Ok this is going to be a complete stream of random consciousness today as I have seen all manner of groovy lilttle bits and bobs that I just have to share with... well anyone that will indulge me really.

First of all may I just point out my incredible sense of trashy mag feature smell. Why on just Sunday I was on the bus back from Donny where I passed a road name sign unfortunately titled "Butt Hole Lane" and I thought to myself: "That road must have got its name a looooong time ago because nobody could be dense enough not to see that one" and made a mental note to stick it on this blog.

Now I bought a completely trashy magazine today (or rather Megan bought it and I nicked it) for a whole 40p. It is called "Love it" and seems to be aimed at really bored housewives. To give you a taste of the tone, the cover stories are:"I left my babies for my wrinkly lover" and "I'm paid to watch porn while I do the ironing". Yeah I know. But really, these trashy reads are very entertaining. Plus I can call it "research". Ahahahaa!

Anyhoo. I opened the mag and what is on page 4?

"I couldn't resist taking a photo of this road sign in Doncaster. It really made me laugh - but it must be a bummer for thise living on the road! - Melanie King, 36, Sheffield "

*[Note to self. Remember to turn safesearch on when looking for shadily named roadsigns. Really.]*

Kind of unlikely no?

In other news, is this not the coolest car you have seen in a long time?

Wow! It was parked outside of the Hicks building so I just had to take a picture.

Just a few minutes later a TVR Tuscan in metallic blue/green came rumbling past. :o !!!!! For those few of you that may not know, this is in fact my exact dream car! Yaaaaaay! I was very excited in a quite scary way.

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I went to Scarborough with Tina, Tom and Becky at the end of the easter hols and we had a right old time. The crappy sea front shops were the subject of much amusement:
Appropriately named "Tina wig". So what if they meant Tina Turner! This was clearly meant to be. Also, why isnt it available in a Tina Turner colour? Odd.

"Includes:

• Jumpsuit"

Why does this require a bullet point? In fact why does it require mentioning? Would it not be easier to take a photo of a kid doing the live-long-and-prosper hand thing that putting a very cheap prop in his hand and having ot explin it badly below? Also, why does the jumpsuit not fit the kid remotely well? Come on guys advertising!

Just incase there is every a nun related emergency. Comforting.

I am lost for words. "Ever popular" ?????

What?!

I would have liked to have taken a lot more of these but at this point the cashier had noticed my camera clicking and me going "Hahaha! This is so funny I am going to put this on my blog!" and told me very shortly that picture taking was NOT permitted in the shop. Oh well.

Ooooh but what about this?

I want one! This surpases even the monumental attention seeking of the tiger golf.

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I have befriended a new Journo Buddy called Ingrid. She hails from Estonia just at the border with Russia to the East. Because of this she has an interesting mix of the two cultures and a damned cool accent. I was talking to her about Doncaster as she had mentioned she had been to The Dome before. I asked her if she was aware of the concept of the chav.

"Are they the ones that wear scabby clothes?" she said.
"Yes." I said "Yes they are." Oh and so much more....
She menioned that she found it really interesting how the different areas of England were so different from each other. She found the way Sheffielders speak rather funny.

"They are like. ' Its mee buh-er' . First of all it is my, not me. And there it a 't' in butter!"
(Imagine this in an estonian/russian accent)

Hahaha! Oh Ingrid you legend...
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Journo stuff is going rather well at the moment. I have actually done some practical journalism :0

For my patch in Walkley I have to find and write 4 stories off my own bat. This is actually pretty tricky as not much seems to happen in Walkley. So I figured I would try and go for the unusual. Well. I really found that in a little shop on the main road.

"Spooktacula"

It is so fun! This shop does and sells everything unusual and unexpected. From second hand goth clothing to teddy bears in coffins, cups of tea to wicler wands, scalextric cars to magic potions. You can get it all here. Anyhoo. The shop is owned by a medium (who incidentally used to be in Take a Break which is pretty cool) called Brenda, and this shop is apparently haunted by a ghost.

A story hooray! I went in and arranged an interview. She was really nice and gave a me tea and biscuits. We talked about the ghost, apparenty a farmer from the 1600s called Adam. I have to say the room did seem a little creepy in the corner where he supposedly seems to hang around but then, I guess it would seem that way when you have been told about things moving on their own and coins appearing for no particular reason.

Brenda told me about the council being all picky with 'A' boards outside of shops too which should hopefully turn into a story when i do a bit of digging.

I got another story from my patch by nosying around the Sheffield Council website. I looked for the councillors of walkey and who was up for re-election on May 3rd and founf Veronica Hardstaff. She and the other Councillors have rather bravely put their phone numbers on the website.

*Yoink*

I phoned her up and left a message on her answerphone. She was kind enough to phone back (I mean I doubt I would have bothered for a journalist, let alone a student one) and we arranged a meeting. Yay.

She was really lovely and her house was all shiney and new. The view from her balcony was fab too. We talked about things life Private Finance Initiatives and Electoral Systems and I made notes with my now reasonable Shorthand. It was rather good really and just goes to show how easy this can be if you look around and are generally nosey. Just need 1 more story for my patch then. :D

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I went to my assigned Council Planning Board meeting yesterday and yes it really was as boring as it sounds. It took about half an hour for the councillors to decide what should be done about these few trees that had accidentally been cut down during building a new house or two. The council had given an order that the trees on a certain site could not be cut down. Turns out they gave the order for only one of the two sites with the trees by mistake and about 20 were cut down. Ooops.

A mistake yes and certainly worthy of a discussion but this argument just went round and round. After the initial few quotes I got down it just turned into

"Chair, may I just clarify this point... blah blah blah, witter, yadda..."
As Ingrid described her planning meeting:
"I could hear the flies dying"

And I didnt have a chair so the circulation in my legs was grinding to a halt as I sat on the plushly carpetted floor, seemingly to the distaste of the Chariman. Luckily it is my civic right to attend these meetings and make the place look untidy.
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Have you seen the new cravendale ads? Oh I love them! Here watch them now:





Oh I have seen these so many times and yet I still find them ridiculously entertaining :)
"Milk miiilk" is becoming a bit of a catchphrase of mine. The advert really works you know. Despite it being 10.30pm I still felt compelled to go down the road to buy some milk I wanted some that badly.

Oh and while I am here, this is another fave of mine at the moment:


Heehee!
If you haven't seen the other Harry Potter Puppet Pals videos, I recommend you watch them along with paying Rathergood a visit. ("My Cats got Knees" and "Looking for My Leopard" are faves along with the highly immature "Buffy Swears")
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Well I think that is about all for the moment as I should probably get back to living my life now. I do spend rather a long time doing this blog for no particular reason. Hmmmmm....

Well. Back to Farscape. I am only on episode 9 of season 4. We can't be having that!

Tootley pip for now :D

Oh.

My.

Word.

On a scale of 1 to 10 Muse were about 20 million!!!!!!!!
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo awesome!!!

We got to the arena and queued outside in what has to be the coldest night yet this year, I was completely frozen. We even huddled like penguins! Of course it would have helped if i was wearing more than a tank and my £2 primark hoodie.... but I digress!

We sat down and watched the support act "The Noisettes" who were rather damn good really. The lead singer was mental! She screamed and yelped her way through the catchy songs and just generally threw herself sround the stage.

Applause.

Musical interlude (and a good one!) including Rage Against The Machines "Killing In the Name of" - rather amusing to hear 12,000 people yelling "Fuck you I wont do what you tell me" along to it actually.

The atmosphere was fab as the stadium was rammed - I have never seen it full before :) The whole arena was mexican waving and chanting and singing. So imagine then the roar as the first electro buzzes of "Take A Bow" came humming from the immense sound system! Wow. This was going to be totally amazing....

Here it is.... [view at my blog facebookers :D]



Note the drummer emerging from the big box of light veeeeery cool :)
And it just got better and better! As it got to Time is running out, Tina leapt up dragging Kat with her, after some persuading Becky followed and I heartily joined in. We sang our little hearts out and jumped along (with rock hands of course.



For me Stockholme Syndrome was their best song - being the heaviest of anything they have ever done bar Assassin (which they unfortunately did not play :( ) We all smashed our heads around accordingly, singing, rock handing and generally behaving like yoofs at a gig :D At the end of this song after some freestyling on the guitar, Matt lobbed his guitar down, chucked the speaker on top of it and surfed it till he fell off. What a badass!



And so after an extremely loud encore they came back on and played the old fans fave Bliss (complete with trademark giant Muse balloons :D) and then on to the last song - Knights of Cydonia. OMG!!! AMAZING!!! See below :0



And so we hyperly raced back to the car, bought a poster from an extremely shady dude with a big trenchcoat and proceeded to drive back to Tapton whilst crucifying Bohemian Rhapsody (complete with trumpet solo from me with my rolled up poster). I recorded all of this so if I find a way to put it up I shall.

http://shef.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046131&l=c3fed&id=61110373 Tinas piccies

Woo and Yay Muse rock the Earth :D:D:D

Just got in from my first day of lectures so I thought I would use this 1/2 hour to write somthing before tea. It has been a slightly random day (as always), I am sure that every day is bizzarre in Sheffield what with dissappearing levels of buildings and rooms saying "no entry dangerous plants" its like a cross between being John Malkovich and Little Shop of horrors!

I went to bed last night at 1am thinking that 6 and a half hours sleep would be fine (which I am sure it would). I set all three of my alarms to make sure I would get up quickly to give me time to have a shower and get down to breakfast for 8. Unfortunately my nights sleep was not to be as peacful as planned...

It began quite well with me having my first dream (at least that I can recall) since I arrived, even though it was a bit random. Why oh why would I dream about watching an episode of Blue Peter in which Katy Hill leaves? That was about 8 years ago! Anyhoo, as I was watching my dream TV I heard a sudden, piercing and unpleasant noise. My first reaction was that it was one of my bizzarre nightmares in which a loud and frightening noise (usually my burglar alarm, hence the wierd phobia) tortures me and I cant make it stop. I appeared to be awake, but then I always do in these dreams.

I figured that I had better take more notice just in case it was real so I jumped up and tried to work out what the hell it was. Was it my alarm clock? Clearly not but maybe it was in this dream.... no didnt feel like it. I thought about things for a moment longer and looked around the room. Seemed real enough...

I saw the detail of the room and the light under the door. Hmmm this really seemed quite real. Were those idiots that harrassed us late at night back for antoher prank? If they were I dont know what they were doing...

After all of this had passed through my mind for about 10 seconds I began to have a feeling what was going on.... Weird claxon thing... Doors slamming.... people going down the corridor.... no way....at this time? It had to be about 1.30 or 2....

A fire alarm!

Bugger!

I bimbled around for a few seconds thinking about what to do. Ok. Coat. I would have to go outside, right. Ooooh hang on some trousers would be a good idea. I was stood in my nightie. Right out the door. Oooh wait! Lock the door! Find keys, lock door.

By this time only two people on my corridor were left! I followed them hastily with shaking legs. It still was probably a dream and I felt pretty weird. I wobbled down the stairs and down the corridor to get outside. This took rather a lot longer than I am sure it should, at least 5 minutes. I was one of the last out of the building and felt rather dazed and confused by the whole thing as i stood in the drizzle.

I glanced at my phone that I had hastily grabbed on the way out. 3.49am?! Surely they wouldnt be as harsh as to do a drill at this time... A couple of more minutes passed and two fire engines arrived. Had some fool jammed summat in a toaster? The firemen just wandered inside without much of a sense of urgency suggesting that it wasnt an emergency.

[Taking a break, have to go to tea!]

[Back from my 7.30 lecture]

Ok back. I will continue hehe.

After about 10 minutes we were allowed to trudge back in and rather blearily to our rooms. We got back to find a passing fireman had opened them all to check there was nobody inside. Rather tetchy and somewhat half asleep Ellie from down the hall threw a wobbly and started rantign about how anybody could have nicked our stuff. To tired to care a went back in to my room, removed my extra clothing and fell back into bed rather dazed from the whole shenanigan.

Yes uni is clearly quite different from home....

In other news today, the songwriting lecture was rather fun. We are a motley crew made up of rock and emo young heads like me and old seasoned rockers, geeky jazz guys with thick rimmed glasses and a comb over and even a bloke who makes music for mobile phone games. We spend most of the session introducing ourselves but then got straight down to it and deconstructed some songs. Now I am sad enough to do this to any song I listen to becuase I enjoy it so this was heaven : )

We are expected to carry a notebook at all times to jot down ideas (I do), write when inspiration strikes (I do) and evesdrop on peoples conversations for ideas (Oh yes indeedy I do hehe). In short this course is going to be ace! We are going to start work on writing music to a set of words shortly and complete it as a project for christmas. Cant wait!

In other news, Tina is a genius. Again.

As I have posted before sometimes she just says the most profound things from nowhere. Tina you legend! This time I was talking to her about how things get tough sometimes and that I was in an awkward position that there is nothing I can do about. She said to me: "As long as there is hope then nowt is lost". Where does this stuff come from??? She is absaloutley right and made me feel so much better. One day that girl is going to come out with a way to make bread fall butter up or the equation to take us pst the speed of light or something....

Well as much as I would like to write some more I have to be up at 7 to go down to breakky with Beth and Emma. Sees you later :)

Raaaaaaaahhhh!

I just typed the first 1000 words of my blog on my road trip with Tina. I got chased around the room by this stupid scary looking bug that I dont even know what it is that kept landing on my face. After that dissappeared a massive crane fly came through the window and set about following me around the room causing me to become a complete girl and run from the room to screams of "Agh! Shit! Shit!"



Eeee I am a wuss sometimes.

Anyhoo I decided to give up hiding from various things with many legs and retire downstairs to this lovely chair in front of the telly where I could blog on in peace. This was no mean feat. I had to creep like Sam Fisher on my front across the room to unplug the power and get the switch without disturbing the daddy long legs, looking the whole time at the floor so that in the case of it moving I wouldnt freak out and run from the room squealing waving my hands around like a big wet lettuce. Whilst gathering various pieces of computer equipment it began chasing me again causing me to leap through the door whispering various swear words so as not to wake my mum up. Eventually I got downstairs after having some trouble making the wire long wnough for my modem to reach the port under the stairs. I sat down with my laptop on my knee and opened up the lid, it having been partially closed during the running away like a brownie.

Oh dear I thought as I opened it.

It had been resting at just the right angle to do the most bloody annoying thing this laptop is capable of. If left for several minutes in the almost closed position, the screen turns itself off and does not turn itself on again without rebooting the whole shebang.

Bugger.

My words were lost and so I felt it appropriate to vent my angers on here.

I have been getting very annoyed at innanimate objects recently. It is surely from the ammount of household tasks I have been doing that always infuriate me when little things go wrong. For instance as I made myself a frappoccino about an hour ago, I found it necessary to say "FUCK YOU!" to the mixer that sprayed the mix all over my front for no apparent reason after doing the same yesterday. I have made quite a few frappos before this with no problems but now for some reason the mixer sees fit to chuck it down me and all over the kitchen top.

Perhaps more worryingly I have started growling with genuine anger at random objects that cause me similar annoyances. The washing line being a current favourite. I really hope other people out there do the same and that I am not too weird. Mabye.....

I think I will just post today a regular random post as I reallt cannot be bothered to rewrite what I have just lost. It was an effort to do it the first time to be honest as I know it will take a long time to write about what me and T managed to cram into 4 days together. It was madness!
Perhaps that is for the best actually as I could do with waiting until I have pics off Tina and my phone that I took with this blog in mind during our escapades.

I suppose I should expect myself to talk about uni stuff but at the moment I really cannot be bothered. I am tired with the whole thing and just want to go and start my course. Sod freshers week I want to be a journalist!

I am slightly worried by the noises coming from upstairs. Mum is snoring interspursed with really long pauses and what sounds like moaning and talking. It bothers me when mum does that in her sleep. It can be quite disturbing...

Ah yes. Sad news this morning. Animal expert, presenter and all around madman Steve Irwin has sadly died after being stung in the heart by a stingray. A real loss I am sure you will agree he was truly passionate about what he did and will be missed. Everybody I know was sure he would one day be eaten by a crocodile. I guess its kindof ironic that you spend your whole life being bitten by extremely poisonous snakes and fighting crocodiles only to be stung by a fish that is largely dosile and friendly. Poor bloke.

The wierd thing is that about a week ago I was talking to Tina and said "I dont know if I dreamed it but I heard that Steve Irwin has died". It was an odd thing to think as I never really watch his shows and hadnt heard wnything of him for quite some time. It does seem quite odd but then its not the first time these little things have happened. They might just be coincidence but as all humans do I cant help but feel that there is something in it as ridiculous as that is.

It sounds really stupid but I did dream that Tinas Guinea pig died the night before Tina came to school and said that one of hers did. Not quite as unusual but along the same lines I guess. Tina even more wierdly had a dream that a space shuttle crashed into the moon and blew up the night before the shuttle Columbia blew up. Again it must be coincidence but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

I think that will be all for now

byeeee

I am just browsing MySpace and have come across some great discussions on the Hungerhill members' page. There is a post entitled "Can you remember" and the replies have been many and in some cases, rather tickling. I thought for the benefit of those ex Hungerhillers that infrequently read this post, I should include some fo the more humerous quotes:

• "Does anyone remember: how mr browne didnt walk he glided? wondering if mr leamys hair was a wig? calling the lunch staff dinner bags? wreaking havok in mr braithwaite/dr newmans lessons?"
• "Hmmm, Mr Browne's walk was very odd indeed. Like his shoes were actually mini hovercrafts or summat....I WANT MINI HOVERCRAFT SHOES."
• "You couldn't take Mrs Shelton seriously either, but that's coz she burst your eardrums just for smiling a the wrong point."
• "Say, can anyone remember the 'Deadly Hedley's'. Talk about old school! It didn't matter whether you were in the right or wrong, it was always "YOU BOY!" Of course there was always his walking. I don't think he could physically bend his legs!"
• "Mr Leamy was ace though.......He liked me, I spent more time in his office for good work or behaviour than bad, so when i actually did something bad he just had me sit down with a biscuit and ask me why. (it was almost worth getting in trouble for: ') )"
• "I wasn't really a mr. Sergeant fan. He used to pick on me 'cos I had messy handwriting + a glittery ruler + I came top of the year in the Yellis test + such. I thought he was a bit creepy."
• "Mrs Shelton. Erk. Wasn't she the one with the great big quivering cloud of orange hair?"
• "I saw Mrs. Fletcher, Mr. Browne, Miss Shelton, + Mr. Whitehouse in the pub today, along with a big group of other people I didn't recognise. I hid..... Well, I didn't want them saying hello to me, did I?"
• "It's scary......When i read your form tutor was Mrs. Gittins, I had a horrible flashback of that being how i imagined Professor Trelawny from the Harry Potter books"
• "We had millions or tutors. One maths one who had shit loads of chest hair coming out of his top but he left coz we were a bunch of shits anyone remember him coz I can't remember his name."
• "Was Mr Leamy a womble? let's examine the evidence:1. he had fluffy white hair.2. ...+ a really big nose3. ...+ he liked nothign more than wombling around the school feild picking up litter."
• "we were told his first name was aardvaak" - on Mr Leamy

Well there you have it!

I am going to stay over at Tinas tonight so we can go on a 4 day road trip tommorow yaaaay! It will be so mad we have no real plans and nowhere to stay. Cant wait! I am sure I will have loads to write when I get back!

See you all soon :)

x x x

I wrote this entry last night as it was too late to go on the netty but I felt obliged to write something. I guess was in a very pensieve mood to make working at McDonalds into a metaphor of personal growth! God I was a bit gushy wasnt I?

Well even if it is a load of poo it did come from the heart at the time - and how! It is about 2000 words long. My goodness I wrote more in an hour than I managed to write for my English project at AS. :s

Hehe. Well here it is anyways:


I recon today is actually the final day of my childhood.

It just makes so much sense...

Today I have severed the final tie that binds me to the life I have lived here in Doncaster for the past 18 years. I am talking of course about finishing my last shift at my job at McDonalds today. It was a strange shift actually with me having the unusual job of window 2 - the money taking window at which usually only newbies and spare parts are chosen to do the job. I guess that is kind of symbolic of the way of things there. We are all but little seedlings to begin with lost within the great expanse of the earth, thrown in at the deep end with not a clue of what to expect, what to do, what to take in, what to ignore, what to become. We are pointed in the direction of the surface by the more experienced people, but the journey itself is only one you can make on your own.

Every moment you are there you take in tiny details - exactly how many millimetres to move your hand to stab in £20.00 in one swift movement, adding or taking an extra word in to your set customer repertoire for maximum efficiency, trying out new ways in which chunks of information can be recalled in bigger and better ways, figuring out which rules are there to be kept and which are simply formalities. Every little bit of what you do you take in and use and so working there becomes the sum of your experience. We who have done this week in, week out can give the new seedlings pointers but there is so much to take in it is simply not possible to pass your knowledge on and so on my last shift I was assigned something simple to do. Perhaps to allow myself to feel like I have achieved something, to remember how far I have come from the meek and lost little soul I began as.

I don’t think I made a single mistake today - surely a record in itself. I even spotted that a £20 note was fake - something I have never faced before. The shift was strangely easy and quiet for me. Things just looked and felt different somehow. As I saw the tears welling in Kirstie’s eyes I began to wonder why that was. Was it that she was simply frustrated at the things going wrong on the job for her - after all we all get emotional on shift when there is so much pressure and one thing after another goes wrong. I wondered if perhaps she was upset on that level but also because she knew that this is what her life had become, and perhaps what it always would be. After all she is at uni but that so often does not help out the managers at McDonalds and they end up just keeping their jobs where they are. Maybe she was crying for the future, maybe for the present or maybe for the past that she looked back on so fondly. Maybe she just had a moment in which she could see where her life was going, straight down the line, on a train she cant get off if she leaves it much longer.

Maybe it was just something else. I guess I will never know.

What I do know is that the past few weeks have been the most bizarre and extreme of my life. Everybody and everything looks so different as to how it did just 2 months ago. My life is like a new life - like I am on the path to the life I have always wanted, becoming the person I always wanted to be. What does it do to a person when everything a person has ever known - their whole way of life suddenly ends after 16 years? Since the age of 2 at nursery it has all been about learning - understanding, preparation for something bigger - infant school, junior school, secondary school, sixth form, university. Everything is just a step to the next thing. Learn, test, succeed, repeat. It is the life I know and the life I am accustomed to and now that is just not there any more.

They say you don’t grow up till you leave home and I think they are right. How can you know who you are until you have no constraints and no responsibilities to hold back who and what you are? I think that is where I am now.

Its like fate has made the transition for me - as I came towards the end of my school life and had nothing to challenge me, to keep me ticking over from late June to late September, fate saw fit to deal me a helping hand in an ugly disguise. My mother fell ill and suddenly I had so many new challenges to face. For the first time I was the one in control. I truly had the responsibility of others and myself.

My Mum in her illness became dependent on me for the first time which at first I found very shocking and upsetting. Then as my Dad had to go away to work I had to assume responsibility for all the things I had never even had a taste of before. Firstly I was truly responsible for myself for the first time - of course I don’t answer specifically to anybody. My parents have always granted me generous amounts of choice and do not breathe down my neck at all. I do of course have to bear them in mind daily by coming in at a sensible time so as not to disturb them, keeping things in places where they wont get in the way for them, not doing things that would make them worry excessively about me. The moment my Dad left the drive in his car that was gone. I would look after myself and answer only to myself for the first time ever. A liberating thing indeed.

I assumed responsibility for my lovely cats Ollie and Oscar. Suddenly I couldn’t just pet them when I felt like it, I was in the thick of it cleaning up things that before I didn’t have to imagine, dealing with mangled animal corpses, getting up early so that to feed them and let them out and worst of all getting them inside at night, God that was a challenge! You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get a cat through a door if they didn’t want to come inside. I resorted several times to leaving trails of treats, sleeping in the living room with the patio door open and a sword in my hand just in case or simply grabbing them and taking a good clawing.

The housework was certainly an eye opener but a good one. I now love ironing - there is nothing quite as therapeutic as gently working out the creases in a piece of clothing and thus restoring it to perfection, especially when listening to your favourite songs with the bass on full, rattling your teeth and singing like a banshee!

I guess most importantly I was left in charge of Mum. Of course she can look after herself but I am sure that having me or anybody come and visit her when she was feeling truly terrible must have helped her out. I was now a commuter as well!

In all I actually enjoyed my new lifestyle being a full time housewife, mother to two mischievous little cats and taking care of my Mum. It was really very liberating. I love independence and that was it in its purest form.

I also discovered just how brilliant all of my friends are. They were all so supportive but also stepped back and left me loads of space for me to just do my own thing. Spending so much time with Keith was certainly an eye opener. I really got to know him so much better, like I used to and we are now really great friends again rather than the occasional recro buddies we were becoming.

Man I love all of my friends so much. In fact I just want to thank them all right now!
Tina - you and me can talk about anything in the world and you know that I would climb mountains for you matey! You and me really are two peas from the same pod even if we didn’t realise it before! Peace to you imzadi.

Keith - You are my rock. You always go out of your way to help me and everybody else out and you are so damned funny! You are my 3rd bro! Could anybody else really just end up living at my house for 5 days without us noticing?

Kat - You know me so well you often know me better than myself! You always see through the façade and can tell what I am thinking, which although can be scary you always say exactly what I need to hear. You tell it like it is when nobody else is brave enough but you are never cruel. You give me a metaphorical slap when I need to come down! Thanks for being so honest and so supportive.

Scott - I haven’t known you long, but in this short space I you have been really supportive and a great laugh. You aren’t just Kats boyfriend I consider you one of my close friends and really like spending time with you. Although you sometimes go into more detail than I would like in some areas (heehee), I love your honesty and generosity. Thanks :)

Mike - Don’t you just love the internet? Without it I doubt you and me would be good friends! I know you probably think that our conversations are a bit one directional but that is not true at all. All of the things that worry you worry me too, and by attempting to give you advise you confront my demons . You always listen to what I have to say even when I talk shit. Who else reads my blog regularly! I really value you as a friend as you are always there for me when I need to talk. In fact, by listening to my moans and by reading my blog you probably know a side to me that maybe nobody else does. Thank you :)

Becky - Although you missed a lot of what has happened to me recently, you still have provided me all the support you possibly could. You offer me support in a different way that other people often forget. When things get tough, you always need a sense of normality and some stability. Without this, how could we keep going? I remember when things got tough for you a couple of years back you told me that you just wished people would stop treating you differently and let you keep going and working through your pain and I really empathised with you. Thanks for doing the same for me J you are my oldest friend and so you know me in ways that other people cannot. Thanks for sticking with me all these years :D

I love you all guys so much!

I will stop this sentimentality as it seems like a letter of goodbye and it isn’t. I wont let it be.
To come full circle, I think today was the last day of my childhood as not only have I left my last responsibility outside of my family, my Mum should (fingers crossed) be out of hospital tomorrow to make the rest of her recovery at home and thus that concludes that challenge.
I feel like I have grown up now, that I have life experience. People have commented that I seem more confident, more independent. I feel I have more perspective. I guess it just shows in the little things. I know I certainly surprised a few people at work a couple of weeks ago when I started speaking my mind more and being assertive. I guess when your work is just a small part of your life you treat it as such.

I am ready now for life. Before I thought I could do it. Now I know I can. If I can just keep in this mindset I know that I can go far in my career and achieve everything I want to achieve.

Farewell childhood. You have been a beautiful adventure full of little joys.
Enter life, what shall be an epic journey mine for the shaping…

Lets do it. Lets live.

I have just come in from another talk session with Tina hehe. She comes out with some profound stuff every now and again. The other day we were talking about the nature of religious beliefs (nothing much then) and the way in which we disagree with many aspects of Christianity. One of these aspects was our opinion that people who worship an all powerful being spend too much time badgering him/her/it asking them/it for assistance. If this being is so great and holy and all powerful, why keep on asking them/it for favours when you should be living a good life in return for the life within you? TIna came out with a line that I thought was pretty brilliant "Why make Jesus do overtime?"

I swear one day that girl will just come out with a theorum on relativity or the cure for the common cold or something. She is so convinced that she is not intelligent but she is and every so often comes up with a gem that other people wouldnt think of in a million years. If she ever finds the career for her I know that she will go far.

Speaking of good quotes I feel I owe it to the fantabulous Shirley Manson - lead singer and writer of Garbage to sing her praises here. Her blog is absaloutley rivetting and a brilliant read. I can spend well over an hour just reading her back catalogue which I find truly fascinating. She is a tempestuous woman prone to wild mood swings of depression, elation and despondance. This when coupled with brutal honesty and a real flair for descriptive writing makes a great diary. In one post I read today she was talking about how she can often deal with huge problems but finds the smaller things in life difficult to compete with. She wrote: "You cruise through the huge traumas in some respects .........only to find that you break down into uncontrollable weeping when you can't open a jar of beetroot." Hehehe. I love that woman. Everybody should have to read the diary of a thirty something, bisexual, dysmorphic, depressive scottish-american lead singer. It should be the law!

Have a look now it is addictive! http://www.garbage.com/news/journal.php?mode=list

God Shirley Manson is cool. Only she could combine the phrases "It made me nearly waz myself", "Bozo the Clown" and "They correlated Samantha's big orange muff" into one coherant hilarious remark. Genius...

In other news today I am now part of "The Dragons" Unreal Tournament group headed by a lovely Devon lass called Fluffy who really looks a lot younger than her thirty odd years.... I am really getting into the game now and am going to start attending the practises and everything. It should be cool :)

Today planes across Britain and indeed much of the world were messed up by a foiled terrorist plot to blow up several British planes. Of course I am only too glad that the mad bastards whose heads have been screwed up by some wisened old gits that have the upmost gall for the West have been aprehended and prevented from harming hundreds of people, but I have a faint and disturbing feeling of apathy.

After the initial absorption of the news and a few minutes thinking I was happy to get on with the rest of my day and forget about the whole thing. Indeed I became narked at how much it dominated the media all day. Of course it is a huge story that deserves ample coverage but I increasingly become tired of the extensive and sensationalist coverage by the media outlets. Of course it is hard to sensationalise such an extreme story that could have so easily been a tragedy, but I fear that the media simply plays into the hand of the government that will inevitably use this event to pass some other ridiculous piece of legislation that either serves no real purpose or worse is damaging to the liberty and democracy of the country in its present state. No doubt this will help Teflon and his diminishing cronies pass that bloody ID card bill and waste enough money to buy the whole world clean drinking water several times over on a bit of plaggy that some scumbag will steal from me and cause enourmous damage to me through various fraud crimes. Bastards. As I said to Tina the other day "If they want to make me pay £70 for a bit of plastic I dont want or need then they can fuck off."

I mean would you take all of your medical, genetic, financial and identificational information, put it in one place and carry it around with you? Good god no! Would you carry so much as a bank statement with you in your wallet? I certainly wouldnt. So how can it possibly be safe to carry all of this information with you everywhere? If you leave your wallet somewhere and somebody with a trendy machine and some "contacts" picks it up your life is one big mess to sort out because of his Tonyness. Idiots. And just what is an ID card supposed to do? Answers on a postcard please...

I digress as is easy to do when dicussing the increasingly ludicrous plans of emperor Blair. As I was saying several hundred words ago, I am unsure as to whether my tiring attitude towards events like this is justified. Am I just being cold and uncaring? Is this a kind of "Crisis fatigue" in which these things become the norm? Am I the only person who doesnt react to this coverage which may or may not be governmental propaganda? I do not know.

What I do know is that soon I may well be part of the mean machine that tries to control peoples opinions. The national press begins to look less and less appealing. A nice magazine however or a e-news page.... yes....

Well I will say ta taa again for now.

Bye bye :)

Blah blah blaaaaaaah blah blah

Sorry, just felt like doing that for some reason...

Well much has happened since my last post - Me and Dean are together, Mum should be out by the end of the week, I have developed a strange liking for ironing, I am now in the rock night band full time (now named the Loose Cannons) and have an upcoming paid gig (paid woo!) at the Park Hotel in town and today I went to Tae Kwon Do for the first time after intending to go for years.

*Breath in*

Full couple of weeks then!

Well I guess I should start with the Tae Kwon Do as it is that that may stop me from completing todays blog! Tina phoned me yesterday and asked if I wanted to go with her and Peter her brother so I just said yes. And why not?

I arrived today to see some people hard at work through the window. We went inside and talked to the receptionist who pointed in the direction of the people working away and said "Just go on in and join the class". Oh my.

We warmed up for a fair while doing jumps, squats, situps, stretches, pressups and running - lots and lots of running. Me and T and Peter too were completely bushed by this point as were several of the older women. Luckily we got on to learning some simple moves.

I now know jabs, hooks, uppercuts , straights, backhands, straight and roundhouse kicks. How fun! Unfortunately for us three, when it got on to training with pads it was continous training for everybody! We had to line up in two lines facing the two instructors with pads. The teacher showed us a combination he wanted us to do on the pads - the person at the front hit the pads and the rest of us practised in time until he shouted "CHANGE"! At this point we all had to drop and do some evil exercises like 5 press ups or 3 squat thrusts and move forward so the next person got a go on the pads. That was kindof it really. The instructor seemed impressed with mine and Tinas roundhouses. Tina had done a couple of lessons before, I however have learnt everything I know from Tekken and thought best not to say so!

I was knackered! Hehe!

It was actually really enjoyable even though us three were aching too much to walk without complaining loudly. And I was sooo hungry afterwards! When me and T went to Tesco for some pasta sauce I was eying up the sandwhiches on the conveyor belonging to a buxom blonde woman! haha

My ankles are still pretty wierd. They have the "good" ache about them - you know when you have exercised and you feel the burn afterwards that tells you there is gonna be some muscle growth overnight. Damn those pivoting roundhouses! hehe

Anyhoo I should be going back on Thursday all being well :)

Me and T had an interesting chat the other night in her car. She had just taken me home and we were having the best chat in ages about everything - you know the deep stuff :) In the end she just parked up and we ended up talking for about 3 hours without noticing, that is surely a personal record... Anyway we were both pretty tired so we were talking with our seats tilted right back like beds. It was cold outside so the windows were steaming up and me and T kept on laughing - mostly at T's feet that kept on peeping the horn accidentally heehee. Tina was wearing tan coloured short shorts and was resting her legs on the steering wheel...

You should have seen the look on the blokes face that walk past hahaha! I dont think any explanation is necessary... Needless to say me and T just laughed harder making the suspension wobble further...

Me and Keith went to look at synths the other day as we decided that that should be our first band purchase after a PA. We found a MicroKorg in Electro that was just... imense

It was the damn coolest thing I have layed my hands upon in a long long time. In a few button stabs I was making well ace noises that sounded like the Sugarbabes or the Eurithmics or something. Sooo ace. And the thing that made it uber uber ace was *drumroll* a VOCODER!!!

WOWOWOWOWOW! Get it! Get it now!

For those of you that are not techy freaks allow me to explain. A vocoder is a voice changer that allows you to sound like a robot, like you are underwater, like you are on helium, quite literally anything you want as analogue synths can quite genuinely create ANY sound. I cannot tell you the feeling of elation as the synth burped back at me in a robotic voice "KEEEEIIIITH IIIIS GAAAAY!" Oh the childish hilarity! I want one soooooo much it hurts! Just the things the band could play with that thing... It would be the best. Oooooooh!

Other musical news - I have all of the Muse scores back that I lost when the hardrive of my last OC blew up, and when I say all I mean ALL. I now have the score to every song off Muse's first 4 albums *swoon*. Yay! I can now divert my time once more to learning the best songs to play on guitar and KB yay! I also learnt Supermassive Black Hole today which is a great song. If I havent already mentioned it I have TICKETS FOR MUSE ON THE 18th NOVEMBER EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Sorry bout the caps there but I think it is necessary to outline just how amazing that is going to be. Put it this way, the first time I saw Muse live on TV at Glastonbury I sat there and time and time again kept on saying "oh my God that is so fucking ace!" to myself at 1 in the morning - no mean feat. It was so mind bendingly amazing it was all I could think about for days. I subsequently bought their Live DVD despite the fact I already had half of the songs on their corresponding live CD and oh my God that is too the work of genius. Absaloute perfection. Matt Bellamy is a Guitaring God.

So seeing them live is quite probably going to be (and I say this with no irony) the greatest moment of my life. As one Muse fan once wrote after seeing them "the clocks turned back and the year returned to zero, it was THAT good". I think they will probably be right. After all I was high for days after seeing The Corrs and even though they were brilliant and I love them to bits, Muse are in another league of amazingness. Again and again they pull it out of the bag and become even better. Their latest album "Black Holes and Revalations" is absalutely bloody brilliant!

My God I am a Museaholic....

Well I think that will do for now as an update and heap of praise (again) hehe.

Farewell for now :)

Look out! Old people eveywhere are having a revolution! I have seen it...

Why it all started as I was driving with Tina a couple of days ago. Tina pulled a bit quickly in front of this old man and as he drove past in his old rover his wife gave us the finger! And it didnt end there... oh no...

A middle aged conservative looking housewife pulled up into the drive through with some interesting albums on the passenger seat. "Hard Trance", "Frantic 3"? These were clearly hers as they were tossed on the seat as if she had just rifled through them. Bizzarre...

And then on the way home an old man came screaming past me in some old estate with some hardcore frantic rave blasting out. What was going on?

Then to top it all this old man an his accomplice tear past me with a sainsburies trolley, trying to make it aay from the store without anybody noticing that the £100 shopping trolley was about to go AWOL.

I urge you all, stay away from old people! I think they are plotting to take over the world!

I am sooooooooo melloooooooow...

I have just been searching the net for info on how to hypnotise people after experimenting with Tina this afternoon. She printed some info off the net and had a go at hypnotising me. She certainly made me very relaxed but didnt really do it long enough for me to be hypnotised properly. She tried to get me to ask out Mr GSOH again! Hehe. Hopefully I will do that anyway...

Where was I? Oh yes. Well I was just on the net searching for other tips and instructions when I came across this quiz you could take to find out how susceptible to hypnosis you are. I took the quiz and got a 4 out of 5 which apparently requires high levels of creativity to be. (according to all the quizes taken on "Tickle" I am very creative which is a nice compliment :) ) Anyhoo, I saw a link saying "advanced test" and was intrigued. I clicked on it and discovered that it was a test involving listening to several audio tapes by some American celebrity hypnotist know only as "Wendi". I was a bit apprehensive at first but thought "What the hey" and did it anyway.

It was very..... interesting.

It was in four parts - the first she "put you under" then hypnotised you in to your right hand feeling tingly and warm. Although I didnt feel the warm I did feel the tingle that was a bit wierd...
The second part was to asses your visualisation skills. You had to imagine floating off to this lovely forrest and experiencing through all of the senses your "surroundings". I scored highest on this bit as I could feel the cold water of a creek on my toes and see the path that I was instructed to walk down. It was very relaxing and nice I enjoyed it.

The third part was quite revealing - it involved journeying through the "silky darkness" to a container that I had to visualise and look all the way around. I then had to look inside the box to find a special "object,person, feeling or idea" that would come from my subconscious to tell me something about my deep psyche. I pulled out a thick, gold kind of choker or necklace that I put on and found very heavy around my neck. I figured maybe it symbolises a worry or issue that is currently weighing me down and making things difficult. Perhaps I am reading too much into it but it would make sense as I have the worry of exams and the tension of Mr GSOH to contend with...

If I have done this right then my amusingly poor artists impression of "my box" should be below for you to have a ganza at.



In the final part I was hypnotised so that I couldnt open my eyes - something I initially found rather unimpressive despite the fact that it works as I have experienced that before when experimenting with hypnosis and meditation with Kat and Becky. But then this Wendi woman managed to hypnotise me into not being able to move my right arm and hand despite the fact I was moving my left hand and was staring in wonderment at my imobile right limb. Now that was interesting!

So after all that I am pretty chilled out right now after a quick juant into my subconscious and mind control!

I tried to post a message about how my new catch phrase seems to becoming "You can piss off" (at least mentally). Luckily that slightly mardy post was lost as the Blogger server had problems and refused to post it (how bout that for a sign hehe!).
Well I found myself thinking it again the other day as a particularly awkward customer came into McDonalds. She came in at 10.50am and tried to order a happy meal. I politely informed her that on a Sunday the main menu is not served until 11am. She said nothing and took a pew with her little girl and beau. She came back at 11.05 and ordered a fish finger happy meal. Unfortunately the kitchen had not got any fish ready yet and so I apologised and gave her a drink and tod her that I would bring it over as soon as it was ready. She tutted and returned to her economy sized family in one of those postures that said "bloody idiots all I want is a kids meal".

I was a little put off at this but sympathised with her that she was having a time getting something pretty simple. I kept checking with the kitchen how the fish was doing and assembled the happy meal as soon as it was ready and took it out to the woman. I said something along the lines of "I'm really sorry about your wait, thank you very much". Glancing dwon I saw her filling in one of those customer opinion surveys that nobody ever fills in. I figured she was wound a little tight and let it go.

It wasnt until the end of the day that I got out the card and took it to read in the office as I was being cashed up. She gave a score out of 6 for the service time - 1. A bit harsh but understandable from the customers point of view. She also gave a score out of six for "staff politeness and attitude" she gave me a 1! Hang on a minute! I was sickeningly nice to you and explained why there was a delay at every oint and then you talked to Lesley the lovey DA lady and you gave me and her a 1? Well piss off then! I made myself be nice to you even though you, frankly were being bloody natty with me!

She gave an explanation for her complaint on the customer comments section. She explained that she had come in at 10.50 and been "advised to wait until 11am for the main menu". So far so fair. Then she continued "returned at 11.05am and was told would have to wait another 5 minutes for fish" Well ok that is pretty frustrating but then "when told the food is served a 11am, all food should be ready for this time".

Now hang on a minute.

How exactly is it possible to continue making and serving breakfast until 10.59am and then have the entire main menu ready one minute later? If the entire main menu was to be made it would take more than 10 minutes at full capacity, by which time the first items made would have expired. Therefore we make the items in the order of their popularity, fish being the least popular. I doubt we sell 10 fish happy meals all day so the chances of somebody ordering one between 11 and 11-15am is rather slim. Needless to say she didnt hang around for me to explain this and promptly sodded off with her air head beau leaving nothing but an insulting analysis of my attmepts to please her bloody awkwardness.

Besides. I "informed her" that the breakfast menu started at 11 - something that was quite plain from the massive breakfast signs hanging above my head. Then when breakfast had ended she waited a further 5 minutes before coming to order therefore delaying her reciept of the food by 5 minutes. In effect she only had to wait 5 minutes, the rest was accounted for by her contrary nature and lack of suitable reading glasses.

Am I being the mardy one here? Maybe. But it does really annoy me when people who are coming to the biggest, silliest "restaurant" in the world come in with a face like a bashed crab. What are you doing wasting your apparently precious time by filling in petty scraps of card that nobody takes seriously? Why dont you just crack a smile and take life a bit less seriously? I mean some people think they suddenly own the company and throw a wobbly the first hiccup they meet. Yes, McDonalds aims to please their customers and provide a good service but at the end of the day, it is a company that simply provides a service that you can choose to have as it is or not at all. No amount of kicking and screaming is gonna mean a damn thing. McDonalds is probably the vest company in the world when it comes to efficiency. Every system there is is selected to be that way to please the most amount of people and work best the most time possible. There is no such thing as a flawless system so please, when you are entering a restaurant advertised as being run by a clown, dont throw a paddy and chuck 1s out of 6 at me when I am only trying to do the best I can with what there is. Life is too short love.

Ok. Rant over.

How about a joke...

hmmm

Ok how about this one straight from the oracle that seems to know everything - Wikipedia

A man walked into a pub and talked to his friend:

"I just had a divorce, lawyers are leeching bastards."

A man stood up.

"I object!"

The divorcee asked "What are you a lawyer?"

He replied... "No. I'm a leeching bastard....."

Ok. So I have a choice.

Either ask a certain person (who I will call Mr GSOH for anonymities sake) out, or have a certain manager (who I will call BG for big gob) tell the entire store that I fancy Mr GSOH [note to self - you remember?!] when in fact I dont think I really do. Hmmm. Tough one.

I dont know. I will decide in time and then when I next see one of them probably do the complete opposite in an impulsive moment haha! Decision making with me can sometimes be pretty pointless as I usually wind up then deciding a split second before I do it. Oh well, being impulsive isnt so bad. I guess it makes things more exciting.

Ooooh. In my haste to write about the state of the middle east, my laptop and the pub in my past couple of posts I forgot to mention that Staffordshire eventually rejected me after another phoning and emailing. About time too!

That means all I have have to do now is pass all my exams haha! Not much then.

My exam TT is so pants this year. I have 6 weeks of study leave. All of my exams are in the last 3 weeks, half of which are in the last week, one of which is a 2 hour exam starting at 1.30 of the 29th of June - my leavers do! How pants is that!
At least I dont have an exam the day after like has happened in the past, that would be really pants!

Oh well. In 6 weeks my 14 years of state study will be over. Just another 3 years left of private then haha! I really dont feel particularly bothered that school will soon be over. I think I am just about ready to leave, the cycle of rules and exams is getting tedious. The only down side is that I wont see Kat Becky and Keith very often. But then if seeing Tina is anything to go by, I bet I will still see them often. Me and T are proper close now! Like inseperable!

We have totally opened up to each other and now know each other pretty inside out which is kind of liberating. We share lots of really special moments together - you know the kind that you always remember and look back on.

One time we both remember really well is when we were on the coach to Soughtern France with school. We had been on the coach for about 18 hours and were both zonked. Tina couldnt sleep though as she has always found it hard to get much sleep away from home, I wasnt much better as I could barely move my legs for our bags and was sat straight upright in my crap broken chair causing me to wake up with a jump every time I fell asleep and my head rolled off the back of the seat!

Anyways, it was about 2am - a time that 14 Year olds like me an T rarely saw. Everybody else on the coach was asleep (except the driver luckily) all was quiet. A thunderstrom broke out - the most unusual that I and probably anyone else had ever seen. It gradually changed colours - yellow, orange, pink, blue. Because France is so flat in the center we could see it stretch right across the sky and even strike the barrier at the side of the road every now and again. It was just one of those moments in your life that you wish you could capture and have it for safekeeping becaue it was so beautiful. We didnt speak for quite some time, we just smiled at each other when it was over as if to say "Wow. But lets not speak and spoil the moment"

Well. I think I will finish on that nice note as I have a headache and am rather tired. Byeeeeee :)

I guess I may as well write something whilst i am here on Tina's computer.
i am sat here with two tops and my gloves on, it is a bit cold(to right! lve t).
I am talking to mike over the webcam at the moment looking a bit worse for wear as i have also just been ravaged by her dog amber hehe. (Ruff!)

I had to come off writing this blog as I didnt have anywhere near the time I usually take to babble on. But as I am trying to keep this an accurate record of everything deleting this little insignificant account would seem to dent this policy. I will begin a new entry for today :)

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."

It seems like ages since I last did a post although looking at it, I did one just three days ago!
This week is going really slowly, not in a bad way though. I have actually done quite a few nice things. Walks in the woods, a whole day with Tina (who I am becoming ridiculously close to :D ), work and of course a whole load of exams and revision imbetween.

Man the internet is kinda consuming isnt it? The radio and The Daily Mail and other such outlets do say "ooh it makes them anti social!" and I guess it does in the sense that I now sometimes am up to the small hours blogging or on MSN. It has however brought me very, very close to Tina and has found me a new friend in Mike. Heehee! You know that feeling you get when you share a special moment with a friend? Its like that all the time with Tina! It is so cool. We tell each other stuff that nobody else would or could ever hear. Heck, I think she is the first person that knows EVERYTHING about me. Wow! That has never happened before.

I have now completely lost track of where I was....

This is no good. I dont have anthing I really want to say right now. I will post later if I do.

This is what you get for haing good mates you can talk to lol!

Ok. Bye for now.

I feel like writing a blog right now, or maybe just don't feel like writing my media coursework...

Again I am procrastinating my schoolwork. I don't mind the idea of going to school tommorow but I think I will miss the holiday routine I have got in to. Blogging in to the small hours... eating food left from christmas... spending hours just messing around on guitar... getting up at ridiculaous hours to walk with the sunrise to work...

*sigh* You know I think I have settled the score with McDonalds. I seem to have managed to not notice the gradual fading of work problems that I have always had. For a start I no longer feel like the outsider simply working whilst the other people socialise. I walk in to work now and there is barely a person I can pass without saying hi. I have a good relationship with all of the managers now and feel kindof at home there.

Most of all the contempt I have for the company is now largely gone. I still dislike what they do and the fact that they are a massive and money grabbing corporation that cynically make themselves appear as caring in order to get money in tills... but when I think about the corportae scumbags I no longer have the feeling of despairing rage that I used to have... it is now more of an exasperated sigh and an apathetic feeling of disaproval. I guess it is because I have come to see the human aspect of the company. Everybody who works in my store are just nice down to earth people that I really starting to like a lot. They care not for the company just for the satff and customers.

Now my only dislike sits with the few corporate fatcats at the top which decide who dances to what money making tune. But even many of them now seem to me just to be cogs caught in a wheel...

Its like everybody is working so as not to let everyone else down or cause them trouble. Nobody thinks about what they are doing, they just do it cos they need the cash and can't afford to be caught questioning the status quo. You can't blame any individuals really...

Ok. McDonalds goes with things like Smoking, alcohol and religion on my list of things that I cannot blame individuals for but that are bad for the world as a whole.

Well. I will probably write something later but right now I have to write my coursework and a message to Tina. Farewell sparse followers!