...tum de tum

Well that went a whole lot better than I was expecting it to :) :) :)

Quote of the day: I'm gonna grow myself a giant afro-o-o [Gone in the Morning, Newton Faulkner]

...well. I'm scared.

In less than twelve hours, I will actually have a set of GCSEs under my belt. Proper qualifications. That is mental.

Now I'm into that stage where you remember with acute precision every exam you ballsed up, and you begin to think things like, "Why, oh why, oh why, oh why did I harp on about JLS condoms in my RE exam? Am I mentally deficient? No one else glorified commercialised contraception, so why was it necessary for me? Why me? Why meee?" 

For the last couple of months, I've managed to block all monstrosities like that from my mind, until my irritatingashell pal Ben reminded me of my condom mishap yesterday, and it's been plaguing me ever since.

And the moral of the story is, don't listen to anything Ben says, and you'll be juuust fine.

Quote of the day: Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. [Hansel, Zoolander]

...document the whole thing like the guy in that Banksy film

Hey.

It's just past midnight, Wednesday 24th August. I have another thirteen days until I begin whatever new school life has in store for me. Less than two weeks of freedom left.

A couple of months before the start of the holidays, a friend, Annalise, and I wrote to-do lists. Mine is as follows:

* Pierce ears again [done]

* Read Lord of the Rings trilogy [I watched the films a few weeks ago, if that counts]

* Exercise at least once [if mincing around in a bikini counts, done]

* Earn money [found twenty quid last week, done]

* Get ahead with AS syllabus [not done]

* Have a camping party [kind of - Soul Survivor is essentially one massive camping party]

* Pass out, intoxicated [not done. I've actually been really good this summer]

* Write a short story [in the process of completing a long one]

* Take photos every day [so far - done]

* Learn to play the ukulele properly [doing]

* Get some action [not done. I'm still as much of a pathetic virgin as I was at the start of the holidays]

* Paint something really cool to go in bedroom [done]

* Buy clothes for sixth form [not yet]

* Meet someone famous [fake Howard Donald?]

* Don't fall out with anyone [until yesterday, done. Thanks to Josh and his unnecessary douchebag comments, failed]

Considering how many targets I set for myself, and how little energy to do anything I've had for the last few months, that's not too shabby, right?

One I've been vigilant about since the beginning is the photos one. My friend Ben once went off on a massive rant about people who live their lives through a camera, and how you should experience something fully, properly, just the once, and not try to recreate it for later with pictures and videos when they just distract from and can never compare to the real thing. I completely see where he's coming from, but I just think there's something amazing about looking back through old photo albums - I'm getting to the point where I can do that with albums I actually compiled, when I was little, and there's nothing quite like the nostalgia you get from a good reminiscing session. I think.

So, anyway, two weeks of mostly nothing, save for Luke's birthday next week, until I'm back to depression. Thought I might share some of the best bits with you.

Okay - I just spent about an hour sifting through about two thousand photos and selecting them for uploading, chronological order and all, and they were all just about to upload and then mum switched the internet off, effectively cancelling all my work. I feel like crying. No way can I be arsed to go back and do all that bollocks again.

The typical family pose.

My delightful lil' cuz, up to no good with a phone box

"Indifference - Mild Distaste." My idea of hilarity.

Gary

The duck at Loch Morlich I befriended

Skillz

Haggis, nom

Guess who just lost the game?

Some serious monkey shenanigans going on here 

Pretentiously artistic, possibly

No idea where this place is, but I think it's pretty

My attempt at throwing a clay pot

Rob's attempt, before he attacked it with paint

Not my dad. 

LOVEBIRDS

Loch-En-Eilein - my favourite place in the world

My jugs look huge. As do my biceps, but just ignore those.

Best sport ever 

 My skinny, opinionated, brilliant friend Jamin. If only Colin Firth had this face every time he wore a wet shirt.

I have no idea how to pronounce that, but they're the most addictive things ever.

Puppet Academy team '11 - the epitome of awesome, blatantly. It was after the person taking the picture described this as "three inches of chip fat on the lens" that I decided to not abuse the pinhole setting so much.

The quintessential Dee picture

Utter mentals

Possibly the nicest person I've ever met

Soul Survivor - UKULELE MADNESS

Suffolk crazies

The couple who spent about 80% of the week making out 

Five seconds previously, this picture was a whole lot more inappropriate

Lot of lot of people.

So proud of those wings

The legend that is, Mike Pilavachi 

What I want tattooed onto my left fingertips

Woot.

So. Yeah. Turns out, I could be bothered.

Well, it's now half two and I just fell asleep on the keyboard. I think it may be time to leeeave.

Quote of the day: DON'T SHAG ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE [Mike Pilavachi]

...think pessimistically. Then it's never so bad.

For anyone who doesn't know, this coming Thursday is GCSE results day.

I've been getting "don't worry, you'll be fiiine" from all sides - but you know what? I am worried! I'm freaking out! I'm terrified!

Gah.

Last night I was thinking about what I'm likely [likely, not hoping] to get, and I think I'm settled on five Bs, five As, and an A*. That's not too awful, right?

:(

...GOODNESS ME

I met this guy called Jack yesterday, at Soul Survivor, at the washing up bowls. We were both on cleaning duty, and he was doing the thing where you spend ages drying a single spoon in order to look productive without actually doing anything. I clocked him, and our conversation went something like this:

Me: You going to actually do something?

Him: Nah, can't be arsed.

Me: Touche.

Him: I'm Jack.

Me: Katherine.

Him: Cool. [Wipe cutlery] So, you had fun this week?

Me: Yeah! It's been great!

Him: What's been the best bit?

Me: Um... [Really thinks about it] I... don't actually remember.

Him: Right... [Clearly thinking I'm mental]

Me: I'm sorry, I'm literally the worst person in the world to try and have a conversation with.

Him: Haha, it's alright.

Me: Give me a hug. [Hug]

Him: [Thoroughly weirded] O...kay.

Me: Mhmm. I'm going to pretend I have somewhere I need to be.

Him: Fair enough.

Me: We should try having another really awkward conversation like this sometime.

Him: We should.

Me: Byee. [Exeunt]

What the hell is wrong with me?!

[In case you were wondering, which you weren't, Jack's roughly my age and really quite hot. Which makes the above conversation my pitiful attempt at flirting. And the incident later that day when we passed in the street and I addressed him as "awkward conversation guy" - flirting. If I was that way inclined, I would have bashed my head against a spiked wall many, many times immediately afterwards.*]

Anyway, this is just a rather unwelcome preview of the kind of conversations I'm going to be having left right and centre with strangers when I begin my new school in - oo - LESS THAN THREE WEEKS. Anyone else terrified? No? Just me? Ahhhh, I'm scared. If this is the way I go about talking to all strangers then I am, to put it eloquently, monumentally bollocked. I'd like to think I'm less of the brick wall I was a couple of years ago; I'm less insecure, I've gone up a bra size [just one, depressingly], I know how to stand out in a crowd, etc - but all the same. What's worse, the girl who sits meekly in the corner with her mouth taped shut, or the girl who, by some cruel trick of nature, is obliged to make a tit of herself at every opportunity? Dude.

*Whatever the hell I did worked, I got his number anyway. My guess is, he felt sorry for me.

Quote of the day: Ahh! Wasp! Kill it! No, don't kill it! Trap it! It's after the jam! Get it! NOT ON MY PLATE YOU BASTA- oh right, fine, use my plate why don't you. Well now it's trapped. What now? Shake it! NO! I forbid you to - you shook it. Don't let it go! It's angry! Gerry's angry! You named the wasp? Hell yes I did! Well what now? He's angry, we have to kill him. How do you plan on killing him? I dunno, he'll suffocate eventually. You can't suffocate him! That's inhumane! I KNOW! I'll drown him in the washing up bowl! Aww come on, don't do that! I'm doing it! ... Done it! You drowned him? Yup! You sure he's dead? Yup! You scooped him out of there? Um... I can't see him, there's bubbles in the way. Hey! That should be his name! Bubbles! [The people on my camp at half seven this morning around breakfast when apprehended by a wasp.]

NB - I just read this through, and realised that how I've portrayed Jack is inaccurate. I've inadvertently made him out to be a lazy, wasp-murdering, monosyllabic bastard, but he's not. He actually seems like a really nice guy.

...express yourself through the power of words!

The following is a result of boredom on the train from Dundee to King's Cross. Try not to explode with the randomosity. It doesn't have a name, think of something appropriate.

One day I came across a 

Pretty little Scottish animal.

She said her name was Zenith,

And she was a Harty.

She said she hated nothing,

Because she loved everything.

Her back legs were long and spindly,

And her front two were short and skinny.

She was roughly potato shaped,

With curly pink fur and eyes.

"I'm here to end world destruction!"

She informed me chirpily.

She climbed to a mountain's summit,

So her words could be heard by all.

I was her only audience,

But that didn't deter her.

She reached the mountain's top,

And began to turn around.

She fell headfirst over her front legs,

And tumbled into the path of an oncoming train.

Moral of this story:

Evolution is a bitch, and not to be trusted.

And, because I sank even deeper into the murky waters of boredom, I drew a picture! Not in colour, but, for the first time ever, what I drew vaguely matched the image I had in my head.

Harties forever.

Quote of the day: The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. [Robert Heinlein]