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.

Socrates - always good with legs

Bad news first. Last week I went to see the GP again (who incidentally is the mother of Jake, a boy in my year, and has lots of pictures of Jake on her desk which is really weird when I'm trying to tell her something serious). She swivelled my knee this way, that way, this way, that way, and then said, "It's growing pains."

"Sorry?"

"Yes, growing pains. There's nothing really you can do. Cartilage, you see, it should harden and resolve itself by the time you're about nineteen or so."

"Nineteen."

"Yes."

"Sorry, just...sorry. NINETEEN???"

So that's that. Apparently I'm supposed to just adopt a policy of Ignoring It, while at the same time avoiding things which "aggravate" the poor ickle pathetic knee. What a conundrum. Meanwhile, a few muscles in my back have been talking amongst themselves and decided that, "Hey, you know what Annie could really do with now? You know what's missing in her life? A nice bit of back pain!" Only it's not just a bit. It's the worst back pain I've ever had. It makes the Great Back Pain of Summer 2006 seem like a little bruise, and to be honest I'm really scared about this, it's never been like this before. I spent most of Wednesday pacing up and down the living room, rubbing my spine and sobbing. Not good.

I then went for a furious swim that was actually powered by sheer rage ("You want pain, you stupid, useless, good-for-nothing muscles? HERE! HERE'S - SOME - MORE - BLOODY - PAIN!" Just to clarify, I wasn't actually saying this aloud. For one thing it would be quite hard to do while swimming.) Anyway, the parents have decided that when I'm in Moscow the week after next I should go and see their old friend from uni, who is now a doctor specialising in this kind of crap. It's quite weird because his nickname at uni was apparently Socrates (I don't know why), and so my parents keep saying things like, "Yes, make sure you tell Socrates about the orthotics" and "Socrates will know what this is about, he was always good with legs" and I get really confused for a second.

Anyway. Let's not dwell on this or I'll start panicking again and panicking will lead to more pacing and tears. On Tuesday I took Dom to Open Mic - he used to write poetry, ages ago, but then stopped due to writer's block/lack of confidence/whatever and I kept trying to make him start writing again and he kept refusing. Anyway, so we went to Open Mic, and it was really good - I didn't read anything because I have nothing to read, but there were quite a lot of regulars and familiar faces, including a South African woman who we saw last time, who read these amazing poems that were like half-song half-spoken word. And one guy read a poem that contained the immortal line, "My arse wept for the Lord God Almighty." (It was about porn.) The only bad bit was when some guy was reading this weird poem and occasionally stopping to say stuff like, "Are there any IMMIGRANTS in the audience?" and "Any BLACKS or SLAVS?" Then when he sat down someone at the back called out, "Are there any vaguely provocative fascists in the audience?" and the room went kind of quiet. Fortunately Niall said something like, "God, can you feel the LOVE in this room??" and made a joke and the subject was swiftly changed. Apart from that, it was a great night.

And afterwards when we were walking down Betterton Street, Dom said he really really liked it, and he EVEN said that he might start writing poems again, and at that point I was so happy all I wanted to do was kiss him only he suddenly went, "OH MY GOD THERE'S A POWER RANGER IN THE WINDOW!" And sure enough there was a life-size model of a red Power Ranger in one of the windows above us. It was terrifying.

And later we saw Orlando Bloom coming out of the theatre where he's performing at the moment, and all these teenage girls shrieking and running down the road to see him.

Yesterday I went to the Poetry Library for the first time. Well, actually, I went there once years ago, but that didn't really count - this time I got a membership card and spent about three hours in there, perusing all the books and magazines. And drooling. I got out two books from Christopher Logue's War Music series (Kings and The Husbands) and The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck and Errata by Michael Donaghy. The trip was only spoilt a bit because at one point I was standing there reading Vicki Feaver and had so much pain in the back area I actually felt faint, and had to go and sit down for a bit.

This means I have eight books to read before going to Moscow next week, although I think it can now be safely said that I'm not going to read Caesar by the end of this summer. I tried to find some more interesting bits I could just skim through - like the death of Pompey in The Civil War - and even that was boring. It's just not going to happen. Sigh. I'm a bad classicist.

I did, however, read Harry Potter earlier this week - Harriet leant it to me after I went round to her house on Monday to see her new kittens. I only have this to say:

a) Not exactly bed-time story material for small children, is it?
b) That was quite a finale.
c) 9-year-old Snape, bless his little cotton socks.
d) I LIKED the big twist. Oh yes.
e) But the epilogue was lame.

Honey sandwiches at dawnbreak

And then it was the end, and suddenly there was a heck of a lot of free time. (Let's not mention A2 courses, personal statements, uni decisions, prefect duties or other thingamajigs, eh?) Today was, as I always knew it would be, epic. There was me waking up at four in the morning because I'd gone to bed at nine the night before, and a few honey-sandwiches-at-dawnbreak (washed down with milk). There was a gloomy bus ride to the hospital a few hours later, during which I felt more and more ill and nervous, couldn't stop reciting Ovid's Amores 1.2 over and over in my head, and listened to two old women behind me talking about their hair.

There was the hospital appointment. I now have orthotics, which are, for a start, not as big as I thought they would be (I was dreading some kind of massive brick-like monstrosities that would only fit in the biggest of trainers or something like that, but they're pretty small really) - they're also quite comfy, like having cushions in your shoes. And I am now just a teensy bit taller because of them. So.

Then there was the bus ride home again, and I started making up a poem in my head - I swear, about 75% of my ideas for poems come to me on the bus, which is why no matter how much they suck, no matter how many times I end up on some crowded bus listening to a crazy woman singing Amazing Grace (this has happened) I will never stop taking the bus.

At home I started feeling ill. Steamed my face. Three times. Drank tea. Went on the internet. Tried not to think about a) Ovid, b) Cicero, c) any kind of Latin vocab/grammar. Didn't work. Read the OCR Mark Scheme for Latin AS-level. Suddenly wanted to cry.

And then all of a sudden it was 1:30pm and I was standing in the lobby, having one of those completely mindless small-talk conversations with Amy who was about to do her economics exam, and I was clutching some paracetamol thinking, "Should I take them? Should I? Am I being silly? Should I?" And I went up to Mr P who was the invigilator and said in a very tiny voice, "I don't feel very well" but he was running around with some woman in a red skirt so I don't think he quite heard me.

Then there was Hannah, who came up to me, wailed, "I don't know ANY CICERO AT ALL! I'm going to FAIL!" and ran off. I stood there, alone, and there were about 10000 year 11s who were about to do their history GCSE, and I thought, "Oh, those were the days - history GCSE, which I thought I'd failed and then it turned out I'd got an A* - God GCSEs were really not that bad...mind you if I told them that they'd probably crucify me...OHMYGOD I want to be sick."

Mr L (Latin teacher 1) came by and was all like, "Alright?" but I didn't really answer him because his face was sort of swimming in front of my eyes. THEN - HE came along. Thingy. Whatsisface. And I hadn't seen him since that night, and while there was a part of me that was kind of hoping to never have to talk to him ever again, there was also another part that was hoping that when we did get round to talking, there would be some kind of...difference. Like, some kind of acknowledgement, at least, of what had happened. But no. It was the biggest nothing of a conversation. It was all him saying, "What have you got?"

And me saying, "Latin."

And him saying, "Oh right. You OK?"

And me saying, "No actually, I'm a bit ill." And waving my paracetamol in an overly-cheery sort of way (why do I do that? why do I always act happier than I am?) and saying, "Immune system's decided to give up on me."

And him nodding. And then Boris came along and wanted to talk to me about the barbecue he's having at his house on Sunday, and so that was it. And I realised that yes, that really was it, we were just going to carry on as normal. Like, good-friends-who-just-quietly-resent-each-other. Yep, sounds like a plan.

Boris left, and I got very sad and sickly, and then Chadders (Latin teacher 2) appeared, and I must have looked like death in human form because he was very kind and reassuring and just generally wonderful. I felt better then, and he went off down the corridor on a cloud of godlike superior Latin knowledge.

And the description of the build-up to the exam has been longer than I was planning it to be. We went in. I forgot how to spell my surname for five seconds; that was a scary moment. Then we began (there were SO many people in the room - all the history year 11s, plus me and Hannah doing Latin, plus economics, plus drama, plus Alec who does Japanese - it was really claustrophobic) and my ill feeling cleared and just over three hours later it was all over. I don't want to jinx anything, so I won't say that, you know, it went well or anything, but...Well, the commentary paper was on two pretty easy-peasy bits (in the pro Milone, the bit where Cicero pretends Milo is waving his bloody sword and going, "Through me alone may justice, equality, laws, liberty, modesty, chastity remain IN THIS CITY!" Love that bit. And the Ovid was 1.7, the one where he hits her and pretends to grovel - SO much to say about that, and SO glad it wasn't smelly old 1.3). And then the essay paper...well, this year is the first year to do Ovid, so the Ovid question that came up was just the most simple, the most obvious, the most BEAUTIFUL question. There was actually so much to say that my essay ended up being a bit kitchen-sink-esque, but hopefully not in a rambly way. By the time the translation paper got handed out I was tired as hell, and the story was a bit doom-and-gloom, as usual (something adapted from Tacitus - the death of Otho, a real tearjerker), so at first I was a bit sluggish and confused, and then I got a grip and I think that was fine too.

And then. That. Was. It.

My other exams have generally been...OK. English seems like another age ago now, but I remember generally feeling a bit smug and pleased with myself afterwards (which didn't last long because I then went and made a tit of myself in the evening...) History was the worst, what with the suffrage paper asking crap questions about trade unions and then my art-and-culture essay on Russia being full of Mayakovsky and without any mention of Lenin - at all. I mean, Mayakovsky is slightly more relevant to art than Lenin, but still, Lenin is Lenin. Russian was Russian. I did it, but there were probably mistakes I didn't see.

But now I'm free, free, free, free. I can probably write poems again! (I'm sure the recent block has been exam-related.) And also, the latest issue of The Rialto came in the post today and it's full of good stuff. There's an essay on Auden, and some stuff about Fleur Adcock, and generally loads of good poems including this one by Julia Casterton, who actually died in March and so is given a special mention in the issue.

CONSIDER THE LILIES by Julia Casterton

I've been considering these lilies since they came out,
probably planted by my neighbour when she got bored with them in the pot,
staked up by John in two clumps beneath the pollarded trees.

As is usual with lilies, they're acting as if they own the place.
I water them every night my cooled-off bathwater.
Unlike the roses, they show absolutely no gratitude.

The hibiscus looks desperate for water, and drinks greedily,
but these lilies can take it or leave it alone. I am the supplicant,
pardon me for breathing. They breathe their cool whiteness over the whole garden,

calming it all down, easing the panic of the drought.
I go out to look at them shining in the night, taking it easy.
They boss the place. They never heard of Solomon or his glory.

Mood swings and roundabouts

Last night I woke up from a dream about (I shit you not) women's suffrage (unfortunately I can't remember what happened exactly, I just know Sylvia Pankhurst was involved...BIZARRE), and then proceeded to stare up at the ceiling for half an hour, sweating and having a mild panic attack about everything. I actually wondered if I was getting ill, which only made me panic even more, so that by about 3:30am I was in a complete tizz and my teeth were actually chattering. Then I tiptoed downstairs and got a glass of water, standing there in the kitchen in the dark looking up at the sky outside, and calmed down and felt much better.

Took some Bach Rescue Remedy before going back to bed, and for some reason wondered if anyone had ever written a poem that mentioned it. I don't know if there's any kind of poetry website that has a database of poems sorted by topic, so you could just type in something like "snow" or "toast" or, well, "Bach Rescue Remedy" and it would give you all the poems that EVER mentioned that thing. There probably isn't, but there should be. Anyway, it made me want to write a poem about it (especially because the ingredients sound kind of - well - "5 x dilution of flower extracts of Rock Rose, Impatiens, Clematis, Star of Bethlehem, Cherry Plum in a grape alcohol solution" - there's got to be a poem in that, surely?). But I'm completely dry on the poem front at the moment, on account of being driven insane by exams and internal emotional dramas. That poem I mentioned ages ago that was half-finished? Still half-finished. And you know when you leave a poem half-finished for too long, you sort of stop caring about it, and it takes effort to get back to it and sometimes you just have to leave it? Well, yeah.

Friday is the end of everything. Friday is going to be an epic day, really. I have to wake up at the crack of dawn and get the bus to the hospital out of town, because - FANFARE - I'm seeing the orthopedist again and this time he's (probably) going to give me the special shoe sole thingies that will fix my right foot! This is going to be AMAZING. My foot hasn't been normal since I injured it in September, and now I'll be able to, like, wear whatever shoes I want without worrying about whether I'll want to rip off my foot with a chainsaw by the end of the day.

And then after that I have to leg it home, eat lunch and leg it to school and do the last exam - Latin - of all the exams that could have come last, it had to be Latin, the most important one - and then that's it.

It'll be quite symbolic. Exams will be over, foot trouble will be over. THEN I can start thinking about Emotional Shit (i.e. the aftermath of last week, see previous entry) which has been put on the backburner for now, which I am not currently thinking about. (OK, I'm thinking about it now. Damn. Anyway.)

In the meantime - actually revised a bit today, sprawled on the sofa surrounded by Cicero notes (apparently I looked so miserable that Mum had to ask, "What's wrong?" to which I said, "Life is shit, since you ask", and she uttered the most irritating phrase on the face of the earth, EVER: "Oh, pull yourself together"). Wrote ten thousand essay plans. Now I should probably go and read some Russian book. Yesterday Dad gave me a book of short stories by some Russian writer and said they were really good and I should definitely try them, they'd be great for revision etc. So I started reading them and they were OK, quite good in a horrendously boring sort of way - the kind of stories where nothing REALLY happens, people just meet on trains and in supermarkets and have some really meaningful conversation like:

"What are you doing?"
"Nothing really. Just...surviving."
"Yes."
"The sun is really big, isn't it?"
"It is."
"Yes."

And then they stare into space for a while and you're supposed to get some sort of idea of "things left unsaid". Pretentious arsewipe basically. Only then I noticed that loads of words were spelt wrong, and that there were all these grammar rules I thought I understood which were now looking really confusing and muddled on the page. And I asked Dad about it and he was like, "Oh yeah, he writes like that, it's full of slang and bad Russian". How exactly is that good for revision then? I mean, you wouldn't recommend Trainspotting to someone learning English, would you?

So now I'm reading some of Anna Akhmatova's prose. She wrote a little bit about her and Mandelstam and some other writers, and about St. Petersburg before the Revolution, which is quite interesting (and the stuff about Mandelstam is sad, really, considering how it all ended). Also started reading Rubicon by Tom Holland because Alistair who wants to do ancient history at uni has been raving on about it all year. It's OK - a bit breathless at times, which I suppose is what all the reviewers on the jacket meant by "exciting", only sometimes I wish he'd slow down a bit. Still, if it's a lively narrative zip through the rise and fall of the Roman Republic you're after, then you probably can't beat it. And I only started reading it because I felt like I didn't know enough about that period but actually I've realised I knew more than I thought I did (funnily enough, from endless Latin unseens...).

So, now comes the painful moment of ripping-myself-away-from-the-damn-computer...