The Lady has been appeased.  Hurrah for that.  Got a letter from Symonds today, saying that my Economics module has been remarked and my mark has gone up... three points.  Bit crap, you say?  Well, those three points have JUST, by one mark, nudged me into an A grade, plus they're refunding me the £45 it cost to do it.  So that's pretty damn fantastic in my book, two As and three Bs, slightly more acceptable I say.

 

Now what shall I be spending my newly-found £45 on?  (Well, it's Dad's, so if I didn't spend it on this then I'd never see it again)  That's right, another remark, this time in English Lang, because I got back the module I got a D on and I thought they were pretty good essays but some screwtape of an examiner evidently didn't think so.

 

I have conclusive proof that my (as of today ex-) manager is gorgeous enough to be a model - there's the wonderful Bradbeers grapevine for a start, and Google has come up with the goods - she's been a runner up in a few modelling competitions and was on TV on Model Behaviour in 2004, didn't win but phwooooar.  Stunner.  Looks better with short hair though.  And now she's gone to travel round the world and go rock climbing somewhere exotic... best of luck, not that she'll ever read this.

 

Colin and Justin on Five Life makes me happy.  It's actually quite scary when a camp Scotsman gets pissed off.  Ooh, you made me jump.

I wish that there was some way of telling a certain member of this household, without being seen as flippant or sarcastic or not taking things seriously, that ALRIGHT.  YOU'VE WON.  I'M GOING TO DO WHAT YOU'VE TOLD ME TO, I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE SAYING AND WHY YOU'RE SAYING IT, NOW LET ME GO AWAY AND GET ON WITH IT, STOP GIVING ME THE LECTURE ON HOW THIS IS THE BEST WAY FORWARD, BECAUSE YOU'VE WON.

 

I don't know if it's just that I've spent this afternoon listening to Keane and being inactive, or that the English paper I got a D on has come back and I seem to have got the arsiest examiner known to mankind, or something entirely different but I feel like an empty shell at the moment, like everything that matters that much has gone tails up, or turned into a lecture on what I am doing or have done wrong, or given up all interest in me, or pissed off to a different continent.  I don't have any space to think, I feel like some kind of robot - you WILL do this, be like this, get this done, have already done this (write yourself a checklist, okay?  No I fucking won't, it'll only depress me), talk to so-and-so about this, and why have you forgotten something else entirely?  You shouldn't be forgetting things, you know, you're clever.  Yes.  Yes, I am.  Clever to the tune of three Bs and a diary I can't work out how to write in.  And no I haven't forgotten how to spell.  And yes, I am expecting to fail this year before I've even started it.  Have you got a problem with that?  Well good for you if you do, because that makes fucking two of us.

 

I can't fight any more.  I think I've used it all up, I was thinking about it this afternoon - I don't have any get up and go left in me.

 

I had an argument on Friday.  It was only short, and for most of its duration I thought it was a joke, but now I think it's another thing I've screwed up so very badly, yes, I'm stubborn, you're going to have to live with that too I'm afraid because it's part of my defensive reflex, and I wish I could sort it out but there's fat chance at this present moment.  Not that the argument itself matters much any more.  I'm still shaken.  It's a snowball effect.

 

Better go.  I have to set the table.  If you were reading this aloud, which I have no reason to imagine anyone would be, I'd advise you to spit that last.

If you are reading this, which evidently you are, please sign up to this: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/gooseliverpate

 

It's a petition to Downing Street to prohibit the sale of Foie Gras in this country.  I tried it once, in France, in a soup, and it was quite nice really but not something it's difficult to live without, it's basically pate.  But I've just seen on BBC News some stuff I was vaguely aware of before... and it's like battery farming, only worse.

 

Geese aren't like foxes.  I personally support foxhunting because there is a practical advantage as well as the tradition - plus there are some schools of thought that say it's more humane than shooting them.  But geese aren't pests, these ones are being farmed for food anyway.  The only issues are taste and tradition.  The latter is not a good argument for anything where pain is involved, it's the same argument they use for ceremonial female circumcision with blunt instruments.  So it comes down to taste.  I say we stick with black pudding.

As I write, I've torn myself away from the nth game of Solitaire I've played today and am watching Stephen Fry talking about manic depression and thinking about cigarettes, one of which he is smoking on screen.  Somehow that seems wrong to me, but who am I to judge these things?  I've never met the man.

 

Nope, I can't hold it.  Another game and a half of Solitaire... I'll just finish this one and be with you.

 

Right.

 

Now you see the thing about manic depression as I see it, as with obsessive compulsive disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, anorexia, extreme anxiety, multiple personality disorder, chronic claustrophobia and depression, to name a variety but by no means all, I have at some point felt like I've got it.  I have sat on the end of my bed and thought that there is something wrong here, this can't be normal, other people can't feel like this.  And then I have looked it up online or advice for sufferers and run through the checklist thinking yes I have that symptom, and that one, and sometimes that one, and... well maybe that one, sometimes, at my worst.  And then I think, but everyone's like that on occasions.  That doesn't make you different.  And I eat alright, and sleep alright, and I don't want to kill myself, and I think if I met myself I would find myself reasonable tolerable, and really there are some beautiful things in the world... and the only thing I do really obsessively is play Solitaire because I have stopped four times in the writing of this paragraph to play another game or so each time.  Solitaire is not life-threatening.  I am normal.

 

But somehow, that's not a good thing, is it?

 

Occasionally, somebody says something and I can recall it so easily and it won't let go.  This time, it's somebody telling me that I'm different and that's why they're still here, that's what attracted them to me in the first place.  And then it's somebody else implying something quite similar.  And then it's somebody answering a quiz yes, they have been in love before, and somebody making a comment to somebody else about photographs, that was nothing to do with me because at the time I knew neither of them.  But the point of this is, why do I, or does anyone, try to feel inherently different?  Because being apart from people is somehow and for some reason highly important, it's what would make people miss you if you died or think about saving you from a fire, and it's very difficult to be different 24/7 when you're also trying so hard to fit in, to be different in the right way as it were.  And, in my case, sometimes I feel like if I'm not different in some way I'll be forgotten and people will just slip away from me because they have better things to be doing with their time than talk to someone with nothing really extra to recommend them.  Solitaire is not enough, you know.

 

Not that I spend all my time thinking about this.  Or maybe I just don't admit to it.  No, it's the former.

 

Does this make me paranoid, and am I in the minority to hope so?

My AS results, for a start.  Currently, these stand at A in Maths and B in everything else.  However, bit pissed off in Economics because I was 2 marks off an A, and a bit pissed off in English because I actually got full marks in one module, and a D in another one.  So yes, remarking the Economics, and possibly the shiter of the English ones, and hopefully, fingers crossed, Cambridge will still make me an offer.  I do ask, however, that people don't a) get my hopes up, or b) assume I'll get in, because I thought that, and I'm sailing very, VERY close to the wind as it is, and it's not, repeat NOT a given.  And if you all start assuming I'll be fine, and I'm not, I'll feel like I've let you down as well.

 

Taboo subjects.  Such as: don't talk to me, I hate you; I got a B even though I was working as hard as I thought I could; no, I don't want to come out because actually I hate evenings like that; yes, that does make your bum look monumentally fat; and my favourite of all: yes, I am, and have been for a while, and anyway what business is it of yours? so stop guilt tripping me about not telling you these things, if you want to know, ASK.  Not all of these I am experiencing currently, but you know how it is, the effort of not saying something lasts for a hell of a lot longer than the effort of saying it.  What's the right thing to do?  You tell me, either that or I'll work it out eventually.

 

Another favourite.  "Dad, how about you stop insisting that it's just as easy to finance your way through university these days (and without any loan other than tuition, I might add) as it was when you were doing it (with a whacking great grant and no top-up fees, incidentally), and either lend me £6000 a year for a few years or give me £12,000 now to invest as I will and pay you back when I'm not surviving on overdrafts?"  But no, I've got a job, I'll manage off that, you see - I've calculated that even working five days a week through all holidays for the next four years I'll still come out of the end of uni about ten grand in the red.  But that's okay, he doesn't realise that I want to manage myself, I don't want to be bailed out when the crisis happens.

 

Oh, yeah, and before you ask, she does take sugar.

 

I can't believe we're back from holiday in two weeks.  Seriously, I can't.  I thought I was meant to catch up on sleep debt a bit?  Fat chance.

That's a good thing, you see, sitting and watching Sliding Doors and playing Solitaire - John Hannah and card games, always make me smile a bit, and then I'll wait until I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, and go upstairs, put on a face mask and read the literary equivalent of Sliding Doors - i.e. the otherwise oxymoron that is good chick-lit.  And then I'll go to sleep.

 

Do you know, I think John Hannah beats Colin Firth as wonderful wonderful [moderately non-corny] male rom-com protagonist.  In fact, yes, I'm almost sure of it.  He certainly gets better lines.  And the accent doesn't do any harm either.

 

Look, I'm just going to say it out, because... well, I feel like it.  And maybe it'll be better this way, and if not, it's my fault and at least I won't explode with bottling.

 

Exam results tomorrow.  And I'm feeling as bad about it as I was last year, I'm going to sleep as little tonight as I did last year, and the only difference... is that this is for me, for my future, entirely for me and not for anyone else.  That doesn't make it any easier, in fact, I almsot think it makes it harder because this time the beating up for getting it wrong (if it happens) is going to be entirely internal.

 

I've also got a week of emptiness to myself soon.  I feel a bit deflated.  Should I?  I can't tell.  I just know that a week is far too long, and that so is the best part of a continent... every time I run out of signal or there's no way of keeping in contact I feel so grateful that Warwick is only a few hours away.  Empty.  Good God, I'm pathetic.  Steely.

 

There's a date on it now, too.  A date, and September 29th, it's six weeks away, or maybe, it's forty-six days, which sounds the less?  1104 hours.  66,240 minutes.  Approximately.  Not enough.  Too soon.  Far too soon.  It's gone from being far-future, near-future, soon... to a date.  September 29th.

 

My head's spinning.

Goes a bit like this: "Just a quick question, we have a woman working for us four days a week, we only want her to do two.  That's okay, isn't it?"

 

This time last week, that went straight over my head.  It probably goes straight over your head.  But now, I get it and without explaining it, it's very funny.  For those of you who aren't that clued up in employment law (ahem), the joke lies in the fact that "quick question" contradicts that cutting down someone's workload by two days contradicts their terms and conditions and the employers could potentially be sued for quite a few thousand pounds for doing it without the employee agreeing.

 

Results on Thursday, but I feel a lot better about it this year than last year.  Partly I've changed quite substantially, partly... it's environment.  That's how I managed to keep my head this last year.  That and -- you make me too.  Quite.

For one thing, you have to have something wrong with you.  I don't care what.  I always held my breath when I touched red tiles, and I always had to step on the cracks in the pavement.  It's different for everyone, or maybe it's not.  What They Don't Realise doesn't exist, they knew it all along, it's just nice to feel Misunderstood sometimes, the exclusivity afforded by loneliness, even among a crowd... that's important somehow, when you're just another packaged school-tie-and-eyeliner-wearing student who listens to That music (but still puts their Busted CD on quietly when nobody's looking), becuase difference is what makes you special, and special is what makes you worth saving in a fire or remembering when you've been out of the room for five minutes, or, heaven forbid, loving.  Maybe love is still for grown-ups and boys are still smelly, maybe you're fed up with people treating you like a child.

 

When you're That Age, you see, that's how it is.

 

When someone else is that age, someone important to you, it's difficult to know what to say.  If anyone has any ideas, keep me posted.  Sometimes, I think fourteen was the best age, and sometimes I remember hating it.  This is the next year, you see.

 

On a slightly different note.  Austen Powers.  Absolufuckinglutely.  Speaking of remembering being that age...

I've just come across this, through Facebook and also there's been an article on BBC News (you knew I'd find it) and... it scares me.  That there are people who do, but also... I'm actually quite glad I found it now.  Because if I'd seen it this time three years ago, or even nine months ago, I would have joined the group, out of curiosity.  But nothing's ever out of curiosity if you're being honest with yourself and I feel like I've had a lucky miss even though who knows?  Life changes.  As in the plural noun.

 

I mean, even the NAME.  Pro-ana.  What does that say to you?  The English student in me comes out right about here.

 

Pro.  Choice (in that "anti" would suggest lack of choice), positivity.  Connotations of agreement and consequently of approval.

 

Ana.  A girl's name, normal and relatable-to, but slightly exotic (removal of one of the Ns).  Does not sound in the least bit clinical, or medical, or food related, in fact, it doesn't sound like what it means.  There are no gutteral sounds, no plosives or sibilance, "nah" is a labial and soft sound and doesn't sound intrusive either.  They've cut out the harsher "ruh" and "ecks" sounds.  It makes it sound more feminine.

 

So "Pro-ana" doesn't mean "agreeing with starving yourself in order to achieve a very thin, and perceived to be beautiful, body shape", it means you're allowed to be Ana.  You're allowed to be normal, feminine and slightly exotic.  Nobody's stopping you, and now, now you have a support group to help you.

 

Now I don't know about you but I think that's dangerous.  When you're feeling low... it takes self-esteem and control at the best of times not to think that maybe, and obviously to a lesser extent, maybe some of these people have a point, and I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Foot and mouth is back, kids.  We're all going to die.  Baa, baa, baa, CRACK.

 

I'm going to watch Grumpy Old Women.