Fog and shortsightedness - not a good mixture

As I ventured out with my friend Josh this evening (actually it was the morning, 1.30 to be precise) on my journey home from my friend James' house we both agreed outside looked like a scene from a horror movie; dark, damp and foggy with barely any sign of life. The bus journey was quite quick (much quicker than it has been in the past) and strangely went by without any 'events'(such as the abusive drunks on the top floor of the bus last time or the ones that just collapsed in the bus doorway after failing to convinced the driver that they were kids who just looked about 50 and should therefore pay a kids fare). Josh's stop was quite early on.

Once off the bus I started to notice I was actually quite tired. I started walking, my route taking me away from the busy roads and instead through the lifeless backstreets. In my tiredness I thought back to a recent dream i'd had where I was walking along the street which I currently was actually walking along. The scene was the same; foggy, damp, dark and with no one else around. But half way down the street there was a man. As I got nearer I saw he was brandishing a chainsaw and was covered in blood. I stopped, turned and started to walk back down the street only for the same man to appear ahead of me through the fog. He ran at me and swung his chainsaw, slicing off a chunk of skin. It was at this point I woke up. The dream was completely stupid as dreams tend to be (well my dreams are anyway) but it did give me a feeling of deja vu. Even though I knew it was just a dream I found myself cautiously approaching the middle of the road just in case, seeing as everything else was exactly the same as in the dream, there was a blood stained chainsaw brandishing man. There wasn't.

The atmosphere then took a turn for the creepy as some weird bird cackled evily. I don't know what bird makes the kind of noise I heard but I feel sorry for whatever mate it aims to attract. This is where my tiredness, shortsightedness and the foggy surroundings came into play. On my route home there are loads of little side passages. I don't know where they lead to (maybe i'll look sometime) but everytime I approached one I kept seeing a person hiding in the shadows, waiting, smiling. It of course turned out to be either part of a tree or nothing at all but either way it was unsettling.

Its funny how much external factors can affect your judgement of things. Simply watching a horror movie, as I had just done, had set me in a horror state of mind, heightening my susceptibility to any potentially creepy things such as the atmosphere and incorporating a recent dream set in my environment at the time as well as my inability to make out distant objects clearly, therebye creating my own horror movie in my mind.

I hope this is comprehendable because its 3 in the morning and I'm really tired. In fact I don't know why i'm still up writing this. So now I will go. Good night.

Coach Driver

On the way to a fencing competition we had quite a funny driver driving the coach (well when I say funny he wasn't intentionally being funny, I just found some of the things he said hilarious). Here are two examples of things he said:

Driver: I tell you, this area used to be really rough and horrible.
Teacher: What, so its much better now then?
Driver: No.

Driver: They've got signs everywhere before these lights but now theres no signs anywhere! I can't believe it! I really can't! Can you believe it?
Teacher: uh..........no.........
Driver: No I really can't believe it either!..........(sighs)........I just can't believe it.
Teacher: (looking around awkwardly) no, it is..........terrible.
Driver: Its more than terrible, its bad! I just can't believe it. I can't! How am I meant to know which way to go? I may have to go left, I may have to go right or I may even have to go straiht ahead! Its bad, really bad!
Teacher: urm, you realise those sideroads aren't actually roads. They're walkways. Cars can only go straight ahead.
Driver: Oh..........well I still can't believe it, I really can't!

Unfortunately his impression of the way snow sounds as it settles can't be translated onto the computer but take it from me, it was 'unique'.

Another 'on my walk to school' story

Well todays tale is of two ladies. One said to the other while walking, 'do you like my new skirt?' The other lady replied, 'I think it looks really cute..........' The first lady then said, 'thank you' to which the other lady completed her sentence saying, 'but most people would say you look like a minging old whore.'

The End.
(based on a true story)

What a shit day!

Today has been, as the title says, an absolutely shite day. It even rivals a certain Duke of Edinburgh expedition for pure shiteness.

It all started off with my being late for school. Not a great way to start the day. Then in my first lesson my pen managed to leak ink all over a homework I was just going to hand in. These things aren't exactly terrible but I was starting to get the impression that the day wasn't going to go too well, therefore it probably wasn't the best day to get my A level results back. Well my fears were justified, with things then deteriorating as I got my results. As usual I let myself down, getting disappointing grades for things I know I can get A's in. I've made the promise I make to myself everytime I let myself down in my exams, to work properly this time (although its a promise that has yet to come to fruition). So the exam results weren't too good. Doesn't matter, I'll just have to do better next time. So the day continued. Straight after receiving my results I had the pleasure of a surprise latin mock type test. Well it didn't go too well. I couldn't translate most of the words let alone put them into some kind of order where they make sense. Things then seemingly got a bit better lulling me into a false sense of relief. But this was not meant to last.

I had to stay after school to take some readings for my biology coursework. Unfortunately I had to carry out the experiment in the classroom of a certain biology teacher who shall remain nameless. For now I shall refer to her as Mrs.. bitch. My teacher had told me that I had to do the experiment in her classroom as his classroom was full of people dissecting rats (which I wanted to try but couldn't because of my coursework). So I start to set everthing up when Mrs. bitch comes in and says 'Alex what are you doing here, this is not your bology class?' I explained that I had been told to do the experiment in her room and explained why. She gave me 'the stare' (when she just stares at you and says nothing for a minute or two, waiting for you to answer a question she hasn't actually asked or indicating you've said something she doesn't like). I just stared back. Then after about a minute she said 'well get on with it then!' before walking off to scream at a poor little year nine kid who just happened to be passing by the lab.

After setting up my apparatus she came back in to say 'can't you do that in the other lab?' 'Urm no because they're doing an experiment in there and theres no space,' I replied. She then replied that I could go and sit in a corner to do it. I was not going to be a sad loner sitting in a corner on my own while everyone else is enjoying dissecting rats. Luckily my biology teacher then arrived and stated again that there was no room. She finally got the message.

The experiment was timing how long it took for a certain amount of yeast to respire to give a set amount of carbon dioxide. Supposedly I was timing the yeast at roughly its optimum temperature and so I should have got the readings quite quickly. It took me 3 hours to get the readings (well in the end I actually resorted to making the readings up). For some reason the experiment just wouldn't work no matter what I did. I tried changing the apparatus and changing the batch of yeast. I even tried applying vaseline to parts of the apparatus to stop any carbon dioxide escaping. Nothing worked.

So I gave up on the experiment and went down the stairs towards the electric doors to leave the science block........and walked straight into a wooden door which someone had shut behind the electric doors. Ignoring my act of idiocy I carried on walking down the tunnel to leave the school. It was pitch black outside and even darker in the tunnel. When I got to the end of the tunnel I found out it was locked.

But my day wasn't all doom and gloom. Out of pity after my slightly disappointing results my latin teacher gave me a delicious jam doughnut and after my failed biology experiment I was allowed to eat as many of the leftover biscuits from the rat dissection biology society as I could. So I stuffed most of them in my pocket (which was really blatant as my pocket was bulging) and left.

On the way home they fell out of my pocket. I wasn't amused.

Angry Oven

The oven in my house is having another tantrum as I write this. Every now and then it decides to throw off one of the knob things which you turn to adjust the heat. It gets quite annoying, especially when you're in another part of the house and you hear this massive crash noise (for some reason it always makes a really loud noise even though the knob is relatively small). The noise sounds like someone is trying to break in and, due to the fact that my room resides over the kitchen, I have had the pleasure of hearing these loud crashes many nights lately.

I don't know whether its trying to tell my family something like 'I've had enough of being used, find somewhere else to cook your dinners' or 'stupid people, I've been stuck in this house for years heating away for you like a slave, I want to see the world! Let me out!' Maybe its just decided its time to retire (it is very old), crumbling away in the process. Or it could just be a very attention seeking oven. Either way its antics have resulted in my parents looking for a replacement. Soon it shall be going where all old ovens go to retire, the dump.

.........................I think it heard me, it just threw off another one of the knobs.

Pointless post ranting on about school (WARNING not very interesting)

Its 2 in the morning and I don't feel very tired so i'm writing a post to fill the time (that and the fact that i don't want to sleep because that would mean i'd wake up and have to start my homework sooner).

I'm so fed up with the amount of homework i've been getting lately. Its just been constant latin homeworks (ranging from essays to tests to context questions), chemistry tests, economics essays (and tests) and biology questions/ tests/ coursework. I've found myself going to school with the aim of just getting through the day, making up excuses for late homeworks and on the odd occasion not doing a homework at all. Its quite sad that I feel more awake right now at 2 in the morning than I have in a long time while at school. I think one of the problems may be that i've stopped writing down my homeworks (due to the fact that I lost my homework diary) and so don't actually have a clue what some of them are (on the odd occasion i've had to make up essay titles, writing 2500 words about something which I then find out was only partially related to the proposed essay theme). Another thing may be that i've become noticably (well i've noticed it anyway) lazier when it comes to homework. When I think back to 3 or 4 years ago I was doing 3 or 4 homeworks a night. Now I can hardly manage to do 1 latin translation, even when i've found the translation on the internet (what.......it takes time to translate the translations. They're all in old fashioned english using words that haven't been used in a century or two). My sleeping pattern is also a complete mess. Sleep occurs at something like 1-2 in the morning and I get up for school at 7 each morning (I then lie in bed for another half hour trying to cram as much sleep as possible into it). My body always wakes me up at 7 no matter how much I concentrate on the fact that I want to get up at 7.30, stupid internal clock. But I think the main factor in my just going through the motions at school is that I finish school so soon. Its only a couple of months away (well not including the exams I then have). I can see the end coming and I want to already be there, skipping all the remaining work that still has to be done.

Saying all that i'm still on the 'good side' of my latin class (regardless of the fact that I was the first and only person to ever sit in the corner of shame as a result of failing to do a latin translation...........oh how ashamed of myself I felt, facing the wall in a corner on my own...............so lonely...............the memory still haunts me). Anyway being on the 'good side' basically translates as 'does the homeworks on time and to a reasonably good standard' and accounts for 4 of the 7 members of the class. I'm also still getting good marks in my chemistry tests and biology homeworks and even my economics homeworks (even though I don't really enjoy the subject) so I guess i'm coping fine. I just can't wait till the holidays when the weekends won't just be a 'catch up on the homeworks you didn't do in the week' and 'catch up on sleep' time (and i'm doing such a good job of that now seeing as the clock on the computer has just turned 3 a.m).

Woah i can't believe my head just spewed up so much crap. That was kind of my mind self reflecting that became a blog post. Looking back on it its also quite a boring and pointless post. Oh well, on the blog it goes.

Another drawing.

This is a drawing of my sister I did last night. I don't know if it really looks like her. The nose isn't drawn very well nor the mouth. She'll probably be pissed off when/ if she sees the drawing.

The fountain

When I woke up yesterday morning I was greeted not just by snow that actually settled but also a fountain that had formed overnight in the middle of the road behind my house (due to a burst water main). So heres a picture of it. Unfortunately by the time I got home it had been fixed.

Parents say such weird things.

As i was making my monotonous walk to school today I heard what i thought was a weird and slightly worrying thing for a young child of about 6 to say, that he couldn't wait to be dead.

I was walking as fast as i could, avoiding all the annoying parents and children who litter my walk to school and have no concept of the fact that other people also use the pavement, in the hope that i'd manage to get to school on time. Well i was late. But whilst trying to get passed them i was listening in on their conversations (as I tend to do, yeah I know thats being nosy but they can be quite funny conversations and it beats just staring at trees and cars). So this child was asking his mum what its like to be dead. I was expecting her to say something like 'nobody knows' or 'well you go up to a place called heaven where everything is perfect, everyone is friendly and you enjoy a luxurious existence' (ok maybe a 6 year old child would have trouble understanding the last part) but the mother said none of those things. Instead she told him that your body dies leaving behind your spirit which wanders the land looking for people to scare. The boy then declared, as I said in the first sentence of this post, that he couldn't wait to die and that he was going to scare everyone he'd ever met. His mother just replied 'thats a good boy'.

This made me think, parents tell their children the strangest things sometimes and small children will believe anything their parents say. I wonder what kinds of answers my parents used to give to my constant questioning when I was that age. Did they used to make up silly answers just to shut me up? Or did they give me proper answers? To what extent did their answers shape my beliefs, personality and feelings about things?

So thats my story. I just thought i'd share it on my blog because I found it slightly strange but at the same time quite funny. Oh and one last thing. If you know a 6 year old boy watch out, you never know, you may one day be visited and scared by him.