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International Camp was awesome. Martin did a swell job recommending me and TPJ to do it. I enjoyed it a great deal. TPJ and I were charged with running the computer room, as mentioned above. However, although the hardware for broadband arrived, the line that we were trying to use with it failed to be correctly activated – indeed, until we told them, they didn’t realise that the line we had couldn’t be used. They have been running two phone lines on one physical cable, which has been fine up until now, when they wanted to use ADSL. BT assured us that they were sending an engineer to sort out the line, and that it would be done by the second Monday. No dice. In the end, we never got broadband which is terribly disappointing for all parties concerned – we had to settle for dialup. But not a 56k connection. Oh no – because we were running two phone lines on one cable, the dialup connection was only capable of 28k/sec. This was then divided between two computers. I heard the phrase “This internet is shit”, or a variety thereof in more languages than I care to count. However, this did work to my advantage, as everyone was extremely willing to talk while they were waiting (the eternity it took) for their websites to load. I met lots of new people this way.

I find it extremely difficult to put into words just what it was about International Camp that makes it so enjoyable. There was always something going on and everyone was very sociable. I didn’t stay every night, but managed to stay for most nights with a special theme party, which I thoroughly enjoyed. One of the most enjoyable nights was the night of the Green Party. When the disco finished, we (me, Deepak, TPJ, Ben, Ted and L) went to sit in the Night Café – a quiet room (in theory) where food was served and there were comfy chairs and sofas for people to sit on. We were then told that outside, Max would be putting on a fire poi show. I had done the poi workshop earlier that day with Deepak and Ted where we made our own poi (though not ones to set alight). Essentially, poi are weights on the ends of string (we used tennis balls) that you twirl around you – when you get good, you set them on fire. Max is really good and seeing balls of fire circle her at 1 o’clock in the morning was stunning. Of course, she had a friend who could do one better – three flaming balls on each string, who promptly show us how it’s done. Max had a go but didn’t do anything quite as ambitious as she had with single balls of fire. Both of them managed to hit themselves with the poi, but as neither were made of paraffin, there wasn’t a problem.

We then had the most excellent idea to go down to the beach with Ben’s campervan for audio accompaniment. Some other people joined us, and some left to go sleep, but most people paid us a visit (including John – someone we met at camp, who could probably not be described as svelte – with a worryingly small amount of clothing). We were also joined by Rachel and her boyfriend, who are both instructors at International Camp and they proceeded to tell us how to play a drinking game (take a mouthful of drink, spin 20 times, swallow, try to walk, fail) which caused much merriment. They also told us about the photo luminescent algae in the Mersea water and, just as they said, we managed to see some. These, when disturbed by a breaking wave or similar (like a stone plopping next to them) glow and the effect is truly startling. Points in the sea light up and waver slightly. Ben even caught one; they look far more magical in the sea – they’re just gooey blobs up close.

I also remembered a notice in the canteen (which most other people had seemed to miss) stating that the Perseid meteor shower was peaking that night. We stared up at the slowly clearing sky for a little while and then ruminated on the idea of getting some ground sheets from somewhere so that we could lie on them and look at the sky much more easily. True to form, Ben rummaged in the van for a minute and produced two groundsheets, which we placed on the ground and lay on. Shortly after, with the sky still clearing and a few shooting stars spotted, we were getting uncomfortable and commented jokingly how mattresses would be useful. Minutes later, Ben had obtained two large mattress/cushion objects to lie on. It was astonishing, and greatly enhanced our viewing experience which was fantastic. I reckon that collectively we saw one every couple of minutes (though Enzo – a Dutch guy who is too good at activities like poi or diablo – seemed to have the uncanny ability to look in exactly the wrong direction every time). We even saw some who’s trails persisted for several seconds after they were gone. I wished at that point that I had taken my digital camera and a tripod – with a 30 second exposure time, I’m sure I could have got some brilliant photos.

We kept watching for shooting stars until we couldn’t see the stars any more due to the rising of the sun. Ted and Ben realised that they were supposed to be serving food in the morning, so the party sort of petered out – Ben and Enzo slept in the van, I fetched my sleeping bag and slept in that, and Ted and L slept on a matress using Ted’s coat as a duvet. It was a really enjoyable night for all concerned, and I don’t think it was really paralleled – for me at least – for the rest of International.

At International Camp, everyone is assigned a village prior to arrival and this defines where you sleep and your team-mates for all the inter-village competition. This takes the form of a multitude of events – a Krypton Factor competition, Sports, ‘Silly’ Sports (like sack race, skipping race, egg and spoon race and so on), a quiz, and a Swimming Gala to name a few – and was hotly contested through the two weeks by all concerned. Everyone took part and both Martin and I were part of our village’s (Radio Ga Ga’s) rounders team, and we made it to the final where we were destined to play the Rocky Horrors’ team – which included Ben, Ted and L. Unfortunately, the one day of bad weather we had coincided with the final, so the titles were left undecided; I feel compelled to admit that they did beat us in the game we played in the round-robin stage, but it was our first game and their second, so I’d like to think that we hadn’t warmed up.

The parties at International Camp were fantastic. Starting at nine, finishing at 1 AM at the earliest with the Night Café open if they did each night, with four of them having themes – the Green Party already mentioned, the Barbie and Action Man party (with the subtheme of cross-dressing), a Bugsy Malone party and a Grease party. The Barbie night was great fun for all concerned and it’s embarrassing to admit that I don’t know which I enjoyed more: the cross dressing party or Bugsy Malone. From the former, there is a cracking photo of Ben and TPJ which will hopefully be on the Camp DVD, which Deepak has ordered and I intend to copy for everyone else concerned. However, I felt like a total legend for Bugsy Malone, as I had obtained a three-piece suit for it; unfortunately, without a trilby, I looked as if I was off for a funeral. It also cooked me inside the party, but was worth it, especially as in the end, I didn’t spend a lot of time inside, for a couple of reasons. The first was that the DJ was abysmal (we had the Macarena repeated three times, at one point), and secondly word reached us that a coalition of people from the other villages had stolen everything from our village’s marquee and hidden it somewhere – of course, this required investigation. Martin and I were told where it was if we promised not to tell anyone, so we went off to explore and investigate, and sure enough it was there. Annoyingly, this prevented me saying goodbye to someone who was leaving early the next morning, because they had left to sleep by the time I returned. At this point, Martin was feeling a bit hungry, so he went off with TPJ to steal some bread and cheese from the kitchen’s which was consumed by the group of about eight of us sitting outside the sports hut and while there was a close shave when Paul (the guy who runs International) came to talk to us, it was well hidden (ish) and he wasn’t really in the mood to care.

Similarly, the activities were very entertaining. The first day we had teambuilding within the villages which involved a number of games designed to get to know the people you’re playing them with. The best of these by far was the Plumber’s Nightmare – a big tube with holes in it, and a ball in the bottom. By covering the holes with your fingers, you’re supposed to get the ball out as a team. This works fine until Matt – one of our village leaders/helper people – who is filling the tube takes the bucket of water and throws it over everyone. It was a nice day, but a touch early in the morning for getting soaked, so most of the team pulled away really quickly, leaving the few of us who stayed wet, and steadily getting wetter as the holes they had been covering spouted water. Nonetheless, it certainly bonded us, if only by giving us a common enemy.

A few days later, the workshops started, with a multitude of choices for us to make. I chose Poi, as mentioned, though I abandoned TPJ in the computer room where he had to run a workshop for those who had signed up for it with no internet connection. I didn’t envy that job, but I paid for my absence later when I came in at 8AM to set up laptops for some person from the council who wanted them when both TPJ and I had spent the previous night at home. I also ran the second computing workshop in penance, so I couldn’t go to the Poi workshop where they practised looking suave with them. Both Deepak and Ted were, last I talked to them, planning to take their sets to Reading, so watch out! Unfortunately, I also missed out on the water sports which were, apparently, fantastic – admittedly, missing one session was my fault, and was simply because I couldn’t be bothered (I was exhausted from the parties the previous two nights; to give you a sense of scale of the exhaustion, I didn’t get up until 8:00. Me. Had a lie in.) The other sessions I couldn’t really avoid missing; one didn’t involve my village (we did art things) and the other I was taking my theory test (passed). At least it’ll give me something to look forward to next year.

Everyone is desperate to go back next year; I wasn’t present on the final morning, because I was recovering in order to go to V (though Deepak stayed that final night), so I didn’t really get a chance to talk to Paul about next year. On the train down to V, however, we met up with Ben, Nes and TPJ – who said that Paul had mentioned both TPJ and I being on the Planning Team next year. This would be brilliant, because everyone else (apart from Martin) spent this year on the Service Team, and you can only do one year on the Service Team. Those who did a good job who they want back are therefore being upgraded to the Planning Team; apart from anything, this suggests that Tom and I wouldn’t be supposed to be in the computer room the whole time. And that would be a marvellous achievement – while I enjoyed being in the computer room and talking to the people who came in, I’d much rather be outside having fun with everyone else. The only tiny problem is that this might remove the exclusive access that Tom and I had to the fridge in our room, which greatly enhanced our experience – I stored food for me in it, and Ben stored Gin and Tonic which was consumed during the dismal Bugsy Malone party while we were dressed for it.

I thought I’d have to leave it there, with my future regarding International Camp hanging on something that TPJ thought he heard Paul say in passing. However, as a family, we decided to go crabbing in Mersea – and we ran into Paul who was also crabbing with his little children. Naturally, we talked about International and Paul said how he was looking forward to the review meeting (where everyone who helped meets up again sometime in October to catch up and talk about International. It’s merely an aside that it’s going to be held at a theme park. Honest) and then in turn how he’d see me at the Planning Meeting next year prior to International Camp. So it certainly looks promising for next year, which is awesome. I really enjoyed meeting lots of new people, and I’ll be keeping in contact with one of them at the very least.

I missed the last day of International Camp so that I could go to V with Alana. We also had the fortune to win a second pair of tickets – which I gave to Martin, who had only the week before said how he’d always wanted to go to a Festival, and Deepak (again!). And we all had a fantastic time. I enjoyed it far more than I did last year – probably through a combination of knowing and liking more of the acts. The Magic Numbers were fantastic, and I probably enjoyed them the most (to be honest, if it wasn’t for the Derby FC flag, it probably wouldn’t have been a contest. That flag really annoyed me.) though Maroon 5 came close. Ashes by Embrace live was fantastic, but I think the rest of their set suffered slightly because they had already spent their best song. There is one argument for it, which is that the crowd was really up for it; by the end, when asked if they had “one more song in them”, a lot of people were groaning that they didn’t. Still, it removed a lot of the anticipation I think they could have milked.

One artist that certainly left his best song to the end was Tony Christie, who got right into it when he eventually sang it. Amarillo was demanded by the crowd from the moment he appeared on stage and while many people disappeared when the act before finished (Idlewild), the area in front of the stage had more than filled up again when he started. The sight of fifty thousand people singing “Is This the Way to Amarillo” was sensational, and he clearly was wowed by the reception that he got – even if it was a little hesitant from most of it at the beginning.

Sensationally, V didn’t even make it into the top two highlights of the week. Those honours fell to International Camp at number two, but both being beaten to number one by Thursday – alias, Results Day. I’m no good at staying calm about results, and I always find myself thinking about the exams, and end up convincing myself that I’ve failed. This year in particular, that seemed like a feasible event, because I would have considered a fail to be anything less than As in Maths, Chemistry and Physics – my Cambridge offer. International Camp did a good job this year keeping my mind off of it – as it appeared to do for several others. Even so, by the time I got to Wednesday evening at home, the next major event was collecting results at 10 AM the next day – and there was nothing to distract me. The effect was clearly universal, with everyone on MSN talking about results, the next day in general and the possible existence of Jenkinson phone calls. I was brushing my teeth after having my evening snack of cornflakes when the phone rang, and dad answered: “Alex: it’s Mr. Jenkinson”. I swiftly emptied my mouth and took the phone: “Hi Alex, it’s Mr. Jenkinson here. I’m just phoning around a few people to see if they’re able and willing to come in at nine tomorrow to pick up their results early and to take part in a little group photo.” My first reaction was what a marvellous turn of phrase it was. Of course, I agreed and dashed back to MSN – the only person I talked to was Chris, who had also received a call. We guessed that it was good news, but in that short conversation managed to confuse each other about the time we were supposed to be in. We both got it right in the end, but it was close.

Sure enough, turning up early in the morning to receive our results, we were greeted by Mr. Jenkinson who informed us that everyone there had got five As (and that one person – James – had got seven) and handed us our results. Other than General Studies (which had a paper marked as ‘Pending’ – the mark was available from Mr. Chester, but I never collected it.), all of my marks were above 550 which I was extremely satisfied with, including Physics which was 596/600. Given that Physics is what I’m intending to do at University, that was extremely reassuring. I also got full marks on the Science Domain paper this time, as opposed to the D that I got last time. Of course, with five As, I met my Cambridge offer, and returned the slip from UCAS to Cambridge as fast as I possibly could, after checking that I had ticked the right box several times. I’m still getting used to saying “Cambridge” without being quickly followed by “touch wood”; it’s surreal that I’m actually going there for sure – as, indeed, is everyone else who got an offer from Oxbridge, which is a sensational achievement. It is beginning to seem real, however, thanks to the correspondence I’m having with Churchill College about things like the room that I’m going to be living in. To be honest, it’s pretty scary, but everyone else is in the same boat, I suppose, so I can draw a little comfort from that. I’ve also started hanging around the (pretty dead, for the moment) Churchill forums on their website just to see what’s going on. By the looks of it, I’m going to have to apply for parents soon: “Everyone will have ‘parents’ from the second or third years who will meet you on your first day, take you out on your first night, and look after you for the whole year!” Sounds like fun. The letter I received from them about signing up for parents was rather entertaining, in fact: “Many people are still great friends with their parents/siblings (often in extended and incestuous family groups)”.

I’ve really enjoyed the holiday so far, and I hope the last five weeks of it (so few!) are going to be just as entertaining. I’m off boating again tomorrow (hopefully) with Georgia, Jacko and one of his cousins, which should be good fun like last time. And then we’re into ‘goodbye’ parties, unfortunately. It’s easy to say ‘keep in touch’ but I’d be really surprised if we’re as successful as we’ve promised we’ll be; those going to the same university may well keep in touch, as well as people that live close to each other, but more than that may well be reduced to passing greetings in the street or pub. Still, I’d love to make the effort.

There have been eight weeks since my last entry, and you’d be sensible to expect something interesting to have happened. However, exams got in the way for a large amount. The exam boards, in their wisdom, decided to timetable all of my exams (bar practicals) in the space of ten days. While it is true that there were plenty of people worse off (Ali for one, who had eleven hours in two days), seeing some people finish their exams before I had started mine that I actually cared about (Physics, Chemistry and Maths, which I need for Cambridge entry) was disheartening to say the least. However, thanks to the cushion that I had built up over the last two years I didn’t have as much pressure on me as I might have had otherwise (50% for an A is a good position to be in). Nevertheless, I felt that I couldn’t justify anything less than three hours a day revision. This I stuck to, but nearly killed me. Looking back on GCSE and, indeed, AS level, I find it difficult to see how I managed to put in four hours a day. At GCSE, I think the variety of subjects kept me on my toes and maintained my interest levels in them, but justification for four hours a day at AS remains a mystery. It’s possible the January exams reduced my immunity to the debilitating effects of revision, but they were six months ago and thus seems unlikely.

The exams as a whole went fine, starting with Computing and progressing swiftly through Maths, Physics and Chemistry (and – grudgingly, for nine marks – three hours of General Studies). Occasionally, of course, we entertained ourselves; definite mention going to Phil looking like Hitler (due to the hair and forcefully drawn on mustache) going into a Science and Culture exam. The AEAs in Physics and Chemistry on the last two days were – as expected – tough, but most of the questions were just about doable. Obviously, we’ll have to wait until Results day for any indication as to how well we’ve all done. Interestingly, AEA has three grades: Distinction, Merit and Fail. To be honest, so long as I get AAA I won’t care how I’ve done in the AEAs. They were put on my UCAS form, and so I had to do them; they’ve done their job by being there for university applications.

After exams, of course, we were now at the beginning of a three month holiday. I have counted twelve parties in the first four weeks, multiple excursions to varying locations, six hours of driving lessons (at last) and a day hawking, which I won and was thoroughly enjoyable. The party-concentration has been immense, but understandable – we’re not seeing each other any more every day in the morning, which was arguably one of the best aspects of school, so now we have to use the ‘excuse’ of social events to catch up with each other. It has been great. Almost surreally, we’ve even been keeping in contact with some of the teachers; we had the Chemistry “Dinner” (pub crawl) and a whole clatter of teachers were spotted in Route one evening. Perhaps best of all, Doctor Jones showed up at Jacko’s barbeque after we invited him at prizegiving although he, despite our best efforts, was able to leave in his car without any real difficulty. I’ve even received a postcard from Doc J on his holiday in America.

It’s taken an astonishingly long time (18 months) but I’ve started learning to drive, and it’s not going too badly and though I’m not one of these people that enjoys it I am getting the hang of it. It’s conceivable that I could pass before university, but it seems unlikely. The first hurdle is the theory test; should I fail, passing before university goes out the window. It’s right at the beginning of International Camp – at which I’m helping run the computer room with TPJ. It looks as if it’s going to be great fun; three hours of work a day (each) and whatever activities we want to do the rest of the time. The only forseeable problem is that TPJ and I (so Paul – our contact – claims) will be the only people with keys to the room, and it is ‘our’ room. We’re also telling them what hardware they need to buy to get everything working the way they want. Once it’s all up and running, however (by the end of the first week) it should be a doddle compared to the computer rooms at school; eight computers in total should be peanuts, especially given that we’ll be having one of them as our admin machine!

I haven’t really looked forward to a movie for a long time. The movie in question isn’t one that I would have ever guessed would be one that I’d look forward to, but everything about it that I’ve seen is simply hilarious. I am, of course, talking about The Aristocrats. Everything I have seen regarding this movie makes me laugh hysterically whilst simultaneously being disgusted at myself. Apparantly, if you have ever been offended by any joke ever, you shouldn’t go see it. The way it’s going, those members of the public in the UK mightn’t have a choice; it “might” come out “before the end of the year” (translation: Never)is the closest thing to a release date over here that we posess. It’s on limited release in America at the moment and gets a full release 12th August. Annoyingly, the pirates haven’t got their act together yet and so there are no copies of it on the net, but as soon as there are I’m going to “acquire” it and then arrange a viewing somewhere. Check the soundboard out at the offical site – you’ll need speakers up, but ideally no family members in the vacinity.

Well, we did it again. We won tickets to V – this time, weekend tickets. The lineup is even better than last year. It looked as if I was sitting pretty until, annoyingly, I discovered that it’s during International Camp, so it looks as if I’ll be unable to go. Alana is, of course, overjoyed. I also won a “Pro” account on Flickr (albiet by being the only entrant in the competition) which I am using with my new Digital Camera to a pretty full extent.

It’s also the site that Phil uses for storing his gallery photos and is where he gets all his stats from, including the eloquent “most perved over photo”. It’s a fantastic site and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who can either win an account or is willing to pay the $25 for a year’s subscription. A free account lets you upload a small number of photos, but pales in comparison when looked at against the Pro account. You’ll also be able to comment on photos, but probably best to hold off that – Phil is supposed to be getting a comment system on his site – it “might” be “before the end of the year”. It’d be more convenient for everyone concerned to look at them if they were all in one place. Browsing the photos on Flickr isn’t as easy as it is on his site, either, though I’m not ashamed to say that if he’d listened to me at the start, it would have been fine and all the photos would be in groups. He’s doing the ones he can be bothered to do manually, but it is, frankly, an impossible job.

I wish everyone (all two of you who will read this) the best of luck in their results

We went to the beach today (as we are prone to do) and I saw something that I’ve never seen before. The tide was out, and the wind was blowing exactly parallel to the beach, blowing really hard (~25 MPH, if the weather forecast was accurate). It was blowing the sand along and over the groynes, but was swirling about. I didn’t have a camera (and the sand would have scratched any lens it might have come into contact with to pieces) but it was beautiful. It looked like dry ice and was moving eerily slowly. It shimmered like the pattern on the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day.

This stretched along for four or so groynes and was all the more sensational because I’d never seen it before – and I go to the beach a lot. Every summer we go down at least once a week and we even go in the winter every few weeks just for kicks. Even the description I’ve given it doesn’t really do it justice; it really blew me away.

The school arranged a Leavers’ Dinner and Ball for the evening of the penultimate day of school, which virtually everyone attended. The prelude to the meal consisted of everyone hanging around in the common room (rather than the gardens, due to the weather) where a multitude of photos – both amateur and professional – were taken. We wanted both a professional photo of the corner and one of the Einstein boys (myself, Ben, Phil – the owner, the writer, the purchase maker), but neither happened. On the subject of photos, if you have any from the last 36 hours of our school careers – that’s the dinner, ball and last day, Phil’s site would appreciate them once we get it working properly with Ourmedia Stop press: It’s working, just about, albeit not with Ourmedia. Ask Phil for an account in the near future and you’ll be able to upload the photos yourself to his site. This preface to the dinner lasted for about an hour before everyone made their way into the main hall

Of course, being allergic to sustenance itself (a slight exaggeration) a meal was always going to pose problems for me. However, both Mr. Hadcock and the caterers (whoever they were) were excellent and allowed me to provide my own food which was then served to me. Put simply, it was awesome. My starter was melon, cucumber and tomatoes in a French dressing; the main was turkey, ham, stuffed mushrooms and vegetables, which they even managed to heat for me. The only slight problem was that my desert – which is known in my family as schlump; apples and blackberries in a bowl, with a spicy sponge mixture poured over the top and bake – never materialized, but given that I was full at that point anyway, it wasn’t a disaster. All three speeches (Martin, Mr. Hadcock and Mr. Jenkinson) were excellent; Martin’s was the most consistently funny, but I think I preferred Mr. Jenkinson’s overall, mostly thanks to a couple of really bad jokes. The first was about a teacher (supposedly) coming to him and saying that they think they have a problem; a student of his has written in some work: “my father – a psycho, the rapist.” Of course, it’s just bad handwriting – the sentence is supposed to read “my father – a psychotherapist.” However, the best joke was only laughed at by just over a quarter of the people there – those that had been taught by him for GCSE French, plus a few more who understood. He was talking about teaching us – and how the memory that stood out the most was TPJ with a blue mouth after chewing his pen too hard – and then paused, before saying “One cannot deny that one cannot underestimate the importance of … ” Everyone in the know recognized this as two of his magical French oral phrases which sound impressive, waste time and don’t really say anything; a winner when you’re running out of things to say in a French oral. Finishing slightly later than intended, at this point everyone made their way down to the ball. I successfully scrounged a lift from Georgia who then entertained everyone by reversing into a space in which she was forced to park over the line due to the adjacent cars. We then took a wrong turn getting to Roberts and ended up in a dark alley before quickly correcting out slight oversight.

The ball was excellent; by far the most enjoyable one that I’ve been to. Once the live band of students had vacated the stage (which were alright doing their covers until they started singing), the DJ put on a lovely selection of both cheesy and vaguely decent songs. Despite the amount of alcohol I consumed (none, as always), I was dancing more enthusiastically and more embarrassingly than I ever have before. Arguably the universal highlight of the evening was Ceri dancing with Doc J, but I don’t think anyone was disappointed with how any of the evening turned out (with the exception of failing cigar-smoking 101 in some cases). Strolling back through the rain to my lift with Jacko and Willy T was mildly entertaining, as we were all knackered and we were going uphill. Returning home, we realized that we had to be back in school in seven hours and thirty minutes and that the amount of sleep that we were going to get was going to be at a minimum. Still, with everyone else in the same boat, several a lot worse off than we were thanks to the level of alcohol that had been consumed, and a lot of people living further away than we did, we were in a better position than most. I took a slim four hours of sleep, getting up at my regular 6:15 AM to give me time to get up to speed in the morning and to execute my carefully prepared plan for the school intranet and thanks to my ability to connect to school from home, the first deed of the day was done before we even left the house.

Leaving the house for a school day for the last time, I was taking a two-layered chocolate sponge cake with Black Cherry jam in the middle. This cake had had the ingredients measured Wednesday night, baked before going to school Thursday morning, and covered in a thick layer of chocolate before leaving for the dinner Thursday evening. We’re talking about a lot of inconvenience that I went to to make this cake, purely so that for the inevitable parties that would take place through the day, for once, I would have something to eat that other people could enjoy too. It was worth it. I entered the school and headed for the medical room to pick up the containers that my food had been in the previous night; rather than find the four containers (the main course had been in two) I found one, filled with schlump. That certainly explained why I hadn’t had it to eat the night before; the caterers seemed to have simply forgotten it. However, the other containers were nowhere to be seen; I spent some time looking for them, but not a great deal – after all, time was of the essence and couldn’t be wasted. It should be noted that this was the only downer on the whole day. I proceeded to the Common Room and was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by Ceri and Florence in purple blazers and ties and a dummy made out of newspaper and dressed up. At this stage, there was no plan for what to do with the dummy; Jonny and Florence had simply made it to keep our options open through the day and for that they gain a lot of respect. Florence had come up with the idea of getting all the girls in purple blazers for the day, and, give them credit, they did. I loaned mine, and still haven’t retrieved it (hint, hint, Florence). We had pre-arranged what the Einstein for the day would be – “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” – and I had the rare pleasure of writing it. Einstein is going to be coming with me to University (wherever I go), but is still hanging in the common room until the end of exams (nearly; the practicality of getting him home is still an issue). School started quickly enough and with no assembly – and a distinct shortage of students thanks to the night before – we had an extra-long Friday form time where Anna attempted to overcome her fear of feeding the salamander but, unfortunately, ultimately failed and we all looked at the food that had been brought for the Form Feat during tutorial.

Returning to the Common Room for our free, there were very few people there, but Florence wanted to use this opportunity to execute the other prank that she had planned – changing the name of the school. The previous day, she and TPJ had created strips of paper on the computer in the same colours and font as the front of the school, but reading “Colchester County High School for Girls”; she had also brought in a thong and purple bra to tape to the sign – just to reinforce the point. We needed some sellotape and so with one five-fingered discount later from the art department, we were set. We needed the sellotape to stick the signs and underwear to the sign and initially we were concerned about doing so; it was raining and sellotape sticks to wet things in much the same way that large pineapple chunks stick to pizza. However, ever concerned with appearances, the school has a hedge that the sign is set into – which looks very suave – and so was shielded from the rain. We were successful, and the bra was placed on the highest point of the gate. We talked to Martin an hour later, who had been in the office when he heard over the radio “Some jokers *tccchh* have changed the sign *tccchh* at the front of the school *tccchh*.” It’s nice to know that you’re appreciated. They took down the sign alteration and the thong, but the bra stayed up until lunchtime at least; I forgot to look as I was leaving at the end of the day.

At this point, it was the end of our free and it was time for the form feast. The cake went down a treat – everyone who tried it enjoyed it, although they all showed initial hesitancy; understandably, given the number of people that have sampled what is affectionately known as ‘bland’. While usually at that point I would have had Physics with Mr. Warren, he had unfortunately double-booked himself for our lesson, and so we had it off while he attended a meeting someplace about some such. Off to the Common Room, Florence decided it was time to get rid of the dummy; the plan was to get him on any roof somewhere. We patched him up using the sellotape, as he was falling apart, as well as dabbled with giving him a spine transplant using a broken pool cue – which turned out to be one of our worst ideas ever, as it broke his head and removed his ability to use one of his knees. Florence was saving his life from our abysmal surgery, when I looked out the window and was struck by the memory of being placed on the roof of the porch of Gurney Benham in Year 8; it was the perfect location for the dummy. I floated the idea and it was well received and so I went scouting inside to see what lessons we would have to dodge past. As it turned out, there were two; a Lower Sixth maths class teaching themselves, who were no problem, but also a Mr. Wallace’s class who had their door open, which we would be in view of for a considerable length of time for a group of people carrying a fairly good replica of a body. In the end, we just rushed with Jonny at the front obscuring Mr. Wallace’s view. After carefully positioning the dummy in an appropriate position (which involved sellotaping his head to the wall), we dashed downstairs – again avoiding Mr. Wallace – and out of the building to view our handiwork. It was marvelous.

We had a few minutes to admire our work from the Common Room, but soon it was break time. And at the end of break time came the Big Free, in which Phil, Sam, Ted and myself had been planning to do a tour of the school with Phil’s video camera. The plan was originally to go inside every room in the school, regardless of their lesson-status, but Ted being a spoilsport wasn’t up for that – and without Ted – the highest ranking of our group, which would lend us a sense of officiality and render us at least partially immune from retribution. As such, we came to a compromise; we’d only go into lessons that we thought wouldn’t mind. Those that we thought would mind, we’d look in through the window. We made our way off to Elianore – where we decided to start our journey – only to be intercepted by Mr. Leveridge who delayed us a fair amount by talking to Ted about music – of all things! Still, we got to the top floor of Elianore, and turned on the camera. We then spent far too long in Elianore talking to people we didn’t know about things neither of us cared about. We came to regret this when we ran out of space on the camera later. However, the journey around the school was marvelous. We went through the gardens, waved at the canteen ladies, all through Gurney Benham without backtracking (the Smokers’ Staff Room has some seriously cool stuff in it). We even got some guest camerawork from Ceri and Georgia for the Boys’ and Girls’ Sixth Form toilets. Shockingly, Art, who we thought would be one of the most relaxed of all the departments, objected vehemently in both teachers’ cases. Mrs. Lloyd went way down in my estimation – which was unfortunate given it was the last day. Equally surprisingly, Tech was fairly lenient with us. We got into a surprising number of offices and secret rooms (although GBH stands out as the one that got away) and caught the elusive Mr. Jenkinson on video giving a lesson. Malheureusement, we never found him in his office and thus our last chance to find out what is in the room behind his office slipped through our grasp. The other regret was the fact that we ran out of time on the video; Physics and Chemistry weren’t done on video, though we did take photos of them for posterity’s sake.

It was now the start of lunch, and thus time for the highlight of the day. I had thought of this a while ago, and it was good to see so many people show up for it. We were going to unscrew the whiteboard from ‘our’ room – GB8 – and sign our names behind it. This was arguably the most ‘naughty’ of the things we were going to do, as it couldn’t be undone without a new layer of paint, but as was said at the time while it wasn’t the type of thing the school would encourage, it was something they’d approve of. There is a horrible rumour doing the rounds that the whole building is going to be refurbished over the summer, which would remove our handiwork in a single stroke (of paint, from a really big brush). However, once we removed the board, we saw that there was another layer of paint behind it of a different colour, so as long as they just re-paint the rooms as they apparently did the last time, we’ll be okay and immortalized in the school for years to come. We anticipated that the most difficult bit would be getting the board back on the wall, as there were also six aluminium spacers to fit back in, but it seemed easier than taking it down (I was involved directly in neither, but the screws were a pain to get out).

This took about half of lunch, but we weren’t done. Earlier, Jon had gone into town and bought some rope; Ben knows how to tie a hangman’s noose, and we have access to the biology department. Skelletor – rumoured to be the skeleton of the old head of Biology (before Mr. Beatty) who topped himself – was getting hung in a purple blazer from a tree. Unfortunately, he was whisked up before the blazer was put on; when we tried to bring him down, his ribs got stuck in the tree branches; TPJ waggled the rope and Skelletor plummeted to the ground, breaking his hip. Ben and Sam rushed him back to Biology and fixed him (only a pin had bent, which loosened the whole leg and as a whole was easily remedied), but we quickly scarpered. Initially, TPJ was blamed, as is only natural. However, it turned out that it was Ben’s fault – he had only single reef-knotted the two strands of rope together, and this had undone itself on the tree. I think everyone preferred blaming TPJ, but you can’t beat the truth – although a lot less people commented about it later than they would have done if it was TPJ’s fault. As our last lunchtime drew to a close, I sat in the Common Room trying to convince myself that if I didn’t get up and go to registration, then school wouldn’t end for the last time. Unfortunately, the real world caught up with me and I was forced to go to registration for the final time before proceeding to maths. Now, at this point we had the bottom half of the hangman’s noose still – that’s the business end – and when I entered our Maths room – upstairs in Gurney Benham – it was tied to a water pipe, hanging out the window. It looked a bit useless, until I remembered what was on the window next door – the dummy. One swift trip next door later, we had our own felon sentenced to death. With no time to wait until dawn, he went straight out the window. This was arguably the most satisfying part of the day, as we kept hearing laughter and shrieks from outside from passers-by. Completely unintentionally, it also was dangling outside an occupied class downstairs. Our maths lessons with Dr. Davey can’t get much more laid back than how they are at the moment without him teaching us, so we had a pretty normal maths lesson (for those of you keeping track, this was my first lesson of the day) before proceeding downstairs for our Maths party with Mrs. Fish; party poppers, the buzzing blower things, and everything. I was a bit early, so I left to talk to people in the Common Room for a while. Flo attacked me with some parcel tape, trying to wrap me up, which I let her do, thinking that it was harmless. It was, until Tank leapt at me and started taping me up good – including one of my legs to my chest. Him and Jon then carried me to maths, where I was unceremoniously dumped on a table. Everyone – myself included – found it funny though and it didn’t take me long to get out. At the end of our – short (due to the exam briefing) – lesson, she let us leave by the window for the first time ever. Of course, I thought this the perfect opportunity to say “So long, and thanks for all the Fish” – which I did. Walking past the hanged man, we were distraught to see that his head had fallen off; apparently it was Pagie’s fault – someone was playing with him in the History class that he was fixed too, and just put too much stress on the stitching around his neck. After the exam briefing, we had five minutes left of school to appreciate before leaving for the last time (barring exams, and results day, and all the other piddling days like “Certificate Day”). I thought we were all doing alright emotionally before Florence started crying, which nearly set me off. A multitude of hugs later, I remembered something else I’d been planning to do for ages on the last day of school – go talk to Mr. Wright. I looked around for as many people as I could that this special reason would also apply to, but Chrissy was the only one. Even though he hates Mr. Wright, I still convinced him to come along.

In my first Geography lesson in Year 7, among other things (such as drawing a map of the school), Mr. Wright told us that even though we had 20 terms at the school, and that seemed like an eternity at that point, it would go far quicker than we could ever expect or think it could. At that point, none of us believed him, but what do you know – the old man with more life experience was right. So I went and told him so on the last day. We had a nice conversation and we all reminisced about who had been in the class; it turns out he keeps all of his old mark books – going so far back that at one point he was able to tell a student what his father had got in every piece of work he had ever done. He gave us Christmas Pudding flavoured kit-kats, wished us well for the future and we did the same; he’s retiring this year – with Mr. Beatty and Mr. Bayes retiring last year, and him this year, the landscape of the school will have changed forever. Apart from anything, I have no idea what the school will do for prizegiving without Mr. Wright; he’s the guy that runs it every year and sorts out all the books. He’s also the media center of the school; he makes sure all the right people get in all the right newspapers and preps people before interviews. If we see less of the school in the paper in the future, we’ll know the reason (well, other than the fact that the best year ever – us – has now left; there’ll surely be a final hurrah for results, and that’ll be it).

At this point, it was time to leave school for the last time. Annoyingly, I forgot to see if the bra was still present on the gates, but walking into town with Bish I realized that I had arrived at the end of an era; one of the most enjoyable ones that anyone can have experienced.

Of course, this isn’t the last time I’ll be seeing almost everyone, and Ceri duly threw a Eurovision Party. The communal favourite was the Moldavian entry, which involved a Grandma banging a drum. Hard. As the night wore on, Sleep Deprivation Club was founded. However, as the first rule of Sleep Deprivation Club is “You cannot talk about Sleep Deprivation Club” *Checks off ‘Fight Club reference on the list of things to mention in this entry*, that is where this emotionally draining entry must draw to an end and I’ll go attack the 3-D Sudoku that was published in the Telegraph at the weekend again.

I haven’t written anything for a while, but that’s because there hasn’t been anything good to write about (well.. that’s probably a lie; both Flo’s and Sam’s parties were great. But they’re not really good journal material). Until today. Today, after school, Ted, Phil, Bish and my good self undertook a journey into town to see – if all went to plan – the singular Terry Pratchett. We bummed around town for a bit, running errands, and got into the queue that was just outside Red Lion Books at twenty-to-five, with the signing due to begin at five. Unfortunately, we got stuck just in front of a man that can only be described accurately as Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. It’s not very nice, but it’s true. He told us about how he was going to ask a question that had been “driving him insane” (“In the Hogfather, when Susan talks to {Some Character}, the narrative just says that she asks him a question. What’s that question!!?!”). Bish and Phil knew the answer, but he asked it anyway – and they turned out to be right. He also needed a good slap as after the signing started, when the queue was moving slowly, and he complained about “Little Old Ladies asking too questions – get your book signed, and get the hell out!” I wanted to point out that he, by his own admission, was going to ask a question, but didn’t.

The atmosphere was really good. We spotted some people from school (including Pagie) in the queue behind us, which was nice. We were just outside the door, and we were getting into the swing of it when we saw some polearms in the distance. Wondering what they were, we peered round the edge of the queue, to be greeted by four members and the Commander of the Watch! They filed in, and then guarded the door. A lovely touch was that they each had a sprig of lilac on their uniform (a reference to Night Watch). We were right next to one of them guarding the door, who we hounded with some innane chatter. Phil asked him “How long is your polearm?” and received the wry reply “I don’t know; I’ve never measured it”. Comic Book Guy asked what the Night Watch was doing out in the day – the retort he was greeted with was that “We have to work during the day. We’re usually in the Pub come later.” They then departed round the back of the store to get their signed books, but soon returned for more guarding action. We were told that we could buy books inside; I was the only one out of the four of us that had any money, so to show willing I bought two books – the one he was signing today (A Hat Full of Sky) and the one that comes before it (The Wee Free Men). I had brought my prizegiving, hardback, Thief of Time for him to sign, but it was at this point that I rued the fact that I forgot I have a Wee Free Men poster which is the size and shape of a door. I’d have loved to get that signed but, alas, it was not to be. Still, I retuned to the queue and waited

The queue extended down the stairs and looped once downstairs, but once we got inside it felt as if we were getting closer disproportionate to the progress we were making and was cooler to boot; standing in the sun outside was both irritating and hot. At the bottom of the stairs, we could see him – which was almost a reward in itself. We amused ourself with the Classics shelf, mocking Ted for what he has read, and reminisced about books we had read a long time ago. Around this time, we came to the general consensus that Phil should go first out of the four of us – because the rest of us were scared. Because of the weird queue, we got close to Pratchett and then further away again – serving to merely taunt us. Still, it gave us time to think about what to get signed; I came up with the sensational idea to get a piece of card signed by Pratchett and to use it as the Einstein says for tomorrow. But where do we get card in the middle of a queue for an author? From my pocket! I was carrying around the deck we use to play 1000 blank cards which – thankfully! – had some blank cards in it. As I was getting two books signed, Phil was making a special request, and Ted was getting two books signed, the request for the card rested on Bish’s shoulders. Ted also finalised his plan for Sam Waterson’s book; he would get a traditional ‘To Sam’ on the normal page, but then on the following page there would be “To No Face” – which is, of course, what we (affectionately!) call Sam. We were now close enough to hear what Pratchett was saying to various people. One woman walked up and said “I’m so excited!”. Pratchett replied “It’s been a long time since a woman has said that to me…”. Also around this time, we decided that (perhaps unfairly) to irritate the man behind us to take our time. Very soon, it was our turn to meet good ol’ TP.

Phil went first, and asked for his map to be signed really big. He duly did so, and added a “You are here” and an arrow pointing to Ankh-Morpork, which was pretty cool. Phil introduced himself by saying “How’s it going? Can you make this out really big to Phil, please?” Pratchett asked him who he was, and when told the answer replied “OH! You’re Phil”. Phil also asked him to put on his hat to have a photo taken – which he agreed to – because “[it's] totally the best hat ever”. Pratchett’s reply was that Phil was obviously “One cool dude”. Phil admitted that he was “down with the lingo”, but soon wondered why on earth he did so. Bish went next, and got his book (The Last Continent) signed to Bish – and asked him to sign the piece of card to the school. Tomorrow’s Einstein is going to be “To CRGS. Yo! Terry Pratchett”. The ‘Yo’ was off his own bat, impressively – possibly after contact with Phil. At this point, we weren’t taking any longer than we had to, but any chance of ours to annoy the guy behind us was taken out of his hands; both Terry Pratchett’s phone went off and a flunkie appeared. Ted and I listened to the flunkie conversation, who appeared to be appologising for something and asking for two days off; the reply he got back was “Ok. But you better tell me everything come Monday, otherwise I’ll kill you. But I’ll probably delegate it to you, so you’ll likely be okay”. He then informed us how no-one else would employ the flunkie and he did it out of pity. Resuming the signing, he signed both books of mine (“Deja Fu” in the Thief of Time, and “Crivens” in A Hat Full of Sky, in addition to ‘To Alex’ in both with his signature). Finally, it was Ted, who got Night Watch made out to Ted (“You had to be there…”) and Sam’s book made out exactly how we wanted it. We just hope Sam isn’t going to kill us. After being more successful than we could possibly imagine, we all left happy. We were soon caught up by Comic Book Guy outside, who told us about his question. We wanted to go taunt Pagie and Alex that we had got our books signed, but in the end we settled for talking to SAEG – the kid who hates both Phil and myself. That was mildly satisfying. And then, after standing for 90 minutes, Bish and I decided to walk home, which was pleasant as the weather was amiable. Entering at seven, a long and most excellent day drew to a close.

But only six more days of school! I really don’t want it to end, as I have said before; I don’t really have anything to add on top of what I’ve said in previous entries.

Birds of Prey are cool. As stated in one of my earlier posts, I’ve got a Bird of Prey experience day coming up (which I won), but today we went to The Suffolk Owl Sanctuary as a family, which has served to whet my appetite for the day I have coming up. After wandering around for forty minutes, we went to see the ferret racing with great anticipation. Disappointingly, it was too wet for racing, but they were still shown to us, along with a kestrel up close, which they even used to demonstrate their hovering technique. It was the most well trained of the birds and it was amazing to see it hover so close. We then got talking to the guys who were doing the show (about the ‘Owl Man’ at Frinton – he takes his owls to the beach when the weather is nice) and the conversation turned to a Harris Hawk chick which they are currently rearing in their office and they took us to see. It’s lovely; four weeks ago, when it was born, it was the size of it’s own head currently, and in six weeks it’ll turn into this.

We were then told of the story of Fetlar, who was a snowy owl that they owned that escaped one day (it was driven from the owl sanctuary by a flock of crows). They tried to catch it, but through the RSPB’s idiocy (“We can’t lend you any mist netting – you might kill a songbird” “Yeah, a songbird is going to fly across an open field with two men on one side and a snowy owl on the other”) they didn’t. They finally got a plan that was going to work, and then found it dead underneath what had become his favourite perch in a caravan park. This was half a mile from the nearest road, and only the back of him was dirty. Under his chin there was a hole. Not from a gun, as that would have been much messier. They took the carcass to a vet. The diagnosis: road kill. This version of events means that he was hit by a car with a spike on the front, removed himself, flew half a mile to his favourite perch, and then fell off the back into the dirt. Not likely. The vet also suggested a struggle with a predator, but no unicorns have been sighted in the area. They were distinctly unimpressed with this vet, who at one point started cutting feathers to look at the would, and seemed surprised when was told that you can, in fact, pluck feathers.

It turns out that the week he died, a gang of men who are known to roam the east coast with crossbows were spotted, and this fits all the facts. Apparently, they use them to hunt with, as they are far easier than shotguns to hunt with, and you don’t need a license. They haven’t been found, and I get the impression the vet has never been used again. We thanked him, and killed 40 more minutes looking at the birds (there was the cutest Tawny owl you’ve ever seen and a bird known as a Seriema – a bird with, bizarrely, eyelashes). We then settled in for the proper show of the afternoon, featuring a common buzzard, a snowy owl, a (badly behaved) tawny owl and a falcon who’s particular breed escapes me; it was doing its second display ever, however, and performed admirably, and was rewarded justly.

All in all, it was an excellent day out (only marred by the terrible cold that I currently have), and I can’t wait for my day in the summer holidays (which has since been rearranged so that I can be a prefect at the Lashings vs. CRGS cricket match. Both will be great!

First off, Hitachi go way up in my estimation with href="http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr%20images/Get_Perpendicular.swf">this
animation describing their new Hard Drive technology. If more companies were like this – able to have a bit of fun – the world would be a much better and more entertaining place. They should make it into an advert and achieve cult status.

It’s the Easter Holidays, but the end of term has been spent sorting out our yearbook entries. I’m pleased with mine, and arguably even more pleased that Einstein is getting his own page. I’ve even been able to get what I wanted on Ali’s onto his entry, managing to overcome the fact he wasn’t in school yesterday. However, the comments that everyone was writing were very ‘last day’ comments. While I was well aware that it was not the last day, it just made me realise even more how much I’m going to regret leaving the school.

However, school did take a slight turn for the worse yesterday. I spent about an hour (maybe 90 minutes) on Thursday night making a timetable for working in the computer room over study leave – everyone had four days work, never working on a day with an exam, and in all but two instances never working on a day before an exam. It was a work of art. I show it to Mr. Heaton, who gives it the A-OK. I print off six copies and go to distribute them, only to be told by the first Lower Sixth former that I meet that ‘This is bullshit’. It turns out that he’s not working over study leave. It’s 11% of his revision time, and he just can’t make that sacrifice, apparantly, even though everyone did it without complaint last year. He even had a note from his mum explaining the situation to Mr. Heaton. It transpired that the same applied to the other Lower Sixth helpers, none of which had bothered to tell me this fact when I asked for their exam timetables only days before when they knew what I was doing. Of course, the Upper Sixth helpers don’t want to work two days a week, so we’re getting fired a month early because the Lower Sixth don’t want to work four days over the course of six weeks. They really get on my tits sometimes.

Finally, the Thursday Next quartet of books are – if the first is anything to go by – really great. I am going to read the last three some time, but for the meantime I’ll make do with the author’s website which is full of odds and ends relating to the book, and some other stuff besides.

Today was a great day, but carried with it not-so-great repercussions. I had the second half of my Cambridge psychological testing. It was similar to the previous week – again, a spatial awareness test and a visual reasoning, although these were harder than last week. The final bit was a very simple maths test; the only catch with it seemed to be that the questions were set out in the form “I have one hundred and seventy three cassettes. I sell nineteen. How many do I have left?” That is to say the numbers were written out. Those of us that were maths students found it great, but there were those who haven’t done maths since GCSE, and so understandably found it difficult. Nonetheless, everyone on the way out found themselves 10 pounds richer. After a short break we then proceeded to having our tutor group photos taken – outside. Only two weeks since we were graced with the mass of snow, it could be said that today spring had finally sprung. The grass had ‘riz’. There was no need to ‘wonder where the birdies is’; they were providing a quintessential audio backdrop. The sun was shining, there were few clouds in the sky, and those that were there shared our sense of lethargy and ambled across the sky. It was such a beautiful day that I managed to wrangle my way into having my last three hours of lessons in the gardens – two hours of maths, and an hour of Chemistry AEA. I would be lying if I said the lessons were some of my most productive, but they were certainly some of my most pleasant. AEA was rounded off with that well known sport of ancients, the cross-school bench race. Naturally, Marcus and I won – through guile rather than outright physical prowess, but a win is a win.

However, this leads me to the repercussions. Today was a such a great day and on the way home I dwelled on the fact that I have terribly few days left at the school. It seems like no time at all since my first lesson with Mr. Wright, where he warned us that we only had about 20 terms at the school and it would go faster than we could imagine or want it to. I don’t think any of us believed him at the time, but look at us now. I’ve enjoyed my time at CRGS enormously and I don’t want it to come to an end. Yes, I’m happy to have an offer from Cambridge waiting for me – dependant on my grades – but if I could just do a university course at CRGS with everything else staying as it is, it would be great. Alas, time is against me and I’m going to be stepping out of the front of the school for the last time far sooner than I want to think about. The most I can do is to continue to enjoy the time that I have.

This acknowledgement that I will be leaving the school soon does have a benefit, however – we can toy with ideas of things to do on the last day. Brainstorming, we have come up with a few things to do:

• Take biology department skeleton; dress in lower-school uniform; hang (high, if possible) from a tree
• Fill Martin’s office with polystyrene packaging
• Arrange a treasure hunt for Mr. Jenkinson. The best item we came up with for the end was a yearbook (if it is ever made) signed by everyone in the year.

Of course, we need more ideas. But alas, as mentioned, there is not much time so we may have to settle for something tried and tested. I have a couple more ideas, but they’re require a lot of preparation (or money); I’m attempting to garner support from… third parties, but I’d be surprised if they agreed. However, it only costs me a second class stamp, so we’ll see what happens. No, you’re not finding out what it is, but there is a (small) clue in this paragraph.

Finally, about a year ago I won a junior rally day. Unfortunately, I’m not a junior, and the ticket was about to expire this month. One quick email to the company later, and I’m going to be enjoying a ‘bird of prey experience’ sometime in June, which is of (near) equivalent value. I have flown and fed a barn owl before (at primary school) and thoroughly enjoyed that, so I’m really looking forward to it.

It was results day on Thursday and – mystifyingly – there were none of the nerves that usually go with it; probably because these modules were ‘pre-takes’ and so didn’t actually matter if we did terribly. Thankfully, I didn’t in all the subjects that I care about – I even scraped (80%) an A in the Pure Maths 3 paper which I loathed and detested and I am now sitting pretty for the summer exams. In maths, for example, I need 17% on the last paper, which should be easily achievable.

I draw your attention to the phrase “that I care about“. General Studies was not so great. I got a good A on the synoptic paper, and then a C and a D on the other two. To add insult to injury, the D came in the science paper. Mysteriously, there were lots of similar results that other people had obtained and now there are rumblings of remarking the last two papers for a sizable proportion of the year. Depressingly, these results put me at six marks off an A and so I have to retake the exams come summer if the remarks don’t come in my favour.

As I mentioned before, I’m undergoing some psychometric testing for Cambridge research – something about how boys and girls learn differently. I did the first half on Friday and thoroughly enjoyed it – it was just like the 11+ crossed with the Mensa test, consisting of verbal and spatial reasoning. There was only one question that I had trouble with to the extent that I couldn’t answer it, but just about everyone had difficulty with it. I’ll be interested to see what the second half consists of.

Today started off alright, and got a lot better really quickly. Friday is already a pretty good day of the week with a lot of fluff padding out my timetable (tutorial, free periods), and I already knew I was getting another hour off thanks to doing Physics (which renders some mechanics lessons fairly redundant, allowing extra time off).

It then started to snow. I was asked – as a connoisseur of snow – whether I thought it would settle. I replied in the negative; oh, how wrong I was. It settled, and in a big way. We haven’t had a snow day this year (unlike the last two years), but this was just about as close as we would be able to get without having the day off. I admit we had a fair bit of snow over half term, but this stuck around unlike the half-term vintage

Our half hour free period and – thanks to our form tutor being awesome – half hour tutorial session were spent in a great snowball fight while the rest of the school had lessons. This merely served to intensify the greatness. Unfortunately, at that point I had physics while certain other people had another free period. With fewer people though, less happened, and a further sizable amount of snow fell. This set the scene for the triumph of the day. Phil, Brady and I, with nothing better to do, started to make our way into town, only to be distracted by unscarred snow. Oxford House was a good source of this, and it was their snow that spawned the snowball. This was rolled – and carried – towards the hospital who’s virgin snow was, frankly, too tempting. Rolling our already sizable snowball across their grass picked up all of their snow. It was like Katamari Damacy in real life, and a sight to behold. Quickly, the snowball grew too big to easily control, and we decided – perhaps foolishly – to try and get it back to school. Dropping it off a ten inch ledge proved futile, however, as it crashed to the ground and broke. We toyed with various ideas – taking the bits back to school, putting the bits on the bus shelter – and we even tried the old “horses and king’s men’ routine, but alas, our Humpty Dumpty was not to be. Depressed and defeated, we trudged back to school for lunch – I hoped that at least, like last year, there would be a large snowball fight consisting of Sixth Form vs. The Rest Of The School. What we came across was even better.

There, at the start of the path to Elyanore was a snowball that someone else had made, the same size as our Humpty Dumpty. With no-one around, we adopted it, and decided to try to take it to the large close, as we had originally intended with our first one. We quickly encountered a problem, however. This was at the bottom of a sloping path. A sloping path covered in ice. Trying to move a heavy snowball uphill is a challenge in itself, but on ice? We decided to give it a shot – and we succeeded, but painfully slowly, avoiding small children and daffodils alike being crushed in this ball’s path. With one final push, we got it into the sunken garden where were left it – we would be able to look at it from the warmth of the common room and admire our handiwork. And my, what handiwork. However, our joy was short lived; come lunch, miscellaneous members of the lower years attempted to remove it from the garden – the sixth form only garden. Phil and I rushed out to defend it, which we did valiantly, but were eventually outnumbered to such an extent that it was futile to try any further. Interestingly, it was the lower years who were using the philosophy “If we can’t have it, no-one can” and attempted to destory it, rather than us, so I was happy to let them try to kick it to bits. Of course, as a massive ball of ice, this took them a long time to even make a small dent. We retreated to let them do what they wanted with it. They decided it would be a great idea to roll it down the school drive into Lexden Road.

Now, I’m not saying we’re a great deal better than them – Phil and I did, in fact, float the idea of putting our first snowball into the middle of the road, but decided against it on the grounds that it would actually be dangerous. They, apparantly, lacked the capacity to come to this decision. And so, they proceeded to roll it down the drive until there was some teacher-based intervention, with Mr. Salter and Mr. Stebbings laying the smackdown. Their punishment? To roll it back to the gardens. A fully appreciated end to a quality day.