PERSONAL BLOG
Snakes on a Transcendental Plane
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Strangled sounds, girls and boys! One week until A Level results, and a torturous two until GCSE results. It's probably a little late to repent, but we can try. Extreme unction, anyone?
Speaking of sheep and goats, I continued my rather unplanned tour of the UK last week with a trip to Tenby, South Wales with three friends, where we stayed in a friend's holiday house (whom we left buried on the beach inside a sand sculpture of a fish) and had general larks.
On Thursday, we decided to build a tidal fort of significant eliteness. Shrewdly, some shrewd Welshpeople appeared behind us and built their very own miniature citadel of compacted sand, then proceeded to sit on it and boast that theirs would last longer than ours as the tide came in. To the gentleman who had made this claim, who bore a not unnoticeable resemblance to a shrew, we politely pointed out that this was because their fort was, ingeniously, ten feet higher up the beach than ours.
During this speech someone must have inadvertently dropped a gauntlet because he retorted with the challenge that our fort could not last 45 minutes. Insulted, we sprang back to work while he and his colleagues sat on their sandbank chuckling quietly. The structure of our tidal defense system was an exquisite piece of engineering. It initially consisted of a waist-high wall surrounding a cental hole in which the four of us could pose heroically, but in time and with the assistance of passing children was transformed into a towering acropolis of moats, canals (leading to the other party's fort of course) and turrets.
Needless to say, we succeeded, although there was a slight disagreement about the use of illegal building materials, which may have included the earnest little boy who formed part of our front wall.
In other news, this Sunday I will be off to London for my third excursion into the Real World (or: work experience at a stockbroking firm), where people allegedly earn money and drink coffee and things. I'm hugely excited, especially as I now have a suit and several copies of The Economist with which to disguise myself should I wish to engage in any broking, brokering, breaking or crafty combination of the above. I can just imagine the headline on Tuesday's FT: "Economy in Turmoil as Schoolgirl Shouts 'Sell! Sell! Sell!' on Trading Floor".
posted by Katy : 5:59 PM
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Scouts in Kilts
Monday, July 31, 2006
'What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.' - Jane Austen
Back from Scotland! And permit me to risk losing half my readership (well, I always find it easier writing to only one person anyway) by venturing that it was bloody hot.
For the first three days we simmered lightly in an apartment in Edinburgh, then on Wednesday we proceeded to be baked in Loch Rannoch Hotel until Friday's eventual, ahh, rinsing. After giving up trying not to look like tourists we blazed our usual trail of (respectably) wanton destruction across the district, rampaging through the placid hamlet of Dull (I know! But they'd obviously seen us coming, as there wasn't a photographable "Welcome to Dull, Scotland's Liveliest Village" sign in sight), running amok at Dewar's World of Whisky, and storming Blair Atholl Castle with the aid (some manuscripts: "subsequent to having caught a glimpse") of a regiment of kilted Scotch Scouts.
And in the evenings I, erm, lounged around at the hotel reading trashy 1940s novels and putting overpriced drinks on the room tab, the latter of which I now consider to be the best invention since sheep themselves.
At one point I decided that it would be unforgivably recusant to return to England without at least sampling the local specialities, so I ordered a small portion of haggis. While it was brewing, my parents informed me that it might be served with "neeps".
This I found a little worrying. Embarrassed to show up my unfamiliarity with Scots dialect by asking what a neep was, an image formed in my mind, as it often does, of some fluffy, adorable little rodent grotesquely recontextualised as a side garnish to my dinner.
I was thus a bundle of nerves until the dish finally appeared, served stylishly with a few mixed leaves. The mystery remains unsolved as to what happened to the unfortunate neepies; nevertheless, it was an excellent haggis.
Thus endeth the family holiday, and now it seems I'll be languishing in languid liberty for the next five weeks. Before Scotland I completed the second out of three placements in my somewhat unprecedented work experience marathon (working title: Operation Karoshi), which was work in a piano repair shop, and was great fun. It's true: I've marred my delicate pianist's hands (not to mention my elegant violist's hands and some nimble organist's hands I like to keep around the place) sanding Yamahas. I may even have developed some muscle! How... inelegant.
Music: Mumm-Ra - Song B
posted by Katy : 6:23 AM
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Extremity
Friday, July 07, 2006
On my right arm, covering about half the circumference of my wrist, there is a spectacular multicoloured bruise. It is a masterpiece of rainbow shades. But for the dubious protests of Dignity, I'd post a picture for you all to marvel at.
This, along with a discount voucher and several pocketfuls of mud, was a souvenir from Saturday morning's outing (clicky and guess which one is me), in which I and eight guys shot high-speed paintballs at a team of sixteen burly men (one can assume the burliness helped in some way) until they caught on to what was happening and shot back at us with inexplicably larger guns. Thankfully the fact that I was at least four inches shorter than anyone else there meant that I was exempt from human shield duty, though this didn't prevent me from somehow ending up in a burnt-out helicopter surrounded by smoke from a grenade that had been intended to mask our entry but in fact served only to make sure that we couldn't see the approaching enemy until we were completely besieged. *grins* It was extreme.
And what better way to round off the day than with a jolly Cathedral evensong? For the three Anglicans who weren't watching the football, it must have seemed a rather unusual service. In attendance were the boys of Wells, the boys and girl of Exeter (yes, I know) and a confused, suicidal seagull which insisted on launching itself at the ceiling during the intercessions.
The choir was obscene, spilling out of the stalls, and I won't even start on the amount of ecclesiastical bling sported by the Wells boys: is it really necessary for the Head Chorister's medal to be as big as his head?
Of course, the reason that I was able to attend five such shindigs (the church services, not paintballing, actually) last week is that we are now appallingly and inalterably free. In the hazy stupor of liberty I have forgotten even when we finished our GCSEs, and school obligations have been swept away by a volatile book-a-day habit and all-night stop-outs at the organ. Aside from the sheer extremity of my life at the moment, however, one thing continues to bother me. I am a hugely sentimental person, as everyone I shot in the head on Saturday knows, and it has struck me that at this moment, I know the most about Biology, Chemistry, Greek, and Edexcel's novel interpretation of the English Language that I ever will. My sympathy goes out to any other victims of life's temporal fascism who have had to drop subjects they like. O senility! I can already feel my brain disintegrating!
Excuse me while I go and revise.
Music: Queen - I'm Going Slightly Mad
posted by Katy : 1:23 PM
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On Stripy Socks: a Triptych
Thursday, May 18, 2006
1:40 pm Today, my socks are not entirely black.
For, about me rages five years' worth of mutiny: overhead are hurled those hateful jumpers, over-knee are torn the abhorrent skirts. Anyone caught without at least eight obscenities on their blouse must promptly be reprimanded, perhaps slapped on the wrist a little, and then treated to a thoracial biology lesson. With fishnets and freckles bedecked we hold the uniform's long-awaited valediction. Good Lord! I'm wearing trainers.
2:04 pm The adornment has escalated to what the authorities have deemed biologically unstable levels: through both my considerable skills in espionage and my naturally conservative dress sense, I have only just managed to escape from a staff quarantine of the year 11 corridor. No-one is allowed in or out without first removing all make-up, rolling their skirt down over their knees and putting on as many layers as are necessary to obscure the writing on their shirt. I've never before seen the school engaged in this degree of self-censorship. What a wonderfully literal cover-up.
3:31pm Well, exam time has come back around faster than a 5kg mass being swung in a 4.3 metre radius with constant centripetal force, and, consequently, faster that I seem to be able to make up suitable metaphors for it: one wouldn't think it but behind the festivities of what is now almost officially called "muck-up day" dwells the terrible fear that in these next few weeks we will be pitted against every other 16-year-old in the country, and that from here on we are alone. We've outgrown, at last, in our own wonderfully Freudian way, youth's snug uniformity.
In other news, I hear there's a party downstairs. Continuari.
posted by Katy : 3:31 PM
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Derision
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Partial though still threatening GCSE exam papers. v.t. To frustrate the hopes of; disappoint. Verily it is so, devoted reader(s). After a week's crushingly procrastinatory half term holiday, the unterdruckt girls of year 11 will return to ten days of pure mockage. And no, I haven't started my revision yet. Someone give me glandular fever. Please.
It's actually quite an interesting thing to watch. The classroom's conversation has turned from discussions of the drink of the cursing classes to what can only be described as "work", and I'm not talking socio-economically here. Behold! Steinbeck is read, verbs conjugated, Soviet Russia discussed, all with terrifying sincerity quite unknown to our lunch hours. My God, it's almost like a school in there.
The Cathedral service last week was a wild rave, as is usual with Candlemas Eucharist. Before I begin, I'd like you to imagine the worst possible environment to try to sight-sing in. Mine comes pretty close to a dark, cold, distractingly beautiful cathedral in which there is a crazy guy swinging incense around the place and for the supposed decorum of which you are wearing overpolished charity-shop shoes which will never fit, regardless of how much tissue paper you stuff them with. Nevertheless, we sang satisfactorily, or so the choirmaster indicated by not shouting at us afterwards.
But more about the crazy incense guy. Even for the High Church, this amount of incense is straying pretty far into Catholic territory, and I don't know who invited this guy, but he seemed to feel the need to shake the incense holder in a slightly threatening way at the congregation at points of no particular importance in the service. He also got rather involved in the acrobatics of suspending a jar by a chain during the procession and started swinging it round his head like he was going to pitch it at the altar in an attempt to break the world myrrh-hurling record...
And all seems to be well at the comparatively Low Church, except for two disastrous events, both of which can be attributed to the unexplained lack of heating. One is that the organ pipes have gone out of tune. This would be fine if they were all out of tune to the same degree, but, alas, each member of the choir has several different pitches to choose from, and of course does. The second, far more worrying, occurrence is the disappearance of Custard the church cat. The probationers are practically losing sleep. Is it too cold? Is he ill? Has he forgotten about us? Where are you, Custard? The church needs him, if only because he makes up a fifth of the typical Evensong congregation...
Music: Kate Bush - p
posted by Katy : 10:07 PM
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