It's all gone a bit J. Alfred

On Tuesday I had a hospital appointment (a check-up) and slept in. Went, sat around, read Heat magazine, unexpectedly found out I had a broken toe, got stranded waiting for the bus in the wasteland that the hospital is situated in, which was depressing. Afterwards I COULD theoretically have made it into school for English, but I thought, "No. No. I'm going to go into town and buy a CD." And walking into the shop, it was deserted and some guy was picking his nose and they were playing Vienna by Ultravox and that was it really, it was All Aboard The Misery Express for the rest of the day. The rest of the week was spent Trundling Along In The Horse-And-Cart Of Melancholy until on Friday evening I suddenly wrote two psychotic poems in one hour and then sat there for ages questioning my sanity. Do you follow?

I've lost my drive, my mojo, my VA-VA-VOOM. I've forgotten how to look forward to things. Everyone else will be in the library at school planning their gap years or their summer holidays or weighing up university options - this place has NIGHTLIFE, that place has a PIRANHA TANK IN THE LIBRARY - and looking so driven and excited, and I'm just sitting there chewing my face off trying to remember why I applied to Arghbridge in the first place. On Monday I was supposed to teach Greek to year 7s with a girl in the year below called Rhiannon, and they asked us to "say something about ourselves" first. I started to say "Errr there's really nothing interesting about me" but then Chadders leapt in with "Annie has an offer to read Classics at Cambridge and Rhiannon hopes to follow!!!!" and the year 7s blinked as one, Rhiannon gave a nervous smile and I actually wanted to throw the board rubber in his face. That's not a normal reaction, is it?

Sorry, this is so uninteresting. I'm just another overexamined teenager feeling the pressurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.

Just watched Unreported World which Mum recorded for me. It was about Russia, and its basic premise was "Putin is a BAD MAN, look at how miserable everyone is!" - the guy travelled to all the backwaters of the country, to these villages where there's no gas and the people don't have anything to do except sit in their freezing hovels and drink themselves to death. Nothing I didn't know before, sadly. What was more interesting was my Great-Aunt's reaction to it (incidentally, she's a firm supporter of Stalin and won't accept any criticism from him because "life was better then"). She was, er, slightly incensed.

Her: "It's all RUBBISH. You BRITISH just LOVE to criticise us, don't you? He just went and deliberately found the most pathetic Russians he could so you could all sit here and say, "Oh, how terrible it must be to be Russian" - what's the POINT in sending resources to those places when there's only about five people living there?"
Me: "That's still five people though."
Her: "They can move somewhere else then!"
Me: "But they don't have any money."
Her: "Yes, because they SPEND IT ALL ON DRINK INSTEAD OF DOING THEIR JOBS AND BEING GOOD CITIZENS."
Me: "Well, that's because they don't have anything else to live for."
Her: "What about GOD?!"

And then later:

"Putin is a good man. He has done so much. Russia is a great country, Anichka, don't you ever forget that."

So there you go. I can sort of see her point, but Russia is Suicide Country No.1...OK, I just checked and it's actually second to Lithuania. Still - it kind of shows SOMETHING isn't right. On a related note, I was blathering on in my Russian lesson on Thursday (using bad grammar etc. etc. etc.) and saying something about how, "Russia has experienced many problems recently" and my teacher rolled her eyes and gave this weak smile and said, "Russia is always experiencing problems. That's just the kind of country it is."

But that's not all it is.

What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

Now that I'm back from beautiful fantastic Arvon, now that everything has settled back into how it was three weeks ago, some things are starting to occur to me. Firstly, I don't actually want a degree or a career thanks, I just want to write poetry all day, every day, and live on a diet of biscuits and trifle with FYP written on it in cream. Yes.

Because I'm too much of a conformist moron, though, I will probably end up doing those exam things that people keep talking about. And it has only just occurred to me that when they come around I'm not going to have some out-of-body experience so that some other girl with my name does them instead. There will actually come a point where I sit down at a desk and open a paper of some sort and see a question and have to answer the question. USING WORDS.

And that means that now I have to work. I actually have to stay awake in Brett's lessons, I actually have to make notes on The Sick Rose and not just whisper to Immy, "How big do you reckon Blake's penis was?", I have to write essays, I have to find the brain that I left on a bus several months ago and actually remember how to use it or the next four months are going to suck immensely.

(Small voice in back of head: "or you could just...NOT.")

I don't

feel very well.

Pietas Pie

And so it's February - limbo-month, love-heart-month, cheap-googly-eyed-teddy-bear-month. Also Arvon-month, for the second and last time, although I'm trying not to get too excited about that just in case it turns out it's not real (I did exactly the same thing last year, refusing to believe it wasn't all just a crazy dream right up until the evening of the first day - and partly not until then.)

There is a man outside Charing Cross tube station who sells the Big Issue standing on one leg. London is wonderful. It's also wonderful because of this man's photos. Aren't they amazing? I'm very tired (so what else is new?) because I just got back from a day of classics lectures. Lots and lots and lots of Virgil, and plummy Oxford professors with weird pronunciation (EE-nee-as for Aeneas, EE-lee-ad for Iliad - is that normal?), and people I had actually heard of (Edith Hall! who is MAD) and a few slightly weird points (apparently Aeneas "stays pretty much the same throughout the Aeneid" - er, what?). My note-taking fluctuated a bit due to random bursts of sleepiness, so for one lecture I wrote masses of stuff, while I've also got another page that only has four points on it:

"Juno is Joan Collins on speed."
"Mad, hairy, passionate lionman"
"PIETAS. PIE."
"ancient sandwich"

and also many many stickmen.

Meanwhile I'm not exactly a model of pietas myself. I am neglecting my family, who are currently arguing over the fact that my brother hasn't done his homework, I am neglecting my duties because writing about Nazi Germany WOULD BREAK MY SOUL, I am neglecting my country because I haven't spoken a word of Russian since Thursday, and er...I can't really think how I'm neglecting "the gods", but today Mum said, "[uber-religious] Great Aunt Susan is coming to stay soon! We'll all have to give up meat for Lent!" and I swore loudly, so it's fair to say I'm going to hell.