NO NO NO.

No.

Nononononono.


HELP.

I have already had enough of the holidays.

Five people trapped in one (relatively small) house, miserably watching the rain cascading down the windows and getting in between each other and the crunchy rolls in the breadbin DOES NOT WORK.

It has got to the point where I am taking large gulps of air and counting to ten very slowly with my eyes closed and my fists clenched when one of them does as much as breathe too loud or stand too close. The ten minute struggle my sister and father had to insert a new film into her new-ish camera was particularly gruelling. Whilst they made impossibly loud and infuriating clacking noises with the camera and snapped far too often 'it does not work, let ME do it!', Mami and I stood in the kitchen baring our teeth.

Don't let's get started on the stealing of clothes or iPod headphones, all the more frequent grievances since my siblings have finished school.

I escaped to my second home (a.k.a. Judith's house), where I was relatively safe and happy learning how to play monopoly with her younger brother and sister, when in came her father, who grabbed my copy of Harry Potter The Very Last. I don't dare to leave it in the house for fear of stealage or plot-spoilage.

What's this?? he cackled joyfully, Can it be...? He picked it up and flipped to the last page. From my sitting on the floor position, I crawled over speedily (almost as if made to be like that, moving on all fours) with my little silver top hat clenched in one hand, colliding with a wet dog on the way, and grabbed his wrists. Judith's father's, and not the dog's.

NO. I told him very firmly. He scanned the page. No!! I shouted at him as his lips began forming a word from the page. I sort of knelt there before him in a pleading, frantic way, and eventually he took pity on me.

How old are you? he asked, and laughed for a long time. And anyway, I was only trying to read you the last sentence. He looked all innocent-like. If that had been my father, I would have thrown something at him.

See? I am safe nowhere.

Today I attended a French lesson at the school-with-attached-sixth-form-centre (a.k.a. The Torture Centre Which Requires Two Whole Extra Weeks Of Study).

I hadn't been for a while. I didn't take paper, or even a pen, as I rightly assumed that our very pregnant teacher would prefer to sit and a) talk to us about how many times a day she pees as a pregnant woman compared to how many times she peed before she became a pregnant woman or b) sleep whilst the rest of us watch a film. The rest of us being four. Numbers have dwindled drastically since last September. She has chased away half the lads we had in the class with all her talk of peeing. Half being exactly one.

So we watched Ma Vie En Rose. For a long time I was very very confused. I thought to myself no no no, this is not Édith Piaf, where is the Parisienne wailing, or maybe it is her, at seven, being a boy but wanting to be a girl... After half an hour, someone put me out of my misery and nudged me, whispered C'est LA Vie En Rose, pas MA Vie...

Only not in French, because it's not that sort of French class.

I loitered suspiciously around the Sixth Form Common Room for a while afterwards, to postpone returning to the drudgery of having nothing to do at home. I pilfered maltesers from poor, unsuspecting randoms, and gloomily thought to myself that there is something very wrong with the world.

The Torture Centre Which Requires Two Whole Extra Weeks Of Study today charged every student who had bothered to turn up £1 for wearing their own clothes. And a green item of clothing, to please the geography buffs, who called it Save The World By Wearing Something Green Day. Or something.

Around me shimmered the most horrendous spectacle. Two Orange Tangerine Things (I assume they were girls) minced around. Wearing horrible green things. The Orange Tangerine Things had no natural hair left on their bodies. Everything was either frizzled to a bleach-blonde, stringy crisp, lasered into non-existence, or plucked into nothingness. There was nothing natural there. They looked around forty-five, both of them, which cannot be, as The Torture Centre Which Requires Two Whole Extra Weeks Of Study does not educate those over 18. And they minced. In an orange, breathy way.

Fuuuuuckeen ellll, one pronounced into the air in a voice resembling closely that of a 90 year old chain smoking man from Stoke. The lid of her lipgloss stuck fast. I am not joking.

The horrendous thing was that they were SURROUNDED by Orange Tangerine Thing worshippers. Who simpered around them and unscrewed the lipgloss lid. Who clung onto their every monosyllabic word, and traipsed around after them, tripping over green shawl things.

What is the world coming to, when Orange Tangerine Things are more popular than a real person, with a real personality, who is capable of a real conversation? Someone who has real skin and real hair? Someone with real feet, and not pointy plastic ones moulded into pointy Barbie heels?

At this point I became so depressed with the state of things that I escaped and went home to face the drudgery of having nothing to do.

I see Morpheus is having a laugh at my expense. I was woken FIVE TIMES this morning when today is the ONE day of the week when I do not have to stumble into college for nine. And to the person who RANG and then WAITED until I'd blearily pressed the green button to blurt out "Wrong number hahahaha!".... DIE!

There exist two main types of parental arguments; the riproaringly horrific ones, the ones which mean crawling up stairs holding ears closed and cringing away from words of nastiness bouncing back from both sides.

And there are the funny ones. Where one or both are slightly inebriated. Where one or both have to pinch the corners of their mouths tight and think thoughts about the budgie flying away to stop themselves from laughing out loud. Where arguments go round and round, and the words get more ridiculous the later it gets. Where accusations no longer make sense, where there is no POINT to anything anyone says anymore, and you argue just for the sake of it.

Where, when it's over, you laugh and laugh and laugh, and blame the cheap Chardonay bottle standing amongst the dishes. Where you want to say, why did you say that, aren't you cringing inside after those words which came out so amazingly badly? And why are you not laughing; is it a given rule that the older you get, the less able you are to laugh at yourself? Or with others? And there is no point in snarling when we are laughing, it only makes us laugh harder.

These are the arguments I can't help analysing. Sitting for an hour every night with my parents could almost be classed as Critical Thinking Revision. And there is a straw person argument. And ad hominem. And appeal to rationality. Slippery slope. I spoke outloud accidentally at one point, and it made them stop.

The subject has two main purposes.

So what, it doesn't count as a grade towards uni requirements in every case. So what, it doesn't make me a better arguer; I still get tangled up in my own words, still lose my breath mid sentence/thought, dumb-founded by the brilliance of the arguments of others. (Ah yes, but why is the fridge door open?) I still wish, every time I argue, that I could submit an essay, that we could argue with a Battle Of The Essays.

Despite all this, I still think it gives me more of a sense of rationality, the ability to analyse an argument in terms of structure and flaws. More importantly, it has the amazing potential to stop arguers in their tracks!

I have been in several depressing places over the past two days. The sports hall today for a Film Studies exam.

I found it extremely hard to get over the smell of stale socks and rubber basket-balls, which sparked off memories of hateful Physical Education experiences, involving running hamster-circles around the sports hall at school, collapsing onto some teacher's coat on a muddy field and not being able to breathe for quite a long time. I was also reminded of doing group-glowering at The Dancing Girls as they synchronised their sexy-dance routines to 'Working 9 To 5', which involved much gyrating against chairs and each other (while the rest of us swung our arms around unenthusiastically in the pretence of being excited by the unexciting prospect of choreographing our own dances)...etc etc. I have an entire backlog of hateful exercise-related memories. PE three times a week for three years, and twice a week for two more years has that effect on most normal people (normal being all those who have an aversion to physical exercise involving any prior changing of clothes before skinny peers wearing snoopy g-strings).

Also, it took a good fifteen minutes to thaw my fingers so I could hold onto my pencil without it slipping in a futile manner to the wooden echoe-y floor, and thus disturbing the entire population of furtively scribbling students rolling up their sleeves surreptitiously to peek at the biro-tattoo notes on their forearms. So I sat and twiddled my thumbs, panicked, and made mental notes which I would later convert to scribbles on shiny regulation exam paper. I thought about Propp's actions as functions, Toderov and Umberto Eco. Cultural and patriarchal hegemony, ethnocentrism, and signs of any class divides in the Beatles film (the one where one second they are playing cards in a train thing with a dog, and the next second bursting into addictive song and inane grinning). I tried and failed to remember what exactly extra-diegetic autonomy is.

By the time I got round to writing, I had wasted 15 minutes of my precious time, and I had to write faster than the speed of light, leaving me with a lingering cramp-thing in my left little finger. It still hasn't stopped twitching.

That was one depressing place. The other depressing place I cannot name. Let it be said it involved waiting for a very very very very very long time, and being surrounded by nervously snickering girls surrounded by little gaggles of giggling friends. The whole thing was rather like going on holiday and realising you have to share the place with 60 or more thirteen and fourteen year olds.


After that burst of writing too many adjectives, I may have to lock myself into an adjectiveless place and do a bit of adjectiveless meditation.



PS - The budgie can now say "Woodstock" in a similar tone to the one my brother uses when he tries to explain away my mother's enjoyment of everything from listening to Cat Stevens (sorry, Yussef Islam) to wearing long skirts and colourful tights, and burning incense.

Tonight was that event I thought four and a bit years ago I would never be old enough to take part in.

You know the feeling. You're eleven years old, you've moved to a new 'big' school. Sixteen and seventeen year olds seem the epitome of scary coolness and maturity. They are the 'big' people you watch from afar with pure awe and a jot of resentment. Teachers are still people without lives, who crawl from the woodwork only to teach and shout and set pointless poster-drawing exercises. You imagine with youthful naivity that they hibernate underneath small wooden desks during the summer holidays, and (forgive me, oh teacher) that they were born old and bitter. Nay, hatched old and bitter.

When you're that old, getting GCSEs, leaving school and then coming back some months later sporting new haircuts, wearing new sexy jeans and cavorting a skinnier (or indeed the opposite) frame is something you imagine will never ever happen. Like you'll remain eleven years old for ever. You don't think differently when you're twelve, thirteen or fourteen. One step closer to something which will never happen. Even at fifteen, even whilst dragging yourself through the turmoil of inner-emo and hiding arms and legs from fellow bitchy fifteen year olds in the P.E. changing rooms, you think it will never happen. Time drags on (and on and on and on). Being fifteen feels like three years rolled into one.

But then, all of a sudden, it's there. Last year at school. Stress and coursework and revision and exams speed things up, and before you know it, you're finished. Done. Never again. That is, until you return for Presentation Evening (or the 'presentation effort', as it was coined by one unenthused ex-pupil). So you return, and then finally, finally it sinks in. You've spent five years at this place, and the prevailing memories are ones of donning scarves and freezing your hands to a hockey stick whilst suffering from exercise-related asthma attacks. For a whole day you suffer; a day which is designed to encourage feelings of teamwork but instead kindles sparks of sport-induced cruelty. So this is what you remember the most - seasonal 'interforms'. (In summer, this memory takes the form of being hit in the eye by a leather rounders ball.)

After that, you remember supply teachers preaching cactus plants and behaviour strategies to a class of youth who could not care less. Eating cheese strings in an abandoned, teacher-less classroom. Making friends and breaking friends and crying with laughter at in-jokes. School trips. Fire alarms. Freezing on the astroturf. Bleep-test in P.E. Exams. More exams. Assemblies.

None of that changes when you return one final time. You end up thinking a little less of the place you spent five years travelling to and from every day. You end up remembering things you thought had been lost to the abyss of not-important memories, and you realise everything is a lot smaller than it seemed. You realise your headtacher is in fact not witty or at all amusing; you try hard to look past the talk of how many Spanish villas your parents could spend their money on if you had never been born, but really, you can't see beyond the cruelty of wishing away over a hundred teenagers when they are there to be rewarded. At the same time, you remember he did not hatch like that, and that he travels an hour home every evening to a family of grown-up kids. He's been there and done that, dreamt of Spanish villas. He sleeps at night, brushes his teeth with his eyes glued half-shut like the rest of us.

Most importantly, you end up realising the big thing you'd expected never to happen has come and gone, and now you have to find some other remote place in time to look towards with awe and resentment.

And he never did eat the bobble of his bobble hat.

In my hypothetical garage, there is a hypothetical punchbag for anger and frustration moments. If my whole family went at it for a week, it would fall apart.

I'm meeting new people with the shop tags still attached. Won't cut them off quite yet.

I need new things. A new room. New mattress. New coat of paint. New books and a new diary. The idea of a diary becomes more and more attractive every day. I discovered my old ones stacked at the bottom of my wooden box, but didn't pull them out. They are from the days when I was young and naive and emotional. I wouldn't stoop to such qualities today. They are full of meaningless sentences -

"I went for a walk today and then I came back and we ate lasagne and daddy shouted. We listened to classical music but it made me feel ill so I told him to switch it off and he was offended. School was boring. I don't sit next to Steff anymore even though I wished for it at the wishing well and tied a hanky to the branch. I also threw a coin in. My brother wished for the fire engine from Early Learning Centre."

It makes me want to be seven again.

But promoted by women?

“Oh, and we’ve some very special features every woman should appreciate” (By this, ‘handbag cover’ is meant). Excuse me? Aside from being slightly grammatically incorrect, the patronising tone drives me up the wall. Not to mention the glaring pink sequined halter-neck top, the pink nails, the pink hairslide, the pink lipstick and eyeshadow and the very in-your-face, false silver “bling” around both wrists, and dangling from earlobe to collarbone.

Now, what’s going on here? Is Sheila’s Wheels car insurance being promoted by, God forbid, men?? Men who think all women who drive and are looking for reasonably priced car insurance are so … overall pink and cheesy?

My mother held the proffered page (from Marie Claire) to her eyes and blinked. Several times, very fast. “Is this for real?” Yes, mother, this is for real. “Car insurance for pink women? A free box of tampons when you sign the contract?“ Almost.

The whole thing is toenail-curlingly embarrassing. It really makes me cringe, you know? The ad was on TV once, and I happened to be too far away to switch it off fast enough. I couldn’t watch, I really couldn’t. I adopted the foetal position and stopped my ears against the tirade of pink ladies grinning from ear to ear and proclaiming:
“For ladies who insure their caaaaaaaaaaars
Sheila's wheels are superstaaaaaaaaars“

OK, it’s a step towards “banning sexual discrimination in the insurance market”, but next time, a little less pink? And a little less ditzy? And a less annoying ad?

Or money for working?

It struck me today that I had never before fully grasped the concept of working for money. Before now, my parents,the marvelous beings that they are, (note the lack of sarcasm) have always given me "pocket money" for just being me, and have even gone as far to increase it by a certain amount after every birthday.

So now, I find out what it's really like. Toiling away and making mistakes and being shouted at and making new friends and aching all over and being so bloody nice all the time. Just for a bit of money. One of the nicest bits, of course, is the friends, who make you feel that little bit better when something goes wrong. You have a common goal with these people, and therefore you help each other. Which is nice.

I have been forced into compulsory situations all my life (i.e. eleven long long long years of education) without an immediate reward in sight, aside from gaining knowledge - which most of my age fail to see as a reward. Therefore, I am constantly surprised when I remember that I am not doing this because I have to. I am doing this for the money! Money for doing something as loathesome as being on my feet for eight hours and smiling and spilling red wine over white skirts.

So possibly the best bit of working is, so far, calculating how much money I will recieve in five days time.

Or the free biscuit I got today, eaten illegitimately in the store cupboard, choking on crumbs when the manager walked past. Perhaps he has a sniffer dog nose, and smelt the biscuit from afar.