croissantkatie

It is absolutely chucking it down with rain at the moment. I am very glad for this, after it being alarmingly hot yesterday and Sunday. I, rather stupidly, went on during the hottest part of the afternoon. We had a picnic to celebrate the end of exams, and went swimming (which was deliciously cold and stopped me wanting to collapse in a pile of melted goo for a while). The really annoying thing is that I'd just caught up on all the sleep I'd missed during exam season, when it got too hot for me to sleep properly. The important part, is no more exams! I now only have to go into college for leavers day (which annoyingly is first thing in the morning and on the same day as our leavers ball). Well, and results day, but I'm not thinking about that yet. Or at least trying not to.

In celebration of finishing our exams, we had a Pirates of the Caribbean marathon. It took me two hours to get there. It should have been a half hour journey at most. They closed part of the A14 as someone was attempting to jump off a bridge so none of the buses were getting through. I waited an hour, at which point my mum gave me a lift to another village whose bus service wasn't as badly affected. It was a nightmare. I did get there eventually though. There was much rum present, although I stuck to ginger beer (which is my favourite drink ever). It was good fun, even though it got rather hot due to how many of us there were crammed into my friend Emma's living room. And pizza and ice cream! I do like my friends rather.

I had a great time watching Glastonbury at the weekend. I saw the whole of Paul Simon's and Elbow's sets, as well as bits of Mumford and Sons, Paolo Nutini, Laura Marling, Pendulum and Jessie J. I sadly missed the Kaiser Chiefs due to Paul Simon, but that is what the internet is for! I plan to watch various bits and pieces on the BBC website, as I got really into it this year. And due to the lack of exams, I can do all of this with a guilt free conscience. That and read and watch tv. It's weird though, I keep feeling like I should be doing something. Sadly, the one thing I really need to do (move all my school notes off my bedroom floor) requires boxes, which we don't have. I am looking forward to seeing the floor again and not having to leap over piles of paper to get to the linen basket.

January exam seasons has officially started. Hooray!

I have done two out of the six I am sitting, am fractionally less exhausted than I was last week and think I might actually know some maths. Maybe. I am planning on doing lots of revision during my Critical Thinking lesson tomorrow. Critical Thinking is perfect for revising maths with my friend Ruth! What is slightly worrying is that, even when talking about binomials and writing equations all over our hands (cue many poor jokes about "knowing it like the back of our hands"), we are still the least disruptive in the class. Everyone is just taking it to fill up their time table. It doesn't help that our teacher doesn't seem to care about our maths revision. I'm not entirely sure she's even noticed we're doing it. And we sit right at the front! It's ridiculous. After doing that for two weeks, we didn't think we could reach any new heights of geekiness. And then we rushed to the library at the end of lunch to get a table. I just hope all this productivity pays off!

I also had a meeting today about how to get more people to come to early modern history fictional book group (it's such a snappy title!). Our main problem is that, even with the promise of baked goods, the only people who turned up were me and the other guy running it, and two of our friends we'd cornered in corridors and at lunch. Current plan of attack: skip the long book, read the next (shorter!) one, promise even more baked foods, get our own email address and make giant posters. Also in an effort to attract people with the pretty, we're going to put on random episodes of the Tudors in between books. I have never seen it, but various history friends said it was hilarious. That and see who else we can guilt into coming. We may actually succeed at this now that my entire history class have tasted the wonder that is Alex's brownies. There is hope yet for us in the battle of the history book groups!

Now I am very tired and it's at times like this I wish I could nap when I wasn't ill. Ah well.

I am currently bogged down in a pile of history coursework. I am not enjoying it. At all.

But I am trying to be positive, so I will write about my recent trip to Bruges! I went for three days from Sunday to Tuesday with my Mum and Dad. It was awesome. I had the most amazing hot chocolate and in general ate lots and lots. The ground was covered in two inches of hailstones when we arrived. It was like walking on tiny balls of polystyrene which was rather weird. Very slippy! We went on a boat trip because the weather didn't look too bad, and then promptly got bucketed on. It was still good fun though. We mainly spent time wandering around, looking in shops and stopping in cafes. Although we did go to visit the Church of Our Lady briefly. The atmosphere in there was rather odd though. Part of it was used to display art and house a museum, whilst other areas were still in use as a church. As a result, it ended up feeling like neither. I haven't been to a church in about two years though, but it just didn't feel comfortable to me. Overall, a really fun trip, even if I ended up incredibly tired. The only real downside was getting stuck outside the port of Dover for 2 and a half hours due to a force 8 gale.

My brother got back from a school trip to New York thos afternoon, and very kindly brought me back a fridge magnet to add to my collection. I am running out of space to put them on my fireplace though, and may have to put some on the actual fridge. When I move out, my fridge will not my bare!

I spent the majority of last week painting my brother's bedroom, which was actually quite fun if rather time consuming due to the lack of flat walls. Although it probably would have been better if my brother had done some more of it. It does look rather nice though.

Over the weekend, there was a "Vintage Cream Tea Weekend" in my village. I honestly think they are trying to win some sort of quaint English village award. That or they are doing their best to emulate many of the villages from Midsomer Murders. They had bunting, a WI stall and brass band music which appeared to be coming from the shrubbery. Although the cream tea I had was actually very good. I am slightly sad to say it was the first one I'd had all year which didn't have squirty cream out of a can. I don't think I've had a single one with clotted cream this year. I spent the majority of the time I was there trying not to laugh hysterically. I only partially succeeded. Although it was nowhere near as funny as when we went round the open gardens in the village and ended up having tea and cake in the garden of the vicarage with the vicar's children playing music on the oboe and violin respectively in the background.

( Bank Holiday Monday! AKA, lots of cricket! )
( Alas, the school year is near... )

Now I am going to make myself some more cheese on toast with cranberry jelly. It is quite possibly my favourite savoury snack of all time. Cranberry jelly is one of my favourite things about Christmas, and Sainsbury's had some of their Christmas stock in yesterday so my Mum bought me some. I am incredibly happy about this.

Things have been rather busy lately. My Grandad was in hospital up until yesterday as he had a kidney operation, was released and then had to be rushed back in because of a suspected heart attack. It's all been rather surreal for me as they live so far away, and I only see them a few times a year. He's out now though and we haven't had any more panicked calls from my Grandma, which is definitely a good sign.

In slightly more positive news, it was Village Sports Day last Saturday. I ran the hoopla stall (even a week afterwards, I am still incredibly relieved that I managed to talk them out of putting me on slippery pole) and did rather well in the produce show. My Duck Mobile (which I think of rather like the batmobile, but cheerier and a really poor form of transport) won third place in the handicraft category. There are clearly benefits to the normal judges not being able to make it as it was never going to be up their street. And I also won my running race! However, as various people pointed out, I also came last. I however don't care. I have a trophy. A trophy which now had my name on twice (the first time, I came second (also last given the huge field of two) but the winner couldn't keep the trophy due to living outside the village parish). I am very happy about this.

( Sunstroke, heatstroke, you name it... )

After getting lots of sleep last night, I feel much better now. So I can now attempt to do my history homework. It's actually quite interesting, I just can't quite seem to summon up the energy. And then there's the World Cup Final tonight. I am almost looking forward to it, which is slightly strange. I think it's to do with the fantasy football league I'm in. It's addictive and I really am far too competitive.

Feeling rather drained, despite only having to go in to college for about two hours to have next year explained to us. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as I expected, but few things have ever turned out to be quite that bad. All the stuff about uni applications is terrifying, particularly my form tutor's opinions. I know she is merely trying to improve my confidence but saying that my "performance does not live up to my potential" could be taken several ways. I know she was getting at the fact that stuff has interfered with my learning and that it's alright because she knows I can do better and will do better. I know this, but it's still a struggle to make myself believe that she meant that, rather than "you could do better and you should do better but you're not trying." Also, I am not convinced that suggesting I apply to Oxbridge next year is a good thing to do, even if it does take in my plans to have a gap year before I go anywhere. My stress levels are far too high as it is.

This is all rather silly and trivial, but I am in a ranting mood. Normally I just sulk, so this is a novelty. School clearly does weird things to my brain. I would claim it was the fumes from the chemistry department, but they're in a separate building on the top floor so as, to quote my teacher, "if they blow themselves up, they don't blow anyone else up as well." And my teachers aren't even the ones who like exploding things!

The World Cup is taking over my life. I knew I'd end up watching a lot of it, due to my family, but I hadn't forgotten in the last four years just how much that meant. I don't mind too much, the World Cup is slightly different to normal so I can survive watching at least one match a day.  My Dad also roped me into joining a fantasy football league with the rest of our family and a few other people. This is a wonderful opportunity to illustrate how delightfully competitive my entire family is. I think fourth place in our league of 10 people is pretty good for a team selected on the basis of me going "ooh! Cool sounding name!" I mean, who wouldn't select a goalie called Julio Cesar?

For the past week, I have done pretty much nothing as I finished my exams and don't have to go back to school until Monday. Not looking forward to that, although it will be good to see everyone again. There are very few people I talk to at college who I am actually in contact outside of school. Also on the plus side, returning to college will cut back on my caffeine intake. I have been drinking far too much coffee over the past week. I simply can't resist my Mum offering to take me to Costa. Ever.

I got from a week in Yorkshire with my family yesterday afternoon, which turned out pretty much as expected. I managed not to get a decent cream tea anywhere because everywhere the scones looked half decent, the cakes looked even better. I also discovered just how unfit I am, although that is not entirely unsurprising as I haven't done any proper exercise in nearly six months. So long as I don't end up going on any long bike rides or trips in rowing boats soon I should be alright!

I am now very tired as I've been sleeping very badly. I've still been getting enough sleep but, as someone who needs a fair bit of sleep to get by alright, it's not been great. I have the next week off for the Easter holidays so hopefully I'll be able to catch up before I go back to school. And hopefully start revising properly, but that requires more energy than I have right now, even taking into account the fact that I have now dropped physics. It was a bit of a wrench doing that, but I think it's for the best. I might actually do nearly as well as I'm capable of now. We shall see!

And tonight is the next episode of Doctor Who! I really enjoyed The Eleventh Hour, and I'm hoping I'll enjoy this episode too. I'm slightly confused about why it's on so early, which probably means that curry will have to wait until afterwards, or during Confidential. Silly BBC, messing with our family traditions.

I am very tired because I went to aerobics with my Mum last night for the first time in several months. I didn't even try too hard as I fell down the stairs yesterday morning. I know have several rather fetching grazes and a bashed up knee. Normally I don't get injured. My house has very perilous stairs, everybody who doesn't live here goes up them very slowly. I however don't. Ha. Serves me right really for pushing it until the very last minute to get up. I never learn.

This week at school has been dominated by tests/essays/assessments/coursework. Apart from the odd essay, I really dislike all of them. I sat a two physics tests (dropped quite a few marks due to a mild panic attack) and practical chemistry coursework (again, had a mild panic attack so my results weren't as accurate as they could have been but I don't think I lost any marks). Also this week I got back 2 history essays (one from November, one from September) which I was beginning to think I would never get back. I got 5 marks worse between the first one and the second. On a slightly more positive note I got a chemistry test back (all these tests do dreadful things to my nerves, one day I really should find a system to cope with it all). I got a B! I was ill for material which made up over half the test! Haha! And even though it's kinda mean for this to make me even more happy, I know someone who was there for all of it and got an E. I may actually pass some of my AS levels. Yes!

Also I am going out Saturday. I'm. Going. Out. Admittedly it is for a friend's birthday (everybody's either paying for driving lessons or saving up for them, so none of us have masses of money) but it is still out! And admittedly, it is going out to eat Chinese food, which I love but may be allergic to something they put in it if my past experiences are anything to go by. This is something other than school related woe (although I am currently trying to convince myself that really, there's not so much woe, which isn't going great) to think about!

Now, I think I am going to go read because reading is nice and fun and I'm fairly sure I can pass off my John O'Farrell history book as educational. Funny and educationally are not mutually exclusive. Or at least they shouldn't be!

So, I've been having a very nice half term so far. Even though we never made it anywhere on Monday as a family (the arguing didn't wait until we'd left, it didn't even wait until Monday. Yep, the dispute happened at eight o'clock on Sunday.), things have been alright. My one major aim of the holiday - to catch up on the current episodes of SJA so I could watch it when it's actually broadcast - has been achieved. I am very happy about that. Roll on 4:30!

The downside is that as I've been feeling pretty upbeat and positive I thought now might be a good time to get some work done. Apparently not. It's not so much that I look at my work and don't feel motivated to do anything, it's that I look at it and I feel as I have no clue what to do. Where to start, what any of it means, that sort of thing. It's seriously annoying me. I've had this problem briefly before in that for the past couple of weeks my Dad has had to sit with me and prod me whilst I'm doing physics homework. My parents don't have time to do anymore handholding for me *sigh* I will try again in a bit, hopefully I can find something necessary but not scary to fill my time with. I hate feeling as if I haven't achieved anything.

And apparently the new series of Spooks starts early November (I've forgotten the precise date)! I think I'll look around for stuff about that once I've got somewhere with my work. Onwards and upwards!

Well, I can't say I know precisely what to say here. I'm still at the stage of peering at the screen of my laptop and going "hmm, does it work like that?" I have to admit though, signing up for this has certainly distracted me from my worries about starting sixth form. Enrolment day is this Friday, and the nerves are hopefully going to be alleviated slightly by getting a lift in with a friend instead going through the trauma that is the bus. Or more precisely getting hold of my bus pass. The council don't want me to have the most appropriate one. At this rate it looks like I may end up having to spend over an hour on a bus for a journey that should only take twenty five minutes. Oh dear me. But I'm not supposed to be worrying about any of that yet! Enrolment day may be this week, but induction day isn't for a while, meaning more time in the house without my brother around! Oh the peace and quiet.

Oh, and that purple haired cartoon is Crystal Tipps. My Dad says my hair looks like hers (although not purple). His compliments are always down right lovely ("with all that metal in your mouth you look like jaws!").