Are we going to prom or to hell?

Gaaaaah. Just got back from a party in Maidstone. Have spent all morning sitting on the floors of various trains. In about eight hours I have to be at school wearing a ridiculous dress for the sixth form ball, which...yeah. God. Sentences. Goawaysentences.

I'm not hungover at all, just exhausted. Evening basically consisted of firstly drinking too much wine too fast forgetting I have a stomach bug, suddenly remembering I have a stomach bug, lying down behind a sofa for ages, and then spending the rest of the night talking to Charly/Antho/a few other people, and helping to look after drunks. It was quite fun actually - I mean, not looking after drunks, but just seeing people again. Also spent a bit of time wandering around having stupid earnest conversations with people ("Yeah, I mean - yeah! YEAH, totally!") and quoting things at a guy dressed as Hamlet. He looked like he was going to throw up at one point so I said, in a kind of I'm-not-really-taking-the-piss-out-of-you-but-I-am way, "O, what a rogue and peasant slave are you" to which he yelled in my face "FUCK YEAH. HONEYING AND MAKING LOVE OVER THE NASTY STY!" and ran out of the room. So yeah, that was...I'm not really sure why I just remembered that actually.

Am tired, tired tired. Very pale too. I will look like a corpse at the ball. Oh God. I want to go, but not now, not today. Just got that line from Heathers in my head: "Are we going to pruhhhhm or to hell?" Really want my pyjamas. My lovely pyjamas. Only I know if I get changed into them now I will never be able to get changed out of them. It's really dark and it's blatantly going to rain and oh heck, I have to get to school myself which means walking through town in a dress in the rain, OH WORLD GO AWAY.

At least, because I have no desire to drink tonight, at all, I won't repeat the ridiculous drunken fiasco of last year's ball. (Gah.) And it's in a house/manor thing this year, not on a big lurching boat, so...that should be interesting. I am looking forward to it. Should really stop typing. OK, I will read for a bit, then have lunch, then bath, then get ready, then stagger out of house. Yes, a plan. At the moment I'm reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (which has been on the To Read list for years and years) and it's quite good; I'm not hooked but I like it. It has Ken Kesey's sketches in it, which is nice. Pictures of men who look like their faces are falling apart.

My face is falling apart. What is this quintessence of dust?

Thankyou, Dana

In a moment (alright, during an extended period) of madness I deleted this. Then I realised it felt a bit like - well, not like losing a limb, but definitely an eyebrow. So here it is, the return of the eyebrow. Minus about ten entries, but whatever.

Things are a bit odd.

I don't really feel like myself at the moment. Which is far less dramatic or interesting than it sounds. Head's all over the place and for the first time in my life I have insomnia, and basically never sleep except when I'm not meant to: in Kew Gardens, at Poetry Unplugged (oops), outside the Turkish shop in Penge. Dad is loading me with herbal remedies. The physio reckons improving my posture will solve all my problems. The funny thing is I don't feel stressed, and certainly not about exams. I just...

I know what the problem is and don't want to say, which makes this a bit of a non-entry.

I also want to read some chick-lit. Any recommendations?

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.")

Just old light

Ill. Ill and babysitting. Misha is currently "playing karate", thankfully with a pillow and not with me, while blasting an old CD he found called HUGE HITS 2003, which contains some delightful songs I'd completely forgotten about (What's Your Flava by Craig David, The Cheeky Girls, Holly Valance's pop career etc.). I'm having a pointless and confusing argument with Dom about...I don't even know what. On bloody Facebook. And drinking tea with raspberries and lemons and honey. It is disGUSTing. I'm like the world's worst sick person - other people just get on with it, drink their tea and take their antibiotics and slob around happily, but I turn into this crazy, miserable moron. Who yells at her brother when he tries to get her to dance to Liberty X.

The last time I was ill (phantom feverishness during exams doesn't count) was during Arvon actually, when I had bronchitis and kept furtively taking painkillers and steaming my face three times a day. And worrying that everyone there thought I was weird for doing so. I remember at one point Paul Farley said, "Why is she ALWAYS under that towel??" Also the 2-year-old daughter of the centre directors was terrified of me because she thought I was a ghost, and I had to poke my head out from under the towel to reassure her that no, I wasn't a ghost, just a silly girl who goes slightly manic when ill.

Anyway, currently I'm sort of trying to decide which essay to send to Pembroke - the pretty good Ovid one from last year or the godawful Virgil one from last week? And reading Ovid's Art Of Love again. I LOVE him - he's such an arrogant, hilarious, stingy ("Guys, try to AVOID giving girls presents, there's no point...Girls, DON'T ask poets for presents, you know we're all poor anyway..."), flirtatious bastard. Is it wrong to have a crush on someone who a) has been dead for just under two thousand years and b) is a complete wanker?

Some thoughts for Sunday afternoon.

It is possible to write an entire English coursework in five hours as long as you are prepared to accept that it will be shit.
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Excess cheese sandwich consumption is probably the reason why I keep having nightmares about being broken into little pieces.
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When a Brazilian guy chats you up on the bus to Waterloo the natural reaction is to be flattered. The natural reaction is not to become confused and scared and weird and spend the rest of the day quietly hating yourself.
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If I was a Russian Orthodox Christian in 1666, I like to think I would be one of those who defied Nikon's reforms, became an Old Believer and moved to the Urals. In reality though I'd probably just accept that now everyone had to make the sign of the cross with three fingers, not two, because at the end of the day does it really matter that much?
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The above explains why I'm not religious.
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Girls who totter about everywhere in stupidly high heels that SHOULD kill their feet and leave them crippled with achilles tendonitis and yet are somehow fine? I hate them.
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When I'm upset I generally can't stand talking to people, in fact all I can do then is mope around and make lists and write bad poems and sit there going all melancholy over beans on toast and see how long I can go without saying anything. Basically I like to just avoid people.
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This makes me a crap girlfriend.
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Injury is dull.
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The BBC show is on Tuesday and yet - whisper it! - I don't actually know anything about Russian poetry.
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Rest? Please? Soon?