Isn't it disorientating when you meet someone who used to be pretentious and scornful to find they are now interesting, courteous and pretty damn hot?

My weekend starts on a Thursday this week. Still shattered from yesterday's ludicrous excursion to Bexleyheath, which somehow involved me cycling there from Becton. It's a wonderful ride, especially over the docks with Canary Wharf on my right and City Airport on my left, then across the river on the Woolwich Ferry. That part of the river is grey and grimy, with run down industrial estates and '70s tower blocks on both sides, but it's strangely beautiful. Like being stuck in some dusty, sombre time warp. Sadly it took me an hour and a half. Was so horribly achy I left my bike there and took the train back. Got home at 11.20 and my bike is still there. At some point I'm going to have to go and get it. Damn.

Manchester is such a beautiful city. I may go to university there. Saturday was alive and blazing hot and inspirational.

I feel so lonesome now. Haven't really seen or spoken to anyone, partly because they're all busy doing recreational drugs at uni and partly because my phone is broken.

At least I have music, charcoal and crunchy nut cornflakes. They're ludicrously tasty, you know....
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Take your anger off the shelf

Sometimes I get the feeling everything I do is just to make me forget other things.
This house is so cold and empty.
I'm so anxious all the time.
It rained all day today. It bucketed down all over the animals. The donkey was completely drenched and miserable.
Heatherbell, Catnip, Angel and Primrose mooed plaintively under their shabby wooden shelters.
When I got home from work my limbs were stiff and my hair soaking.
I climbed into bed and ate honeydew melon.
I don't know who to turn to sometimes.
I think myself to sleep at night.
There's nothing in my life that I feel completely sure about.
I'm not even nineteen.
My dreams are so vivid they terrify me.

Burning the candle at both ends.

Kirchner, Girl under a Japanese parasol 1909

Somehow I'm doing too much again. This year is going to be almost as chaotic as last year was. I am now taking GCSE German, AS level Art and A level Maths. And a full time job. And still playing the cello, and sleeping and eating. This shouldn't work, but it's going to. I am fucking determined. I've been lounging around for far too long, it feels invigorating to be doing something worthwhile at long last. This is going to kill me.

So I turned up at Waltham Forest at 7 this evening, having worked all day, feeling filthy and groggy and sleepy and not too enthusiastic, thinking evening classes = mainly people over 40 = awkwardness = probably a fairly dull, uneventful evening, but better than sitting at home using the internet for several hours. Wow. I was wrong. The class was incredible. There were between 30 and 40 people in a massive art studio, about three quarters of them between 17 and 19. There was a model, and loads of resources and some really interesting teachers; people who weren't bitter and cynical like Mr Watson. And we talked about Auerbach and Henry Moore and drew and painted until our fingers were covered in charcoal and we were running out of space and energy and time. It was brilliant. Next week the class is going to see the one exhibition I've wanted to see ALL SUMMER. Tate Modern, Kandinsky, for free, with a whole bunch of really cool people, mostly my age. I am so excited. This is too good. Bring on next Thursday.

I'm going to read books and milk cows and paint and do maths and take exams and go to Edinburgh and work on Christmas day for triple pay and earn lots of money and spend too much money and dance and drink and cover my green walls and cycle and cut my hair and drink tea and twist and shout and it's going to be heavenly. Fuck that, it already is heavenly. Even though my hands are shaking and my eyelids are oh so heavy and in eight hours I have to drag myself to work, I think I've got my youthful vitality back +_+
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How I will blow your paradise away away away....

Basquiat, Unititled 1983

Gosh I've been busy. Have been clearing out my room today; kept coming across clothes I'd never worn, letters I'd never sent, books I'd never read and heaps and heaps of old schoolwork. I've no idea what to do with it, I can't help thinking some of it might be useful/valuable some day, but in truth it's just unecessary clutter. I'm attempting to apply to university for next year as well, nice and early. According to the brand new UCAS tariff system I have 747 points which is a bit of a joke. It's a shame that a) no one uses the UCAS system, and b) the new pro-IB initiative doesn't come into effect until 2008. Damn.

Anyway I'm probably going to do some kind of politics course next year - a PPE or something similar, unless I dramatically change my mind. There are hundreds of courses roughly based around that - International Relations, Philosophy & Politics, European Politics & History etc etc etc. It's starting to bore me already, to be honest. And I haven't got round to the most exciting part of all: the personal statement! Spend 30 lines talking pretentious, ambiguous crap about yourself that 90% of universities probably won't read! Oh yes.

And then I've been trying to enrol on a course, which is proving immensely complicated. There's a reason why Floodlight is 486 pages long. My plan was to do Maths A Level and some other Art course at the same time, and maybe even GCSE German too, which I never got round to doing, but it's all proving rather ambitious and I'll probably end up spending my evenings sitting around reading the newspaper and surfing the internet and sleeping. I seriously crave some work though. Something to think about. There was certainly always something on the back of my mind during the IB, even if it was only when I was going to finish my EE and what was the best way to avoid Mr. Adcock. Seems all very far away now, those frantic days. It makes my extended summer look ever so lazy and self-indulgent.

I'm gradually getting things done, though. I've read 23 books since the exams ended. +_+
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White shores of longing stretch away...

I have had 2 hours sleep. Should not have attempted to rehearse the New World Symphony for four hours, drag myself to an exhibition, and then sit through a murder mystery with an immensely complicated plot. Could barely keep my eyes open, let alone understand the muddled melodrama. The Black Dahlia should probably be watched after plenty of caffeine and anticipation. It's sexy and racy and slightly too long. Maybe I'll watch it again when I'm in a better frame of mind. Josh Hartnett lights a few too many cigarettes though. Plus every time I look at him I think of 40 days and 40 nights. Didn't really do him any favours.

Pleased with myself for spending less than £20 this weekend though. Going to Manchester on Saturday, and starting my course on Wednesday. Seriously can't wait. If you'd asked me how I felt about optional Maths homework a year ago you would have got a slightly different response I feel.

I can't express myself at the moment. I blame the sleep deprivation. It's cruel how hours of manual farm labour has little effect on me, but dancing until 4am has broken my soul.

Might go back to bed. I'm reading Brighton Rock and it's brilliant, full of panic and madness and moral ambiguity. Oh, before I go, Writer's Block is a great song, and Banksy's latest antics are ingenius.
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It can't come quickly enough.

I seem to spend half of my time these days wishing I was like everyone else and the other half wishing they were like me.

Everything was sensational this weekend, to a point where I felt completely ill at ease with my life on Monday and sank into this horrible, desperate anxiety that I could no longer dance and sing and be mesmerised and reckless and mindless. And then a million ridiculous unjustified thoughts started getting me down and I was practically in tears.

The awards ceremony didn't make things any better. Despite seeing Timmy and Paul and Phil and Berengere I thought the whole night was horribly contrived and bizarre and elitist. It's quite sickening how educational institutions are now run like business enterprises. We can't freely reward achievement these days without a) alienating a large proportion of students, b) promoting the school as "special" and better than other schools, c) openly sucking up to the governors by giving awards to their children, d) placing emphasis on the school's sponsors, benefactors, reputation and staff rather than the students themselves, e) using a selection procedure controlled by members of senior management, with not a single student-governed award, f) advertising the school through huge placards and flags across the stage, g) presenting the headteachers and governors as members at the top of a massive heirarchy and somehow in a position of power: I don't feel priviledged to shake the hand of some random governor, or Mr Barrs. Why exactly am I shaking hands anyway? It was as if we had reached some kind of shady deal involving me producing good results for the school and him in exchange giving me an Anglo-European School biro. I don't regard producing a ridiculously extravagant and enormous school trophy (the "Bob Reed" award) to Abbie Southern as a particularly productive way to either honour Mr Reed or spend the school's money. The speeches were somewhat suspicious (in what way, for example, does the IB encourage 'integrity'?) The real limit was when someone mentioned 9/11 in their speech. I was practically expecting everyone to stand up, put their hands on their heart and recite the school's fucking mission statement...

I have achieved peace of mind now, anyway. I have moved away from the stage in my life dominated by the Anglo. There are people I spent the entire two years trying to fit in with, never quite managing, when in reality we have nothing in common and they had little or no respect for me. There are also people I truly love, whom I will miss, but it's pretty wonderful not having to see them in the context of the Anglo-European school and all its smothering glory. I also have some level of control over my life now. Speaking of which, the new job is better than I imagined. The farm is lovely. It even has a kookaburra and chipmunks. The jobs are nowhere near stenuous at the moment. It takes half as long as I anticipated to get there, the boss seems reasonable and the breaks are lengthy. Also, at long last I have something to think about and get on with, far from that hazy bubble of worrying and being alone.

It's been such an emotional end to my holiday. I can still see a whole tent of about 2,000 people going fucking wild to Common People, the last song of the last DJ set at 2am on Sunday night. I can still see smoke exploding out of the stage during Filthy/Gorgeous. I can still feel everything I've left behind. Ahead there's just a flickering horizon, and for some reason I can't wait to reach it.
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For today I am a wild creature...

And tomorrow I will be lost again.

Kandinsky, Flood Improvisation 1913

I start work on Tuesday. That means I have five more days of freedom. I will be spending four of those days on the Isle of Wight. Started packing today, spent several hours searching for and putting up tents. I eventually found one small enough to carry, discovered it had a broken pole, but oh well, I'll make do. It's what I call a sardine tent; I will have precisely the same amount of space to move around in there as a tinned sardine has in its little tin. Only slightly larger than a kennel, and only slightly wider than a coffin. It's going to be fabulous. Also discovered that once I had packed my tent, my sleeping bag and the flattest pillow I could find in my rucksack there was virtually no room for clothing and food. Ah well, it's a festival, I won't need to eat or change my clothes. All this is part of the fun, right?

Spent yesterday watching Firefly and drinking gin instead of slaving for my mother and now I'm not in the best position to borrow a whole load of money off her. If the worst really does come to the worst, I shall change the 20 euros I have left in sterling, take whatever I can from the fridge, and hope that together with the £10 I already have I'll be able to eat.

Had a rather nostalgic conversation with Katrina about university and the loss of our youth. She yearns for change; I don't. She's off somewhere new; I'm not. But somewhere there were a few things we'll miss. Stability, protection, long train journeys, worry-free sleep, nights out in London, the comfortable routine that schooldays allowed us. I've been thinking about the the times I worried I'd fail my course and I know I'm lucky, and that I must've worked harder than I noticed at the time, but it's not enough, it's never enough, not even close, and now the tunnel's closing in and the light's fading and all I have is 37, a green room, some close friends, too many books and the remnants of summer. I'm still searching.
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Edit: apparently I have won the school History award, God knows why. See fellow award-winners on Monday....

You got me off the sofa (at long last).

Wow, it's been one of those wonderful days of ups and downs.

*At 10 I was told by the hospital after waiting over an hour for an appointment that I needed an X-Ray. The waiting list for non-urgent X-Ray referrals is 15 weeks. Oh yes. It will be after Christmas before they get back to me.

*At 12 today Tom told me I have a ticket to Bestival.
Oh yes! Scissor Sisters, Jamie T, Mystery Jets, Klaxons, Guillemots, The Young Knives, and more. A whole weekend on the Isle of Wight! And it's free! All expenses paid! All I have to do is some rallying for STW.

*Spent several hours in Stratford drinking Coca-Cola, looking in Maplin Electronics Store and milling around.

*I owe the library £29.40. That's far too much.

*At 4 went to see an exhibition of anthropomorphic cats. It was too late. Exhibition was closed. Drinks in The Phoenix instead.

*Just as I got in Teardrop came on the radio and it was dark and the fairy lights were glowing and the window was open and I lay and listened in my little green room on my double bed wearing socks and ballet pumps and had one of those intense moments.

The best things come from nowhere. Suddenly everythings unfamiliar and exciting and happy. How I hope this lasts.
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What was a peacock is now a lizard eating a bird...

I want a reason for all this night after night after night after night

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
I spent far too much money today.

Yesterday was a strange emotional surreal night, involving travelling to Broomfield far too late at night. I can't quite decide whether it was too good or just tragic. I did get a bed and a very cosy duvet though, despite feeling strangely melancholy this morning. Seeing people is always a relief. As is escaping from the current shambolic situation at home: stressful relatives and general panic-stricken mayhem in the lead-up to Saturday...

On the bus to Broomfield I read the last seven pages of Everything Is Illuminated. It's rather disjointed and confusing and complicated and completely threw me at times. It became incredibly engaging, but his literary techniques got overwhelming and annoying; capitalising large chunks of texts, for example, and drifting into long convoluted sentences which were difficult to read. Maybe Johnathan Safran Foer was trying a bit too hard. There were just a few too many twists and loose strings.

Apparently my new job are still waiting for a reference, so it seems I will be slacking for the next week or so. (Correction: doing exciting, constructive things like tidying my room and sorting out my life). I also have to go to the hospital on Monday. I'm scared.

I am also pleased: Climate Camp seems to have got plenty of media coverage. Drax generate more carbon dioxide than Sweden does. It's a fucking scandal. Though I'm not entirely convinced by the following sentence appearing in The Guardian's editorial: "like the Conservative party, Drax is not beyond redemption"...+_+

I love Chelmsford swimming pool, it's huge and spacious and wonderful. Outdoor pools are heaven and diving boards are a luxury. I spent half of my money for the next month on a pair of jeans which I didn't need and couldn't resist. I am dangerously weak-willed. Once again though, there's something pretty refreshing about spending money you earned on your own. Making your own atrocious decisions, doing things on a whim and getting away with it. Sure, I'll regret squandering that money soon, but for now I'm happy to sit in the park eating Marks and Spencers smoked salmon sandwiches and reading about Graham Coxon in the Guardian. I'm naive and foolish and decadent and not sensible in the slightest, but sometimes it's worth every minute.

In the swimming pool my eyeliner smudged and seeped right across my face and for a moment I had dark sparkling eyes the size of apricots.
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