Post title. Do I have to? Jeez, fine

Ben deleted his blog almost a year ago in a fit of paranoia, and he said something at the time about keeping up with everyone else's despite not maintaining his own, but a lot has changed and I feel safe in admitting that I really freaking miss him. And it's in my own fit of paranoia I can admit that I'm scared he's forgotten me.

Now that I'm already here, y'know what? I miss all you crazy mofos.

Sam? I miss you. I've been a right Oedipus this last year, and I feel like an even bigger one every time I see something - anything, like a crunchy leaf or a really good sandwich - that reminds me of you, and your bad double entendres, and then I get really sad and pathetic because you're a jillion miles away which sucks hairy ass

Jen-Vdude? I miss you as well. You've become associated with a really, really good period of my life, and I'm sad as hell that you didn't come to Norwich but you seem to be having a wonderful time where you are, and that's as much as I could hope for.

Rory? I dunno if you're still bothering to trawl through these self-centred oh-so-dramatic blatherings of mine, but incredibly, I kind of miss you too. And Charlotte. Tell her to answer her damn phone, will you.

And yeah, I miss Sophie. And Miriam. I feel like Miriam, especially, has found her place at uni - much more comfortably than she ever would've done had she stayed here. So, great, really. People move away and grow up, and she's done just that. Cool. Good. 

Shut up and take my money (£209.45 for ten hours! save £50!)

I'm learning to drive. Don't really want to, but I'm sick of people getting at me for being eighteen and not driving yet. Eighteen, jeez, what a twat I am. How dare I be ambivalent to the idea of owning a vehicle. How dare I make use of public transport. How dare I ask for lifts. What. A. Shit.

I asked my instructor if it's ever occurred to him that humans are just not meant to drive. If evolution wanted us to travel any considerable distance then we'd have wings. He told me to shut up and go up into third gear, remember the clutch.

Fucking hell.

Sam Winchester is my animagus

Guess who's finally jumped on the Supernatural bandwagon? Only, like, eight seasons too late, but better late than never.

My provisional license arrived this morning. That means I've not got to learn how to fucking drive, damnit. 

My boss keeps nagging me about driving, despite it being none of her business and, actually, quite rude. It's not that I don't want that freedom, but allow me to entrust unto you a short list of reasons why "Katherine" and "driving" just don't seem to click:

1. It's expensive. Katherine is a) perpetually broke and b) completely unwilling to spend the little she has.
2. Katherine is not a clever person. The idea of her in control of a massive, metal, moving vehicle with the potential to be a killing machine - just, no. I see bad things arising.
3. It's expensive.
4. I mean, really expensive.
1. The license.
2. The lessons.
3. The motherfucking vehicle.
4. The insurance.
5. The tax.
6. The fuel.
7. The maintenance.
8. IT'S JUST EXPENSIVE OKAY.
5. Katherine has intense anxiety (I mean, considering she's never driven a car once, it seems an excessive level of anxiety) about being responsible for passengers, and that one-in-a-trillion scenario of "just driving around with some friends la la la oops crash everyone dead but me" plagues her like some kind of plague.
6. Did I mention that it's expensive?
7. Going back to the anxiety thing - seriously. It's the biggest damn "if" ever, but what if? I don't want that guilt on my shoulders for the rest of my life. Therefore, my ideal car would be a one-seater. What's that? Did you say motorbike? If you can convince my mother, please do.
8. Two-seaters are even more expensive than five-seaters.
9. It's all so very expensive.

There you have it.
I genuinely resent the amount of money I'm losing because people keep telling me that I have to fucking drive.

Fucking Michael

In a nutshell, that's my dominant thought these days. Know why? Because fuck you.

How are you? Now it's been, what, four months? How's that career coming along? I'd have asked sooner, but you're kind of hard to get hold of.

I get the impression you tried to remove yourself from my life completely, and even though I'm no closer to knowing why, it's becoming clear that you didn't do a great job. Tear neatly along the dotted line between "you" and "me" and, guess what, I'm not over you, I'm not fine, I'm just hurting. I'm hurting still. Know why? You didn't even have it in you to make me hate you.

Come on. If I'm that insufferable, then cheat on me. Let me find you holding hands with someone else. Let me see dumb stupid compromising texts on your phone, whatever - if I hated you, you'd be nothing by now.

Or, y'know, if you want to practice basic decency, then tell me what I want to know. Tell me what I did wrong, tell me why you're sick of me - but can you? No! Cut me loose and leave me hanging! Why not!
It's been four months, Michael, and I'm not okay. I'm not okay, and I'm not okay because of you, and if you don't feel even just a little bit guilty then you're even less of the person I thought you were.

Why, though? Is it that hard, speaking to me? Drop me a line, drop me a fucking text, I don't care - I hate how much of a coward you are. If we were to bump into one another tomorrow in the street, you wouldn't even cross the street to avoid me. You'd do your infuriating "Helloo" with that dumb wave you do and, I don't know, maybe even ask me how I am, what do I know - but it wouldn't mean anything, and it wouldn't lead to any kind of conversation - especially not the conversation I want - and within seconds you'd be walking away again, and you'd leave me even more sad than I am now. I don't understand why you're so unwilling to clean up after yourself.

Just, fuck you. Fuck you.

It's funny -

I'm sure no one envies me, and yet I consider myself unbelievably fortunate. University? - pff, maybe later - and yet my own skepticism doesn't compromise the excitement and fear and whatever else is being felt at this moment by everyone waiting for the first day of uni. And so it shouldn't, of course - but I think the reason I'm in such distraction by the impending Year of Complete Isolation, is that I just don't understand why everyone's going. I mean - I've had to explain my reasons for not wanting to go. I suppose you could say that I'm worried that my friends - the overwhelming majority of my friends - are going off to university with no clearer idea of why they're going than I did six months ago when, amid revision and UCAS and all that bollocks, it kind of just occurred to me one day that I didn't want to walk this path being laid for me.

When I'm feeling particularly fluffy, I like to compare it to a pasta machine, with "it" being this big, ugly, proverbial SYSTEM that everyone likes to throw around and exploit and criticise - present company included, naturally.

Try and take me seriously for a minute. I know it's hard.

As I said - this SYSTEM is like a pasta machine. A pasta machine that primarily makes tagliatelle. The windy thing on the side of the pasta machine turns; this, within the context of the SYSTEM, is the passage of time. It turns, and churns out string after string of tagliatelle - and the tagliatelle is delicious, and edible, and everything that it should be, "and the Lord said that it was good" blah blah - but then, from nowhere, a lump of pasta-dough doesn't want to be tagliatelle. It wants to be a bow-tie, or a curly ribbon, or a shell, or a loopy-loop, or a windy tunnel. The pasta machine, unable/unwilling to accommodate the wishes of this nonconformist, rejects it; it gets caught in the workings, slows everything down, gets put on the receiving end of a thousand disapproving looks and exasperated lectures, all of which the pasta has heard before, until the words "You'll like it when you're tagliatelle" become the bane of its existence and it is left with two choices: to force itself to mould into tagliatelle, or to leap headfirst out of the pasta machine and pray to God that they'll land safely. 

That is what it's like, admitting to everyone who ever said, "You'll do well at university" that, eheheh, I don't want to go. First, the silence, then the questioning, then the unhelpful advice, then the "Oh, well, you can always change your mind". Thanks, lady. Further invalidate my autonomy, why don't you.

Without turning into some neo-hippy/hipster in vintage clogs and a fifties housewife petticoat, fuck the PASTA MACHINE.

So, uh,

now I have to admit that I didn't do as well as I'd have liked - but FUCK IT I'M NOT GOING HAHAHAHA oh dear lord I'm so grateful that I didn't have to go through clearing. I hate pitying people, because I know that no one likes to be pitied, but fuck me - I imagine clearing to be a massive pit of disappointed teenagers fighting to the death for a place on the Communication Studies course at the university of Bedfordshire and it's just depressing to think about.

*Where Katherine is once again a massive snob and fails to care*

Impending Results

In terms of immediacy, my A levels are basically irrelevant. I think that's why I'm not scared to find out how I did on results day, Thursday.

It feels a bit like someone said to me, a few months ago, that I'm going to receive a present on Thursday 15th August - and they're honest with me, they've said that it could be a nice present, or it could be a massive disappointment - so I know next-to-nothing about this present I'm getting, so I don't really think about it, but then when I do think about it I get kind of excited, because a present is still a present, and that's quite exciting.

ONE DAY MORE

Okay I've got work in 10 minutes and UGH I'M SO TIRED DON'T MAKE ME DO IT GOD

I don't think I know how to not complain about stuff anymore

I'm getting kinda chubby. I should regulate my eating, but I really love pie. This is a genuine dilemma.

Going up to Scotland in two days. TWO DAYS. It really cannot come fast enough - I am utterly whacked. And increasingly sounding more and more like my mother. Which is fine, she's a wonderful lady, but I'm eighteen and the preferred lexicon for "very tired" is "knackered".

When did I become such a dick.

Work is hard. Which sounds obvious, but it doesn't negate my point. Working in a pub, sometimes we're so busy that I want to cry with exhaustion, and other times there is nothing at all to be done and I want to cry with boredom. I find myself doing a lot of cleaning. Compulsively, you could say. Which isn't good, but it's something I do well.

I like being in the kitchen, because I'm learning so much, and not at all in a sit-down-with-a-textbook-and-here's-a-recipe-for-quiche kind of way. It feels like osmosis - I watch these chefs, who've been in the business for longer than I've been alive, and their knowledge and confidence makes me feel so stupid - but then they never make me feel insignificant, and I really appreciate and respect them for that.

I like being behind the bar, because the air conditioning is really good, and I like pretending to be charming and cheeky because, trust me, the punters lap that shit up like it's going out of fashion. It makes me sad, in a way, because the customers that I'm getting to know are the ones who're in there every day, and - of course - they're in there every day because they're all raging alcoholics. And that makes me sad, because they ask for a double Bells and Coke and I want to punch them in the face and say "NO, GO HOME TO YOUR WIFE AND NEVER COME BACK" but that would get me fired so I just serve them and try not to think about their ever-decreasing life expectancy. If anything, working behind the bar has given me a very, very clear idea of the kind of person I never want to be. So there's that.

But I really need to go to Scotland. I'll read lots and swim lots and take lots of pictures and I'll hang out with ALL my family and Mum and I will climb mountains and then we'll have barbecues. Many, many barbecues.

What was that I was saying about getting chubby? Oh, well. At least my jeans still fit.

"So what do you want to do with your life?"

oh gee shit NO, ANY QUESTION BUT THIS, HOW THE BOLLOCKS AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE I MEAN FUCK I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT FOR LUNCH TOMORROW, HOW THE EVER-LIVING DICK CAN I BE EXPECTED TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND ALL THE PEOPLE I EFFECT AND INFLUENCE, FUCK, NO ONE SHOULD BE INFLUENCED BY ME, HAVE YOU SEEN THE DUMB SHIT I DO BECAUSE BELIEVE ME NO ONE SHOULD BE DOING THAT AND I DON'T WANT TO GET IN TROUBLE WHEN SOMEONE COPIES ME AND GETS INTO DEEP SHIT AND BLAMES ME WHEN FUCKADOODLEDOO I'M NOT YOUR BABYSITTER DON'T BE SUCH A DUMBFUCK, AND THAT THERE IS WHAT I STRONGLY BELIEVE OUGHT TO BE THE FIRST RULE OF LIVING ON EARTH, WRITTEN IN THE SKY AND IN THE MOUNTAINS AND IN EVERY DIFFERENT LANGUAGE, "DON'T BE SUCH A DUMBFUCK" BECAUSE REALLY A LOT OF CRIME WOULD BE HUGELY REDUCED IF PEOPLE COULD STOP BEING SO DUMB, DOING STUPID SHIT LIKE IMITATING IDIOTS LIKE MYSELF WHICH, SHIT, WAS NEVER A FUCKING GOOD IDEA, OH DEAR GOD PLEASE NEVER GIVE ME CHILDREN OF MY OWN TO CORRUPT AND TURN INTO MINI-MES BECAUSE THEY'LL NEVER CATCH A BREAK WITH A MORON LIKE ME AS A MOTHER, OH ME OH MY WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN, THE POOR BASTARDS, AND ARGH STOP GIVING ME RESPONSIBILITIES, I AM PHYSICALLY REJECTING THEM ALL - LEARN TO DRIVE, KATHERINE, NO FUCK YOU GO TO UNIVERSITY, KATHERINE, NO FUCK YOU GET A JOB, KATHERINE NO FUCK Y- OH OKAY I'LL GET A JOB OH HELLO MONEY WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, IT'S RARE FOR US TO SPEND REAL TIME TOGETHER, Y'KNOW WHAT WE SHOULD DO, WE SHOULD START AND MAINTAIN A SMOKING HABIT, JUST BECAUSE I HAVE SOME CASH AND LUNGS TO BURN AND WHY THE HELL SHOULDN'T I IT'S MY OWN FREAKING BODY FUCK ANYONE WHO TELLS ME OTHERWISE BUT WAAAIT YOU'RE A WOMAN DO YOU WANT TO JEOPARDIZE YOUR CHANCES OF HAVING HEALTHY CHILDREN IN THE FUTURE OH WAIT NO HOLD THE FUCK UP DON'T GIVE ME CHILDREN OH MY GOD PLEASE DON'T GIVE ME CHILDREN I'LL FUCK THEM UP WITH MY STUPIDITY AND UTTER, UTTER LACK OF COMMON SENSE - I DON'T WANT RESPONSIBILITY, I WANT TO GO INTO A WORLD THAT DOESN'T EXIST YET BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I'M YET TO INVENT IT, IT'S STILL A HELL OF A LOT EASIER THAN THE ONE I'M ALREADY IN AND IN GENERAL JUST fuck

"well y'know i kind of want to live in a cave and never see anyone ever"

Employment

is hard

School was always kind of easy for me - even when I wasn't doing so well academically, it was never a struggle to sit behind a desk and write whatever I needed to write in order to overachieve. And now I'm in an uncomfortably hot industrial kitchen, making pastry and hacking up bits of chicken carcass and washing up and generally spending my time handling slimy things and it's weird and gross and I love it - jeez, do I love it. I'm using my freaking body, and I'm in a confined space, and it's an unhealthy environment, and I'm constantly in danger of grievously injuring myself with the crazy samurai swords we use to cut vegetables, and I just freaking love it. 

My official title is "kitchen apprentice". Which sounds cool to me.

Whatever. 

Presenting...

...a CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF SOCIETY
YES
I HAVE A JOB
omg i'm so glad
think of all the monies

i'm off for a drink by myself at the shitty little pub in my village that does obscenely cheap jack&coke
ciao

HORROR, OH DEAR GOD IT'S HORRORFUL (now with terror ratings)

This is for personal reference. I plan to add to, and cross out, the titles as and when I come across or watch more of them. 

• Ringu
• 7/10 (ok i know it's overdone and it's the bit everyone knows but fuuuuck when she's crawling out of the telly is i swear at least a 10)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Exorcist
• Night of the Living Dead
• 28 Days Later
• 6/10
• Blair Witch Project
• 8/10
• Pulse
• Wickerman
• Evil Dead
• Audition
• 8/10
• Carrie
• 6/10
• Rosemary's Baby
• Ju-on: The Grudge
• 10/10 (no kidding this is the scariest fucking film)
• Saw
• 6/10
• Psycho
• Birds
• Carved: Slit-Mouthed Woman
• 6/10
• Dark Water
• 6/10
• It
• 9/10
• Misery
• The Shining
• Ichi the Killer
• 1408
• Shallow Grave
• 4/10
• Bedevilled
• One Missed Call
• 8/10
• Marebito
• 5/10
• Cure
• Infection
• 7/10
• Purge
• Deadline
• Devil
• Tale of Two Sisters
• 7/10

(ok so there're films there that i've already seen because i wanted to have something to cross out don't judge me)

(plus i thought that if this was all written in silly pink then it wouldn't be so scary)
(PLUS a low terror score doesn't necessarily mean it ain't a good film
eg, Shallow Grave
blew my freaking mind
but more disturbing than terrifying
the more ya know)

Oh dear Lord

It hasn't properly sunk in yet that I'm done with school. As in, DONE. OVER. FIN. GAME OVER. THE END. Holy fucking crap it's crazy to think of and yet it doesn't really connect, like it's all happening to someone else and I'm pleased for them but it doesn't really affect me, when jeeez does it affect me.

I haven't told many people yet, and now seems like a good time to make it known: I've deferred entry to university, on the grounds of the really, really simple fact that I don't want to go to university. I'm kind of protective over my decision because I had a truly awful, utterly degrading conversation with someone last weekend, which went something like this:

Person: So when are you going off to university?

Katherine (not anticipating any kind of shitstorm because Katherine's life is none of Person's motherfucking business on any day of the week and especially not when it comes to something as significant as university): Oh, I'm not going.

Person: What?

Katherine: I've decided to defer.

Person: But... why?!

Katherine (puzzled): I don't want to go yet.

Person: But what are you going to do instead?

Katherine: Work.

Person: *noise of derision* What a waste!

Katherine: Excuse me?

Person: Doesn't it feel like a wasted opportunity?

Katherine: Actually, no it doesn't. It feels like an unimaginably large weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and for the first time since university was presented to me as the only available option for a reasonably-high achiever such as myself, I feel free. If you truly believe that my choosing a path other than university is a "wasted opportunity", then you are wrong. Success is not determined by a degree. Would you like a list of successful people who did not attend university, or dropped out after deciding that it wasn't for them? No? Well, have one anyway: H.G. Wells, Whoopi Goldberg, George Orwell, Anne Hathaway, Thomas Edison, Jamie Oliver, Alan Sugar, Henry Ford, Simon Cowell, Abraham Lincoln, Bruce Willis, Ralph Lauren, David Karp, Billy Joel, Jimi Hendrix, Molly Brown*, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Hanks, Eminem, Halle Berry, Walt Disney, Charles Dickens, Ellen DeGeneres, Madonna, and among others, Bill Gates AND Steve Jobs. Are you convinced yet? No? Then maybe I ought to tell you just a little about the not-so great place I've been in for the last couple of years. I'm an obsessive, neurotic, anxiety-ridden depressive. I am so pumped on antidepressants that sometimes I wonder if I'm really myself. Only in the last couple of months have I come clean to my mother about the self-mutilation, and although it might be nothing to you, that I haven't harmed myself since is a really, really big deal - but my point is that, despite my progress, I'm still recovering. You wouldn't get a man with broken legs to run the 100 metres. Likewise, I am not ready to move out. Putting it bluntly, I can't be trusted to not have a bad day and immediately succumb to the need to gouge into my skin with an almost-certainly unclean shard of metal, thereby exposing myself to all kinds of infections as well as the risk of slipping, cutting just a little too deep, and bleeding to death on my regulation student mattress because even though I probably wouldn't mean to, I'd take it as a sign that, sometimes, these things happen, and that then is my time to go. In short, not going to university is a superlatively good thing and you, Person, can pipe the fuck down, because you are what is referred to in intelligent circles, as a cunt. *snaps fingers in Z formation*

Okay so I didn't say any of the last bit, I said something noncommittal and walked away. 

* If you Wikipedia no one else on that list, Wikipedia this lady. If you've seen "Titanic", Molly Brown was the lady who, when all the rich people were out in their lifeboats, tried to get them to go back to save the people who were drowning. She wanted all the lifeboats to go back, but she was shouted down so much that she only managed to convince them to send one, and that's the one that saved Kate Winslet. She later became known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". How. Fucking. Badass. On top of that, she fought for women's rights, and for fair wages for factory workers, and for child literacy and education, and she used the fame she gained from her actions aboard the Titanic to aid her appeals. Nice lady.

So, yeah. Instead of going to study Literature, I have an apprenticeship. At a restaurant. I'm training to be a chef! Cool, huh?

Despite Person's unnecessary quibbles I feel a real sense of relief. I feel happy. Real happy - not artificial happy, not situational happy, not vicarious happy, just really, really fucking happy. I'm hopeful. Excited. (It's a good feeling.)

There's a small problem, though.

I can't stop listening to Bruce Springsteen.

Skip to 1:10 if you want to miss out on seventy seconds of adorable crowd-thanking and stuff.

Admitting to liking Bruce Springsteen is akin to saying out loud, in public, "You know what? I can't decide who I love more, Nickelback or Coldplay," and that is embarrassing but nuuuuhhhh his lyrics

Someday, girl, I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun - but 'til then, tramps like us, baby we were born to ruuuuuun

Not cool not cool not cool but I LOVE HIM BECAUSE HE'S A WHITE MALE AMERICAN AND HE USES HIS WHITE MALE AMERICAN PRIVILEGES FOR GOOD AND HE KNOWS THAT AMERICA IS A HOTBED (hotbed mmm) OF INEQUALITY AND INJUSTICE AND IN SONGS LIKE "BORN IN THE USA" HE SINGS ABOUT AMERICAN STUPIDITY WHERE IT CONCERNS WARFARE ("so they put a rifle in my hand/sent me off to a foreign land/to go and kill the yellow man") AND HE WAS DOING THIS BACK WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD STILL THOUGHT AMERICA WAS ABSOLUTE HOTSTUFF AND HE WAS LIKE "HOLD THE FUCK UP BITCHES" AND HE SPREAD AWARENESS OF THE AWFUL THINGS THAT AMERICA WAS DOING TO EXPLOIT THEIR POOR AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT HE WAS ALL INTO FREEDOM AND I SWEAR "BORN TO RUN" WITH LINES LIKE "wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims/and strap your hands 'cross my engines" ARE JUST THE BEST BECAUSE HE'S USING THE IMAGERY OF A MOTORBIKE TO SAY TO THE UBIQUITOUS 'WENDY' THAT HE WANTS HER DREAMS TO BE THE DRIVING FORCE OF HER LIFE BUT IF THAT ISN'T ALSO A CLEAR REFERENCE TO FUCKING THEN I AM COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DAMNED AND IT'S THE BEST FUCKING SONG OH MY GOSH

It needs to be put in writing that I love Bruce Springsteen and I'm only a tiny bit ashamed

IT'S GPOY FRIDAY

And now for something completely different

So it seems that I wrote something hugely melodramatic I don't even know how long ago and proceeded to completely forget about it until coming across it just a minute ago.

It says:

I am trying to think of an entirely new world. Not sci-fi or anything, just imaginary. And yet, every world that I create bears a remarkable resemblance to the one I inhabit. My thoughts and ideas and 'originality' are tainted by that which helped to shape them. The picture in my head is painted by the experiences I choose to paint it with, and so it isn't my picture. How can it be? The material I create is made of material that isn't mine.

There is no way to conceptualise that which you have never experienced. Nothing is new. 'New ' can only ever be recycled.

A true piece of originality is about as rare as perfection. 

It's sort of interesting, getting an insight into your own mind at a point in time you'd forgotten about.

But jeez. True originality is as rare as perfection. What a fucking annoying nonconformist I try very hard to be.

Psychology:

GOOD
Here endeth the exams
Now to get hammered and watch Game of Thrones

Heh heh heh

So this happened

English Literature:

GOOD

English Language:

GOOD

You know what else?

And I don't know how much of this I can blame on you but I sure as hell wasn't this easily distracted before I began to wonder if you were planning on speaking to me any time soon, any time at all

I can't focus on anything. I can't be bothered. Why should I be? Apparently I'm so unbearable that the best I deserve is a promised wish to still be good friends, swiftly followed by a silence that I hate more than being told that I'm clingy, and weird, and too intense, and volatile, and rubbish at giving head, and embarrassing to be around, and useless at talking cars or money - silence doesn't give me a chance to improve. It's not even a starting point.

And worst of all is that I don't even know if I'm being unforgivably selfish, or if you are.

It's amazing how four weeks of silence can drag when the five months preceding it seem to have flown by

The Problem with Being a Pathetic Moron

is that I can't stop crying and there are many logical reasons for me to stop and very few for me to actually be sad but I'm still sad and knowing that I shouldn't be doesn't help

God Michael I don't think anyone has ever made me feel as much of an idiot as you have. I hope this was your intention, because then at least I'm reacting in the way I'm supposed to.

I'd like to start afresh.

The first thing you do upon meeting a stranger is introduce yourself, therefore: hello. My name is Katherine Ruth Leaver.

I am eighteen years, three months and twenty-five days old. 

I have a cat called Bingo:

a cactus called Brutus:

a brother called Rob:

and a sister called Liz:

They're both much older than me, and they're both married. My sister and her husband have a son called Leo; he's nineteen months old now.

(They made a boat)

So it's just Mum and Dad and me at home, now.

We moved to Suffolk almost four years ago for Mum's job. She's a vicar.

I did my GCSEs at this place here:

It's the private school in Woodbridge and for two years I was, to put it eloquently, fucking miserable.

I did, however, come out of it with five A*s - but then I also came out of it with an unhealthy dislike of anyone with a spare two quid to rub together, which is unfortunate because it also sparked a chronic obsession-slash-hatred-slash-immense desire for money.

Which brings me onto employment.

I once worked for three hours at a Chinese takeaway before I was discharged on account of my being utterly useless.

That there is my entire employment history.

Onward.

I moved to Farlingaye High School for sixth form, and it's only since I've moved that I've been able to be happy with myself.

That said, it hasn't been easy.

Last September I was diagnosed with OCD, which manifested itself through incessant handwashing and relentless cognitive issues. In the middle of November, I had my first (and hopefully, only) breakdown. I stopped being. Not long after I was diagnosed with depression as well.

However, things have been begun to get better. It's not exactly that wonderful things have been happening one after the other, but life is starting to get its rose-tint back for me.

Ahem.
My best friend is Sophie.

 

We met when we were eleven, and we're similar in all the ways that matter, and different in all the ways that make me love her most.

We both love reading. When we were thirteen we read the Twilight saga obsessively, and, for a good six months, Edward Cullen was the only thing that mattered to us.

I think her favourite book is Secretariat by William Nack. I'm more fickle; my favourite book tends to be the one I've most recently read. As it happens, the book I am reading at the moment (The Book Thief, Markus Zusak) may be a strong contender for a more permanent favourite.

However, in the last two months, something has changed. It was one night at the start of the Easter holidays, about one in the morning on Film4, when Battle Royale was showing. I'd heard my brother mention it a couple of years previously and I had nothing better to do so I watched it, and it broke my heart in all the right places. I've since watched it twice more, read the book by Koushun Takami twice, and the manga once. (I like it a lot, if you hadn't guessed.)

I also made a thing:

(Yes I am an Instagram whore shh)

It's the BR collar! To me this is exciting.

This here is my friend Sam:

He is a supernerd also.

We have tentative plans to invade ComiCon later this year and dress up. He refuses to do BR with me though because he says it's rubbish.

Someone else who means a lot to me is Shakespeare.

This here has got to me my favourite text in the world, and I am so, so glad that we've been studying it for this past year in English Lit.

I love Shakespeare. I love the worlds he created in his plays. I love his brilliance. His utter understanding of the human condition - or, if not direct understanding, he acknowledged the complexities of humanity, its cruelty and its beauty, and how the two so often overlap, and he toyed with the thin line that stands between genius and insanity and he was, and remains, superlatively incredible.

If I was given a loaded gun and had another pointed at my head and was told to shoot someone else, I hope I would not.

I like my mouth.

I hate small-talk.

I ship Johnlock.

And Frostiron.

And GeorgexLuna.

That isn't it. Of course it isn't. A person is made up of the things that have happened to them, and in eighteen years and three months and twenty-five days, so freaking much has happened that I can never know exactly who or what I am. Like the gun hypothesis; with reference to the moral choices that I have previously made, it's likely that I would shoot - and yet, I still hope I would not. Humans are creepy and weird and unreliable and brilliant, and it's taken me this long to see that I'm the same.

We are all amazing. Isn't that great?

You know what's not cool?

Here, have a list:

1. Breaking up with someone by text.
2. Proceeding to flatly refuse to speak to them for a week (and counting).
3. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that, as someone who has been on the giving end of a breakup more than once, it is not too much to expect an adequate explanation. It's basic breakup etiquette; the dumpee always has the opportunity to shout and scream and make the dumper feel guilty because in this case anyway the dumper fucking deserves it.
4. Here're some more things that are neither cool nor okay:
5. Telling a mentally fragile teenage girl that she's enough when she clearly isn't.
6. Refusing to speak to her for a week (and counting). This is listed twice because it is a doubly selfish, douchey way to behave.
7. Letting her down again
8. and again
9. and again.
10. Using reasons 6-8 as a 'reason' for breaking up with her when it is something over which we both know you have control.
11. Essentially saying "it's not you, it's me".
12. Making out to not have even a minute to spare at any point during the week when you do. Of course you do.
13. Making me angry whenever I think about it for too long.
14. Refusing to speak to me for a week (and counting).
15. Generally being a spineless fucker.
16. You are a spineless fucker.
17. This is not cool.

FUCK. YOU.

Tell me I'm immature and a cold bitch and "not what you expected" and I will blind you. You've had every opportunity to redeem yourself but if you aren't even going to hear me out then I'll put it up on here for everyone to know.

Up n coming

Yesterday wasn't very good. Neither was the day before it. Or the day before that. But today was good. I successfully argued my point in Literature, that William Blake was an arrogant berk with something of a superiority complex. It's funny, how little it takes for a day to be good.

Dad gave me a piece of advice some time ago, that goes something like this: there are people that matter, and there are people that don't. Try and not confuse them.

I mean - that makes sense, right? There's no need to care about people who aren't good for you. It sounds cold, to me, but logical is cold. Logical is trustworthy. Feelings change, people change their minds, people change, but logic... kind of stays the same. Well, no, it evolves as things are proved and disproved and discovered and reduced to extinction, but it doesn't undulate the way that subjectivity does.

What the hell am I talking about. Jeez, Katherine.

Annalise's party is this Saturday. I'm looking forward to it. I'll bury myself into a group of people who can stand me and get far more drunk than could ever be considered wise. And then I'll say stupid things to people who don't matter but that's okay because they don't matter.

Something's changed, of late. People who I before actively disliked... I've become indifferent. Like Dad said, they don't matter. So few people matter. It's so much less hassle.

I love 1D and I have a mug to prove it

An important announcement

I feel the need to share with you exactly why Battle Royale is an incredible film. But first, an overview:

A class of schoolkids is taken to a remote island and ordered to fight to the death in order for the last remaining student to be named the victor.

(Sound familiar?

Yeah well BR was published in 1999 and the film in 2000 so yeah.)

Here is a concise list of reasons why it is necessary for you to watch Battle Royale as soon as is humanly possible:

1. It's the best way I've spent four hours of my time in the last week (yeah, I've just finished watching it for the second time shh);
2. It's brilliant for being brilliant; incredible story, funny in places, touching, brutal, engaging, heartbreaking, horrifying, every other adjective that I wish I was awake enough to attribute to it;
3. It's brilliant, for all the ways it's brilliant as well as all the ways it's shit. The hilarious way all the deaths are conveniently timed ("Thank... you... *dies*" makes numerous appearances) and the questionable acting both spring to mind;
4. Kazuo Kiriyama, a deranged, emotionless, violent psychopath, is the best-looking Asian redhead I believe I have ever seen. (And I've spent a lot of my life pining for a certain video game fighter. Called Hwoarang.)

Hey look, it's everyone's favourite psychopath.

Aaaand it's late, my eyes keep gumming together and I just want to retreat into my little dreamworld where I can hang out with Shuya and Noriko and Hwoarang. 

Oh God when did I become one of those people

I suppose I should write something

even though, increasingly, I don't know who I'm writing for.

And it's unbelievably stupid - the first rule of writing fiction is that you are writing for yourself - but I don't read my blog 

Bingo, get off my foot you fluffy-faced imbecile

and I don't know who

Bingo you idiot get the hell off my phone I swear you're worse than Leo and he's a human-person you're just a cat-person

actually reads this anymore

Bingo stop scratching the sofa

Oh, gee. When did I become so like my dad. I don't care if he scratches the sofa. I care if he scratches me, but that's because it hurts. If he scratches the sofa - so what? It's not like it's going to be worth any more twenty years down the line when Ma and Pa try to sell it if it's devoid of cat scratches; the arse-imprints are there forevermore, as is the red wine stain (Dad) and the hot chocolate stain (me) and the mysterious green stain (who knows), and if the cat scratches something then maybe he'll be nicer to us.

It's the same with coasters. Damn coasters! A little quadrilateral of uselessness is never going to protect your coffee table from devaluation because it's already worthless from the moment you get it in your front door. No, you know what a coaster is? A sign of how far up their own arse a person is. The greater the coaster:table ratio, the more of a pedantic, irksome arsehole the coaster-owner is.

It bothers me that, after a weekend spent in the company an entire family of coaster-fiends, I automatically sought out a coaster on which to rest my beverage. I had to actively move said beverage to a different part of the table for me to not shrink into neurotic insecurity. Can't I just drink my beverage? Why, why oh why does it offend some to see a tea-ring on the coffee table? I love da tea-ring! It was probably a great cup of tea! Everyone loves a great cup of tea. 

(Michael doesn't, but then I always knew there was something strange about him.)

Oh, well. No coasters to hurt me anymore. 

I did quite well in my January exams. Well, exam. I got an A in psychology. Which is something of a relief. And my English Language teacher got back to me the other day - I've got full marks in my coursework. Which is also something of a relief. All I have to do now is not mess up. Three As? I can totally do that.

I can't. Shh.

Alice Pyne

I started to follow Alice's blog about eighteen months ago, when I'd just set up my own account, because Google told me that I should follow her. It's been lovely, reading about the things she's done, raising money and awareness for cancer charities, campaigning to get as many people as possible on the bone marrow registry, winning a Pride of Britain award for it all. She died a few hours ago and even though I don't know her I'll still miss her. It's sad to know that she's not going to write again. I hope her family is going to be okay.

Her blog, if you wanted to check it out.

#NightNightAlice