OF MY SOUL THAT MAKES ME WANT TO RIP ALL MY HAIR AND ALL MY TEETH OUT AND CLAW MY EYES OUT OF MY BRAIN WITH MY BARE HANDS WHENEVER I SEE IT but it's still nice to win something.
5. There was an old lady in the street today who dropped three twenty-pound notes and they went flying off in the wind, and it was me who ran down the street and actually jumped in the air to catch them, and she was very very grateful and it made me glow inside.
6. I think it needs reiterating: I'm not dead.
Therefore all that I need to do is forget all the rubbish stuff (examsexamsexamsmyleghurtsIfeelsickJesusChristIcan'tfindmyCicerobooksIcan'topenmypursebecausethere'safivepoundnotecaughtinthezipexamsexamsexams) and just breathe.
And I think (because everyone else does it) I'll end on some poems today. OK, they're poems I wrote essays about this morning, but they're still good poems (and the essays were OK too).
SONNET 65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
SONNET 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
Desire his death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
By Shakespeare. Obviously.
Nevertheless, I feel I should keep writing in here, if only because I'm in the middle of the Post-Lunch Procrastinating Period (PLPP) and don't feel like writing another Fart of Darkness essay just yet. This is what my Saturdays have turned into. I'm trying not to get miserable about it, since misery, as Thursday afternoon showed, just leads to chocolate marshmallow bingeing and yelling at younger brothers. And if I were to divide everything into nice, sensible lists, I'll see everything is in fact more fine than not fine:
THINGS THAT ARE FINE
1. I'm not dead.
2. There are just twenty tiny little days until Exam Hell is over, and all that's required of me is just to get through them one at a time.
3. I have an outfit for pruuuuuuuuuhm (aka the sixth form ball) next Friday, which I finally pieced together today.
4. I won a poetry competition yesterday. And OK, it may have been with a poem I LOATHE TO THE UTMOST DEPTHS OF MY SOUL THAT MAKES ME WANT TO RIP ALL MY HAIR AND ALL MY TEETH OUT AND CLAW MY EYES OUT OF MY BRAIN WITH MY BARE HANDS WHENEVER I SEE IT but it's still nice to win something.
5. There was an old lady in the street today who dropped three twenty-pound notes and they went flying off in the wind, and it was me who ran down the street and actually jumped in the air to catch them, and she was very very grateful and it made me glow inside.
6. I think it needs reiterating: I'm not dead.
Therefore all that I need to do is forget all the rubbish stuff (examsexamsexamsmyleghurtsIfeelsickJesusChristIcan'tfindmyCicerobooksIcan'topenmypursebecausethere'safivepoundnotecaughtinthezipexamsexamsexams) and just breathe.
And I think (because everyone else does it) I'll end on some poems today. OK, they're poems I wrote essays about this morning, but they're still good poems (and the essays were OK too).
SONNET 65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
SONNET 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
Desire his death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
By Shakespeare. Obviously.
Friday 18 May 2007
So I finally did it. Again.
Having resisted for over three months now, I've gone and done it, gone and got YET another blog despite the fact that I KNOW I'm rubbish at keeping blogs. Of the five thousand or so blogs that have been created by me over the years, about two have more than one entry in them. All have been abandoned after a few weeks, mainly because...I don't know, maybe because I'm just an idiot? Because I'm one of those old-fashioned types who finds it easier to commit to a proper, real-life, notebook journal than this kind of virtual 21st-century thing? Computers make me a bit queasy, which is stupid really considering the amount of time I've been spending on them recently. I have an English exam in exactly one week, there are still a few sonnets by Shakespeare that I barely know, and what do I do? I waste time getting a blog I'm unlikely to commit to. But then..."Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted", as said by John Lennon, T.S.Eliot or Bertrand Russell, depending who on the internet you want to believe. So...
^That, folks, was my first paragraph, and that is usually another reason why I abandon blogs: rubbish first paragraphs.
I also abandon blogs because of the terrible names I create for them and this is no exception. This name IN NO WAY AT ALL reflects who I am, really, because
a) I am not a relatively unknown suffragette from the Women's Freedom League who in 1909 hired an airship and flew over the Houses of Parliament throwing out carrots and Votes For Women propaganda leaflets, and
b) I really hate the women's suffrage movement. Specifically, I hate learning about it - sure, it's great what they did for women and everything, but when it comes down to it, their alliances with Labour/the Liberals/whoever, and their pious little war duties, and even their hunger-striking, window-smashing, throwing-themselves-under-horses days are just really, really DULL. (And here I am in my first entry blathering on about it all.)
But I gave myself this name because throwing carrots at the Houses of Parliament is kind of brilliant, and if I ever have to throw stuff at someone/something, I'll want it to be carrots.
So, moving on from that...I'm here because I tried Livejournal (many times), and also Diaryland (from the ages of 12-14) and Windows Live Spaces, but I've never had one of THESE, and they're pretty, and shiny, and maybe I'll stop being a blog slut and commit to this one. Although God only knows what I'll put in it - I get the feeling this is the kind of place for Mature Stuff, poetry or reviews or musings about current affairs, and not just for offloading the usual "waahwaaah school suuuuucks being a teenager suuuuuucks ooh biscuits" kind of thing. Maybe it'll be for poetry. Maybe I'll have an exciting mix of poetry and current affairs musings and snippets from my own WILDLY exciting life. (...Maybe this will be the last entry...) Or maybe it really will just be me and my rambling. Which, you know, is not so bad.
How do people end these things?
^That, folks, was my first paragraph, and that is usually another reason why I abandon blogs: rubbish first paragraphs.
I also abandon blogs because of the terrible names I create for them and this is no exception. This name IN NO WAY AT ALL reflects who I am, really, because
a) I am not a relatively unknown suffragette from the Women's Freedom League who in 1909 hired an airship and flew over the Houses of Parliament throwing out carrots and Votes For Women propaganda leaflets, and
b) I really hate the women's suffrage movement. Specifically, I hate learning about it - sure, it's great what they did for women and everything, but when it comes down to it, their alliances with Labour/the Liberals/whoever, and their pious little war duties, and even their hunger-striking, window-smashing, throwing-themselves-under-horses days are just really, really DULL. (And here I am in my first entry blathering on about it all.)
But I gave myself this name because throwing carrots at the Houses of Parliament is kind of brilliant, and if I ever have to throw stuff at someone/something, I'll want it to be carrots.
So, moving on from that...I'm here because I tried Livejournal (many times), and also Diaryland (from the ages of 12-14) and Windows Live Spaces, but I've never had one of THESE, and they're pretty, and shiny, and maybe I'll stop being a blog slut and commit to this one. Although God only knows what I'll put in it - I get the feeling this is the kind of place for Mature Stuff, poetry or reviews or musings about current affairs, and not just for offloading the usual "waahwaaah school suuuuucks being a teenager suuuuuucks ooh biscuits" kind of thing. Maybe it'll be for poetry. Maybe I'll have an exciting mix of poetry and current affairs musings and snippets from my own WILDLY exciting life. (...Maybe this will be the last entry...) Or maybe it really will just be me and my rambling. Which, you know, is not so bad.
How do people end these things?
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