Brownie points to James Bradwell! Who actually texted me saying he was going to show this to his mum. Hurrah! I think you should all do the same if you want a mention.

Nice things about James:
1. Once, I gave a presentation and I had a cold. When I got back to my seat, coughing everywhere, I found a tissue with a locket on top. It was like Christmas
2. He always has bizarre things in his bag, including a fan. (Which was very useful when the class civ room was 110 degrees)
3. Mr Owen loves him to pieces. When Mr Owen doesn't know the answer to something, he asks James.
4. He can do extraordinary dances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVHa5fB0sU
5. His religious views. I won't go into detail but he represents precisely how I think religion should be, something personal and non-intrusive. Very very envious of that.
6. His voice reading, be it the Odyssey or 50 Shades (he's very versatile).

My mum's doing something fantastically exciting with Handel's Messiah. I know that may sound not very interesting to non musical people, (not meant offensively), but basically this is a project she hopes to get published and I seriously think it's going to change choirs all over the country, if not more globally!

Handel's Messiah is a religious piece of music which has been sung in exactly the same way for years and year and years. It's incredibly wobbly and difficult to sing, which has alienated less technical musical singers and musicians. Mum's taken the piece, re-written it to be easier for choirs without ruining the music and is putting it on Saturday.

She's done some lovely things with it, including Mr Dew giving a talk about champagne for the celebratory solo (which is now a talk about champagne). My dad is also singing, there's a Hospice nurse giving a talk about her job for the movement 'Comfort Ye' and lots of other lovely stuff. Including a lovely poem called 'Neighbours' by Benjamin Zephaniah (look it up it's actually very moving I think it'd get to you).

The concert is on Saturday, 7:30 St Francis Church. Tickets are £8 there are few left (she's actually selling the choir's chairs now to house everyone) so mention it to your parents, grandparents, trust me they'll know this piece and I'm sure some of them will be interested.

Here's the promotional video, I'd be hugely grateful for any further publicity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vCSUPhGTjY

I'm sat in bed surrounded by incomplete homework feeling pretty darn stressed. My UCAS remains un sent, I'm missing yet another A Cappella rehearsal on wednesday night (which means I will be murdered) and I have a lot coming up this week, concert tuesday night, work wednesday, meal thursday. Sounds like not much but I crumble easy. Plus I need to bring in a letter for the day off school I had, which I keep forgetting to ask mum to write. And every little thing which should be easy to sort out seems to pile up. My room is in a state again and I need to clear out the millions of empty cans by my desk. Also, my driving theory is soon and I need to learn it.

BUT I put this song on and I literally do not care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys7-6_t7OEQ

I have a feeling that I'm going to be someone, I'll get some sort of break some how. I don't know what into, but I'm going to do something fucking cool, and none of the shit little things really matter because in about a year I won't even remember them. And ultimately, they won't lead me to where I want to be so I don't need to care. It feels like one of those moments where it's two fingers up to the world.

More than anything it's just not listening to the negative stuff. All I do is complain and make myself miserable and I'm not going to let myself do that anymore. I'm my own problem, what's the point in reading too much into what everyone says all the time? No one needs to feel like every comment made about you is the truth, so here we go. You know the feeling you get after pain goes away, it feels like you're invincible? You clench your teeth and narrow your eyes and raise your chin and remember who you are and why you're here. Life is too short to feel shit with yourself. And the pain I'm referring to is currently the fuck off paint-ball bruises on my legs and arse and a sense of impending flu. This is what's making me feel stronger. BRING IT VIRUS.

Be impressed with my homemade instagram:

That's me being all daughtery and nice waiting for my parents to get home.

Bus trip back from Class Civ in London.

Today I went paint-balling for the first time ever with James Kelly, Jess Sparey and Tom Smith and I am in so much pain. Jess gave a free voucher for 4 people to her dad last christmas and he said he'd never use it so... she had to. On the day she rang me and told me we were going, I'd earlier been walking through town with Evie and we'd said how we'd hate nothing more. I was quite convinced I'd be appalling and I was sort of right. At one point, I knocked the lid on my paint balls and all of them fell out. So I had to steal some of Tom's, but I ran out and had to leave the game.

I did get into it more in the second game, it was quite funny to run to shelter, then leap up and shoot at people and watch them ducking. I almost got someone. I didn't at any point, but it's the thought that counts.

Jess and James both got shot on the hand which was, I imagine, very painful, seeing as we didn't have any gloves. I have two bruises on my thigh, and one on my arse. I am tired. But it was incredibly amusing and fun. Funny seeing the men on our team getting really into it and getting really competitive, they were making jokes at these two german girls and I got really annoyed with them for being so arrogant. I mean really, if you're a middle aged man on a paint-balling course you should question yourself anyway.

LOOK IT'S AUTUMN!!

SPEED TYPING see if I can do something decent in 3 minutes. This'll be good exam practise. 2 MINUTES. SHIT. So I'm currently in bed watching Misfits. I've already watched one episode, I'm now watching the second because James Kelly is forcing me to watch it so we can talk about Curtis committing suicide. Misfits this series has been disappointing because it's not got Nathan in. BYE.

I was getting panicky about the fact that I missed blogging again, and thinking how I am now doomed to failure. But then, I realised that there will be days where I physically cannot write something. For example, I'm meant to be going to Greece in Easter (that is, if Mr Owen actually arranges it. Doesn't look like he's going to).

Friday night I went to Barney's house with a few people, and I've not had such a good time in ages. I maintained my drunken state for ages, which is so not like me so I was very proud. Plus as well as catching up with Ollie and Barney it was nice to spend some time with people I didn't know well. And I put my iPod in and NO ONE said anything bad about my music, which was incredible. Yesterday I babysat for Cunley and Oni which was very amusing. Cunley put music on and danced around for ages. As soon as his parents left having just said 'They can go to bed after watching Strictly' Cunley looked up at me with his giant affro and long lashes and said sweetly 'We could do a jigsaw after Strictly' hmmm...

I'm writing this from the comfort of my living room under a blanket watching Desperate Housewives (yet to pick a film). Oh and I forgot to mention, my chocolate pudding is cooking in the oven. Yippee. After my exhaustion last night, (very sorry about the rant), and my teary drive to school this morning my mum decided I need some sleep, so it's home sweet home. And Hopefully I'll get my UCAS off this weekend!!

Anyway, Patrick Brennan, (who went off to Durham because he's very clever), sent me a message last night saying he'd written a blog and being very nice about mine. He's keeping his journalist options open by practising on this link:

http://www.peejaybizzle.blogspot.co.uk/

I had a proper read a minute ago and I really like it. It's like my blog but smart and funnier. And his last post about Bloc Party is completely accurate, it made me laugh. So take a read, more and more people jumping on the Blog bandwagon. In an abstract sense of course.

Found this photo on my phone earlier and it made me laugh. Georgina went to the loo at my house so I thought it'd be funny to take loads of stupid pictures of myself for her return. I've deleted all of them because they were hideous, but love this photo. I waited for her to come unsuspectingly back into the room and then nabbed her.

Mum on holiday discovering a passion for rapping...

I've officially had the worst evening ever. This was going to be my first night in since monday, which doesn't sound that bad but I was really tired this week and stressed. So I get out the shower, mum says: "did you not hear the answerphone?" because my emails haven't been connecting with the writing group leaders', I didn't know we were going to see a play tonight. I had 10 minutes to be at the playhouse and I was there from 6 till 10, with a bunch of arrogant middle aged people who make me feel stupid and young. They went round the circle and said 'Oh I'm Jim, I've got two plays on at the minute, directing another and just own this competition...' they talk for ages and it got to me and all I could say was 'I'm at sixth form' I hate being so young and waiting for my life to start.

During this, my mum texted me saying maybe I should have tomorrow off to catch up on some sleep and feel better, I got home and she said 'I'll give you a lift to school tomorrow' which means that I'm not getting a day off after all, which after thinking I would have one has upset me so much. I feel ridiculously stressed. This weekend, I'm going to a friends friday, straight to work saturday, straight to babysitting after work, then I'm in at work the next day for the campaign change, which is crazy because I've done way over my hours for this week and next. I swear they aren't paying me for over time at the minute as well... need to check my statement more closely and work out how much I should be getting.

When I finally climbed into bed, hysterically upset and being girly, I realised I hadn't blogged and I said I'd fail my A level if I didn't blog every day. I know that seems like something really trivial, but when I fail at things like that I get really freaked out. So I got even more upset. I'm tired and stressed enough to burst into tears right now, and I really need Mr Dew to give me back my personal statement so I can go to uni. And I need to hand that letter in. FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK. If I have to go to english tomorrow I'm probably going to burst into tears, can't stand english at the moment.

What I realised tonight as well, was that I used to be amazing at talking to people I don't know well. I cannot do it now. I panic, sound nervous and make it awkward. It's so upsetting to watch everything I used to be good at disappearing. Almost swore at my parents tonight for no reason, which is really unlike me. Really sad.

So I said I've have 'more about that later' in reference to the assembly we had. I'm not going to go on for too long about this because it was yesterday and assemblies don't remain very important in my life for over 24 hours. Anyway, this focus group came in and gave an assembly on being a lesbian or a gay person. This consisted of a video of them talking about common debate issues about gay/lesbian community, but to me it sounded like 4 lesbians talking about how much they hated straight people: 'No one understands unless they are gay or a lesbian'. That was ridiculous.

Then they talked 10 minutes over the registration time, so I was now missing nap time, which made me a feel almost tempted to become homophobic. But I didn't. Then they had an obviously fake story about a boy who killed himself half at lunch time after he'd been teased about kissing a boy in spin the bottle as a dare. For a start, no one plays Truth or Dare at the same time as Spin the Bottle, and he MUST'VE had other issues to commit suicide after half a day of teasing. Ridiculous crap. Then at the end of the assembly they had a slogan song which literally sang: "Lesbians and Gays, Biosexuals and Queers' At this point, from the back of the main hall I watched everyone put their faces into their hands.

The point of their assembly was to encourage us to sign these billboards which made us agree to not using 'gay' as a negative adjective, (I will complain about this in a moment), but I refused to sign because I don't agree with the aggressive way they presented their viewpoints. I actually felt a little offended and thought they were making a little bit too much of a big deal about stuff. I don't know what they've been through, and I understand it must've been hard. But they surely can't think the hardest part of being gay is hearing people say 'gay' when something is bad?

Anyway, it reminded me of when the christian group came for a discussion with us in year 11 and one of them said 'In my opinion gays need to be cured' and it was a lovely moment because everyone in our year got furious and had a go at him for the next half an hour. So actually, I don't think people are that homophobic anymore, not that I've experienced.

Now, my complaint about using 'gay' as a negative adjective are that no we don't. For a start, I know few people who actually say that anymore, I think it's a phase when you're younger and you're pushing taboo language for a reaction from people. But 'gay' when used in a negative light is no longer used directly meaning that the person saying that doesn't like gay people. It's just picked up a negative association, and it will phase out because language changes. (Feel like my english textbook right now). I'm getting bored of myself.

GOODNIGHT.

Firstly, I want to apologise for my recent annoying habit. When someone's in the middle of speaking my brain thinks 'OOH I know a story similar to this that I can talk about when they're done' but instead of waiting, I just keep talking. My brain/mouth correlation is definitely in need of some D.I.Y. so I apologise for interrupting everyone by saying 'Oh my god it was so awkward the other day...' I am aware I'm doing it and you just have to hit me in the face.

Tonight I recorded a video about what's stressing me out today, and I'm going to play it in 6 months and see how much any of it mattered. I'm positive 100% of it will be completely behind me by then, but then it's nice to watch myself learning... as in, when I watch it in the future I will think 'How wonderful I have learnt from these experiences'. One thing I've picked up almost immediately is don't overuse 'YOLO...' it's not cool or funny. Or angry enough.

This year I've also learnt that you shouldn't give your phone to chavs, and I should never play my music in public. It always ends badly. Normally it's just Ollie yelling at me 'THIS IS SHIT!' which is better than everyone staring at my blankly. Because you can't even end a song with 'You had to be there' because that would make no sense at all.

Here's a quote from a James Morrison song:

"Well I'll hide all the bruises, I'll hide all the damage that's done.
But I'll show how I'm feeling, until all the 'feeling' has gone."

Ooh aren't I cultured?!

I'm feeling sort of low tonight, you know when you feel like something is dragging you down and you can't figure out what it is. I guess it's a combination of little things, like I've left my pad at bishops which has a form in it that I need signed. I get stressed by things like that. Or that my duffel coat has gone missing and it's cold. Or that I had a bad drama lesson today. Or that I can't figure out why I'm being grumpy to my parents at the moment.

In half term I went to London twice, Sunday night we saw Eddi Reader doing a concert and it was amazing, but I always find it really hard to leave London. I get withdrawal symptoms I swear... one time, when I'd been there for a week doing work experience, I cried on the way home. I love it there. Actually, I once cried leaving Devon. I'd been going every fortnight with my mum and it got to the point where I was so attached to the place, I was crying on the way home and mum said 'If you wanted us to transfer you to Colyton grammar for sixth form, we'd move for you' and I thought about it. So there we go, I almost moved to Devon for sixth form. Imagine the chaos that would've caused, leaving everyone to fend for themselves...


...yeah anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psiILfa-G1c&feature=endscreen

I JUST WROTE A SONG and I think this one is actually good:

It’s half one in the morning

And I’m lying here listening to what you said.

I know it was heat of moment,

But I can’t get those words out my head.

And you make me feel like nothing.

Every time I think of you I’m ashamed.

You know I can’t be a perfect person.

But still I feel you lay on me the blame.

It’s half one in the morning

And I’m lying here listening to what you said.

I know it was heat of moment,

But I can’t get those words out my head.

We’ve hardly said a word and still,

We have come to this conclusion.

I barely know you at all,

Yet you’ve barred me into my seclusion.

It’s half one in the morning

And I’m lying here listening to what you said.

I know it was heat of moment,

But I can’t get those words out my head.

And every time, I close, my eyes.

I see your face.

And when I lift my fingertips,

It’s that I can perfectly trace.

Every line on your skin is a memory,

And one that I will never have seen.

Every moment’s a moment wasted,

We’re too busy counting the moments in between.

It’s half one in the morning

And I’m lying here listening to what you said.

I know it was heat of moment,

But I can’t get those words out my head.

Eh???