Monday 21 May 2012

A Levels vs. My Life

Hey guys,
sorry I haven't posted in a while or even read or commented on anyone else's blogs for a while.
Today I realised my lack of attendance to the blog, so I've now decided to give in.
A Levels are my life now.
That is all I think about and all I do.
Revise-revise-revise.
I'm sure most of you have been there!
So I am signing off until the 18th of June when I finish everything and I can talk about the two performances just completed that day, the exams I will have finished and my fear/excitement of the change of life that is about to come.
I will also have a chance to properly start my book! Writing, I mean.
I am going to miss this small getaway but I will be back and ready to write!
I may be full of ideas as well, after my play which is set in 1720!


So, for now, fare thee well and may you prosper and keep posting :)
M. x

Tuesday 15 May 2012

The Lightning and the Lightning Bug

Thank you so much for putting up my post!
It's really exciting for me coz I'm relatively knew at this :)
Sorry, won't be making a new post for a while - I have a v. important exam tomorrow and there are more coming! :S I will post when I can :)
M. x

Monday 14 May 2012

18 year old M finds her immaturity.

Recently, I've been feeling very grown-up, being allowed to drink alcohol whenever I like, having very important exams very close by, having my friends drive me around in their cars...but you adults out there have to admit that we are all very juvenile at times...

So here is where my story begins...

The headmaster of my 6th Form College is my RS teacher...
He's very powerful in the school and you just don't get on his bad side. Maybe I was just feeling a bit rebellious today...
Anyways,
Last year, I didn't do so well in one of my exams and he decided that I would retake it. I decided that I wouldn't. He decided that he wasn't happy that I wouldn't so has been trying to convince me otherwise.

He says he knows me well (we usually get along) but he evidently hasn't worked out how stubborn I am yet!

I decided against doing the retake. This is my life. I am 18. I can make my own decisions.
But he won't listen and just keeps going on and on about it.
And today in the lesson, in front of the whole class, this is how the conversation went:

Head: So, M are you going to do the retake?


M: *M roles her eyes* No. I don't want to.

Head: Why?

M: Blah blah blah blah blah. (That's M saying all the reasons why which would take ages to explain and would bore you even if I tried).

Head: Well, I think you're making a mistake!

M: (*getting annoyed*) well I DON'T!

Head: Look, if I didn't think it was a good idea I wouldn't say it.

M: I didn't say you didn't think it was a good idea. I just don't think it'll help me in the slightest.

Head: (*he is known for being obsessed with university. Seems to think that is the only route in life*) It will help you get into University! It will help you get the grades you need!

M: So what? I'll probably have to reapply anyway because I changed my mind about what subject I want to study and, anyway, it will not kill me if I don't get an A.

Head: (*also getting annoyed*) But you might end up getting a C! (*shock horror!!!!!!*)

M: Okay, so I'll get what I deserve. I don't particularly care.

Head: (*eyes widen in complete and utter horror at my words*) Fine. You be stubborn. Good luck with your exam. I won't bring this up again!

So then M got a bit childish and, just coz she knew it would irritate him, she says

GOOD! 

while staring right into his eyes, in a very childish and immature way.

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say but M really didn't give a damn.


YOU DON'T SPEAK TO ME IN THAT WAY! I AM TRYING TO HELP!


The Head shouted.

M just stared into his eyes with a I do not give a damn kinda look while thinking You are not my father! You are not my father! He actually seems to think he is though which M finds kinda weird...

All this shouting made M laugh. Angry shouting from a teacher nearly always does. Even when it is the headmaster.She had to try desperately hard not to make it show in her eyes or to burst out into very loud laughter. Inside, she was squirming with the giggles:

Hehehehe! He shouted! hehehehe He's angry! hehehehe! He can't control his anger! hehehehehe!

M can be very childish at times.

She was meant to be taking this very seriously.

M didn't even say sorry. She just stared at him in the same way until he carried on with the lesson.
Man, M can be very stubborn sometimes!

So, that's my little story of the day!
The argument gave me such a good sense of catharsis that I spent the rest of the day in a very cheerful mood and I still am in a cheerful mood! I should be rude to him more often!!

Sunday 13 May 2012

BGT Final

Yes, I do watch Britain's Got Talent. Well, I only watch the finals...

I just need to get this out of my system...

Why did Pugsey win?? Yes, he's cute and a very clever dog, but seriously?
A dog beat Jonathan Antoine's voice?
What is the world coming to?
Anyone who hasn't heard Jonathan Antione's voice, just check this out!
His voice is just incredible for his age!
My Dad, a professional concert pianist and opera-singer teacher even agreed with me! And Dad really knows his stuff in this area. 
(I might as well give a shout out to my Dad's website in case anyone is interested: http://www.duolevinhancox.co.uk/index.html)

I thought RyaO'Shaughnessy was going to win, and when it was announced he wasn't in the top three, I was gutted! I love him to bits!

Well, now that that's out of my system, I can get some sleep!



Saturday 12 May 2012

So Whose The Techno Freak Now?

For the Lightning and The Lightning Bug:

My older brother has always been known as the one with all of the techno knowledge. When ever a techno-problem arose, we would always go to him. But then he left for the army and it's not so easy to get him to fix things for us over the phone, so I had to step up and help. Now, I can't say i'll ever be as technologically advanced and knowledgeable as he is, but I do know some stuff - like how to find things on a computer, which buttons mean what and so on. But, until the other day, I realised that my older brother had never witnessed this as, when ever he was on an army break, he would be the one we automatically turn to.
So the other day, I found him setting up a new remote control for the TV (our other one is broken).
He asked me,
"What else is there that needs fixing?"
And, without thinking, I started going off on one about the EXT link on the TV and which buttons I usually have to press to make the TV work again and all this complicated stuff that I probably couldn't even name now.
In that long sentenced of mine, I managed to sound exactly like he does when talking to IT friends. Most of the things I said were just words I had learned from seeing them so often, not from an understanding of what they meant. But he must have though I did understand them because in reply, he gave me a strange look, saying 
"WOW. I didn't know you could turn it on, let alone fix it!"
but, being his secretive self, he hid away this shock and carried on as if everything was normal.
It was then that I realised he had never known about my techno skills before.
It kind of made me feel good, that I could prove myself to him! But now I'm wondering whether it made him feel slightly redundant, despite his constant complaining that he's always helping us with the same problems...

M. x

Thursday 10 May 2012

Episodes

So I've just discovered that I have a serious mouth infection. And it hurts. A LOT. I'm on a lot of drugs for the next week so won't be feeling great!
I always find it funny when I go to the dentist.
You know those silly voices people put on when answering the phone?
"Ringmer Dental Practice. How can I help you?"
You can hear the voice when you read that, can't you?
Well, I find my dentists funny because it's as if the receptionist has used this voice so often, she can't seem to stop it! She speaks like that to you in real life! (opposed to just on the phone).
I always have to keep a straight face when she speaks to me.
I am not a child, woman! I am officially an adult! 
Well, I am legally an adult, but that doesn't mean I have to act like one!

Anyway, I named this post Episodes because I have realised that whenever I go to the dentists or the doctors for something, it's never something normal, like the flu.
Oh, no. I get something rare, something weird that no one in my family can even try to identify.
Okay, so my family are musicians, not doctors, but we know a little bit about which illnesses do what!
The last time I went to the doctors was because I had found a cyst behind my eyelid!
I have  big problem with my eyes. Whenever my immune system is down, I tend to get either conjunctivitis or a sty. It's nasty, I know - but, for me, it's what comes with being ill.

Whenever I fall ill enough or in pain enough to go to the doctors/dentists, it's always like a very short episode in mine and my parents' lives. Everything starts off rather boring. Nothing is happening in my life. I'm reading, or something, because I have nothing else to do or because I'm bored of doing school work. And all of a sudden, something nasty pops up and I'm rushed to the local doctors, prescribed something, poked and prodded and then I'm back home, ill for a few days and weighed down with  specially prescribed drugs.

Today was one of those. Yesterday I woke up with serious mouth pain and just took a lot of pain killers, hoping it would go away. Today I woke up and it was WAY worse, so I was rushed to the dentists and now, of course, I am weighed down with drugs and trying to work out when I am free enough for it to be sorted.

When it hurts (when the pain killers haven't kicked in), it hurts so much, I can hardly talk, eat or concentrate on anything other than the pain! This must be the worst time to have this tooth pain, a week before my exams start! I'll just have to work through the pain! So, with all my exams staring me in the face, rather than just round the corner like they were last week, and this searing pain in my mouth, I, yet again, have got no further with my novel :(
I am desperate to write though! I used to say that if I could be given an 8 day week, I may be able to write it, but at the moment, that extra day would just be filled with work and revision.

All I can do is cross my fingers and hope that everything goes okay!
:S
M. x

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Damien Hirst Exhibition


All that stress I wrote about in last week's post seems to have just been a bad patch. Today I had quiet a cheery day!
Anyways, I promised a post on my trip to London!
Now, I am a downright country girl. London is a while away and bloody expensive to get to, so, as a general rule, I just don't go there. But when I do, it completely exhausts me and shoves in my face just how much I am a country bumpkin. Nevertheless, I find a trip to London incredibly exciting! (If it's only for a short while. Living there would be hell!)
So, Mum and I got to London Bridge with half an hour to get to the exhibition before our 'slot' closed to go in. (We had pre-booked.) We rushed around, attempting to work out how to get there, passing interesting things like some big church my mum once attended a wedding in, and some Victorian boat called The Golden Hinde. Apparently, it was amazing to have been able to look inside the church and see this boat I'd never heard of so I just took it as a very lovely, cultural experience!
As we got to Tate Modern, we found that the queue for the tickets was HOURS long, and began despairing until we quickly worked out that there was such a thing as a 'pre-booked tickets queue'!
Have you ever had that feeling when you get to walk right past a massive queue and groaning people and just go right in?
It was amazing! Now I feel mean to all those poor, already tired people, but hey! What could I do? So we collected our tickets and looked at the next daunting queue to see Damien Hirst's diamond skull. We decided to leave it for later. Yes. It was that bad!

We headed upstairs for the exhibition, and, soon enough, we were in! We saw a ping-pong ball hovering on the blowing air of a hairdryer (that must have taken years to balance!), - the same thing was found in a different room, just much larger, without a hair dryer and with a beach ball - a picture with Hirst smiling next to a dead head, lots and lots of dots and coloured pans on a wall and so on. For me, these were the things that didn't matter so much.
Dots. (Notice how they are not centered!)
Dead Head
Hairdryer













(I couldn't find a picture of the beach balloon.)
Other stuff included A Thousand Years:

The white box is where flies are born. The cow's head is real. The flies then eat the head and die in the same enclosure. It is there for us to see the life cycle. 


It's quite nasty, isn't it? But the ideas behind it are fascinating! He does other weird things, like animals in formaldehyde:

This is one of his most famous pieces.
















He also does a cow and calf divided in two. You can walk between the two sides and see the real insides of the animals.


Some argue that this is not art, it is just science. But Damien Hirst knows this! What I love about him is that he does modern art to take the piss out of if. His dots are done by someone else so that art critics ask what is behind the painting, when all it is are dots (and a mocking tone to those analysing!)
Hirst is brilliant and incredibly clever!
I admit, some of the stuff he does is quite disgusting.
For example, a circular canvas of dead flies...

He also made what looks like stain glass windows out of butterfly wings:

and one of the rooms of the exhibition was full of live butterflies! I'm not very good with butterflies but I decided to test myself instead of sitting back comfortably my whole life, so I went inside. When I say I'm not very good with them, what I mean is, they pretty much terrify me. I hate moths. They are horrid things. Surely people can understand that? So why are butterflies any different? They are just prettier!
So I went inside this room, which had a quick escape root on the other side if needs be. Imagine going into a room full of one of your worst nightmares! (My WORST would have been spiders. If that were the case, nothing would have been able to drag me in there). Mum wouldn't go in because she hates them as much as spiders.
When I went in, I wasn't really ready for their size! These things were MASSIVE! English butterflies may reach the size a small coaster, but these were dinner plate butterflies!
They flew by my face, my feet and even landed on people!
My worst fear is getting live things stuck in my hair. Of all the nasty things in the world, my two biggest fears are spiders and wasps. When I was little, I got a wasp stuck in my hair and since then, I've always had some paranoia that something is stuck, I just can't feel it.
So there I was, having a mini panic attack in the middle of the room, with everyone else casually strolling about with butterflies clinging onto them.
I lasted a minute. But I was proud of myself! I didn't back out at the entrance - I went in! I didn't just run straight for the exit - I stuck with it for as long as I could bear! And I felt tested. My heart was beating from fear and adrenaline and I felt I had got what I had wanted from the experience!

The rest of Hirst's stuff was hugely fascinating, such as this:


and, of course, this:

but I'd seen the skull before and nothing else had affected me quite as much as the live butterflies!
Damien Hirst is, overall, wonderful because he discusses religion, life, death, modern art, beauty and the comodification of art. He's a genius, he's intelligent and he's funny and I am a huge fan.

(The reason why I say this so directly is because when we got back, we got into a debate with some friends about whether Tracy Emin - who I really don't like - or Damien Hirst is a better artist. It got me quite het up...)


I hope this taught you something about artistic brilliance!
M. x

Monday 7 May 2012

Stress

I didn't know things could get anymore stressful!
With my A Levels just round the corner, and a relatively difficult life at home, I thought this was all I could take.
But the stress just gets worse and worse, and along with it comes those unhappy thoughts about the past, present and future. The other day, I just realised that when I go to university, I won't be seeing my little brother whenever I like. I don't see him that much anyway, but I think he is what keeps me sane. I get to unleash my imagination with him without him thinking I'm weird. I get to be fascinated by lego star wars models and pictures of frightening monsters he draws.

This weekend I went round to Dad's for dinner because it was Dad's birthday and discovered that my little brother had taken time to contribute something towards the novel project. It was brilliant.

My little brother is an all-rounder. He plays the cello and can sing, is brilliant at writing and has a brilliant imagination. He's good at Cricket and Rugby. He knows everything there is to know about animals and just gets science (unlike me!). He understands things like atoms and he's only ten! He knows everything about the Tudors and every other bit of history and I don't even know the order of the different periods! He just got a scholarship and a 100% bursary to one of the top grammar schools in England, saving us £50,000!

But when I go to university, I'll lose touch. I won't know what interests him anymore. He'll start to fancy girls and I won't be there to coach him! He may not like history anymore and I won't know! It'll start with long phone calls about life at uni but they'll get shorter and shorter as our lives become more distant.

I need him. He is the only functioning brother I have. My twin is disgustingly rude and nasty most of the time and my older brother is away in the army most of the time. When he's on leave, it's all very lovely but there's nothing really to talk about. We have nothing in common. Now that I think about it, we never did have much in common.

My little brother is one of my best friends as well as a brother. He looks up to me and keeps me going because I want to show him that you can continue with life, no matter how hard it gets. I want to show him how to deal with school without being bullied. Just stay under the radar and try not to get noticed, that's how I do it. I worry that he'll be too cocky, thinking he's the most intelligent in the class, when he's not. The more intelligent ones will be keeping quiet.

All this depressing talk must be very boring, but it's what's going through my mind at the moment and everything that goes through my mind seems to end up on this blog at some point. I like to see this blog as a diary. But not a diary that nobody reads and ends up being thrown in the bin; a diary in which I can get advice and share my thoughts, and, perhaps, help others to realise that they are not alone.

Everyone seems to have similar thoughts about things; similar worries, similar upsets. The only difference in people is the way they go about showing it.

So with all this on my mind and A Levels I should be revising for at this very moment, things really couldn't get any harder. Right?

At my Dad's birthday dinner last night, the dog came in limping terribly. There was no thorn in her foot or surface wound but she did not look happy. We phoned the vet and they reckon it's just a sprain, but there is a chance that it is broken.

Now, I know this is hardly as big as my worries around my relationship with my little brother and so on, but it just gives our family more stress than it needs. With little money anyway, we really can't pay for an x-ray for the dog! Vets are expensive these days!

I guess I should be looking forward to going back to London tomorrow. I've never really been one for cities - they're took big and bustly for me - but I do like to go and look at art with Mum. It'll be a Mum/Daughter day out in London. I live in thick countryside so, for me, going to London for the day is almost as big as it would have been in Jane Austen's times. Okay, so we're spending a few hours there, not a few weeks, but it is exciting for me! Life is so plain and boring at home. Everyone thinks it must be heaven living in the countryside. In truth, it's boring as hell when you get to 18, desperate to get out and have a life.

Well. I'll report on tomorrow's exciting trip!
M. x

Saturday 5 May 2012

Update on My Button

I have finally got my button (almost) fully working!
I feel like such a techno genious, thanks to Jeremy Ross at The Lightning and The Lightning Bug!
http://www.onceandfuturegeek.com/ He told me how to do it... but this is a big step for me!
I'm considered the one to ask for tech-help in my house hold, seeing as my computer genius brother has disappeared off to the British Army (though he's back for the next 10 days!!). 
But this was something I just couldn't get my head around!
So, to anyone else out there who's new to the whole computer text thing, here are some people and websites who may be willing to help!!
http://photobucket.com/ - this is where you can create your own button
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_textarea.asp - and this tells you have to make your own confusing computer text and gives the link which gives your button the little link underneath it (so that other's can use it on their pages). This is what I was struggling with yesterday.

So, my button is pretty much sorted...except... my small amounts of OCD now kick in...it annoys me that it doesn't fit perfectly in line under my button! >:(
Irritating.
M. x

Friday 4 May 2012

My Button!

Hey guys!
I just worked out (after a lot of research and complications) how to make a button!
Well, all I've got so far is a button that links to my page, I'm not sure how I'm meant to get that link underneath it that everyone else seems to have for their buttons,
so if you want to add it to your blog (which I sure wouldn't mind!) just put this:

<a border="0"href="http://http://fantasystoryproject.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank"><img src="http://http://i1159.photobucket.com/albums/p630/exodus238/flowerhair-1.jpg?t=1336161484.jpg" /></a>

in the 'caption' bit and everything else should be as straightforward as usual!
I would say "ask me if you need help" but, I'd probably just confuse you even more even if I did know how to solve the problem...
M. x

Thursday 3 May 2012

A-Z Reflections Post


How was the A-Z for me?
 Well, it was stressful, of course. I set myself the target of doing one post a day, but sometimes that didn’t work out as well as I had planned...
I had also said to myself that I would continue with my normal blog at the same time which became practically impossible. Lastly, I promised to my readers that each A-Z post would somehow feature something to do with my novel project and, although I managed this for most of my posts, I was definitely scraping the barrel a lot of the time.
However, I found the challenge really fun as I had to really use my brain to make the posts even mildly amusing. I also found my now favourite blog:
She is just HILARIOUS!
I don’t really know what else to say about it, other than it made me addicted to blogging! Everyone says they’ll only post once a week and so did I, until I realised I was addicted to it!
I love to let my thoughts out and now that I’ve found The Lightning and The Lightning Bug,
I have discovered the joy of making up a story as you go along! I have found a way of undoing my writer’s block!
Okay, slightly off topic, here, but this is all thanks to the A-Z Blogging. Because of my frequent searches for other A-Zing blogs, I discovered something brilliant that helps to get my mind away from the horrible, stressful world of exams!
M. x

'The Last Time' Writing Prompt

I've written this for The Lightning and The Lightning Bug:
http://thewriteandthewrongword.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/flicker-of-inspiration-prompt-49-last.html


The last time..........


The last time I went to Dawnie’s was when the rain began. It fell like it would never fall again. But that was a lie. Because it would. The ast time I went to Dawnie’s was when the world turned upside down. The last time I went to Dawnie’s was the last time I’ll ever go to Dawnie’s. It’s not Dawnie’s anymore, it’s owned by a new girl called Rachel. She’s not like Dawnie. She’s normal, not quirky. She doesn’t make me laugh, she makes me sad. She makes me sad because every time I see her, I remember what happened to Dawnie.
It was on a cold, December morning – I’m not entirely sure of the date. Dawnie and I were 17 at the time. Dawnie had a lovely boyfriend called Jack who had messy brown hair and gorgeous eyes. He and I had always been quite good friends, but not friends of that sort, if you know what I mean, so I was okay that Dawnie and he were together. In fact, they both deserved people as lovely as each other. Anyway, Jack was at his Dad’s house at the time, a good few hours away, so I decided to keep her company. 

We organised a sleepover and then I packed everything I’d need straight away; toothbrush, pyjamas, change of clothes etc. I stuffed it into a rucksack, hauled it onto my back, left a message for my parents on the kitchen table and cycled over. Mum and Dad both had full time jobs in London, an hour from where we live, so in the Christmas Holidays they weren’t home all that much.
As I reached Dawnie’s house, a small blue cottage, with perfectly cut hedges and lovely flowerbeds, I found her mother working outside on the garden.

“Hey, Kate!” I said. Her parents were like second parents to me. They both worked at home, so I saw them more than my own parents.

“Hey Steph! Dawnie’s in her room upstairs”. She said, a big smile on her face.

“Thanks” I said, mumbling, noticing it had just started to rain. I raced up the stairs to find Dawnie tidying her bedroom. A few years back, she had decorated her bedroom walls with the map of the world. She had always dreamed of travelling everywhere and living in some place other than England.
Dawnie has pitch-black hair that fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were green and had a sparkle of life in them. She had a sharp jaw line and feline features. Her hair was thick and luscious and had always made me jealous.

For the next few hours, we sat and chatted about life. Well, you know – all the things teenagers chat about. Boys, people at school, lessons, exams, driving tests and so on. It was only when her mum came upstairs to tell us that Dinner was ready that we noticed the rain outside. It fell like no tomorrow! Buckets upon buckets slapped at the pavement. I started to wonder how it would feel having that land on you.
We went down to Dinner, a very normal dinner, as the thunder started to growl. It was right above us. I’d always loved thunderstorms – they had some power to them, a sort of natural beauty, shown and heard right above you that you couldn’t escape. But, somehow, this had a different nature. The thunder growled like it was truly angry – like it was truly taking revenge, and the lightning struck like it was defending something truly precious – its baby, perhaps.

Dawnie and I sat up for hours, watching the battle from her bedroom window seat. Through the reflection in her window, I could see her eyes sparkling with delight. There was something natural in Dawnie – something that told me she’d easily spend a day in a forest rather than her bedroom. She had a sort of fire-like quality about her. Something I always wished I had. She suddenly leaped up, made a noise like the thunder and made a full-scale attack on me. I was knocked backwards onto the floor and, laughing, I wrestled her off. We decided to go to bed, as it was 11:30 now. But that night I couldn’t go to sleep, so I just lay there, listening to the ferocious noises coming from outside, wondering what the thunder was so angry about.
I held a fascination in the noises; desperate to join them in their fight; a strange, innate need to express my natural side, instead of lying in the luxurious man-made bed, with warm man-made covers and man-made pyjamas.

Dawnie slept on soundlessly. The thunderstorm had hardly affected her compared to the way it had affected me. In fact, she seemed bored with it by the time we went to bed that night. I watched her sleep peacefully, hardly daring to breathe, in case I woke her from natural sleep.

At last, the light began to shine outside, but there was something different about it this time. It seemed more like a lamp light had been switched on to illuminate the world within her room. I tiptoed across the room and opened the curtain to peer outside. Although I knew it was morning, it looked like a giant torchlight had lit up the road and houses outside. The dark alleyways inbetween houses were dark with shadows, while the main road was lit. It was still raining like the clouds were releasing everything they had ever stored. I looked to Dawnie as she blinked her eyes open. She sat up and looked at the digital clock on her bedside table before registering me standing by the window looking at her.

“Look at this” I whispered. My voice seemed to have gone and had been replaced with a strange sort of awe.

She stumbled over to the window and blinked furiously as the light hit her eyes. She studied it for a while then looked at me.

“Weird!” was all she said. Just weird. She galloped down the stairs to the kitchen with me in tow. Her mum was downstairs preparing breakfast with a disturbed look on her face.

“Have you seen it outside? It’s...very odd” she said to us both. We nodded in reply. I nodded with a confused expression on my face, while Dawnie’s looked excited.

“I want to go out in it!” She exclaimed as she rushed to the main door and pulled on her willies.

“Dawnie, please don’t! You’ll get soaked!” said Kate, laughing at her daughter's rashness.

Dawnie didn’t listen. Oh, how she should have listened! That silly, impulsive girl! Oh, who am I to kid? I loved her crazy impulses.

Once she had her raincoat on, she raced outside, trying to find the source of the light.
“Her father didn’t come home last night.” Kate said, suddenly appearing by my ear. I stared to look at her, finally understanding her look of distress. “He always comes home...” She looked close to tears.
“It’ll be fine, he probably got stuck somewhere in the driving rain.” I reassured her, looking straight into her eyes to show her I meant it. Dawnie’s Dad liked to visit his parents every Friday – it had become a sort of tradition.

Suddenly, her eyes flicked outside and she was screaming.

“DAWNIE! DAWNIE! Come back!” The rain was no longer rain. Small electric currents raced through the air and hit the ground with a hiss. It was almost as if the lightning had merged with the rain and become electric bits of hail!

In a strange way, the rain was kind of beautiful. Our brains couldn’t pick up quick enough what they actually were until they had hit the ground and burned out. They were small lumps of rock, like lava from a volcano. Blue and white streaks, racing to the ground, like tiny little comets with blue fire.

“Dawnie!” I shouted, “Come back inside! Please!” hysteria now in my voice and my body ready to run to her aid.

Dawnie’s face no longer held excitement. She was terrified. She was tucked under the small shelter of the doorstep in front of the opposite house. The mother who owned the house poked their noses through a gap in a curtain in alarm. Ready to take the run, Dawnie began to sprint across the road, a sense of determination in her face. And all of a sudden, a huge rock came flying to the ground, where she had been only seconds before. All around her they fell as she dodged and dived, her clothes now almost shredded and her skin red and raw. Every time the rock landed, the earth shook with the force. It was a meteor shower, headed for Earth.

In a split second – a small moment in which her cat-like instincts had become distracted – she was burned to the ground. The image is bright in my mind. A meteor landed just by her feet and she was caught in its fire. All that was left was ashes. She had burned in seconds. I don’t recall feeling shock, like they would in the movies. I didn’t even scream or cry. I don’t recall feeling anything. It never really registered in my brain. One second she was there, and another...she was not. Those beautiful green eyes were lost to me forever. I stood, frozen. Her mother stood beside me, also frozen. She was the first to break free.

“I can’t live without her.” She said to me, no tears in her eyes, no expression in her face and no tone in her voice. And she walked out into the rain and waited till she, too, burned to the ground. I didn’t help her because she had told me not to in her expressionless words. She had told me to let her die. But I just watched. And I could live without her. I still do. Kate, my second mother, and Dawnie, my only sister, had disappeared right before my eyes, and I had just watched. I hadn’t thought about what those images would do to me. I just watched.

And that is why I never went back. Not because they died there, and not because that moment changed the world, but because the moment replayed over and over every time I drove through that road. When my wheels went over the path, I felt like I was killing them both all over again.

The rain finished after a few hours, and I made my way back to my house, dumb-stricken, to find it unharmed, as if nothing had ever happened. Piles of ashes and small, lava rocks the size of hail stones laid scattered around me. I stumbled inside and stared at my mother, who started shouting in my face, asking what had happened. I didn’t reply. I never did. I went upstairs and closed my mind, my heart, my soul off to the world.


Hope you liked it!
M. x

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Feeling Morose

So what has been distracting me from writing my novel recently?

Yesterday evening, I went on a school trip with my English class.
We went to see The Duchess of Malfi in London - and what a cultural experience it was!
Well, we got there a few hours early so went to Tate Modern for a bit, in which I had the chance to see Damien's Hurst's Diamond Skull. (not entirely sure what its official name is).
It is an incredible thing. Well, for me it is. For me, it is beautifying on death - a very controversial idea. Also, the fact that it is so famous made it incredible - I was just thinking, WOW...this is the actual thing! They are actual diamonds!

We had to walk into a pitch black corridor and turn right. But the darkness was so penetratingly dark, it was hard to tell when to turn right. It made you rely on your own senses, an instinct I have been desperate to grapple at, as I said in an earlier post (for The Lightning and The Lightning Bug). I found this nasty at first, as I am not a huge supporter or pitch blackness, but exhilarating once I worked out that my body had instantly started to use is instinctive senses!
If anyone reading this is in London right now, I strongly advise you to have the experience! (It is the main exhibition piece in Tate Modern at the moment).
Upon turning right, a bright light hits your eyes, and you see the skull it a lit up box, glittering with an incredible quantity of real diamonds. I love this piece of art, yes, I do think it is art, because what I saw was incredible beauty on something dead. It was so beautiful, I could hardly tear my eyes off it!
I was hoping to see the rest of the Damien Hurst exhibition, but we were running out of time and it cost £15.

Now, there are some girls in my English Class you are the typical college cows. Those you find in films like Mean Girls or Never Been Kissed. Yes. They do exist. So, being an easily intimidated person, I dislike their company as many like me do. I was dreading having to eat in a restaurant with them because they'd be the incredibly lovely, outgoing, funny people (who just happened to be nasty to those they didn't like when those who they wanted to pander weren't around). However, luck unusually found me. They decided to go to Nando's while the rest of our class when to an Indian. There is one boy in our class who is incredibly lovely to me and a very good friend until those girls aren't around. So, with them gone, the teachers, him and I entertained those other quiet people with us. It was so much fun! Now, I'm not going to lie - we all like to be the centre of attention occasionally if we feel truly comfortable about it. And that's how I felt right then. Completely comfortable with having 8 eyes on me, chattering away.

So after a perfect meal out in London, we went to see The Duchess of Malfi in The Old Vic in London. This was one of the greatest plays I have ever seen! (Other than The War Horse which was truly, incredible.) The acting was marvelous and the plot just came alive in their hands! Sometimes, I watch a Jacobean play and don't understand what's being said because, it seems, neither to the actors, so I get bored and confused. But this was perfect.

So, overall, apart from the fact that I got to bed at 1:15am, after a long journey back home, it had been a perfect night.

It was today when it went all wrong. I was so tired, I felt ill, so at school, I slept on a sofa half the day, still felt ill when I had to go to lunch and feel ill now. Because my defencess were low, or perhaps because I was feeling more vulnerable all of a sudden, I felt judged left, right and centre. All of my ideas in my Drama class were dismissed, sniggered at or criticised. I felt ignored all day. And this is why I'm feeling morose. Life was on a high and then, like usual, took a turn for the worse.

Now, all I can do to make me feel better it to unleash this unwanted feeling onto  my online diary and hope that my readers to not get bored of my morose feelings. I am warning you, readers, this will either prevent me from writing anything in the next few days or will cause me to write tons of annoyingly depressing posts just to make me feel better.

So there we are. I'm feeling morose, ill and bloody tired! I need to wallow in my sorrows without being judged by anything. School girls are so immature to be acting as they do. They don't seem to take on their own agendas, they just copy the 'cool' people in films. Maybe we should pity them? Well, to tell the truth, I don't have the will power to do anything other than hate them right now.

I apologise for this sad post, but if there's anything you can think of to cheer me up, I assure you, it will not be a waste of time!

M. x