Day 155

It's a tradition in my family to put the Christmas decorations on the first Sunday of December. Every year, come rain or shine. Or snow. Just kidding, it never snows.

Ever.

So that made two days ago the nominated day for decorations - namely the Christmas tree. What caught my attention was not the sparkly tinsel, the baubles or the as-ever-non-existant fairy, but looking inside the tree. Inside our artificial Christmas tree is like a new world - there are metal bars everywhere (I swear, it doesn't even try to be realistic) all arranged in different levels.

You may not know that I played with my Barbies up until an embarrassingly late age. Up to the age of eleven, twelve even, I constructed houses and lived increasingly elaborate plotlines with my old Barbies, until finally I realised that computer games were a far more effective way to spend my time.

Through the childlike eyes of imagination, every year the huge Christmas tree seemed like a castle, with its many floors and pretty style of interior decoration. It was a little spangly, to be sure, but who was I to complain? A fortress was a fortress.

So every year about ten Barbies became the extra decorations, posed near the top (sunbathing) or balanced carefully on the bars (cooking). My parents, parhaps a little embarrassed or alarmed at me playing with childrens' toys whilst taking my GCSEs, never mentioned them. They were unspoken, unacknowledged, but always there. The elephants in the, er, Christmas tree.

I'm a little relieved to say that I haven't played with my Barbies for at least three years. But I'm tempted to put them back in the Christmas tree, y'know, just for old times's sake.

Merry Christmas if I don't remember to blog before then!

Day 124

Every time I read back an earlier post, it sounds utterly terrible. This one will sound terrible when I read it back next time I come back here. Ah well. At least nobody reads this blog so I'm not too embarrassed.

So, this week, this week... I still haven't snapped out of my daydream crazy mood. Am starting to think it's a teenager thing. Something that's definitely a teenager issue is the spot the size of Brazil that's appeared on my face. Ah well. I can hide behind my huge photography sketchbook (that I still haven't completed) until it goes down.

School is getting completely crazy. Apart from the sketchbook, I'm reading french texts, finally getting to grips with calculus and trying to get my head round crazy physics. If this is what A Levels are like, what would a degree be like? In fact, what will I take a degree in? Will I even take a degree at all?

Oh, speaking of which, another qualification is coming up: my Diploma in Performance of the Violin. It couldn't be more different to the grades. For my grades all I had to do was the pieces, a few scales and tests, and that was it. Now I have to write a bit about the pieces and have a well-informed discussion with the examiner... which is scaring me a bit. I'm not informed at the best of times, but writing the programme isn't actually that bad. I've been instructed to make it as interesting as possible, so I'm doing research only on the bits that I find the most interesting. One of my pieces was composed when the composer was my age! Well, now that's written down it doesn't seem quite so interesting, but it was quite a revelation when I first saw it.

So yeah. I'm going to go have dinner, and then carry on whatever that hell I was doing before I started writing this. Happy fireworks night, by the way.

Day 112

It's half-term! I've survived seven whole weeks of A-Levels! All I can say is, the holiday hasn't come soon enough. If I can call it a holiday with all the homework I've got.

The work has definitely stepped up. In GCSEs, I went to school, dozed through lessons, went home and got on with my day. Now I have to work?! That wasn't part of the deal! No, really, I'm coping... just. I have an hour or two of homework per day, which I get done during my frees mostly. I can't concentrate at home.

Problem is, my teachers appear to be employing the same tactic some did last year. I used to have one teacher who moved deadlines forward and piled on the pressure to get more work out of us. Now, I'm not saying that all of my teachers are doing that, but a couple are telling us we need to come to the classroom during holidays, before and after school in addition to the homework. That would be absolutely fine with me the week before the exam, but in the autumn? Really? I can't put that much time into all four of my subjects, it's a physical impossibility. And on top of all that, I'm only going to be sixteen once.

So how to spend my sixteenth year if not studying? Well, getting scared silly would be a start. For an early halloween celebration, me and my friends went to a scary halloween event last night. I thought at the time it was a crazy idea, because I'm the biggest wimp you'll ever meet. I'm scared of the dark, I'm scared of mirrors in the dark, I'm scared of things under my bed - and I sleep in a high sleeper. There's a sofa under my bed: ample room for a serial killer/axe murderer/creepy little girl. I knew I should have reposted that chain email. But it turns out the event wasn't that bad. I walked round the creepy cottage, through the dark mineshaft etc without too many traumas. I did freak out in a room with a man with a chainsaw, but then who wouldn't? And there was a sticky moment involving a vampire who said "blonde" instead of "blood". Luckily I'm ginger.

I can't believe I've written all this and not mentioned the thing foremost in my mind. So in an abrupt change of subject: I'm going to Paris. For two nights. Woop. My parents maintain that we're going so that I can improve my French ahead of the A Level I'm going to take in the summer. I reckon they just wanted an excuse to go to Paris. Either way, we're off the day after tomorrow. I'll get to reacquaint myself with the Eurostar and hopefully try and speak a little French. Problem is, in a tourist-centred place like Paris everybody speaks English. When I go on school trips to France and try to speak French, people notice my (apparently - I can't tell) strong English accent and reply in perfect English. It is of course very considerate of them, but it perfectly defeats the object.

So anyway. Tomorrow. Packing. And youtubing: that obsession still hasn't run its course. Am now living in a daydream fantasy land in which I am a successful youtuber. I have six million subscribers and never have to drag myself into work on a Monday morning. Dare to dream.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go count my twitter followers again. See you after Paris.

Day 93

So, things have started to settle down. Every day I panic about leaving late for school, run to school, arrive to lessons panting and attempt to concentrate for an hour. Sometimes two hours. Double lessons are rough.

At home I lead a strange half-existance of youtubing, general internetting, eating and sleeping. I've only recently been really getting in to youtube. Only about a week ago did I discover the wonder that is vlogging, and the legends who post their crazy thoughts on youtube for the world to laugh at. Just kidding.

It seems amazing to me that someone can make a living from talking to a camera every day. I suppose if you have enough things to say, it's easy. And you can get famous - have you heard of Toby Turner? Since no-one's reading this, I can assume you haven't. He's pretty well-known not only in America, but over here. I linked to one of his videos on facebook and half my facebook friends commented saying how awesome he is.

Anyway. Watching all these vlogs gave me a slightly alarming idea: what if I could start vlogging? Maybe I have a huge untapped talent which is just waiting to burst out. As luck would have it, I had just bought a DSLR camera capable of HD video recording, so I set it up (with some difficulty - I thought tripods were supposed to be intuitive) and talked to the lens for a while.

And let me tell you, it felt weird. I've never really been on camera and I have no experience in video, so to have this blank lens staring at you is an odd experience. But it was therapeutic in a way, and as I babbled on about school and such I felt better... until I watched the video back.

Where did I get that stupid voice? And those hand gestures? I'm sure I had a stupid facial expression too, but I wouldn't know because I unwittingly cut my head off the top of the frame. I said "er" more times than I can count, and it was totally disheartening. I went to school that day and barely spoke, I hated my voice so much. I've now had time to think about it, and I reckon it's because I'm english. All these people I've been watching live in America, mostly LA. (By the way, watching those videos convinced me that the one day I visited LA last year was the only cloudy/rainy day in history.) So I pressed play, convinced that this normal american accent would come out; instead I realised that I have an incredibly posh RP voice with a hint of australian.

Ah well. I'll persevere with making videos, if only to record my current strange half-existance for the future me to dig out and laugh at someday. And maybe I'll read up on editing videos. Maybe being a photographer, video is the logical next step. Hm. Watch this space.

Day 85

Exactly three weeks later and things haven't really changed much. Physics is still physics, whichever angle you look at it from. One thing that has changed, however, is my opinion of my own wardrobe: never particularly good at the best of times, but after three weeks of trying to throw a decent outfit together for school every day, I've started to despair.

Such is the eternal problem for the non-uniform-wearer. No matter how hard we try not to, we all form impressions of people based on their clothes, right? So I should try to make my clothes as representative of myself as I can, right? Easier said than done. Not only do I have no idea how my personality translates into topsand trousers, but I genuinely don't know enough about fashion to confidently represent myself by way of clothing.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think I'm alone in this. Aside from the slavish followers of fashion, how many people have the time and/or money to spend styling themselves a la Gok? How I wish I could customise my old clothes and wear headbands with the confidence of the models, but I have a feeling those clothes would look strange in a Maths lesson.

So I seem to have fallen into a general pattern of jeans and boots, little tops and big cardigans. Which I actually find quite to my liking, especially as I walk through a forest and across fields on my way to school, so I need sturdy shoes. Morning dew on the grass is beautiful and perfect, but when I'm ploughing across my second wet field of the day and the icy water is sinking into my socks, I'm not quite so keen.

I'll keep up my routine of jeans and boots. It seems like the easiest option right now, but wait a minute - what happens when I run out of these? Must go, internet shopping sites are calling my name...

Day 64

Well, something went a little awry there. I haven't written a word for over forty days.

Truth is, I went on holiday, and after that nothing happened that was exciting enough to encourage me to write about it.

Something exciting did happen today, though. Today was the first day back at school. This is one of the most important days of the year, but it was even more important for me this year because having finished GCSEs, I started my A Level courses today.

All the teachers in charge of the A-Levellers at school took the time to impress upon us how Very Important the next two years were going to be. The work was going to get harder, the homework was going to increase and the teachers were going to get tougher. But I have to admit, all I could think about was all the shopping ahead of me; from now on, there will be no uniform.

Even though I'm staying at the same school, being in a completely different area of it was as alien as starting a new school. Plus, I've only had three lessons and the syllabus is looking difficult already. I guess I can only hope that everyone is feeling the same way, and things will get better.

Day 20

Many people today enjoy moaning about the superficiality of modern society. “Too much emphasis is placed on womens’ appearance these days,” they state, tears of nostalgia in their eyes. If asked, there are few people of a certain age who wouldn’t enjoy a quick trip back to the days long gone when no-one thought anything about anyone before a deep analysis of their true personality was carried out.

Despite being too young to feel nostalgic about any era, I fail to see exactly when there wasn’t any importance placed on appearance. In Tudor times, young ladies bleached their hair with sulphur and lead, then plastered it on their face with vinegar. Then they dropped poisonous belladonna into their eyes to make them look larger. This hardly compares to shelling out for a lash-lengthening mascara. Perhaps I’m exaggerating, but whenever someone harks back to ‘the good old days’ I can’t shake the feeling that not even they know exactly when these days were.

Besides, I don't think that judging people on their appearance is necessarily a bad thing. The person you just walked past in the street has put some effort into their appearance as a way of expressing themselves - saying something about who they are or what they believe in. Therefore, although being cynical is undeniably fun, harking back to a bygone era does grate on me a little. There are lots of things wrong with today, but superficiality isn't one of them.