Warwick don't want me; I don't want Warwick.  That's quite enough for the time being.  I'm a little annoyed and I can't work out why, I think it's the fact that it's a rejection but OH WELL, I shan't be going there anyway.  I shall be going to Durham, with luck, and laughing in the face of Warwick.  And LSE.  And especially Cambridge.  But not too obviously, in case I end up going back there in a few years' time.

 

In case you're wondering, this week I am deliberately eating little and tiring myself out.  This is so that when I get back from babysitting on Saturday night (which I have just this minute remembered I have... damn) I can absolutely crash and sleep through to Tuesday, then wake up and eat three fried eggs and copious amounts of toast in one sitting.  I am aware that this is not overly healthy but it is my way of celebrating the end of the Spring term and I have done it every Spring term since I was in about the fourth year.  So a lot.

 

Doctor Who's back this week!  Counting the hours.  I would also recommend this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtX44XwN-nI because it made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion.  Yes for Rowan Atkinson and that girl out of Ab Fab.  Also for Stephen Moffat who I would be quite happy to marry if he ever asked.  On the other hand I would be quite content with just a very long time picking his brains about how he managed to write Joanna Lumley the line "My sonic screwdriver has three speeds!" and get away with it.

 

I leave you with these two stanzas of joy from Christopher Isherwood (which I fully intend to read aloud at Poetry tomorrow on the grounds that anyone who hasn't heard it should have):

 

 

In this hypothetical lifeboat, we want above all to survive.
Define safety, for instance, we want to be safe.
On this ocean we navigate in our own minds
(For this is the age, if there is one, to save a life)
We fear this above all:
We cannot be alone.
Death is impossible, when you are twelve,
Forever shifting away with the horizon.
Religion is not a question.  At this age
We have thought nothing wrong.
Game over is equal to heaven.
If I were to rule the world, I would not have education.
No Mrs. Hodge from Class Eight;
I'd do away with the lot of them.
And homework - let us get rid of all writing.
Water over food; family over friends.
Safety over peace.
In this hypothetical lifeboat, pretend is the order of the day.

 

 

Written during the Guides meeting this afternoon.  I think it counts more as blog than poetry, for the main reason that it's about the answer to the lifeboat question, or hot air balloon question, or Concorde question if you're feeling really racy.  Basically, if you're in a life-or-death situation and you have all these values or needs, and you have to throw them out one at a time, which would you throw out first?

 

It's strange, the way one's answer to this changes as you grow.  For girls aged eleven to fourteen, the top few were safety, family, water and food.  Education was near to bottom, as often was privacy, and cultural identity.  Surprisingly high up came having your own opinion, and surprisingly low down came peace.

 

I remember back at KES, having a very similar discussion in an RE lesson in the fourth year.  The final two values to battle it out, as it were, were family and justice.  These are the top priorities of 15-year-old KES students.  Family won, in the end, although I vehemently opposed it.  What about domestic violence, for instance?  What do you say then?  What about all the people who for some reason don't have a family?  What, in other words, about the bigger picture, or people other than yourself?  If the worst comes to the worst, you can be your own introspection, your own company and your own rock.  Justice as a concept is universal.  I wonder what they'd say today.  For some reason, that discussion sticks in my mind.

 

It also surprises me how many people fail in action to distinguish between right and responsibility, especially when it comes to having an opinion.

 

If anyone happens to have a copy of today's Independent (Thursday), read Johann Hari's article opposite the Letters to the Editor.  I'm so glad somebody said it, I was worried for a while that it was just me thinking and that after all, I'd got it wrong.

 

As for where I'd put my values, I think privacy would rate fairly highly, as would safety.  Peace a little lower because justice is far more accurate, as is safety.  And although I hate to admit it, religion would rank lower for me than for the Guides tonight.  As for the related but distinct question, "Can you get rid of money?", I should think the answer is an obvious and emphatic no.  This is essentially because people are not homogenous.  Ponder it, perhaps.

It is my opinion that when your day includes amongst other things all of the following:

then you have yourself an adventure.  And as luck would have it, that was a good proportion of my day today.

 

Add you the books I've bought over the last week another RD Wingfield, which is a feat, I have to say, because I've only ever found Hard Frost before.  This one's about serial violent murder and paedophilia.  So that's nice.

 

As on several occasions, I planned out what I'd say right about now earlier, but now I've forgotten.  Hell.  So you know what?  For the time being, I give up.  Pssh.

AAAAARGHNOOOO... do you know that feeling when you've said something you shouldn't have and you just want to take it all back in and unsay it but you can't and you have to go through with it because backtracking would only highlight it?  Yeah I had several of those today.

 

I also think I've stuck my foot in it fairly substantially with someone for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration.

 

Take S.  I do like talking to him, because I like to go off on one about Maths geekery and there is nobody else to do so with.  This creates some sort of exclusivity which I do not like.  And on the other hand I don't want to alienate him either.

 

This is sickening.  Promise now to sort it out.

 

Economics is turning into a headache.  If I don't get this A, I am utterly screwed for the next five years.  I would like to point out now that my place at university now depends on two exams and two re-sits, none of which I am confident about in the slightest.  I am trying not to think about it because if I do, I will panic. It is a certainty.

 

I can't afford to fuck this up.  Should that be what I keep telling myself?  Because it is.

Today has been an almost wholly successful day.  I went into Southampton for the first time in ages, eschewed the lights of West Quay (as anyone with taste these days should do, if you've never been there, lucky you) and headed straight for Borders with a lovely £20 gift voucher that my mum in her infinite wisdom gave me for Christmas.  I would like to point out here that the reason it has remained intact for three whole months is that I've not been into Southampton for that long and Winchester, lovely as it is by all accounts, is Waterstones Territory.  Not that I'm complaining, I now have a lot of money on my loyalty card.  But anyway.

 

Thus followed two wonderful hours in which I made the following four excellent purchases:

"What is this?" anyone who knows me at all will now be wondering, "But Fiona, you have complained on many an occasion that you abhor milky coffee unless there is a lot of chocolate to cover up the taste, and futhermore I thought you weren't a fan of cinnamon either?"  I can hear you say it now.  And, my friend, you would be almost entirely right.  But on my travels of the last few weeks I chanced upon a free sample of Starbucks cinnamon latte and it is gorgeous.  Bit of a weird grey colour, but the most wonderful thing to sit with and waste an hour ina comfy chair in a bookshop, writing stories.  Plus, it stays warm.  Which I was really impressed with.  And there's no scabby bit at the bottom which I usually leave.

 

I have also found out that the word "Dolce" basically means "With Squirty Cream" in Starbucks-speak, also that it is not nearly as expensive as I thought it was.  No, that's a lie, it's just that everywhere else has got dearer.

 

Some lovely person on Deviantart this morning said that some of the stuff I've written looked professional.  This has also made my day, and for this reason I shall shamelessly plug my Deviantart now: http://commondenominator.deviantart.com so you can look for yourself and also say nice things, if you feel that they're worth it.  It's odd, I'd given up the thought of publishing anything particularly, the story I've been working on for ages hasn't been going anywhere and is looking stupid now, to me, and I've not the patience to go at it twenty-four hours a day.  But now... I don't know.  Some day.  Maybe there is a living in it somewhere, or maybe it's just going to stay a hobby.  My best advice so far, it seems, has been Roald Dahl in Henry Sugar.  Pssh.

 

I have also discovered that Southampton is a bit rubbish really, and that I forgot to go into Lush (damn...), and that I really like university towns for some reason.  I think I'm supposed to; they're aimed at people a few years older than me.  I am also turning into a dreadful cynic about pricings in shops.

 

That is all I can think of and quite enough for the time being.  Do have a look at my Deviantart, won't you, there's a love.

The thing they rarely tell you about sleeping dogs is that after a while, they wake up.  It slips your mind, perhaps, because at the time you say "I think the best thing is to let sleeping dogs lie", the dogs in question are asleep.

 

And now I am sat on the end of my bed listening to Keane singing that she says she has no time, in the artificial light of an energy-saving bulb and the taste of hot cross buns from this afternoon is still on the back of my throat.  Things have not changed; they have always been like this and the Message has made no difference because I am still happy how and where I am.

 

Except I would like it to be October now please because then I can sit on trains and read books and stay up until three in the morning writing beautiful essays and I can go and see people up and down the country whenever I have a free day or so, if only I wait a little, because there is nobody to say No You Can't You Are Just Leaving Us To Get On With It and there is money if only I plan.

 

I knew it would happen because I have just read Alias Grace and that means I have been thinking about murderesses, amongst other things.

 

I met a boy on the train this morning who taught me not to judge by appearances, that photography is beautiful and so is Japan and so is social responsibility, and that the glass is always half-full unless someone offers to refill it for you.

 

The glass is always half-full unless someone offers to refill it for you.  This is an example of why you should always find out the whole story.  "Always" and "unless", my dad would say, is an oxymoron.  You do not mean always, then, do you?  However this is not true and he is only being nit-picky.

 

I enjoy arguing semantics.

 

(In case you hadn't guessed, they aren't real dogs.  I decline to comment about the sharpness of teeth.  And you are right, Afghan Hounds are wonderful.)

 

Today was... wonderful.  Glorious.  A little blustery.

So I've been doing the tours, and I must say UK universities have the widest range of freebies I've ever come across.  I mean, KCL: nothing.  Which was nice of them.  Durham yesterday gave me a 64MB memory stick which I thought was nice of them... and Southampton today (not applied there, was there for a talk) plied me with notebooks, pens, bags and lime green post-its.  Which was fun.

 

I've also met Simon Singh today.  This makes me ecstatic.

 

And now I must catch a bus.  More update when I get home, probably.

 

Cheers for freebies.

Well, I finished Alias Grace today, after approximately four days, which should tell you how good I think Margaret Atwood is (can't believe I've only just got round to reading any of her stuff!) and the Best Random Gifts In The World List now looks something like this:

On the other hand, I have just given up the idea of making an Atwood-hattrick (there's a pun in there somewhere but it's too late in the week for me to try and find it) in favour of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar because I've been meaning to for a while and it's not nearly as depressing (based on first five chapters, I may eat my words shortly) as people make it out to be.

 

Budget = fun for all the family, and indeed the Economics class.  Well done, Darling.  (That joke never gets old.)

 

I shall now retire to listen to Radio 2 and write stories and feel good about the world.  It's rather nice at the moment.  Yes, I think so.  Passing the smiles to you, hopefully.

I got CRB checked today.  This was exciting: it means that I have never been a rapist or molester in any way, and am therefore allowed to be around Guides.  Anything I do now remains unchecked, for about the next four years, but apparently I'm not allowed to have a list of Guides I want to chuck down some stairs.  Oh WELL, they can chuck me back.  I'm proud of our Guides.  They give as good as they get.

 

Went up to KCL yesterday, it was good.  Realised I've actually been to the bar before, at Shared Planet a few years back - which was a little surreal.  That and going back to KES got me thinking about things, yet again.  Well.  I don't know.

 

Nice trick with the French horns, by the way.  I'm assuming that's what they are, my musical knowledge isn't excellent.

 

Exam results - good God, I'm starting to panic about Economics.  However, my B in English has been upgraded so significantly I'm actually better at that than at Maths now, which is surprising.  I can be complacent with both of them, which is nice.  But it means all my attention... is on Economics.

 

I'm slipping.

 

Bloody, bloody, BLOODY hell.  Frankly.