Though it feels like since school ended, I ran to the furthest corner of the earth, fell into a coma for ten years, took off on a spaceship and got trapped in a space-time wormhole, not a whole lot has been happening. I have been watching an awful lot of movies, as is my wont during holidays. The best was Inception, which remains entirely indescribable — if you don’t believe me, watch the trailer and notice how you have no more information about the film than before you watched it. I think the best way to catchphrase it would be “conceptual magnificence”. It was just awesome. I couldn’t give you a “worst” because I haven’t watched any bad films. Moulin Rouge was entirely bizarre, and if you can get past Ewan McGregor’s desperate shouting into his microphone, it’s fairly entertaining. Big Fish was similarly strange (why have I been watching so much Ewan McGregor?), though well made as always when it comes to Tim Burton. I wasn’t sure what to feel at the end of it (a common quality of many Burton films), apart from shock at just how bad Helena Bonham Carter’s Southern accent is. Helena, we love you, but you’re just too posh to be a hick.

Other new discoveries which are highly recommended include Thelma & Louise, one of those films at the end of which I could find nothing to criticise (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis fabulous, the tone perfect, all hail the writer/director, whoever they are); An Education, which I’m sure everyone on the planet but me has seen, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen something good and British, and Carey Mulligan nails it; Un long dimanche de finançailles, which the class watched one day while I was away — only Jeunet can turn the First World War into a touching, watchable feat in that way, apart from uniting Marion Cotillard, Audrey Tautou and Dominique Pinon (three of my favourite French people ever) and getting Jodie Foster to speak fluent French (GASP).

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the bunch was Love Actually, which I was not expecting to like but thought I might as well rent, since everyone always talks about it and it falls under the pretending-to-study category of Love Through the Ages. It was actually rather uplifting. I’m not really a fan of Richard Curtis, never having understood what all the fuss over Notting Hill, Four Weddings etc was about, but I think he got it right this time, with a warm, honest film with all your favourite British institutions. It didn’t end entirely happily, but it affirmed one’s faith in…I don’t want to say love, so I’ll say humanity. No great work of cinematography, of course, but it did the trick for a Wednesday night in.

Moving back into cinema, I actually went three times during the last week of term. Monday (Sports Day, MUAHAHAHA) I went with Amirah to see Eclipse, which was rather tolerable actually; it was a better film (due to better story and less Bella) than New Moon, and since even New Moon fell into the still-enjoyable category of So Bad It’s Literally Funny, I believe I got my money’s worth for what I was expecting. Searching deeper (never a good idea with Twilight) for the causes behind this, I considered the possibility that it was due to the multiple viewpoints. The actual plots aren’t all bad, acceptably thought-out — in the main — with enough action to hold up the rest, so once the audience is finally granted a brief reprieve from Bella’s dull, self-wallowing, one-dimensional abyss of emotionlessness (which admittedly), the film’s not bad viewing. The flashbacks to Jasper and Rosalie’s past lives, though lazily filmed like everything else, and the introduction, through the newborns and the Volturi, of some scenes WITHOUT EDWARD, BELLA OR JACOB IN THEM! CAN IT BE? made a more well-rounded film. Admittedly, as soon as I saw the camera zooming in on Edward and Bella in the meadow, I left to get popcorn. But it could have been worse. What couldn’t possibly have been worse: the red of the Volturi’s eyes, the teddy-bear quality of the wolves.

On Wednesday, I went straight from school with the guys (and Georgia) to see Toy Story 3. I don’t remember the original (not even sure if I’ve seen it all the way through), and never went near the second one, but all the same I have grown up with those plastic faces smiling benevolently from merchandise, bus posters and Channel 4′s countdown of the best family films of all time. I can see why people (mostly my generation) view Toy Story as one of the great classics, and believe the reason for this is *DUALFOLD*. On the one hand, the idea in itself was a great one, which everyone can relate to (I too had a wall of drawings of my animals, and my family has a running joke about the guys partying while we’re on holiday). On the other, as Pixar proved with Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc and so on, there is no condescension. Just because it’s rated U doesn’t mean there is no real plot. There is plot, character development, motif and real humour — beyond the much cited “jokes for adults” which are in themselves fairly patronising. A rich experience which left many of the audience, including me and Georgia, struggling not to cry over our lost youth.

In the meantime, I have begun to analyse Les Petits Enfants for French, and have still not ordered Les Quatre Cent Coups off Amazon. I have ignored all piano, Greek and Latin until After I Get Back From Canada, that horribly large heap of To-Do. I have bought a dress and survived. I have undergone the wince-worthy experience of being forced to watch, forty five minutes at a time, how LOST went from a great show to a colossal joke (otherwise known as Season Four). I meet people every now and then. I am progressing with my Sticking Book.

I’m shuffling along.

Firstly, French wasn’t actually that bad *gasp*. The essay questions were nice, simple, actually answerable, unlike the past papers which had rather led us to believe, as Cloe so eloquently put it on the phone, that they would be more along the lines of, “Why do lonely people commit suicide?” (Answer: probably, because they took French AS, had no social life and then a nervous breakdown, followed by the realisation they would rather end their lives than continue with this absurdity any longer.) On the other hand, I always think it ‘wasn’t actually that bad’ and then I get it marked and it turns out that actually, it kinda was. But since I can’t do anything about it until August, let us enjoy these two weeks completely devoid of Mot à Mot, Travail Personnel and ecotourism, and stop talking about it. One last note though: my last post might have sounded like a pre-exam last-minute freak-out, but I assure you, I still think and feel everything I said in that post, to the extent that if I think about it too much, The Rage builds inside me once again. Another reason I wish to stop thinking about it.

Latin today was also much better than expected. I fear History tomorrow will not quite be the same. Since they’ve already asked all the best questions (“How important was trade/war/the Seven Years’ War/William Wilberforce?”), since Mr H has not sent back the one essay I have done since that clicking moment I had and since there still exist the same things I just don’t know as I just didn’t know round about Xmas (Navigation Acts, development of ports, anything to do with the slave trade, that elusive figure Thomas Foxwell Buxton). The hot weather has mercifully buggered off and we are left with a nice gentle breeze more conducive to successful working environments, but not even that can overcome my general sense that there’s nothing I can do to improve my mark, plus the general boredom I invariably experience when attempting to revise the British Empire. Oh, how I miss GCSE. I even miss the Tudors. And it’s only been about two weeks since I stopped revising that. The crisis du jour, therefore, is the perpetual Motivational Crisis.

The uni crisis is progressing, further away — fittingly — from History & French. I’m trying so hard not to let this year influence the decision. But I think I’ve come to the realisation that learning about periods of history is more enjoyable than analysing them, unlike English, the reading and analysis of which are equally enjoyable. For me, anyway. And it’s not like I’m totally losing it, because of Classics, which is why I wanted Classics in the first place. So there we go. Everyone — including my History and English teachers — are telling me to go with Classics, because it’s the diverse one. And my own brain is telling me to go…away from…History. Now to sort out some work experience…

(Note to Jordan to check if he’s paying attention: A thing at the bottom of my edit controls just caught my attention. What the hell are trackbacks and pingbacks?)

In short, all crises except that concerning motivation vis-à-vis two Empire essays at 9.00 tomorrow morning have been fundamentally or largely resolved. Yes, that’s right, I am once again publishing my ramblings on the Internet because it’s either that or go and do some work. I felt like Ms D or Ms H trying to get to the dining hall as I made my way out of school today — every ten paces, I’d see someone I know and get drawn into a conversation with them, so that it actually took me about an hour to walk from the bottom of the slope to the top. Which, of course, left me as hungry as Ms D and Ms H kind of constantly are, never making it through more than three encounters in the Vestibule before something urgent and/or annoying requires a trip back to the office to get something/or phone someone/do anything apart from eat some food. Not that I blame these people for accosting me — it’s all on me that by the time I have forced myself to make my way home from my AM exams, which finish around 10.30-11.00, the PM exam candidates are making their way in. 

Nor is it their fault that I stop them and say hi when they should probably be going off to revise, if not sit their exams — anything to delay further the moment when I must blip out my superfluous piece of plastic, drag myself up the hill, blip in a significantly more useful piece of plastic, sit through a 30-minute lulling bus journey in a state of  pleasant lethargy, drag myself up another hill and start revising. I can already see how today is going to go (exactly the same way as Sunday and Monday). I will do nothing and sit around with my eyelids at half-mast, vaguely thinking every now and then, “I should be working”. Then, round about 11pm I will start hyperventilating about having not done anything, and will hastily begin speed-cramming. Eventually I will acknowledge that staying up so late is counter-productive, and will go to bed, only to get out again at 6am to continue the speed-cramming, right up until the moment I go up to my exam venue. Sigh….how clear and how impotent foresight of monotony is.

I have been having very crisis-themed dreams too. Last night I was at the top of an absolutely massive peak (the bus journey taking its toll?) with Tasha, and a slide showed us the only way down apart from climbing treacherously (well, not climbing treacherously — climbing down very treacherous terrain — I’ve been revising foreign languages for the last four days, leave me alone). However, the slide was cut off halfway down, rather like the ladder down the hatch on LOST (my frustration at being way too behind on episodes to watch the mixed-review finale even if I could afford to get up at 5am?). So we had to choose being catapulted through the air to possible safety, and climbing down to be possibly catapulted through the air if things went wrong. The night before that, we were in an absolutely gigantic mansion; you couldn’t tell, once you were wandering in outside bits, whether you were re-entering the same or a different building (Daedalus’ labyrinth crossed with the Warwick campus?). Tess, Max and some others were running around this place like headless French chickens, trying to find our exam venue. If I dream about the Glorious Revolution tonight I will not be happy.

It is now five minutes to three, which makes it over 4 hours since my exam ended, during which I have done no work whatsoever. I am going to stop writing, as if this will lead me to do some work. Perhaps if my non-History crises were not at a current low tide, I would be less complacent and more inclined to some last-ditch enthusiasm for the second greatest fléau of my academic year. But as Cicero would say, I pass over these things, lest it become endless.

(Did I really just quote Cicero? And say ‘lest’?)

Gordon Brown has just announced his imminent resignation as party leader. I’ve always quite liked Gordon — okay, so maybe he sucks in the lower half of his face at the end of his sentences, has terrible handwriting and disappointingly ordinary hair, but what many people don’t realise is that he’s actually a very clever man — probably one of the most intelligent MPs. Tony may have been the brawn (and by brawn I mean Cheshire cat grin), but Gordon was, and is, the brains. Very few people, furthermore, seem to have any idea, or even care, about what he actually stands for, rather than what they can blame him for. He is a nice man who reads love poetry and got into politics not to “make a difference”, as the self-serving egotistic Cameron and co would boast, but to “help people”.

All in all, therefore, I don’t think he’s been nearly as awful a PM as the right-wing media would have us believe (though he hasn’t, admittedly, been overbowling, if that’s a phrase), and I’m quite fond of him. Never, though, have I admired him so much as I do today. I take back everything I said in my last post about the stupidity of staying in Number 10 — I called it stupid only because I assumed he had no intention of resigning as party leader. In light of this most recent development, which can hardly have come out of the blue (haha, another political pun), it was clearly the right thing to do for the country, whether or not they recognise that. Wow, a week really is a long time in politics. The Tories’ feeble comeback of a referendum on electoral reform will, hopefully, not be enough given what Brown’s already promised. God, he’s like one of those amazing heroes from an epic blockbuster who’s kind of useless and doesn’t really help in any way and then SAVES THE DAY BY SACRIFICING HIMSELF. When I assumed Brown was determined to stay put, I didn’t do him justice. I should have believed him when he said with his wife a while back during a television interview, “If I can’t do any more good, I’ll go and do something else.” Because New Labour and Parliament have lied about a number of things, but Gordon Brown is nonetheless a fundamentally honest man. And now there is a real chance at a progressive coalition.

In other areas of extreme relief, there was a brief  moment of panic when it was revealed that Mr H will not be here next year, until he continued that it was probable that, instead, next year we will have Ms H (no relation…). This is the happiest news I have received in quite a while. Also, I got back that half-good, half-terrible Wider Reading practice from English, and it turns out despite the fact that I finished mid-sentence, had one poetry quote and no drama, I didn’t do that badly. Woot. Nor did I completely fail the random vocab sprung on me by Rhetor at the beginning of today’s lesson. Double woot.

This, of course, doesn’t change the fact that Clegg could stick to his stupid fair guns and thrash out a deal which is a nightmare for him and for Cameron for the sake of bloody principle. Or, much more importantly, that though I’ve got the content for my exams pretty much down (French, of course, excluded), I’m not at the marks and/or grades that I should be with two weeks to go. For now, however, I’m going to bask in my metaphorical deep exhalation.

Well, what the hell is going on? There was a general wave of disbelief in the common room when poor Gordon confirmed that the widely dismissed Sky reports were correct, he was not resigning. Standing next to Mrs K for the duration of this speech was rather entertaining — she could not hold back shrieked expletives — but I can’t help but agreeing. It’s clear what he’s doing — buckling down and crossing all his fingers and toes (and those of his wife too, I’m sure) in the hope that Cameron and Clegg realise that they’re at opposite ends of the British political spectrum and can’t reconcile their differences after all. And that in this event, Clegg will come crawling back to him, probably committing political suicide by siding with the guy who refused to quit while he was…already significantly behind. And that following this, Clegg and Brown between them will be able to convince enough Scotsmen, Welshmen and Irishmen to join the slightly offensive joke — sorry, to join a coalition topping 326. There’s rather a lot of “if”s in that scenario, enough of them to have made it reasonable for Brown to assume that resignation was a risk worth taking, in order to die with dignity. Had Brown gone to see the Queen today, Cameron attempted a minority government and failed, the British people would probably have accepted a coalition involving Labour. Now, however, even those who voted for him want him out. As I commented in the common room, though Brown funded Iraq, had a hand in the screwing up of the economy, attempts to be “hip”, throws stationery items and furniture, squints a little, has bad handrwiting and sometimes has, as Rosie put it, “a smile like a paedophile”, he has always been clever. Few members of today’s electorate realise Brown’s intelligence. Today he has done something immensely stupid, and I felt like flopping to the floor in dismay.

A minority government, I fear, it is. I can’t see a Tory-Lib Dem coalition getting very far. I doubt the weak mumbling about a “cross-party committee” (in other words, a fruitless project designed to occupy non-Cabinet MPs) on electoral reform is going to be enough for Clegg. I equally doubt that Cameron will go much further. The question, therefore, is whether or not Cameron can actually govern like this. In some ways, given the inevitability of Labour’s defeat, this situation is ideal — Cameron gets the blame for the hideous ‘age of austerity’, but with severe checks from the combined Lib Dem/Labour MPs on the stuff which is so Conservative that neither of them can stand for it. However, between formal coalition and minority government there are some weird halfway ideas being suggested, particularly by the Tories — Lib Dem Cabinet seats have not been ruled out, though the precise implications of such a manoeuvre are difficult to envisage. Presumably, given the vast differences in policy, Cameron would have to either entirely give up control of some aspects of government, or trust the Lib Dems to run the only things they agree on. So that’s the third runway, the fact that Gordon Brown sucks, and…erm…

The popular vote of our mock election went pretty much as expected, with a Lib Dem landslide — nice one, Iain. There was slight surprise at the number of seats Labour gained — nice one, Katie — despite the overwhelming “anti-whatever-we’ve-got-right-now-feeling” among the fortunately mock electorate. This is probably due to the lack of Tory vote (they only got 3 in our form), since fourteen year olds don’t generally have large heaps of assets to conserve. I was even more surprised to learn from Katie this afternoon that we almost had a hung…school, Iain only securing in the last four forms the absolute majority. So perhaps the typical student ‘fair and clean’ vote only stretches so far. I would be able to comment further if I had been present for the debates, which I’m still pissed off I missed, or if I knew more details of the results (missed those too…).

The final point of commentary (apart from HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE NICK ROBINSON SLEPT???) is the appalling number of polling stations who last night turned voters away at ten. Clearly they were following whatever protocol is set out by the Electoral Commission (who didn’t hesitate to say that it was clearly crap and in need of serious review). But surely that protocol should dictate something other than refusing a vote to people who had clearly been standing outside since 9pm?

Well, the coverage does get tedious (Iain, Saagar and I spent about ten minutes watching Sky News film a door before David Cameron actually walked, not even through it, but in from a completely different point of entry). But I think this has been a pretty damn exciting first election. Clegg may have ruined the party (okay that one was actually accidental) slightly with his blanket “no thanks” to Brown around midday, but until then it was agonising watching the Lib/Lab total inch up throughout the morning toward the Tory total, then waiting for the seats to come in one by one until the hung Parliament was official, then with each new result assessing the likelihood that Lib/Lab could reach 326….In a way I wish the Tories had won outright because then I could promise you no more election posts and I could promise myself to go back to revision properly. Sadly, we look to be hanging around for the rest of the week at least…

It may only be three weeks until exams start, but my most frequent conversation with my teachers over the last week has been “How does nobody realise…?” Finish this sentence with “that Nick Clegg can’t win in an overwhelming majority of seats, although we acknowledge the extreme success rate of The Power Of Positive Thinking”. Finish this sentence with “that David Cameron is talking out of his fucking arse and has no policies that he hasn’t stolen from the other parties”. Finish this sentence with “that Gordon Brown has screwed up a lot of things but has also got a lot of things right, and has never screwed up because he had the wrong ideology.” When we watch what has been fondly dubbed “the worm” which fails to dip in blue after Cameron has said something particularly wildly inaccurate, we cannot believe the utter stupidity of the electorate. Yet we are the electorate. (My teachers are, anyway.) So where the hell does this phenomenon come from? Who the hell are these people who vote based on who leant on their lectern in the most serious but least desperate way on Thursday night, and who managed to say “I think fairness is important” the most times?

Despite the annoying feeling that I could have been doing something right now, such as spending five hours a week arguing about this with a room full of equally interested people, or trying to say to some kids in the lower school some of the stuff I’m saying here, this election has been pretty exciting for me. It’s become a far cry from the “well clearly the Tories are going to win because the Lib Dems aren’t a real party and it’s anything but Labour” of September. It is genuinely impossible to see which way things are going to go. Or at least, it was until this week, when Labour’s dual disasters of the bigot and the arrival of Tony Blair seemed to plunge them back into the pit of despair from which they had been briefly raised by David Cameron’s idiocy and Gordon Brown’s demonstration that he does actually know what he’s talking about in terms of the economy, both of which have been at least partially recognised by the electorate.

Regarding Cameron’s astounding string of fuck-ups, for want of a better word, it seems — thankfully — that if you throw darts of mathematical ineptitude at the electorate for half a year, at least a couple of them will hit the board. The total confusion over marriage tax breaks? Largely forgotten. The misquoting of the likely teen pregnancy rate in poorer areas as a rather insulting 54%, as opposed to the actual 5.4%. Labour may not remember to check their microphones are off or send all the helicopters we can’t afford, but they would simply not, ever, be distanced enough from the people of Britain to make that kind of mistake. Unfortunately, since the ones to get outraged here are teenagers, the large majority of whom will probably never have heard about this soon hushed-up error, that one’s gone unnoticed too. But even the Furniture (a term I have recently learnt from some Year 13 friends, grouping the Year 12 students who are constantly slumped in an arm chair in the common room, to the point that they have become part of the general dusty decor) picked up on the slight absurdity of a 40 year old black man having served in the navy for 30 years. Clearly Cameron’s never actually met “a black man”. If he had, he would probably have described him as “a naval officer” or “a postman” rather than “a black man”.

That last jaw-dropping slip of Cameron’s frilly mind and/or tongue has become mainstream because of the TV debates. I think they’re both fantastic and awful. Fantastic because they have both re-energised this campaign and informed the electorate in a way that couldn’t have happened otherwise. Awful because no matter what anyone says, Cameron wins the debate due to having the greatest hair and the most fertile wife, and Clegg wins the polls due to Just Believing. I will refrain from again screaming WHY ARE THE ELECTORATE SO FUCKING STUPID? (oops, too late). We can no longer deny that Clegg’s got some good ideas (the cross-party reviews on whatever the audience member asked about go down particularly well) and he knows exactly what he’s doing when he points out that clearly none of the current screw-ups can possibly be his fault, since his party has never actually made it into government. I never thought I’d say this, but “I agree with David”, when after the surprisingly three-horse first debate he pointed out that Clegg’s got a nice easy job of it, holding Vince Cable in one hand and “A plague on both your houses” in the other.

None of this — yes, let’s create a fairer Britain! your party hates Europe and your party loves America! actions speak louder than words, guys! (oh wait, I don’t have any actions since I have no experience in government…) well, it’s time for a change! it can’t get any worse than this, right? — changes the fact that we have First Past the Post. Nick Clegg can tell us as many times as he wants that this system is diabolically undemocratic and that we need to reform absolutlely everything, and he will be right, but so long as we have it, he cannot win a majority. Most people considering voting for him don’t seem to realise that general elections are fought not up and down the country in people’s TV sets, but in a handful of key marginals. Very few of which are something/Lib Dem. Today Clegg came out with his slightly unexpectedly late “ALL IN!”, but if his supporters follow this advice and abandon tactical voting, they will not gain seats for Clegg, they will lose seats for the left wing. Okay, so Labour have proved adequately in recent years that we may not want to trust them for another five years. But we just know we can’t trust the Tories.

Even if your political leaning doesn’t agree with that last statement, the Toriest of Tories cannot deny that we can’t trust the Tories to bring us electoral reform. They don’t seem to realise how insanely moronic their poster slogan “Vote for change. Vote Conversative.” sounds, the greatest oxymoron in recent political history. Or perhaps they do, and they’re rolling around on the playing-fields of Eton, haw-hawing at we plebs who are stupid enough not to realise it. Yes, politics has become more admin than politics, and it’s nice to have some big ideology, but in the middle of a financial crisis is not the time to do it. This is the time for realism. And realism tells us that this election is not going to bring us a Lib Dem popular majority. The best we can do, then, is try and secure a Labour seat majority, and hope that Gordon Brown carries out his admittedly last-ditch promise to examine seriously the possibilities of switching to AV. Because Cameron sure as hell won’t, and he’s not even pretending he will.

Just a note on that Cheshire cat blast from the past ex-Pm of ours, who has spectacularly reinforced Labour’s popular position as a bunch of tired, grumpy old bureaucrats who are too blind to work out why Cameron’s winning and too arrogant to acknowledge that Clegg has become a real rival, with this wonderfully self-destructive statement: a vote for the Lib Dems is “not a serious thing”. Whose great idea it was to even let Blair into the country during campaign season, we will never know. Clearly the campaign team got together, looked at the still astonishing way in which Cameron has dragged his party kicking and screaming by the slimy smile to the centre of the spectrum and the head of the polls, and decided their best move in response would be to invite the man who killed 9000 Iraqi soldiers and 30000 citizens for some oil and a ‘special relationship’ with the dumbest President in history. History, indeed, was starting to remember Tony Blair kindly, reflecting back upon the ‘golden years’ of vastly improved public services and a steady economy (run by Gordon Brown, remember?), comparing the anticipation and the achievement of 1997 with this current foot-drag toward the finish and conveniently forgetting that economies don’t collapse overnight and that he slithered out just in the nick of time. Until he opened his mouth. This torrent of leaflets and colour-coordinated ties had just about washed the memory of Chilcot out to sea, and then Labour went and decided the best way to win support for the party was to gain its official support from the man who has caused the electorate to hate it. It’s like Cameron producing Margaret Thatcher as his secret weapon.

In short, Labour are stupid. But Cameron has adequately proved that he is just as stupid. And Labour will act stupidly in the interests of all, whereas the Conservatives will act cunningly in the interests of a few. Clegg, of course, would at this point jump in and say “If I could just move beyond the petty bickering over details here, (has he never BEEN to the Commons?) I would act fairly, trustingly, openly and refreshingly in the interests of all living things.” So would Labour, Nick, if they weren’t aware of the fact that we’ve run out of money.

Let’s work from the bottom up, shall we? I don’t wish to spend too much time right at the bottom because, contrary to popular belief, dancers tend to have the ugliest feet in the world. Callused. Blistered. You get the picture. But there is, on my right foot, a very specific scar-which-was-once-a-blister, in the shape of a star. Very Harry Potter, I know. This is because of my wacko Austrian family. The last time I was out there, c’est-à-dire two years ago, as I politely declined to go last summer, there was, as always, some Big Beef over some forests we weren’t meant to cut down or whatever it might be. (Excuse the odd French-sounding phrases…I haven’t quite detoxed yet.) The meeting which was supposed to commence at 10am and finish by 2pm, did not start until midday (certain members of the family being better at others than getting out of bed on time). At 2pm they broke for lunch, and were still on lunch break at 5. Now, there are extremely limited facilities at the house in Austria, in as much as no one has cooked there since the servants did rather a long time ago, therefore no one really knows how to use it and there’s nothing in the cupboards to burn even if we dared attempt it. When it reached 11pm at night, therefore, and the meeting was still going (not the kind of meeting you can interrupt), I began to grow rather hungry. 

 My mother eventually remembered my existence, gave her proxy to another warring sibling and emerged to take me to the nearest Gasthaus. This involved walking through innumerable corn fields, in my flip flops which have the plastic star on the strap. (See where this is going?) When we eventually arrived, it turned out it was Ruhetag there (equals no food whatsoever). We walked through several further cornfields and in the end turned up in a random village (almost on the verge of tears), ate some chips, then proceeded to walk all the way back home. This entire exploit took so long that the star from my flip flop has been permanently stamped on my foot ever since. It was fairly painful.

What was just as painful (again, ignore the French) was the incident leading to the still-present bruise/scar on my right knee. As a child I had always resisted the dubious pull of those infernal Micro-scooters (for those not born between 1991 and 1996, like normal scooters but shinier and much, much spindlier). One day, however, when playing at the house of my friend-sort-of-not-mutually-agreed-boyfriend, at the age of about seven, I met the delightful children of his cul-de-sac. They all had bikes, rollerblades and so on. Being a fairly useless child who couldn’t do any such things, I was duly handed a Microscooter. Overcoming the urge to ask where the rest of my foot was supposed to go, I began. It wasn’t that bad actually. How could I have thought that supporting my entire body weight, with both feet off the ground, on a wheeled metal contraption the size of my forearm was dangerous? I began to speed up. The next thing I knew, I had lost the precarious balance and had catapulted over the front of the twig-like handlebars. I landed in a fairly awkward way, and was glad to never again be asked to play with the Cul-de-sac Children.

Skipping over a few body parts, we arrive at my back. In Year (was it?) 9, I had one of those brain-freezes while journeying up the stairs at home. My feet stopped doing what they were supposed to, and I fell backward onto the step opposite me, which had a nice metal grill thing going across it. So much as placing one’s little finger upon the area of my back which had the misfortune of coming into contact with the grill-thing made me shriek like a banshee. Consequently, I got away with not tucking my shirt in for about a week. It was a pretty cool scar at the time, varying shades of brown and red, varying levels of skin-loss. It’s pretty much gone now. :(

Did I just use an emoticon? Oh dear. Moving swiftly on… My arms are absolutely covered in bruises, scrapings and so on, and I have no idea where the large majority of the come from. I quite often wake up with ruby red scratches on my upper arms. No vampire jokes please. I do remember vividly, however, where the scar on my right palm comes from. It was at Oakwood Park, that most awesome jungle-ground of hiding places, fortresses and helter skelter slides. I fell off something or onto something, and got an extremely large splinter in my hand. Not surprising given that the entire park is made of wood. My friend’s mum attempted to extract it, but as we had no medical implements to hand, and as I was impatient to get back to the swings (a vacancy had just opened up) and kept wriggling, this wasn’t an entire success. There is still a splinter of wood in my palm, where it has remained to this day. I’m lucky it didn’t go all septic on my ass.

There’s not much else to tell. I’m more widely known among my friends for causing injury than for receiving. (Do NOT take that as a challenge.) I could start talking my mental scars through the years of insufficiency complexes and identity crises, but I think it’s best we just leave it here.

Then, of course, there is the additional possibility, pointed out to me by Ms Lee in a bitter tone suggesting that she regrets not going on holiday, that there will be a staff deficiency too. I myself didn’t think of this, probably because the idea of teachers having social lives or even existing outside the prison-grey walls of their own classrooms is still difficult for us to grasp. Mrs K is stuck on her unexotic teacher exchange in Amsterdam (my imagination has placed her in Colin Farrell’s role of ending every sentence with “In fuckin’ Bruges”, despite her being in the wrong country). I don’t know about the others — I fear any French people will have taken the fully booked Eurostar — but one can only hope, despite the fact that, given the whole revision mindset we’re currently supposed to be in, we should probably panic at the thought of an endless stream of cancelled lessons. But the weather’s so nice…

Meanwhile, the sulphur cloud has not — here, at least — visibly appeared. Knowing my luck, it will arrive on Monday at around 1.30, when I plan to venture beyond my front gate for the first time in several days, to see someone who isn’t my parents, my sister, my sister’s family, members of my dance school or my dentist, for the first time since the other end of the holidays. I have to say I’m slightly disappointed. A sulphur cloud would at least change the view I have been trying not to stare at from my window-seat desk for the last fortnight. We haven’t had such excitement over here in fuckin’ Barnet since that explosion at Hemel Hempstead which did, actually, wake me up in the night, and which provided a nice black overhang in the distance for several days to come. And so far only one person has been hospitalised for volcanic reasons, compared with the 50 odd for oil-related reasons.

I spent some time in the garden today, which reminded me how nice it actually is to be outside. I think the dogs of the neighbourhood have heard about the sulphur, because the creepily staring one who lives opposite, about three doors down, was mysteriously absent from this revision session as he did for every single day I revised outside last year, sitting unsettlingly on the pavement opposite for hours at a time. Or perhaps he was an omen of sulphur clouds to come, and having done his duty, has moved on to a new patch. …Perhaps I spent too much time in the sun today.

In any case, this wasn’t a particularly inspired topic for a post, as nothing is happening here. I suppose I began in the misguided hope that in the process of its construction, said cloud would arrive and give me a nice excuse for having lived a cringeworthy non-life for the last two weeks. I wouldn’t mind if I had been revising, but the less-than-enough that I’ve done has fallen straight out of my brain again anyway. All in all, not the most satisfying holiday. But at least I went outside today.

Mental fresh air, however, has been the order of the day this holiday. Even if I am suffocating in my own revision schedule, it is still somehow a complete change from the school routine, the last three weeks of which I barely made it through. Staggering toward the finish line that is the Easter holidays, I was actually kind of looking forward to this hideous incessant conveyor belt of French questions, Latin words and imperial wars. I have come close to strangling myself with a long paper-chain of scrunched-up Mot à Mot pages at times, in complete despair over the complete lack of leeway in this schedule, but I have been leading an existence within my own brain, as opposed to struggling to keep my brain switched on in a structured environment where everything is organised and happens with or without me. This has been rather beneficial, and my nerves are…unnervingly…calmed.

It has taken me four tries to convince WordPress to publish the photos of Cloe’s party, so I hope you all appreciate them (and no, Maia, that is not the same thing as immediately uploading them to FaceBook). If the number of unknown Jews and familiar-and-almost-forgotten MHCHS alumni was slightly overwhelming at times, the company of Maia and Georgia, among others, the generosity of Sophie with her cider and the excellent quality of the cookies more than made up for it. Sadly, the event reflected its school equivalent in that, just as I spend hardly any time with Cloe despite us being in all the same classes, I virtually didn’t see her during the entire evening. This, no doubt, was because she had the misfortune of finding herself the hostess — in addition to the fortune of being able to dance at parties, one in which I am sadly lacking. Nevertheless, it was a great party and the first time I can remember seeing anyone outside school in a long time, so full marks to Dooey, whichever country she may be in.

I also snatched some brief air when crossing the road from the 82 bus stop to the O2 centre last Sunday, though whether you could call the atmosphere at the Finchley Road traffic lights fresh is another matter. Iain and I together endured the weirdest overall cinematic experience I have had in a while, namely Shutter Island. The film in itself was fairly “trippy”, as we heard the usher say in a surreal tone on our way out, but the main problem was the phenomenon of allocated seating which is now required at the centre. We were — almost certainly incorrectly — informed that the only two seats left which were together were in the very front row. Nobody likes to sit in the front row — except some strange children whose eyeballs have not yet developed into full humanity or something — but it was either that or face the reality of having travelled for forty minutes to sit in silence on opposite sides of a darkened room, so we took them.

Alarm bells should have gone off in my head when we were directed to Screen 8 (at any Vue, an inevitable omen of bad sales), but even I was taken aback by the cave-like feel of the room. There couldn’t have been more than 7 rows, and then there were 2 in front of the aisle. Malheureusement, this compression of the screen seemed to have been started from the back, so that our seats were literally no more than a Vitruvian man-span from the screen itself. We missed the first ten minutes or so of the film due to the various heated disputes going on behind us, as someone else in our row complained and it transpired (gradually) that pretty much everyone in the screen was sitting in the wrong seats, having all backed as far away from the cornea-frazzling monstrosity as possible. This, however, did not much diminish the pain of both visual organs and necks caused by the remaining 2 hours and 10 minutes of the feature. The film was entertaining, albeit fairly generic, but parts of it — alternating between a mental institution and a concentration camp — were simply too freaky to watch from seats that close. Our conversation at dinner afterwards, I fear, suffered greatly for it.

Dancing was the only other time I have been outside this holiday, so I suppose I should talk about that. Fresh air miles amount from my front door to the church on the main road, but the hall is so poorly heated that we should really add the duration of my lesson too. Almost the entire lesson was spent on a new Samba routine, which wasn’t great as I had no idea what I was doing and, after next week, will most likely bunk until exams are over. I have been so on and off with dancing of late for a variety of reasons that I never really managed to remember my existing routines all that well. I think it’s fair to at least partially blame their complexity; I have a horrifically fast Kopylova Cha Cha and a Hardy Jive, for a start — difficult shiz. And since none of you have any idea what I’m talking about, you will all assume that I am fantastically talented and referring to the most advanced dances in the world. Let’s leave it that way, shall we?

I’m going to go and read the paper now, as I have no idea what has been happening in the world, except for the awful Polish plane crash, and even that all I have so far gathered is that “they’re all dead”. I haven’t watched the news in so long that it’s possible the general election may even pass me by. No, Rhetor McC will never let that happen, but our school’s mock election is indeed a mockery (oh, the puns that are spat out when one is deprived of human contact!) of a real vote. The Lib Dems will most likely win, because students like the idea of Lib Dems and, unlike the country, are largely unaware that in reality they could not quite handle being in government, given their own assumption that they never will be. On the other hand, as long as Vince Cable’s around he would probably do a better job than Brown and Cameron put together — indeed Brown and Cameron put together would make for much fields-of-Eton-streets-of-Edinburgh insult flinging and tie-peanutting — so I reserve judgment. The year group hasn’t shown a wild amount of interest in the election, but then neither has the general public, so perhaps our little contained, cliqued society does represent the real world after all. Though the thought of Ed and Ricky running for Parliament is slightly disconcerting…

The only other thing that has happened to me today was a slightly surreal experience involving my voicemail. As is the norm with my beloved *retro* phone, having received no missed calls all month, I suddenly received four answer phone messages all at once. I called up, and went through the bizarre ordeal of listening to myself having a fifteen-minute heated argument with my mother in the car two weeks ago. The number which had called was not my mother’s, only adding to the confusing fact that I didn’t recognise my own voice, and had to play it twice before realising it was not my SISTER having a fifteen-minute argument with her instead. How it got there, I have no idea. And various second calls and Lemsip spillages have conspired so that I have not yet managed to delete the phantom message, nor listen to the other 3, all from different, unfamiliar numbers. I am putting off having to listen to myself whining and sulking for the third time in the last hour by writing this post.

I think I’m going to blame rehearsals this week for the state of my throat. Well, let’s get personal: I blame Uber Choir. Though rehearsals for the musical are now of course over, I suspect poor exhausted Mrs McC probably could not face the thought of a swollen, non-music-reading, constant-key-changing rabble of amateur singers, at the back of which perpetually prowls the Head, and so left it once again to his leadership. I hate it when this is the case. What he’s saying makes sense, and he definitely tries to teach us when Mrs McC doesn’t, but that’s generally because she is trying to ensure that by concert week all the parts know what they’re doing. It doesn’t seem to matter much to the Head if we get the words or the notes right, so long as we SING IT LIKE A PROFESSIONAL CHOIR to impress his Local Authority chums in the front row.

In fact, he doesn’t even seem to care if we survive the performance. He bullies the guys for cutting short some of their minims. The tenors, already valiantly gasping up in the ledger lines, elongated their notes accordingly. He cut them off after two lines and grumbled, “It sounds like you’re dying of consumption!” As I then noticed upon closer inspection of the score, it turns out the minims they were coming off slightly short were marked as the final notes of the phrases. In other words, where they are supposed to breathe. Having eliminated this trivial element, how can his Headship be surprised that his tenors are dying of consumption? This, added to the fact that not even he seems to know at any given time what key we’re in, can prove rather trying.

I saw Grease on Wednesday after a brain-wearying day at the Oxbridge conference. I was so freaked out when I got home (up to 4 interviews??? up to 45 minutes each??? over 10 000 AAA students rejected each year???) that I completely forgot about the show, so it was all a bit of a mad rush once my parents had turned up and asked if I was ready. Happily, it was worth it. Though I felt the chorus and dancing was unusually mediocre (unsurprising when you have 70 kids crammed onto a tiny stage with big skirts and big hair that all they have room to do is an emotionless Hand Jive), the principle cast was unusually outstanding. You could call me biased,given that I’m friends with basically all of them, but they made the show worth seeing. Just as Alice shone in Guys & Dolls last year (this year she had the slight handicap of a character with no character), Tess as Rizzo made the whole damn thing this year. For the first time, sitting in the audience, I felt like I was watching a schoolplay, as opposed to a professional-standard production, which is probably partly due to the fact that I was in the second row, thatI was in it last year, that I am the same age as the entire cast. Nevertheless, the feeling was there, and Tess was so not Tess, so submerged in her character, despite all of that. I had the impression of watching a form assembly with fancy staging, I have 12-15 lessons with Tess a week, and I was sitting there watching Rizzo. The only one who really did that for me was Emily. With both of them, I was highly entertained by the regular snatches of movie Rizzo and movie Marty which they pulled off perfectly. Tasha as Jan for the comic value, Eleanor as Cha Cha for restoring my faith in the standard, Mehdi for just being Eugene. But Tess raised the bar — the most emotional on-stage performance I’ve probably ever seen in There Are Worse Things I Could Do – and the underwhelming choreography and performances from everyone else essentially failed to rise to it.

I have realised that cancelled lessons are literally one of my favourite things in the world. On Tuesday I had no school, because I had no classes. I had got more done by formtime that morning than I would in all likelihood have achieved ALL DAY at school. What should take half an hour in the classroom ends up taking an hour (above all in the usual suspects, History and French), but takes as a general rule around 20 minutes at home. Between that day of extreme efficiency, Wednesday’s conference and the fact that I had grand total of 7 real lessons last week, I don’t really feel like I’ve been going to school this month. Which, for those who have hung out with me recently, is probably a good thing.

Concerning Latin (as ever), I am settling into a rather UNSETTLING pattern of complacency and inproductivity. (I think I made that last word up.) I sent off my last ever session this week. That’s right, the last EVER. Sure, I have about 8.5 hours of mocks that I skipped out at the time, plus relearning the entire vocab list. But at least the sessions are over! ..On the other hand, that’s probably a bad thing, since the only thing that was keeping me going through doing Latin during my frees instead of lounging  about in the common room and/or on the field was the strict schedule of the sessions, including how shittily behind I was. I now have a bad feeling I’m not going to get any Latin done between now and the exams…

My keyboard is doing that thing where it refuses to respond and then suddenly churns out fifty of the same letter at once, which is why this post has taken me a torturously long time to write. I think it may have something to do with my mouse, whose batteries need changing.There is no logical link to my mind, as they have the same receiver not the same power source, but in any case I’m going to finish this post before I throw the keyboard across the room in frustration. This last sentence has literally taken about five minutes. I hope you appreciate it.

I’m pretty much up to date on work, but I’m really behind on that list of stuff entitled God, I’ve Really Got To Get That Sorted. At the top of the list currently are: dentist, hairdresser, optician, cervical cancer jab (not that THAT one’s of any great urgency…), some proper piano practice, cutting my nails to enable this to happen, finding some work experience, downloading some uni prospectuses, deciding what I’m going to do with my life and putting away all the ironed clothes hanging off the front of my wardrobe. Right now, between careers (I’ve suddenly realised I need to sort it out) and actual homework, everything else seems kinda unimportant.

Except, of course, Cathy & Swank nights. Except, of course, that we were unable — once again — to get hold of a Swank film, as usual, so really it was just Cathy night. We also only got through two films, which I blame on the presence of so many eight and nine year old boys that they were literally everywhere — we dragged ourselves upstairs at 4am and went into our regular Cathy & Swank bedroom, and turned on the light only to discover about five children in our bed. I felt like one of the three bears coming back from the mornign walk. Except Goldilocks was quieter, and a lot less obnoxious. And probably, when invited to a sleepover, didn’t spend the entire time staring at her Nintendo DS. Oh, the modern age.

Now I have to go home and write an Eng Lit essay. The slight flaw in this plan is that I haven’t actually read any of the poems I’m supposed to be writing about. The slight flaw in the general plan of getting stuff done is that no one ever gets anything done the day after a sleepover, and I really can’t be bothered to do anything at all. “I’ll do it the night before” is such a beautiful phrase, like a fine wine trickling smoothly under my tongue. Then again, this IS the night before, though it still feels like a continuation of yesterday. Already on the cards for Monday’s night before is the usual Pile Of French Shit; the Always Tuesday thing is comforting, but unfortunate, as Monday is my six-period day in both weeks. Plus whatever other homework for History/Latin/Eng Lit I’ve forgotten about.

In short, it’s all a bit messy and icky. My life feels like the morning after a sleepover. I was about an hour late coming here yesterday, because I was sitting at my desk, on the verge of TEARS of SHEER FRUSTRATION, at the Oxford course outline for Classics w. French. I literally could not make sense of it. There are 2 courses, one for people who’ve done Latin and/or Greek A Level, and one for people who haven’t. So far so good. For my version of the course,there are 3 versions, people who’ve done Latin, people who’ve done Greek, people who’ve done both. Still following. For each version of the course, there are 3 options, entitled Option 1, Option 2 and, nonsensically, Option 1 & 2. Option 2 is a year longer than Option 1 but seems to have less stuff in it. And Option 1&2 has nothing to do with Option 1 or Option 2, so far as I can tell. In the end I threw it into my overnight bag and crawled weeping into the shower. I think this is the preliminary Oxbridge test: If you are smart enough to understand this course, you are smart enough to apply for it. I failed miserably.

So my brain is a bit of a mess, too. Unusually, the only thing which isn’t a mess is my desk, which I tidied while watching LOST  to make me feel like I was doing something productive. Amany’s hair looks pretty neat too. Despite its natural chaotic and twirliness. I want to go back to bed for about five years. And when I wake up, we will have emerged from the recession, so everyone will have stopped applying to uni, the Tories will have just been voted out, so tuition fees will have gone back down, and I will have subconsciously absorbed five years of knowledge and wisdom, and will be able to work out the table with 3 options for 3 versions for 2 courses for 2 degrees.