The lady doth protest too much, methinks

I am DEFINITELY back now. That last dormant phase wasn't even shaken off by the "blog.co.uk misses you" email that should have shamed me back into action. The truth is, I've been shockingly stressed recently, to the degree that I couldn't even blog to help calm myself down half the time. And when I did it was on LiveJournal, because that's the one that I have tabbed on my browser!

I got my rejection letter from Oxford earlier. Even though I know that just last year they rejected 10 thousand applicants who I'm sure were mostly very good candidates, it's not all that comforting. I was sure I didn't mind, and that I'll be perfectly happy going to King's College London (now my top choice) but it's just...it's Oxford. And I was there and spoke to them and had a chance and I didn't make it.

I also got turned down from the Royal Academy and the Royal College, though that was mainly because I'd had flu the week before and hadn't played, and I'm not sure they realised that I'd actually been running a fever and throwing up (lovely!) rather than just a bad cold. I have 4 offers from Reading, Nottingham, Warwick and King's, and a reserve offer from Trinity college of music - I just have to wait for them to tell me if anyone's turned them down and if they decide to give the place to me. They'd better do it soon though, as soon as UCAS register Oxford's decision they'll want me to accept KCL etc. It's such a stupid messy balancing act!

Anyway, in other news everything is good. The clouds have just broken up a bit so I can see a bit of pretty sunset-ness on them and I'm going to the cinema later with Alex. Oh, and I even know what I'm doing for my English Lit and Ancient History courseworks, which is amazingly organised by my standards. Hell, I was even rereading the text earlier.

I've neglected this site shamefully. It's mainly because - dare I say it - there's more action on LiveJournal so I usually write on there. And I've been massively stressed what with university applications, boyfriend trauma etc. (Mainly ok now, I hope.) I did have my birthday on October 21st, so I'm finally 18. I still got sent out of a pub because I hadn't brought my ID. Oh the shame

Last night I didn't get to sleep till 3 worrying about Alex. He sounded so upset on the phone. I'm seeing him later and I hope it'll be ok. At least now I know he doesn't want to break up. That was my main worry but I'm still on edge. Fucking hormones, probably.

Gracious Lordy Lawks a Mussey, it's 5 past 3 and I've not eaten yet today. No wonder I'm hungry. Must dash.

Oh yes and I got a merit in my Grade 8 horn exam

I've just got back from tour, with West Sussex County Youth Orchestra. Overnight travel, 27 hours on the coach overall, for some reason passing through Austria, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. As far as I know that's not the most efficient way to to do it, but our coach drivers were not exactly the cream of the crop. We managed to get lost and do a half hour detour going back towards the town we stayed in, Villach, when trying to get to Slovenia for an evening concert.

This tour was great in one way, because I made more new friends than I might have done in a smaller group - we are about 85, I think, which means there's always someone new to talk to - but on the other hand it also cemented my views about a certain percussionist, (who spent 3 hours yelling from the back of the coach, at least 75% of all his sentences containing c*nt, a***hole and other miscellaneous obscenities that weren't even amusingly deployed, and then shouted at my friends and I for talking quietly because he wanted to sleep) and also showed me how glad I am that I won't really be seeing a couple of people who have now left because they are too old. Unfortunately one of the leavers is actually lovely and I've only ever talked to him on this tour. It's a pity I won't get to know him or a couple of others any better. I did also make friends with a couple of people who are the same age as me, for once, and so won't leave before me. I tend to make that mistake quite frequently.

We did go to some nice places, though our lake swimming was cancelled because the water was apparently dangerously cold. The best visit we made was to a big network of caves, and because I'm amazingly clever I can't remember where they were, but they were just beautiful. Huge stalagtites and stalagmites, and interesting passages that you're not allowed to go down, and vast open spaces that look a bit like Gothic cathedrals with ornate carving, except it's all natural, and an underground rivery lakey thing. After the 30 degrees outside the 8-2 degree temperatures were quite welcome.

My only complaint about the hotel - the charming and traditionally Austrian Holiday Inn, *cough* - was that the bathroom was made of glass. Fair enough, you might think. But not when it's only tinted glass, not frosted, and the lights in there are the brightest in the room so it's like a spotlight on whoever's showering. Needless to say I showered in the dark. I did have a slight panic when our friend Sam came in and I was changing in there with the lights on, but we cunningly distracted him by saying "Hey, look at our view."

Another highlight had to be our conductor - a generally reserved man - dancing on the bar in a club and flashing his chest at us. YouTube, methinks. Oh the blackmail opportunities. 

I always tell myself that Friday 13th is only unlucky if people believe it to be so. So I maintain that it's a lucky day, because if I say so it'll work that way, right?

Friday. Biiig fuckoff argument with boyfriend.

Hm. The only way I can see it is that it was lucky in that it did work out ok in the end and we're all right now. But then that's just sort of the badness ceasing, not an actively good thing.

Hmph. I am quite disillusioned with my attempt at serendipity.

I got tagged..though not electronically, you'll be pleased to know.

1. What I was doing 10 years ago:
10 years ago I was at primary school, probably not doing very much.

2. What 5 things are on on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
find a darned pianist for this music exam of mine.
try and cajole/pester my mum into actually sending off a cheque to pay the beginning of this new instrument I've got.
have the customary trivial argument with boyfriend.
write personal statement for UCAS application.
put clothes away that are currently languishing on my chair.

3. Snacks I enjoy:
salt'n'vinegar anything, hot chocolate and hovis digestives, pain au chocolat, err...most other things that have either high quantities of E numbers or are otherwise very bad for you.

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
build myself a couple of houses, get a pilot's license (and plane!), get a couple of nice cars, maybe a horse, oh and lots of pretty clothes

5. Places I have lived:
London, Bury, Horsham, Itchenor, Amberley, Walberton

I tag:-
Bearcub
Becky-Speyer
kevinwilson
Znethru
jackfrost

My left hand is all painful and swollen up in the middle. The worst part is I didn't even hurt it doing something heroic, or in an accident. I wilfully beat up my left palm to gain all-important coins playing Mario Party on N64 earlier. Stupid painful minigames. Grinding your hand round and round on the analogue stick is the only way to turn it fast enough to win, but it also effing hurts. Three! Three turning games in a row! Where the hell are health and safety when they might actually be useful, eh?

And why the hell am I blogging at 25 past midnight?

Oh yeah. Because I don't have to get up tomorrow morning, because I've FINISHED MY EXAMS!!
Until next year, that is. But that'll do for the present. It's a pity that you only appreciate sleep when you've finished doing it.

Oh God I need to sort out my accompanist for grade 8. I was supposed to somehow contact her and ask her if she can do the day they've given me; being a teacher at school she might very well be teaching at 10am! Stupid Associated Board. Stupid hard exam that I actually have to practice for. Stupid Mozart writing stupidly hard horn concertos. Chris'll kill me for not ringing him back.

So the main bulk of my exams are out of the way. Ancient History could have been a lot worse, except the last paper was a bit dodgy. Music was relatively good. So that's a relief.

Now I'm on half term for a week, but I have to revise for Latin, on the 4th. Memorise exactly 275 lines of Virgil's Aeneid Book 12 and 16 hefty sections of Tacitus' Annals 1, in English but with close reference to the Latin, not to mention keep up all that vocabulary and make sure my grammar's in working order? Don't mind if I don't.
My teacher's faith in me is touching, but sadly misplaced. Don't know how I'm going to do it. I desperately need an A to make sure I can get an A next year to make sure I stand a half decent chance of university.

On a slightly more immediate note, I'm REALLY HUNGRY but I can't go downstairs because I might have to talk to my bonkers aunt who's invited herself over again. I wish my mother would inform me of these things so I could stock up on provisions before she gets here.

Goodness gracious me. Has it really been that long since I wrote? Long enough for me to get a "blog.co.uk misses you" email! Disgraceful!

School is the best time of your life? I bloody hope not. On Wednesday I have two English Lit papers, and the day after that I have 5 exams in one day, comprising 3 hours' worth of ancient history essay writing and 2 music papers. Then after half term is 3 Latin exams in one day.

My horn teacher said to me the other day that to get into music college I should be doing at least one hour and a half practice session a day, preferably 2. So I'm trying to build up my stamina but at the same time I HAVE EXAMS IN A FEW DAYS AND I'M GOING TO FAIL AHHHH
and then I won't get in anywhere anyway.

Today I also had a contest thing in Crawley with my brass band. Apparently (I didn't stay for the adjudication) we came 4th in the contest - as it's an entertainment thing and not just musical - but the adjudicators said that we were 2nd muscially. Not too bad, as we were the only youth band there. We managed to get the best soloist and best conductor/compere prizes too which isn't bad.

MUST REVISE
MUST REVISE
MUST REVISE
MUST REVISE
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

So that's why I've not had so much time for scribbling.

I just remembered! I haven't said a word about my lovely trip to Greece except in my previous post. I'm sure that anyone reading this is now hanging on my every word and absolutely dying to read all about it...

We started and finished in Athens, going round (not necessarily in this order!) Delphi, Sounion, Epidavros, Corinth, Mycenae, Olympia and Tolon. The most beautiful places had to be Tolon and Sounion, just for being on the sea, but Delphi was pretty darn amazing too in the mountains. I got so much exercise it was ridiculous, walking up and down hills and mountains all over the shop, following my teacher Mr. Collins (who we have all decided is a Bionic Man) who never got tired. In Mycenae, the oldest site we visited, we went down into the 3000 year old water cistern cut into the rock. Completely pitch black but incredible. Of course, we had to run in the original Olympic stadium and sing Jerusalem - and then Bohemian Rhapsody, not sure why - in the theatre with perfect acoustics in Epidavros. We found wild tortoises in Athens and got rained on on the Acropolis, though that was the only day we had bad weather and it cleared up pretty fast. The rest was baking hot to us, though the Greeks were all wearing coats and no doubt thinking we must be from Siberia or something!

It was incredible. Sod the Greek islands, give me archaeology any day. And of course it's great going with a group of people like that - all but one of my close friends were with me, so it was especially fun.

...I am. I'm all happy and have been for the past 10 days now because I'm going out with a very nice lad called Alex.

*beam*

It was all a product of my Ancient History trip to Greece, where there was a big ruckus with a lot of the not-knowing-who-knows-what and you-can't-tell-soandso-this and basically the rather messy product of a lot of teenagers stuck on a very nice holiday and not having anything better to do than all get in a tizz with each other. Unfortunately I ended up becoming the communal box of tissues - to cry on, not to blow your nose on, I hastily add - while somehow managing to also be at the centre of the Ruckus.

And Alex and I went up to the top floor of the hotel to talk through his side of things and a whole group of people marched off down the beach to look for us, convinced we'd gone missing. That was quite amusing.

But yes. Trips are good for that sort of thing. You get to know people so much better so quickly. It's great

This week has gone disgustingly quickly. I'm on half term from 6th form and I'd swear I've only been off for 3 days but what do you know, it's almost Monday again. I love the way that no-one thinks "Ah, a week off. Let's give them a holiday." No, the rule is, "Ah, a week off. Let's cripple them with work and then bollock them if they don't finish it all." Obviously, because the only reason we have a h-o-l-i-d-a-y is to make more time to do work. Pah!

The last day before half term started, I was informed that I had to do: 3 Ancient History essays, 1 detailed plan for my English Lit coursework, as much of my Music composition as I could humanly manage along with harmony work and practice for a recording, the date of which is yet to be revealed. Oh and I should really be learning Latin vocabulary and the subjunctive verb endings, not to mention reading the Aeneid and preferably chunks of Tacitus.

*grumble, moan, whinge*

And I'm going to get horribly beaten at Mario Party tomorrow at my friend's. Oh the shame.

Just got this madlib 'love poem' from somewhere:

My Love

Your skin glows like the peach, blossoms furry as the iris in the purest hope of spring.
My heart follows your flute voice and leaps like a hedgehog at the whisper of your name.
The evening floats in on a great lark wing.
I am comforted by your hat that I carry into the twilight of radiobeams and hold next to my mouth.
I am filled with hope that I may dry your tears of milk.
As my arm falls from my vest, it reminds me of your bottle.
In the quiet, I listen for the last bellow of the day.
My heated nose leaps to my boot. I wait in the moonlight for your secret comb so that we may amble as one, nose to nose, in search of the magnificient yellow and mystical carrot of love.

Ah well. Better luck next time eh!

1. What would be the contents of your perfect pie?
A mixture of fruit. Cherries, apples, blackberries etc. etc.

2. Lift your eyes from the screen - what's the first thing you see and how did it get there?
My Muse poster - put there partly because I went to see them in Wembley and it was great, partly to annoy the woman who does the assessment (rented property) because she hates blu-tack.

3. What, if anything, would you like to get rid of in your life and why?
All the mess - the literal mess that comes of having a tiny room, and the other mess kindly donated by my collectively bonkers family and a couple of my irritating *friends*.

4. If you were building your own house what one room would you include that you don't have now?
A music room - soundproofed. I could practice any time of day or night and have room to leave my instruments out when I wasn't playing them! And a place to leave all my music lying around! And room for a piano! Heaven.

5. When you were little people asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Does your answer then match what you do now?
Um. I guess I don't qualify as quite "grown up," but my life is going to plan so far!

I don't believe I'm the only person on BCUK who likes classical music. Even if people wouldn't say so, I bet they like "The Entertainer" or "the track off that advert." So this is effectively a shameless plug for my group 'haydn-seek' which is for anyone who likes anything that could loosely be described as classical music!

And I bet you do, too.

I'm not sure whether that SAD thing exists - where people tend to get depressed as the days get shorter and darker - but I do know that I was unreasonably happy earlier when I noticed it was 5pm and it was still broad daylight. Hooray!
The other day I could almost pretend it was summer when I looked out the window. It's on its way...
I can't wait to go to Greece. It's in 1 month and 4 days and I'm EXCITED because I've never been on a foreign 'school trip' before apart from the French exchange. And my Ancient History teacher is possibly the best person imaginable to go with. He's even more excited than us, and really enthusiastic so we'll get lots of pointless information about how there are no straight lines in the Parthenon and all that jazz.
Plus, of course, it should be much warmer than it is here. It'd better not snow or anything stupid like that.
Yay Greece!

Jeez. I was just sort of moseying around on t'internet not really doing much and I went on ask.com and entered the beginning of a question. I only got as far as the words "how do I" because on the suggested questions bit I saw a little blue link saying "how do I become anorexic." I must have sat there for a good 20 seconds just trying to think how many times a question would have to be asked before appearing on that list.
And Valentino had the balls to say that models can't be too thin. I'm as much against the 'nanny state' and all that jazz as the next person but that is disgusting. A girl of eleven could have been looking at that quite easily.
It's not often I am genuinely shocked by things on the web, but that did the trick nicely.

Oh, and I just found some girl's MySpace where she mentioned quite casually that she'll basically be a millionaire lots of times over when her dad dies, and in the same sentence she whinges about how unfair life is cause her boyfriend dumped her. I mean, I moan quite regularly. But I live on thirty quid a week I sponge from the Government for making their education system look better. Youth of today, eh? Don't know they're born.

Why is it that if the weather is cold, and you walk far or fast enough to make you quite warm, when you get inside you're much too hot - but if you only walk a little bit you're colder when you get in?
I get colder walking for half a minute to the shop and back than over the 2 miles from college.
Maybe it's an evolutionary feature to make us take more exercise and stop obesity...or maybe it's just me having an odd thermostat.

Had a concert this afternoon, but it was only at the rehearsal that we found out a good third of the (decent) members of the brass section were in fact not going to be turning up because the Guildhall is AMAZINGLY arsey and makes its members go to their rehearsals instead of anything else that might be happening in their lives, like a COUNTY ORCHESTRA CONCERT. Grrr. So our horn section had to be rearranged at the last minute and we put the very small girl on the 4th part for Rachmaninov 2 - all the parts were technically covered, but the bass was non existent. Really made me think how much we rely on Ollie to stabilise our entire section. The Gershwin piano concerto was even worse.
Dammit, I don't want to always rely on someone else. How sad.
Ah well. Must...practice...more...

Oh, nicely done. Wales just scored again.
And, in case anyone is actually reading, I'm supporting Wales because I'm with my dad, who is Irish, so for some reason I have an instinctive opposition to England in matters of sport. ^^

Y'know, it is a strange phenomenon that overtakes us when, sitting in our armchairs and reclining on our sofas, shovelling food down our throats, we scream advice at the best sportsmen in the world. All the more odd when I'm doing it, and I'm a girl. I'm not supposed to care. But really. 65th minute and they've only just begun to pull their finger out. Ireland were even worse earlier; they may have won but it was an amazingly lethargic game. And at the end into injury time - what the hell were they doing?! If they'd only got the damn ball off, rather than running the significant risk of giving Italy a win.
God. My dad and I should tell 'em what's what.
xD

I've just come back from having dinner at that well known haven of fine food, Pizza Hut. I was with 6 of my friends, and 3 of them in particular tend to be a bit screamy when they find things funny. You know the sort. You don't notice until other people look annoyed. Anyway, the place was quite full and after a while I was feeling a bit embarrassed because we were talking a bit too loudly and I noticed one guy looking over, seemingly a bit irritated.
It always seems to be me that's saying, "Keep it down a bit" not because I mind but because I don't want other people to be pissed off with us. Now either I'm square, and turning into my mother, (at 17?! That's got to be a record!) or I'm just too paranoid about what other people think. Or I just don't want to get banned from Pizza Hut. But I don't want to annoy my friends either. Hmm. Hardly the most usual "teenage dilemma". God I hate the word teenage. Maybe I should just go live somewhere Neverland-ish where everyone remains with a mental age of 52.