I think this is going to be one of those posts that I go on for a bit! Apologies, but I have not posted for a while.

I am currently listening to Bonnie Tyler (I think, it could be Bonnie Langford, one of them is a dancer though I think...). After listening to a song in Tony Brigg's car today I was hooked! It was a song called "Holding on for a Hero" - no doubt a song from an equally cheesy 80s movie. It was fantastic though! For a start Tony's car has a massive and decadent (I love that word!) 240 Watt system in his Corolla that sounds fucking epic! The song has a frantic and layered drum machine in it consisting of a kicking bass, cha-chitting 16beat hats and mahoosive echoing power toms. This coupled with a fantastic off beat waspish growl of a bass just sucked me in. Bonnie Tyler/Langord whatever also has a deceptively good voice.

The whole song as achingly 80s which should make me despise or laugh at it but listening to its intensity and its buildup and its fantasticly unexpected chord progressions made me forgive it for its cheesy exterior. After all, a song with the chorus #I need a hero, hes gotta be strong and hes gotta be tough....# just smacks of cliche and 80s patriarchy. But who cares! Its cheesyness and kitchness gives it a kind of charm. It could become a firm favourite!

Tony (as he always does) kindly copied the CD for me and I now have it on my MP3 player. Yay!! This has also prompted me to put other stuff on my MP3 - The entire Queen Greatest hits, Steps (haha! yes I know), Britney Spears and "Killer Cuts" - a cheap and cheerful gimmick of the soundtrack to a little known 90s SNES beat em up. Heehee. I have such a fantastic bank of songs! Wooooo!

#I NEED A HERO. DOO DOO DOO DOO DOOOOOO. AHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHH!#
Sorry, I had to put it on again! Oh man I LOVE this song! It will stick in my head for ages and ages. Could it beat the record of 10 days in my head currently held by Radioheads "Paranoid Android"? Maybe....

#I CAN FEEL HIS APPROACH IN LIKE A FIRE IN THE BLOOD! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!#
Sorry. I will stop now but it is so damned good!

Ahem.

Other news.....

Oh yes my exams that I thought were going so badly have turned out to have gone really rather well - heh, my undying optimism, complacency and luck shines through again! English paper 5 in which you get a pack of material (the stuff I was looking thorough on that bench) and then have to regurgitate it over 2 1/2 hour in another form went well. I took a rather stupid risk by leaving all of my studying and note making of the pack till the morning of the exam. I could see that I was only going to have the time to study one so just hoped that a good question came up with the stuff I was studying on Mars. Of course an ok question did and I wrote reams and reams - the correct amount for a change! I wrote 1000 words just about bang on with a bang on 150 word commentary and the stuff was probably good. I cant remember or really judge if it was the correct tone or not. It is partly opinion on the examiners part anyway. I just hope it is, then I get to miss some lessons later for the people retaking the paper 5! Woo!

I finally got on to my UCAS tracking space to find that my no 2 choice requires only a 260 points! 260! I am not even sure it specified that it had to be from 3 A levels! Thats a BCC ! Yes!!!! I got AA CC at AS. Even if I do bad I can expect B CCC! Oh yes!

I still do have to work hard however in case I get in at Sheffield. I do really want to go now! I had a bit of a wobble a few days back and was like "Boohoo! I am going to uni and getting into debt and I dont know if I will be very good or even like it! I probably wont even get a good job and wil be poor.... Why dont I just work at McDonalds for the rest of my life? I am pretty good at it and everybody that is full time gets by with the wages and have cars and families and holidays...."

I feel better now though. I think I will enjoy uni life even if I find my course hard and dont like it. Becky has told me about reviews from Sheffield, everybody says it is great, even one from the Journalism course so it is as good as you can get really. I like the idea of being all independant and being in control. Heehee! Cool!

The only think I do wonder about is if I will make any good friends. I have no doubt that I will find people that I will talk to and maybe hang around with but will I have any really close friends? The kind that I have know that you can be totally natural with? That I can share my obscure humour with? That I can talk to deeply?

I dont know. I know I will always have Tina to talk to on the net but I worry that I will lose contact and closeness woth Kat and Becky. They have been there since the beginning. Kat with our games in the primary school playground.... Becky was my first ever real friend. We have been friends since nursery man! How can I cope without her being there? Its more the thought than anything that it is the end of the era and that we will drift apart no matter what we do. I hope against the odds that that doesnt happen.... Oh man now I can feel myself welling up.....

No. I am good now.

oh......

I will change subject becuase it has got me thinking of the devastation that is results day and us saying goodbye to the certainty of maintaining contact. And what Kat said.... "We wont see each other again after this year" . Does she have that little faith in the solidity of our friendship? Does that mean that she wont bother to try and keep in contact? Jeez! My brother saw his old mates every time he came home from Uni and there is such a thing as the internet! It may have just been a lack of understanding on her part of how easy it can be but it sounded a bit like she was giving up on me already!

I must stop this now. I cant waste my time getting all sad about potential futures.....

Ok. What else?


Hum. I dont really know! I guess there is work....
I have started to enjoy my job more now (have I put this before?). I sometimes even look forward to going! I guess it is because I enjoy the company of a lot of the people I work with. Ooooooooh! I remember something now that I was thinking about on the way home from work oooooh! and something else to that I wanted to write about.

First of all. A slightly massive topic. Why do bad things happen to good people? I have always brushed this question off as something people say in grief that is just a distorted view. After all bad things happen to everybody.... good and bad. You couldn't say that more bad things happen to good people than bad...... but it got me thinking the other day when I was told by lovely Lesley why Amy was off work.

It turns out that Amy's Dad was in a terrible car crash at 60mph and it is "touch and go" as to how he is. "Every moment.... you know" Lesley said and I just thought.... Why!?

Amy is the most adorable little urchin there is! She is so fun and cheerful and bouncy.... the kind of person you just want to be around because their lovely personality is infectious. We are always joking and messing around whilst on the job and we even talk at school - something I never really do with the others that go to Danum. She is one of those rare people that makes you (or at least me!) want to give them a massive hug with a big beaming smile on your face because they just radiate happiness!

I kept on thinking "Dont let him die. She deserves so much better than this pain." then it reminded me of Katie, the lovely manager who seemed to have been devestated by her boyfriend cheating on her with her friend that she had kindly taken in after she had a fallout with her mum. Then I thought of Sue Tattershawl - the smiley science teacher that had a loveing husband and child and suddenly died without warning or any meaning of a sudden heart attack along with her unborn child. Then I thought of Christie - the life and soul of the party at Monte Carlo Beach - the cyber comunity. She died after refusing to give thieves the keys to her car. She threw them down the drain in front of her instead of letting them do something wrong. So rightous and passionate and above all fun and she was struck down by some anonymous criminls for nothing. She even died with good humour. She was nothing but jokes in hosital I was told. Such a waste....

Then I remembered those poor kids that have been killed just outside of school. 5 in the past few years! 5! I was told this by Lucy at school. She told me the reason for all the road alterations and severe punishments for ignoring road safety on that road - so many young lives lost through carelessness....

There is a story that haunted me for a few weeks: the terrible, terrible story of a poor girl. It is an incident that one of the teachers were involved in. A teacher found the poor girl and refused to talk about to anybody. After some alcohol and persistant questioners he told Lucy that he had found the girl with her head completely crushed under the wheel of a car. "He had never seen anything like it" she said. I am not surprised that he couldnt talk about it. Its a wonder people dont go insane when haunted by such horrific images. I mean although Kat seemed unfazed I just kept on seeing the image of a poor girl with a crushed head lying limp and lifeless in the road. I cant walk past that patch of raod without remembering that story.

It really, really freaked me out that something so horrific and terrifying could happen somewhere I go everyday....

Well. I guess I have made my point. All the people I can think of that really bad things have happened to have all been exceptionally nice people. I kindof half wrote a song to the chord sequence I have had for a while on the way home from work. I wanted to call it "Rsndom act of Fate". I know it sounds like tautology but I mean to convey that fate chooses random victims and has no compassion. The words were so angry and heartfelt at the time but I dont think I could ever do the notion justice enough if I put it in a song. I know I will probably try at some point but I dont think I would put it online unless I thought it was some kind of masterpiece.

I was going to talk about something else now but that subjetc is even more morbid and disturbing so I will save it for another time.

I am glad I got that story about the girl off my chest. I neede to get it out so that I could quantify it and make sense of it. It still freaks me out to think about it but... it is better than it was to use a deeply insesitive phrase.

I feel a bit regretful that this blog has turned out so sad. I didnt mean it to. I am actually in a pretty happy and good mood but I guess these things are things that I have been making a mental note to talk about for a while so I guess it all the bad stuff came out at once.

I need to finish this blog on a happy note so..... um.

A joke....

Ooooh!

um....

no...

how bout.....

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were out camping one night. Sherlock said "Watson, what do you make of this situation?" Watson replied "Well, I think that the stars above us are mighty balls of gas that burn billions of miles away. They look like beautiful fireflies on a silky midnight canvas... winking specks from a ceasless horizon.... awe inspiring grandeur that humbles us all.....

"Watson?"

"Yes?"

"Somebody has nabbed our tent."