A quick update because I should be doing many many things right now, such as research for my Russian oral or an essay on Nazi ideology or making dinner for my wonderful family, but am so tired that I've decided to just conk out in front of the computer for a mere ten minutes. Today was Whole School Photo Day, which only happens once every eight years or so (I've never been in one), and it involved standing in the cold (and later the rain) for an hour while each year group was painstakingly arranged on the massive platforms they'd set up on the field - from us year 13s right through to the 3-year-olds from the nursery. It took FOREVER. And I was surrounded by guys who insisted on singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and God Save The Queen or trying to start a Mexican wave or a mass humming session until one of the teachers screamed at them to shut up through a loudspeaker.
Meanwhile we saw some random tourists quite blatantly sneaking into the school gates to take pictures (to which it has to be asked: WHY?), and at one point some fat man in a grey t-shirt started hanging around on the edge of the field staring at us and taking pictures, OF US, on his camera phone.
"Who's that?" I asked Anna, who was next to me.
She shrugged. "Paedo?"
The actual taking of the photo took about a minute. And then afterwards we all nearly fell down the steps because we could no longer feel our feet.
Friday, 28 September 2007
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Fobbity-fobbity-fob
School has presented all the sixth formers with 'fobs'. These are little electronic devices that have our personal details on them, and we have to 'fob' into the school (i.e. put the fob against a sign on the wall outside the sixth form entrance) and when we leave 'fob' out again. Why? I don't know. I think it's one of those pointless new shiny things the school installs every time it slips further down the league tables (see also: unnecessary repainting of the toilet corridor, sporadic "smoothie bar" at lunch, etc.) Anyway, this is by far the least important thing I could be writing about right now.
New Blood on Monday, at the Poetry Cafe, was terrifying. I mean, I'm not sure I actually read for the full fifteen minutes, but it was still quite hard not to burst into flames with fear in front of that mike. Yes, it IS possible to set yourself on fire through fear. I'm sure it is, I came close. But it was OK really, people listened, people seemed to enjoy, and at the end a man tapped me on the shoulder and said "Well done!" So you know, at least I pleased that man.
I read the following, in this order:
1. Strawberry blonde. Because it's easy to read.
2. Summer In The City.
3. Underneath An Irn-Bru Sunset. A mistake: I've changed the first stanza of this 20,000 times and changed it AGAIN on the bus into Covent Garden - as I was reading it I realised the new version was still wrong and got very annoyed - when will this poem FINISH itself?
4. Sorrento. It felt weird reading this, just because of the...history. Let's not dig that up.
5. Crash, which I was really worried about reading and so when the time came I just DID it, really really fast and mad, and I think people liked it because they a) laughed and b) clapped. So yay.
6. The acrobat's daughter. And I mentioned Charly!
7. Too Many Storms.
8. Margarita.
The other two, Heather Phillipson and John Stammers, were amazing. I didn't get to talk to either of them unfortunately, because JS left after the first half and I rather stupidly dashed off at the end without saying goodbye to anyone, and felt rude all the way home. But I Facebooked a hello to HP so that's OK.
Back in Real Life (not that poetry isn't real life, but you know, I tend to think of everything that happens, like, here - school, friends, family, shopping for shoes that don't fit properly, and so on, as real life, and so everything like the forum, the Foyle bunch, poetry readings, poetry-writing, Pomegranate and reunions is just some separate, wonderful poetry land where I'm a different person and...yeah. It's hard to explain)...anyway, back here school is trundling along. Or thundering along, with all the force of ten tonnes of homework and the monster that is UCAS.
I've picked a Cambridge college - Pembroke. (And a Durham college, St. Cuthbert's Society. Cuthbert is a great name. That's not why I've chosen it, though.) As luck would have it a girl who used to go to our school is now in her final year doing Classics at Pembroke, so Mr L has asked her to come and have an "informal chat" with me on Friday. Well, it was just an informal chat at first, and I was looking forward to it because I can ask her loads of questions about Pembroke and Classics and Cambridge and actually get straight answers, and also ask her "HOW, HOW, HOW DID YOU GET THROUGH THE INTERVIEW?" But then Mr L added, "And as she's here we thought we'd give you a little...mock interview."
"What...on FRIDAY?"
"Yes. Just a few nice questions."
Yeah, I'm sure they'll be nice. Gah. Mr L has actually turned into a bit of a git recently. He's Oxbridge coordinator, so most of what's been spewing out of his mouth has been OxbridgeOxbridgeOxbridge, "And WHY have you not written your box statement yet?" and so on and so on. I know he's supposed to do this, and he's not the only teacher but still, it's annoying. And he's become unnecessarily mean in Latin lessons too, nitpicking at every piece of work I do and every point I make. We were translating a bit of the Aeneid recently (book 12) and I translated a phrase said by Latinus in a kind of archaic and old-fashioned way (probably because the notes I was using were from a book published in about 1890) and he started sniggering at me. WHICH, CONSIDERING IT WAS A FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND I WAS REALLY DAMN TIRED, WAS BLOODY IRRITATING. And I protested that, well, maybe I MEANT to translate it old-fashionedly, Latinus is after all QUITE OLD and so it makes sense that that is how he would talk. Yes? And Hannah backed me up, and Mr L then left me alone. But there's still just this constant...nitpicking. I don't feel I can do anything right.
Maybe he's pushing me deliberately in the run-up to Cambridge applications. He's going to be disappointed when...I mean if...I mean, WHEN I get rejected. (If or when?)
I'm going to shut up about this before I get panicky. You know what goes well with writing a Hamlet essay? Rachmaninov.
New Blood on Monday, at the Poetry Cafe, was terrifying. I mean, I'm not sure I actually read for the full fifteen minutes, but it was still quite hard not to burst into flames with fear in front of that mike. Yes, it IS possible to set yourself on fire through fear. I'm sure it is, I came close. But it was OK really, people listened, people seemed to enjoy, and at the end a man tapped me on the shoulder and said "Well done!" So you know, at least I pleased that man.
I read the following, in this order:
1. Strawberry blonde. Because it's easy to read.
2. Summer In The City.
3. Underneath An Irn-Bru Sunset. A mistake: I've changed the first stanza of this 20,000 times and changed it AGAIN on the bus into Covent Garden - as I was reading it I realised the new version was still wrong and got very annoyed - when will this poem FINISH itself?
4. Sorrento. It felt weird reading this, just because of the...history. Let's not dig that up.
5. Crash, which I was really worried about reading and so when the time came I just DID it, really really fast and mad, and I think people liked it because they a) laughed and b) clapped. So yay.
6. The acrobat's daughter. And I mentioned Charly!
7. Too Many Storms.
8. Margarita.
The other two, Heather Phillipson and John Stammers, were amazing. I didn't get to talk to either of them unfortunately, because JS left after the first half and I rather stupidly dashed off at the end without saying goodbye to anyone, and felt rude all the way home. But I Facebooked a hello to HP so that's OK.
Back in Real Life (not that poetry isn't real life, but you know, I tend to think of everything that happens, like, here - school, friends, family, shopping for shoes that don't fit properly, and so on, as real life, and so everything like the forum, the Foyle bunch, poetry readings, poetry-writing, Pomegranate and reunions is just some separate, wonderful poetry land where I'm a different person and...yeah. It's hard to explain)...anyway, back here school is trundling along. Or thundering along, with all the force of ten tonnes of homework and the monster that is UCAS.
I've picked a Cambridge college - Pembroke. (And a Durham college, St. Cuthbert's Society. Cuthbert is a great name. That's not why I've chosen it, though.) As luck would have it a girl who used to go to our school is now in her final year doing Classics at Pembroke, so Mr L has asked her to come and have an "informal chat" with me on Friday. Well, it was just an informal chat at first, and I was looking forward to it because I can ask her loads of questions about Pembroke and Classics and Cambridge and actually get straight answers, and also ask her "HOW, HOW, HOW DID YOU GET THROUGH THE INTERVIEW?" But then Mr L added, "And as she's here we thought we'd give you a little...mock interview."
"What...on FRIDAY?"
"Yes. Just a few nice questions."
Yeah, I'm sure they'll be nice. Gah. Mr L has actually turned into a bit of a git recently. He's Oxbridge coordinator, so most of what's been spewing out of his mouth has been OxbridgeOxbridgeOxbridge, "And WHY have you not written your box statement yet?" and so on and so on. I know he's supposed to do this, and he's not the only teacher but still, it's annoying. And he's become unnecessarily mean in Latin lessons too, nitpicking at every piece of work I do and every point I make. We were translating a bit of the Aeneid recently (book 12) and I translated a phrase said by Latinus in a kind of archaic and old-fashioned way (probably because the notes I was using were from a book published in about 1890) and he started sniggering at me. WHICH, CONSIDERING IT WAS A FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND I WAS REALLY DAMN TIRED, WAS BLOODY IRRITATING. And I protested that, well, maybe I MEANT to translate it old-fashionedly, Latinus is after all QUITE OLD and so it makes sense that that is how he would talk. Yes? And Hannah backed me up, and Mr L then left me alone. But there's still just this constant...nitpicking. I don't feel I can do anything right.
Maybe he's pushing me deliberately in the run-up to Cambridge applications. He's going to be disappointed when...I mean if...I mean, WHEN I get rejected. (If or when?)
I'm going to shut up about this before I get panicky. You know what goes well with writing a Hamlet essay? Rachmaninov.
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Really bad news/really good news
1. Osteochondrosis. That's all I'm going to say about it.
2. Foyle Young Poets 2007. Me. The last poem I entered. Crash. The 'afterthought' poem I only entered for the hell of it.
Oh. Em. Gee.
2. Foyle Young Poets 2007. Me. The last poem I entered. Crash. The 'afterthought' poem I only entered for the hell of it.
Oh. Em. Gee.
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
September
The last time I wrote in here was before I went to Moscow, and since then I've returned and started school. Everything feels up in the air at the moment - there are all these New School Year things to be getting on with, the usual mix of admin stuff and trying to memorise the worst timetable I think I've ever had. My English class has sixteen people in it, some of whom let's just say are not exactly my best friends - the other English class, logically, has three people. Then there's history, which is a mixed bag because on the one hand there are only four girls and we're being taught a Nazi Germany module by BRETT, the kind of teacher who can only be called by his first name and can only have that first name written in capitals because he's that amazing. (And really, a surname would just take the edge off a name like BRETT.) But on the other hand Glavshit, sadistic nutcase history teacher from year 12, is still around, and will be teaching us Russian history. Joy.
The sun is all Septembery gold, people have new haircuts, the year 12s are smug, the year 7s come up to about my waist...autumn usually makes me so happy. I was in Moscow on September the 1st, which is a really huge day over there because firstly it was the city's 860th birthday and secondly it was the first day of school (even though it was Saturday), which in Russia is a MASSIVE deal - they don't have any lessons, they just have parties and all the first-graders get initiated into the school with a big ceremony etc. Everywhere it all felt so new: the children's songs blasted out from loudspeakers in school playgrounds, the fifth-grade girl with her blonde hair in two thick ribboned plaits, walking home ahead of me, her legs (knee socks, shiny shoes) in a confident rhythmic strut on dirty pavement; the identical rucksacks all over Moscow, the flimsy 84-kopek textbooks, the teachers on the underground with their arms full of flowers. And because of the anniversary the streets in the centre were all closed to traffic, people waving flags and milling around, the sky (clouds specially, expensively removed) a freezing blue. I went to a poetry reading on the Patriarch Ponds (the setting of the scene in The Master And Margarita where we meet the Devil and Berlioz loses his head), and there was this guy reading Mayakovsky's Backbone Flute and it was incredible.
The next day I had to take myself and Misha home, as well as an envelope that contained two X-rays of my knee, an MRI scan of my back (all these tiny snapshots of various parts of my spine curving in a way that Dr Socrates later said was "wonky", "unnatural", "wrong"), and some notes on an ultrasound concerning problems with my liver I didn't even know I had, and some turd-coloured pills to take before meals and some white pills to take after meals.
And all of this in Russian, so that everyone else seems to know exactly what's wrong with me (or they don't know what's wrong with me but they can speculate) and I'm just hearing these words that aren't on the A-level Russian syllabus and have no idea what's going on.
I don't know. I don't really know what to say about it or how I feel about it or anything. I don't even know how to end this entry because on the one hand it's September and it's new and there are things to be done and I'm busy and and happy and stuff, and on the other hand...on the other hand. I spent a year and a half being mad and obsessive about all the weird pains and clicks and being told, "ANNIE, YOU'RE AN IDIOT, STOP WORRYING" and believing deep down that I was an idiot and I should stop worrying, and now suddenly it turns out I was right all along.
And the stupid thing is that I still don't know what I was right about.
The sun is all Septembery gold, people have new haircuts, the year 12s are smug, the year 7s come up to about my waist...autumn usually makes me so happy. I was in Moscow on September the 1st, which is a really huge day over there because firstly it was the city's 860th birthday and secondly it was the first day of school (even though it was Saturday), which in Russia is a MASSIVE deal - they don't have any lessons, they just have parties and all the first-graders get initiated into the school with a big ceremony etc. Everywhere it all felt so new: the children's songs blasted out from loudspeakers in school playgrounds, the fifth-grade girl with her blonde hair in two thick ribboned plaits, walking home ahead of me, her legs (knee socks, shiny shoes) in a confident rhythmic strut on dirty pavement; the identical rucksacks all over Moscow, the flimsy 84-kopek textbooks, the teachers on the underground with their arms full of flowers. And because of the anniversary the streets in the centre were all closed to traffic, people waving flags and milling around, the sky (clouds specially, expensively removed) a freezing blue. I went to a poetry reading on the Patriarch Ponds (the setting of the scene in The Master And Margarita where we meet the Devil and Berlioz loses his head), and there was this guy reading Mayakovsky's Backbone Flute and it was incredible.
The next day I had to take myself and Misha home, as well as an envelope that contained two X-rays of my knee, an MRI scan of my back (all these tiny snapshots of various parts of my spine curving in a way that Dr Socrates later said was "wonky", "unnatural", "wrong"), and some notes on an ultrasound concerning problems with my liver I didn't even know I had, and some turd-coloured pills to take before meals and some white pills to take after meals.
And all of this in Russian, so that everyone else seems to know exactly what's wrong with me (or they don't know what's wrong with me but they can speculate) and I'm just hearing these words that aren't on the A-level Russian syllabus and have no idea what's going on.
I don't know. I don't really know what to say about it or how I feel about it or anything. I don't even know how to end this entry because on the one hand it's September and it's new and there are things to be done and I'm busy and and happy and stuff, and on the other hand...on the other hand. I spent a year and a half being mad and obsessive about all the weird pains and clicks and being told, "ANNIE, YOU'RE AN IDIOT, STOP WORRYING" and believing deep down that I was an idiot and I should stop worrying, and now suddenly it turns out I was right all along.
And the stupid thing is that I still don't know what I was right about.
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