Winter Wonderland

The Christmas season is here (and, to a certain extent, gone) once more. Christmas carols are once more being sung. Not by me, and not, if I have anything to do with it, anywhere remotely within my vicinity, but I'm assured that they are being sung. Snowflakes, snowmen, and a white Christmas . . .

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that is. Because right now, in Australia, it's mid-twenties and seems to be staying there.

In fact, the only way any of us can get access to snow or ice is (a) by flying to the UK or (b) by going ice skating. Which I did. Not the flying to the UK bit. I did that  last year (it's not all it's cracked up to be, my shoelaces froze into position after half an hour outside). No, I went ice skating with Reedy, Lala, Aviator & Falcon. To put us in order of skill level:

REEDY - Reedy is practically professional. In fact, I think his sister IS actually a professional ice skater. While the rest of us were struggling to do up our skates and wobble up to the ice rink, he was calmly skating around in loops and figures of eights. In our two hours on the rink, I saw him:

- Skate backwards. Falcon did this too, but it didn't count in his case as he didn't actually mean to.

- Do the Nutbush - including the crossover bit at the end. Lala was so thrilled by this she made him do it again. And again.

- Go around the whole rink in 10 seconds. 10 of Aviator's seconds, that is, and about 6 the way Lala was counting. We would have been more precise but Reedy took the only watch with him.

- Not fall over ONCE

AVIATOR & LALA - Aviator and Lala were about the same. Nowhere near as good as Reedy, but still far better than me. This was slightly disappointing as before we actually stepped on to the ice Lala had assured me that she'd only been ice skating three times previously - the same as me - and therefore I expected her to have the same skill level as me. This turned out to be far from the truth. I can't remember how many times Aviator fell over; he might not have fallen at all. Lala only fell over once, in a me-related incident I shall recount later on.

FALCON - He's below Aviator & Lala as he fell over six times. And yes, I was counting. To my eternal disappointment, I missed all of them except the second-last one. On the very last one he refused to get up again, claiming that it was nicer to be sitting on the ice than to be forced to skate around on it. He got up when it started to melt.

I'm convinced that his persistent falls related, in part, to his refusals to take off his sunglasses. WHO wears aviators indoors? No, really. WHO? Aside from Falcon, obviously.

ME - I managed to stop skating along the side whenever I was holding on to someone. I managed to stop holding on to people when I got back to the side. Figure it out.

I only fell over once, although this was less to do with any skill I might have for skating and more to do with the fact that I was going far too slowly to actually pull myself over. The details of the fall are as follows:

I'd decided to have another go at skating on my own. I had had several goes at skating on my own, and these invariably ended with me just managing to reach either Lala or Falcon and clutching dramatically at them for support. The logical thing to do, then, when I realised I was unlikely to be able to stay upright any longer on my own, was to aim for the nearest one. Lala was innocently standing still near a wall when I crashed into her, flailing madly. I attempted to grab her to stop myself falling down. What happened instead is that we both began to topple over and finally crashed into the ice. Neither of us were injured - although I was fairly embarrassed - so I still maintain we could have carried it off if we'd had time to get up before anyone noticed. Unfortunately, we were both laughing too hard to get up. I fear we'll never make professionals; at least, not unless every other professional skates like this:

Aviator has, in the past, discussed with me how he's unhappy with the way I'm portraying him. 'Discussed' is probably the wrong term to use. He called me three times in a row threatening to burn my house down unless I started changing things immediately. He even went to the effort of setting his computer to talk on the phone instead of him. The point of this paragraph, however, is to get one meaning across: Aviator is NOT going to like the next story. Every word of this is true, but I just know I'm going to get more threatening phone calls from him. Or possibly wake up in the middle of the night to discover that my house has burned down. Therefore, it is recommended that viewers who like/are Aviator do not read the next story.

Aviator had spent some time previously warning us as to the dangers of keeping your wallet in your back pocket. 'I'll prove it to you,' he explained. 'I'll pick Reedy's pocket.'

He pulled his wallet out and proffered it to Reedy. 'Just put this in your back pocket.'

Reedy did, and Aviator carefully moved around. 'Now, you see, I just stick my hand in his pocket and remove the wallet. The victim is barely able to feel it.'

'I can feel it,' said Reedy, looking slightly concerned.

'Now I pull the wallet out - hang on -'

'Please take your hand out of my back pocket.'

'That's disturbing,' said Lala when she'd stopped laughing for long enough to get words out.

'And here we are!' Aviator said triumphantly, proffering the wallet. 'Very efficient.'

Basically, the moral of this story is that although it may not be safe to keep your wallet in your back pocket when you're worried about pickpockets, it's even less safe to have it in your back pocket when you're anywhere near Aviator.

Christmas Day was, of course, far from cold. Nevertheless, my family perseveres with tradition: turkey, ham, and that bowl-shaped pudding you're supposed to set on fire. Nothing like a flammable dessert in 30 degree weather.

We tend to spend Christmas with varying amounts of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other relations. I personally spent much of Christmas Day torn between my grandfather explaining how the Harper family are apparently distantly related to a firm of funeral directors on my grandmother's side and my two- and four-year-old cousins, who were less concerned about family history and more interested in me playing hide and seek with them. I eventually resisted the pull of all my relations and went to my room, where I began to listen to the very first episode of a radio series I'd received for Christmas. Called The Blow Parade, it describes a series of fictional bands throughout the classic

 ages of music, and is narrated by the everpresent Captain Blow (or Andrew Hansen). I admit the picture makes him look like an elderly boat-oriented paedophile, but the series is excellent.

Anyway, I was just getting into this when I heard a knock at my door. This was followed by several seconds of quiet conversation, and finally a voice I recognised as belonging to my four-year-old cousin- whom I shall call An - saying 'The door won't open.'

I paused the episode and opened the door. 'What is it?'

Both cousins and the RCG were standing outside. 'We need you to be in Sleeping Beauty,' the RCG said wearily.

'What?'

'We're recreating Sleeping Beauty, and we need someone to be the witch.'

'Oh, thank you so much.'

I went into the room next door to be the witch, despite the fact that I have no memory of what the witch is supposed to do in Sleeping Beauty. I sat through a long, involved scene starring my two-year-old cousin - Pan - as Sleeping Beauty and the RCG as a good fairy when suddenly somebody nudged me. 'It's your bit,' An informed me.

'Already?' I said doubtfully. 'I don't remember this bit. Um, yes . . . I'm here to . . .'

'Curse them,' said An helpfully.

'By the power of Captain Blow, I curse you both to . . .'

'That's not right!' she said indignantly, and went into a long demonstration of how to do it properly. In the confusion, I sneaked back to my room.

After a few more minutes of listening I heard, once more, a knock at the door. I opened it to see Pan.

'I want to play a game,' she said. 'Let's play hide-and-seek.'

'Yeah, you know what's an even better game?' I said brightly. 'Lie-on-the-bed-and-listen-to-The-Blow-Parade-without-interruption.'

'How do you play that one?'

'Well, it's complicated,' I said, ushering her out of the room.

Before long, how ever, I was once more forcibly removed from my room to provide entertainment. This time, somebody had had the bright idea of making parachutes, so we used bits of paper and string to make them (obviously they weren't for us. We attached toy soldiers to them. The RCG and An's soldier was delicately tied by his leg. My and Pan's was less delicately tied around his neck. It looked painful).

We tied a long bit of string to the top of each parachute so we wouldn't have to go down and get it once we'd dropped it off the balcony, we could just pull it up again. Pan and I went first. She dropped it, and then we both craned over the edge to see it land.

'Now pull it up again,' she said when it had reached ground level.

'Pan?' I asked.

'Yes?'

'You know that only works if you hold on to the string?'

That was Christmas. Far from freezing but fun.

Formalities

Dear everyone who is still capable of reading this blog (that is to say, NOT Shoelace or Giuseppe, who are both spending time in the communist anti-blog paradise that is modern China),

I think it's the perfect time to finish my three-part account of the end of the year. 'The perfect time', in my own unique version of blog speak, is defined as 'the period of time slightly after I promised I'd write the thing but slightly before people begin harassing me about it'. In this case, some of the events described actually happened about a month ago. Luckily I was taking notes at the time. I have no doubt that a number of the people featured in this month's installment will spare no time in contacting me to explain exactly how wrong I am about certain details. Still, I am going to valiantly battle on and describe, in as much detail as I'll allow myself, Ariane's Malice in Wonderland party, exactly what happened when sixteen of us thought it would be a good idea to go and see the seventh Harry Potter movie, and of course, our most significant end-of-year event, the formal. Three very different events, and the preparation and incidents - or, in a word, the formalities - that accompanied each one.

The formalities of Ariane's 'Alice in Wonderland'-themed costume party included picking a character to dress as and then dressing as said character. Virtually all the character decisions were made while I was, unfortunately, out of internet reach. Therefore, by the time I'd returned I had very few choices left. Basically, it was either a turtle or a playing card. Neither of which I've ever aspired to be.

Luckily enough, I happened to be with Marie-Clare (who had intended to go as Alice) when she bought a dress with hearts on it and suddenly decided that in order to have an opportunity to wear it, she would go as the Queen of Hearts to the Malice in Wonderland party. Giuseppe had formerly called the Queen of Hearts. After a long chain of events - Marie-Clare took Queen of Hearts from Giuseppe and Brandine took Alice from Marie-Clare - I ended up with Alice's sister, who Brandine had originally wanted to go as. For all those who don't know - and that included me, at that point in time I'd never seen the original movie - Alice's sister looks like this:

Not only that, but I'd forgotten about the party until several days (three days, to be exact) before it actually happened. Basically, I did all I could in the time available, and arrived at Ariane's door wearing a purple skirt and shirt in the vague hope that if you squinted a bit, they did look at least similar to a nineteenth century dress (they didn't, but as it turned out, I wasn't the least convincing).

Ariane and Lala had probably put the most effort in and, as a result, actually looked mildly convincing (if not convincing, then at the very least interesting): Ariane as the cat, and Lala as the Mad Hatter. As for the rest . . . well, to put them on a scale of most convincing to least convincing:

GWEN - Came as the dormouse. I'm putting her at the top simply because of the amount of effort she went to, sticking fake claws over each of her fingernails. It looked (and was) hugely inconvenient - although pretty funny seeing her try to pick up her cup - and she took them off partway through, but it still counts.

MARIE-CLARE - Marie-Clare got into the whole 'Malice in Wonderland' thing and had an Alice bracelet on. Not to mention the dress.

PEANUT - She'd probably go above Marie-Clare - she'd put some effort into her costume - but for the fact that her idea of dressing as the caterpillar entailed her putting on a blue silk dressing gown, a green turban thing, and covering her entire face in green eyeshadow. Quite like something out of the Arabian nights (some of the genies were green, weren't they?). Not all that much like a caterpillar. The eyeshadow gave her a slightly unsettling look, but did mean her entire face glittered whenever it caught the light. She'd also brought a hookah along with her - one of these things:

Although in Peanut's case it wasn't really a hookah, just a teapot with a straw stuck in it. This led to the following exchange:

PEANUT (P): I'm not sure if you pronounce it 'hooker' or 'hoo-kah'

GIUSEPPE (G): It would have to be 'hoo-kah'. 'Hooker' means something completely different.

P: Yeah, you're probably right.

G: Otherwise you'd end up saying something like 'Can I smoke your hooker?'

(Lala walks up at exactly the wrong moment)

LALA (L):WHAT?

There was also another part to Peanut's costume, which she didn't pull out until part of the way through the party.

LESLIE (L): Saying something I don't remember

PEANUT (P): Hang on, I didn't hear that properly. Let me pull out my monocle.

(She does so)

L: Peanut, what is that?

P: It's a monocle.

L: No it's not.

P: It is.

L: Peanut, that's a drink stirrer. It is not a monocle.

P: It's a drink stirrer that works as a monocle!

NESS & SHARONA - They were, at least, wearing the same thing, but the only part of their costume that looked remotely Tweedledum & Tweedledee-ish was the propellor hat each of them were wearing. Then again, I hadn't actually seen 'Alice in Wonderland'. Maybe Tweedledum & Tweedledee are SUPPOSED to wear fishnets and extremely high heels.

SHOELACE - It's probably time Shoelace learned that dressing in brown and taping a small paper 'shell' to your back does not a Mock Turtle make. It was quite a nice shell, though.

BRANDINE - I don't think Alice wore checked shirts and high heels. I suppose she may have done, casually, of course, but not when she's actually in Wonderland. Still, even Brandine put in more effort than Giuseppe.

GIUSEPPE - I've a feeling she had originally intended to come as the white rabbit. Apparently, though, she'd had a busy day and hadn't had time to get a costume. So she arrived wearing a trenchcoat.

'It's Trenchcoat Bob!' said Ariane delightedly when we saw her getting out of the car.

'Who's Trenchcoat Bob?'

'You know Trenchcoat Bob - he's Alice's invisible stalker. He's one of the main characters!'

So Trenchcoat Bob, Alice's stalker, Giuseppe was.

At this point in the story I'm a little torn. I'd quite like to describe the party, but frankly it would be a little hard. I'd have to go through all the details of what Ariane had done to her house, the tea party she'd set up, the signs she'd arranged, and frankly that would involve a little too much effort, even for me. Also, Marie-Clare has started her regular bout of hassling - she even called me up just now, solely for the purpose of telling me to hurry up - so, frankly, the quickest way is probably the best way to go. The easy alternative was to put pictures up. But I can't put up photographs of my friends. That would completely defeat the point of giving them nicknames and being so terribly secretive about everything.

So, the easy solution was to take lots of Ariane and Sharona's pictures (yes, yes, copyright by them, I don't reserve the right to . . . something) and crop the recognisable pictures of 

people out of them. Which is what I've done. Enjoy.

Ariane had decked her garden out with a number of interesting Alice-ish signs:

That's Marie-Clare with the Mome Raths, by the way.

She'd also set up a tea party in her back yard, with teapots (most of which contained what I sincerely hope was soft drink; one, for some reason, was full of smarties), bottles labelled 'Drink Me', and cupcakes upon each one of which somebody had painstakingly spelled out 'EAT ME' in those little sugary ball bearing things. This effort was wasted on Sharona, who spent most of the evening seeing if cupcakes are flammable or not. Discovering that they aren't, not really, she moved on to burning napkins; we stopped her after she nearly set the tablecloth on fire.

As well as being covered with signs, Ariane's garden was covered in playing cards (one of which Sharona ended up setting alight) and watches dangling casually from the trees (such as the heart shaped one in the picture. That one wasn't actually up for very long, Peanut nicked it and concealed it inside her dressing gown for much of the party).

Later on we watched 'Alice in Wonderland' - the original Disney movie, not the Tim Burton one (in my opinion, the Disney one's probably better, although it does suffer from the fatal flaw of not having Stephen Fry in it). Alice's sister only had about three lines. She's also a severe killjoy. Next time I want to go as Trenchcoat Bob. Anyway, turns out Sharona is not only a pyromaniac, she's also an extremely hard person to watch movies with.

(We'd just reached the part of the film where lots of strange, mutant bird things are coming out and looking at Alice. Presumably Trenchcoat Bob was there looking at Alice as well, although we didn't see him)

SHARONA (S): Look, it's a bird with a hammer head! I should have come as that! Forget Tweedledee, I want to be a hammer head.

NESS (N): I thought I was Tweedledee. You're Tweedledum.

S: I don't really want to be Tweedledum - look! That one looks like a cage! I should have come as the cage thing!

PEANUT (P): Sharona, it could be hard to dress as a cage.

S: THAT ONE HAS A SPADE FACE! I want a bird that has a spade face. Oh, yeah, and I should have dressed as it. I could have just stuck a spade to my face.

ARIANE (A): Well, you can't come as everything. You barely even came as Tweedledum. I don't think Tweedledum wears fishnets.

S: I'm not Tweedledum, I'm Tweedledee.

GWEN (G): Look, can we please just watch the film?

A: Yeah, Sharona, stop interrupting.

S: All right, but I really want a spade face bird.

(Brief pause)

S: MOME RATHS! I want to be a mome rath!

Yes, it was a hard film to watch, made slightly harder by the fact that most of us wandered off halfway through to dance in the front room and eat cake (it was a truly inspiring cake, by the way, there's a picture here of Lala holding it).

All in all, 'Malice in Wonderland' was a more or less excellent way to spend an evening, although if there was to be a next time I'd suggest that Sharona isn't allowed to go anywhere near anything remotely flammable. I'd like to finish off the first part of my discussion on formalities with some pictures of Ariane and Lala (Ariane because she was the birthday girl, Lala because she had an extremely good hat on - or two extremely good hats, rather). Ariane's the one wearing purple; I have no idea why she's wearing Lala's hat in the first photo. Probably just the spur of the moment. Still, the way she's jammed it over her face makes an extremely good blog picture. It's Lala's hand in the teacup photo (I had originally thought it was Brandine's. Turns out, it's not. Lala was quick to correct me on that one). That picture wasn't set up. Lala just really, really wanted a cup of tea (or whatever it was in those teapots) and happened to be blocking Ariane's face. That's the way it was explained to me, anyway. I personally love that picture. The photo in the middle is of Lala. Or the top of her head, anyway.

So I've described Ariane's party in some detail; I now feel it's time to move on to the formalities of a completely different event. That of the time Gwen decided to get as many people as possible together and go and watch Harry Potter. 

The formalities of going to see a film with an extremely large group of people involve booking the tickets, of course, and making sure everyone can come - but most of all, it includes finding someone who is either able to or willing to organise everyone else to wherever they're supposed to be. In this case, the task of organiser fell squarely on to Gwen.

I'm going to do my best at remembering everyone who came. We filled up about a row and a half by ourselves, so it's a little tricky.

There was: Gwen, Vyvyan, Giuseppe, Ness, Peanut, Klaus, Hitler, Bob Dylan, Mai, Kapish, Shoelace, two friends of Kapish whom I shall refer to as Smithy and Masterson, and three other people I've forgotten.

No, because I was there too. Two people I've forgotten.

It began fairly inauspiciously: I walked up to the bookshop where we were meeting to see both Peanut and Vyvyan run out. Vyvyan came up to me and said, very seriously, 'I didn't break the torch, OK? No matter what anyone tells you, I didn't break the torch.'

She then started laughing so hard I couldn't figure out what she was saying for the next thirty seconds.

Luckily, Peanut explained it to me: Vyvyan had been fiddling with a torch and it had somehow, magically, 'got broken'. I was unsurprised. If you're going to leave torches in a bookshop and then allow people like Vyvyan to come in, you're bound to end up with one or two breakages. Probably more, depending on how many other people are there to protect the merchandise.

Eventually it transpired that she hadn't actually broken the torch. It's just that while the correct method of turning it off would have been to twist the handle (in exactly the same way as she managed to turn it on), Vyvyan was somehow convinced that it would turn off if she banged it on the table a few times. Which worked, although it did give the impression, once everyone had worked out that that wasn't how you were supposed to turn it off, that the torch was broken.

Anyway, Gwen somehow managed to organise us into the movie theatre, where we watched the film (well, OBVIOUSLY). Nothing major occurred, excepting only one incident, when a snake leapt up suddenly on-screen and Peanut panicked, jumped off her seat, and kicked Vyvyan in the ankle all in one smooth move. That was far funnier than it was traumatic, anyway.

All in all, the movie was a success. Gwen looked extremely relieved once it was over and she could stop hassling reluctant people to do things.

And finally - the main event of the end of school year (for us, anyway. It's probably not such a big deal for people who didn't actually get to go). I present to you:

YEAR 10 SEMI-FORMAL

(Yes, you can see our faces, but it's so small I don't consider it to count. It's not like I've labelled it. Photo courtesy of Vyvyan. That is to say, I haven't asked if I can have the photo, but I really don't think she'll care. This is a public website. It's like her first gig as a professional photographer)

The formalities of formal - well, it tends to vary. Luckily, we all got half a day off school to attend to these formalities. The boys spent it picking up their suits and playing Xbox (at least, so Falcon has led me to believe). It was a little more complicated for the girls.

Peanut and I, neither of us being the kind of person who is overly comfortable with hair and makeup stuff (I don't even know the technical terms. I just call it 'hair and makeup stuff'), banded together for the afternoon. This began with going to a place to see someone who DOES understand about hair and makeup stuff. The journey there, however, was fraught with hazard. Peanut's mother drove us; they have a large blue van, which is probably necessary as Peanut has four brothers and sisters (that is to say, two sisters and two brothers. Not four of each). Anyway, it's one of those vans that doesn't really have a boot that's separate to the rest of the car. It's all joined together, meaning that you can theoretically get to the boot when only the front door is open, if you don't mind hanging over three rows of seats. Peanut explained all this to me shortly after we'd gotten out of the car, when she'd realised that she'd left her phone in the boot. 'So you see, I should be able to get my phone out without having to move the car and get the boot open,' she added, while climbing through the door. Peanut's mother and I watched with interest as she suspended herself over two rows of seats and began to try and reach over the third. 'You look uncomfortable,' I observed.

'That's because I am . . .'

Suddenly, she froze. 'Oh no.'

'What is it? Did you find your phone?' inquired her mother.

'It's in my ****ing pocket!'

I almost expected Peanut's mum to get annoyed about the swearing, but luckily she was laughing far too hard to mention it.

We managed to get to the hair place eventually. I won't go in to what we had done in detail (partly because I'm not all that sure about what half the things the hairdresser/makeup person did were actually supposed to do) but I ended up with slightly curly hair and Peanut had hers straightened. One of the other hairdressers came to talk to us for a bit. 'So you're going to your formal?' she said cheerfully. We assented.

'Oh, good,' she said. 'So you're sisters, aren't you?'

There was a brief pause, during which Peanut and I both stared at each other in an attempt to see the resemblance.

'Um . . . no,' Peanut said firmly.

Anyway, after an hour and a half (it doesn't seem like all that much when you write it down, but at the time it took forever) we headed back to Peanut's house, where we put our dresses and shoes on and then practiced walking around in heels.

'I think it's a knack,' Peanut told me as she walked carefully past, trying not to wobble. 'There's a technique involved.'

I agreed. 'Perhaps if you try like this . . . no, hang on . . .' as I clutched a chest of drawers to halt my collapse.

Our walking attempts were stopped when Peanut's younger sister Hazel decided to become a paparazzo and chase us around with a camera (although we soon realised that if you can't walk in heels, you're unlikely to be able to run, and just stood still and put up with her aggressive photographic technique).

Eventually Aviator arrived with his mother, as Peanut's date. To her horror, he had brought her a corsage. 'It wasn't my idea,' he promised her as he presented her with it. 'I swear. My mother thought of it. Look, I have to wear a matching buttonhole.'

Even so, whenever I'm depressed I'm going to remember Peanut's face as he presented her with the white flowers (I think they were lilies). Her look of stricken horror will always have to be among my fondest memories of that evening. 'What do I do with this?'

'It's a wristband,' Aviator's mother explained kindly. 'You wear it on your wrist. Have you noticed Aviator's got the same flowers in his buttonhole?'

'I had,' Peanut said viciously.

Peanut put it on her wrist and then backed away, while her and Aviator's mothers conversed. 'How long do you think before I can lose this?' she asked in an undertone.

'You could hide it in the car,' suggested Hazel. 'Drop it on the floor and tell him it fell out the window,'

'Or actually throw it out the window,' I offered. 'Pretend you were pointing at something outside and it just fell off. Or that a sudden gust of wind took it.'

'That might work,' said Peanut thoughtfully.

'Anyway, it's time for more pictures,' Hazel ordered.

So we took about a frillion (well, probably closer to fifteen) more pictures, with all of us. 'I just want you to know that I wouldn't have chosen to take this picture,' Aviator explained to us as we got one with his arms around both of us, as his mother had requested.

'Well,' said Peanut, trying not to look away from the three flashing cameras, 'You are the year's biggest pimp.'

'Yes, it's expected of you,' I added.

(I should probably explain this; throughout the year, there has been an epic competition between Aviator and Lox to see which is the year's biggest pimp, a title neither of them want. In assembly that day, Aviator had finally been crowned the 'Biggest Pimp'. Now it's official).

Thankfully Falcon arrived fairly shortly after that. After numerous photos, we finally managed to leave the house. Aviator went in Peanut's car, I went in Falcon's. Somehow, despite the fact that we left slightly before them, they managed to arrive at the venue before us. I'm still perplexed as to how they managed this.

Everybody at formal looked truly awesome, and there's no point describing it because I'd be here all day. I can't really put pictures up but there are any number of albums about it on Facebook at the moment. My personal favourite is Vyvyan's album, which is why I stole the picture above from her instead of everyone else. A dubious honour.

Formal itself was a dinner/dance type of thing. There were a couple of DJs playing music (if you can call it music . . . they didn't even have the waka waka song when Brandine asked for it). If you liked dancing, you could go and do your thing up the front; if you liked eating, the rest of the room was basically tables. The tables were in groups of ten. On my table was Giuseppe, Falcon, me, Vyvyan, Chinny, Kapish, Gwen, Eggleston, Peanut, and Aviator.

Nobody on my table really danced until after the entree. In fact, the most interesting thing that happened during the entree was Aviator standing up. 'I'm going to request a song,' he informed us.

'What song?' Giuseppe wanted to know.

'What song do you think?' he asked, and left.

He returned about thirty seconds later, having spoken to the DJs. 'They said they're going to play it, and say it's a special request from me,' he said cheerfully.

'What song did you ask for, though?' asked Peanut warily.

'James Blunt's 'You're Beautiful', of course.'

I really can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but almost exactly a year ago, Giuseppe and I stole Aviator's school diary and refused to return it unless he recorded a cover of James Blunt's timeless classic. He did so. So far as I'm aware, virtually the whole year's heard it. It's well worth a listen - if only there were some way it were available on the internet, on YouTube perhaps . . .

Anyway, this is the song that Aviator had requested. For some reason the DJs chose not to play it immediately. Most of us assumed that they weren't going to play it at all, and so it was quite a shock when suddenly, in the middle of the main course, a voice announced 'And now, as a special request from Aviator . . .' and the song began to play.

I think the DJs were surprised when we gave the song a long round of applause. Aviator listened to it, grinning. 'You know what? I'm going to get up and sing it.'

'Don't do it!' I said quickly. Too late, however, as he'd already gone up the front and begged a microphone from one of the now even more surprised looking DJs. 'I dedicate this to Giuseppe, Leslie, and Shoelace,' he said magnanimously, before breaking out into song. He sang for a good twenty seconds before giving the microphone back to one of the now completely stunned DJs and running back to our table, to riotous laughter and applause. Again, I think the video's up on Facebook - twenty seconds' worth at least.

The rest of the formal was mainly just dancing and talking to people (there were, to the best of my knowledge, no other major Aviator-style incidents). I remember that at one point Aviator decided the dance floor was too crowded and found a space behind the curtains instead, where he pulled me and Giuseppe so we all had room to dance. And he claims not to be a pimp. Actually, there was a surprising amount of room behind the curtains. When I was looking for Falcon at one point, Skeith and I wandered around, looking behind all the curtains ('Just in case!', as Skeith said at the time). We eventually found him in the middle of the room.

The formal went from 6:30 to 10:30, and the time went surprisingly fast (far faster than at the hair and makeup place, anyway, although time never does seem to go particularly fast when someone's poking a small brush into your eye). Peanut never ended up losing her corsage; at least, if she did, Aviator clearly found it again for her, as she was still wearing it at the end of the night, although it was slightly the worse for wear. All in all, it was an extremely good night. Even breaking the end off the heel of my shoe in the car park didn't mar it too badly (mar the night, that is. It marred the shoe quite a lot).

And that was it. The end. The end of the year and the end of my overlong three-part coverage of the end of the year. And it's about time for both of them, I think. Roll on Christmas. And Senior School, but I prefer not to think of that.

Oh, yes, and me & Falcon are going out now. There's formalities for you.

The Scientific Method

Dear everyone who is still reading after my ridiculously long previous post,

This one is not going to be any better. I've talked (typed? written?) about the special end-of-year events; now, I think, it's time for the basics. Despite the fact that we're all increasingly uninterested in it, school seems determined to go on. Some of the teachers are relentlessly trying to actually make us do work, explaining 'I wouldn't turn up to your house a week before the holidays end and make you do Maths, would I?' (yes, this was a Maths teacher. Surprise, surprise, surprise). Others appear to be just as bored as we are and are just relying on old Wheel of Fortune episodes to keep us mildly interested until we can all finally make our escape. Some are celebrating the year's end - in Gwen's tutor group, for example, her tutor finally came good on the promises she's been making all year and brought them in four cakes at once. Or in Mr W's case - he's been seen headbanging in his classroom throughout recess, although this isn't celebration so much as his normal behaviour.

At any rate, I thought it could be an interesting experiment, to write down what all my different and varying teachers are doing to commemorate or commiserate the year's end. I'll begin with Science, which is my worst subject, and move down in no particular order, as befits the Scientific Method (bearing in mind that I have no idea what the scientific method actually is, I just thought it sounded good. I asked Gwen once and she said 'It means trying things with experiments and testing, and, you know, not using that wacky logic they taught us about in RAVE.' I still have no idea). And so here is:

A LESLIE M. HARPER ™ LIST:

End-of-year subjects

Science

So, Science. My very favourite subject of all, if you take favourite to mean 'least favourite', which most people don't. I've had a lot of good Science moments over time. The time in Year Seven, for example, when I forgot how you were meant to label forces and drew all the arrows in the wrong direction on my test. The time in Year Eight when I had a bonding experience with Shoelace and Peanut (whom I had barely spoken to before) over a weird chemical reaction we christened 'Pudgy'. That other time in Year Eight I was boiling hydrochloric acid and nearly burnt Peanut's face off. That other time in Year Eight Peanut and I decided to make caramel with a bunsen burner. Year Nine, when I forgot to turn the gas off after an experiment involving flames. Year Ten, when Bob Dylan forgot to turn the gas off at the tap and set her hair on fire. Also Year Ten, when Falcon spilled both sulfuric acid AND hydrochloric acid on himself in the space of five minutes. And those are just the ones I remember - I'm sure there are plenty I've expunged from my memory, probably with good reason. This week was my last week of Science EVER. In our last lesson, we did experiments (during which Falcon did the acid thing I wrote about above), and, when we'd put everything back and Falcon had washed his hands enough that we were fairly confident he wasn't going to suffer significant damage, we received our grades. I got a B. Falcon got a B. Gwen, however, was being stubborn, and refusing to find out her mark. This frustrated me somewhat - she's topped the class in most, if not all, of the sciences we've done this year, and I wanted to know what she'd gotten for Chemistry.

LESLIE (L): Just go and find out what you got.

GWEN (G): Leslie, I'm busy.

L: It's not hard, you just have to go up and ask him what you got.

G: Be quiet. I'm trying to work out my unit score.

L: BUT IF YOU GO AND ASK HIM HE WILL TELL YOU YOUR UNIT SCORE.

G: Why are you so keen to find out?

(Pause)

L: I want to know if you topped Science or not.

G: I won't have done, look; if my unit score is the same as this, it's quite low.

L: But that's not your unit score! He has your unit score!

G: You know, I think I might be happier not knowing.

L: No, you wouldn't. Incidentally, you're still wearing your apron from the prac.

G: Oh, right.

L: If I put it away for you will you find out your score?

G: No.

L: Right.

(I begin to strangle Gwen with the apron).

G: Stop . . . LESLIE, STOP THAT!

(Obviously I wasn't strangling very hard, as she was still able to talk. There's something for any of the readers who are shocked by violence - then again, I know most of you, and that's not many of you)

L: FIND OUT YOUR GRADE!

G: All right, all right!

And she did. Except I've now forgotten what it was. Clearly it made a big impact on me.

And that was my last lesson of Science. Something I certainly won't miss. Possibly, we could now have a minute of silence for everyone who is going on to do Science next year. Or you could just keep reading.

Maths

For the end of term, we've all been split up into different maths classes. We go into the Maths that we opted to do in Senior School - in most cases, at least. So General students do a kind of pre-General class, Apps do pre-Apps, and Methods do pre-Methods. Trouble however, arises over Spec A & B. To the best of my knowledge, only about thirteen students are enrolled in the Spec B (i.e. double Maths) class next year, and about forty or fifty want to do Spec A. Obviously this leads to fairly uneven classes. So those who make important decisions around the school have decided to scoop up the creme de la creme of the Spec A class and stick them all in Spec B for these last couple of weeks. I, unfortunately, was one of those few. And I have no idea what's going on.

I'm not sure how many people know this, but I'm currently doing a Maths enrichment course, along with three other people in my year (Eggleston, Reedy, and Tree), which I got into accidentally after getting an unprecedented High Distinction in a test (in fact, it's the Maths test mentioned in the second half of my post 'Tales of Mocktails and the Fail Whale'). Every Friday, I sit there for an hour and a half, listening in amazement to smarter people (almost all of whom are Asian boys, Eggleston included). Recently - the day before yesterday, in fact - I had to do a four-hour Maths test as part of this enrichment process. I worked for about half an hour in total over the course of the test, and spent two hours gazing at the questions and wondering desperately about incircles and arcs and how to prove that when a circle has 2N points on it making arcs of length 1 and the points are joined in pairs, making N number of chords, N is even (I just drew a picture of a circle and left it at that). After two and a half hours I couldn't stand it any more and skipped out. Eggleston, damn him, left after an hour and a half, because he was actually finished. 'Goodbye, peeps,' he said as he exited cheerfully. I've never wanted to throttle someone more (except for the Gwen incident mentioned above, obviously).

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that you could take any moment of those two and a half hours and the the feeling I was experiencing would be basically the same as how I feel in Spec B Maths. Luckily, as I've mentioned above, it was only for a couple of weeks, but still.

As it was for the end of term and we had no set syllabus, our teacher let us suggest what we wanted to do. He wasn't that keen on most of our ideas. 'Look, you're the top class, I'm not going to let you play with blocks for today's lesson.'

Still, we've finished now - no more axioms, factorials or proofs by subtraction until next year - and unless I get into the Maths enrichment program again, I should be essentially safe.

English

Shakespeare isn't all that relevant to what we've been studying in English, but I thought I'd put his picture in as my English icon anyway because (a) the alternative was a picture of Jack Nicholson in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' and (b) it relates to a conversation I was having with Peanut the other day, and I'm not going to let her forget that in a hurry.

Let me set the scene: we were wandering around the Year 10 locker area. All the posters for Year 10 Shakespeare were up - this year, they've called it 'Freakspeare'. Peanut and I stopped  briefly to look at one of the posters - which featured, among other things, a picture of Shakespeare.

'Why are the pictures of Shakespeare always so blurry?' complained Peanut.

'Well, they're paintings,' I pointed out.

'Yeah, but none of the pictures I've ever seen of Shakespeare have been good quality,' she said.

I considered this. 'Well, there were some photographs taken of him during his early career as an actor, but they were lost some time during the seventeenth century.' (Obviously I wasn't being serious. I mean, you've probably already realised that, but I have to prepare for every eventuality; after all, Shoelace reads this).

Peanut thought about this. 'That would make sense. I did an assignment about how nobody knew what he looked like, so if the photographs of him were lost . . .'

She paused.

'Wait a second! They didn't have photographs in the seventeenth century!'

That was a truly golden moment.

Anyway, English is one of the few subjects I take in which the teacher has sensibly realised that there's no point in making us do work, and instead lets us watch movies. My English teacher was actually on Wheel of Fortune once, as was her husband (although they were on different episode). So she brought in the episode she was in - at least, so she thought. Turns out what she actually brought in was the tape of her husband's stint on the program. Which would be fine, except that they're currently going through a divorce. I've always quite liked Wheel of Fortune - at least, from what I can remember of it, I liked it - but somehow it's for more entertaining when your English teacher occasionally pauses it on a freeze-frame of her husband and makes obscene hand gestures at the screen. I think I'm going to miss high school English.

French

For the end of high school French - for some people, although not for me, their last lesson of French EVER - we made a newspaper. Each (well, both, there are only two of them) French class made one. My class contains Skeith, Midgie, and Hitler, as well as Comet, Lyssy, PC, Graziella, Ram, and S-Man (we're a pretty small class). Each of us tackled a certain part. Midgie wrote an article about music. This gave me an excuse to bring my blue iPod into class, as I'm basically the only person in the class who has any French music. Not that we listened to that much French music: whenever the teacher left the room Midgie and I would just watch Chaser videos. Still, we both managed to get our articles written in time. Mine was a film review, I wrote about the seventh Harry Potter. I'd tried to get some quotes about it from the friends I went to see it with last Sunday (something I'll write about in more detail in my next post), but unfortunately one of those friends was Vyvyan, whose idea of a useful quote (when I asked her what her favourite part of the film was) was 'OH MY GOD! When that snake jumped out and Peanut full-on freaked out and kicked me!' (and yes, that is an exact quote - I was recording it. I'm going to provide a transcript in the next post). Anyway, I did manage to get it written. Hitler had originally decided to do a cartoon entitled 'Skeith's Adventure's in South Africa' but then changed her mind and made a find-a-word instead. She was also the editor. She didn't do a lot of editing, though; at least, not that I saw. She did spend plenty of time reminding Skeith about the time he coloured his lips in with permanent marker ('It burns! It burns! And it won't come off!'), persuading our relief teacher to let us play the waka waka song over the classroom speakers, and explaining to me how the film 'I, Robot' was really a vehicle for anti-Communist propaganda. Lyssy did a gossip column. PC covered photography - he took pictures of all of us and then edited them so we had moustaches. It won't surprise anyone to know that Hitler was sieg-hailing in hers. Comet wrote up a crepe recipe. S-Man wrote a horoscope. Graziella did design. In fact, she designed S-Man's horoscope with a blue background and a number of artistically placed black splotches. S-Man wasn't overly thrilled with it. 'What's this? Did someone spill ink on it?' 

Ram had originally been going to do a review of the canteen. He surprised all of us when he announced 'Actually, I think I'm just going to try and write some French poetry instead.' I'm not sure if he finished or not, although we were all fairly keen to read some. I was, anyway. Frankly, anything is better than Aviator's poems, which is all the poetry I've read recently.

Aviator has recently discovered a talent of his for writing dirty limericks. I was with him in the library once when he showed me a page of five poems he'd written for Lyssy at her own request. I'd recount some of them here, but I want to keep a G-rated page - PG at the very most. Besides, most of them mention either his or her last name, and that would kind of go against the whole point of using nicknames. Anyway, Aviator decided to print them out and give them to her. So we printed them and headed over to wait by the printer. While we were there, a pair of Year Seven girls came over and collected several pages they'd printed out. Aviator and I waited for a little longer, but nothing more came out of the printer, so we decided there had probably been some technical error and went back to the computer to puzzle it out. While we were there, one of the Year Seven girls came over and tapped Aviator on the shoulder. 'Excuse me? This got mixed in with our printing. I think it's yours.'

The only thing funnier than her expression of distaste as she handed the poem sheet over was Aviator's face, with mixed relief - that it hadn't accidentally printed out on a teacher's printer - and horror. He handed the poems over to Lyssy and exited the library quickly, before anything else could happen (I left too, and so I can't describe what Lyssy's reaction to the poetry was, but I can imagine it).

There is a sequel to this incident: a couple of days later, I was talking to Peanut when I remembered that she was one of the few people I hadn't yet related the poetry story to. I was partway through when she went 'Oh, yes, I heard about that.'

'How? Did Aviator tell you?' I asked, surprised.

'No,' she replied. 'One of those Year Sevens was my sister.'

PE

Yes. The great moment has come. The moment I've been waiting for - well, basically for my entire school career.

I've had my last PE lesson.

There are some down sides, of course. No longer will I have the opportunity to fall off a bike in front of my entire PE class. I won't be able to run any more cross country practices, falling up hills (yes, up. If I have to injure myself, I'm not going to do it in a conventional way) and scarring my knee. Vyvyan will no longer be able to hit me in the shins with crosses. I won't play badminton with anyone, missing the serve five times in a row despite the fact that Falcon is actually standing next to me and explaining what I have to do. I won't have to go and get the table tennis balls after accidentally hitting them through the net - wait, did I write 'down sides'?

There is very little I'm going to miss about PE, from the freezing early morning changes to the moment at the end of school when I realise I've missed my bus because I had to stay behind and pack up the bocce balls, or whatever bizarre sport we were playing. For my last ever lesson (which I didn't realise WAS my last ever lesson until right at the end) we combined with another class and played soccer.

The first game I played, I was playing Klaus's team, so I just wandered around and talked to him. We occasionally took it in turns to move towards the ball when it was coming near us, and then moving back when it had been safely propelled out of range (usually by somebody else). Klaus explained to me his policy of trying to touch the ball once, on average, for each game. If he touched it twice in a game he was exempt for the next one. It was an interesting concept, and I was still considering it as a potential strategy when the whistle blew. For the second game I bade goodbye to Klaus, and went to playing Vyvyan's team. She explained to me that she had actually scored a goal in the previous game and I explained Klaus's theory to her. Not a lot of soccer-playing was done. In our third and final game, both Falcon and Wiggles were playing. On their own, they're not generally over-competitive people. When together, however, they seem to have this need to constantly tackle each other, do ridiculously long passes, and generally not get along. What made it particularly strange is that they were both on the same team.

We'd just begun the game when I noticed Sharona giving me a strange look. 'What is it?'

'Are you on my team, Leslie?'

'We've been playing together for the past three games, so yes, I think so.'

'That would explain a LOT,' Sharona said. 'I was wondering why I kept playing on the same field as you.'

Ah, yes. That's how much my friends are into soccer playing. It probably had something to do with the end of term as well. None of us are at our sharpest.

One of the examples of this, during this game, was when BBB, while attempting to get the ball as far from her team's goal as possible, accidentally kicked it so it went up and smacked Falcon in the face. He keeled over, moaning gently and rocking back and forth. We all gathered around.

'Are you all right?' someone asked worriedly. Falcon calmly stood up and brushed himself off. 'Yeah, I'm fine.'

'Then . . . what was all of that? The falling over?'

'That,' he said firmly, 'was for dramatic effect.'

And he ran off, with the ball. I happened to be in front of him, so I wandered up in the vague hope of stopping the ball. 'Go on, kick him in the shins!' yelled Wiggles hopefully. 'Really, it might be amusing.'

I would have had a go, but by that time the game had moved on.

Something else happened during that game which might have been my finest soccer-playing moment of all time, excepting that time in primary school when I was in goal (they'd learnt I couldn't play, so they put me somewhere I wouldn't have to run around much) and somebody tried to score, but they hit my knee instead, causing it to bounce off and look like I'd saved it. Falcon and Wiggles were about two metres away, each trying to tackle the other one in an attempt to score the goal. In the midst of this they'd managed to completely forget about the ball, and so I did the sensible thing: I ran up and kicked it (rather feebly, to be honest) to Tree, who was then able to pass it on. Soccer-playing history.

At the very end of the lesson Vyvyan ran up to me and attempted to hug me. Luckily I've become wise to her ways and managed to shake her off after a matter of minutes (Beartrap wasn't there to act as bodyguard). 'It's our last PE lesson ever!'

'Please don't do that right next to my ear - wait, is it really?'

'Yes! Backwards hi-five!'

(A backwards hi-five is what Vyvyan and I attempt to do after any great sporting moment. It might even work if either of us were remotely coordinated).

Anyway, never again do I have to don sporting garb and pretend to care about what everyone else is doing with a ball. Except for playing netball, of course. Apart from that, though I'm finally free.

Geography

Geography is, I think, unique among my subjects in that not only did they give us a non-assessable end-of-term assignment, they tried to make us care about it. We had to write a speech and then several groups would be selected to present. Peanut, Marie-Clare and I worked in a group of three to make a powerpoint about the people of Afghanistan (we were given the topic). When I tell you that we actually wrote our speech twenty minutes before the presentations were due to begin, you'll understand how unprepared we were.

I took drastic action on the way across to the lecture theatre and decided to pray that we weren't chosen. Not being religious, however, I didn't really have anyone to pray to. So Peanut and I created a new god - the God of Geography or, as we like to call him, the holy and all-powerful Boltssna.

Marie-Clare was perplexed by this, as was Giuseppe when we explained it to her. Klaus was intrigued. 'Boltssna? You've personified geography?'

'Yep,' Peanut told him. 'And his son's called Map.'

At any rate, something must have worked because we didn't have to give our presentation. And that, my friends, was my last ever Geography lesson. Perhaps if I'd thought to create something to help me through Geography earlier on in my school career, I'd be doing it next year. Or maybe not. I guess we'll never know.

Media

In Media, to commemorate the end of the year (and complete our assessment), we made films. They had to be 10 seconds long, have some form of twist at the end, and were virtually impossible to do. I'm sure this wasn't the case for everyone. It's just that I was working in a group of three. It was me, Apple - and Skeith. Apple had the idea, which was of someone running around, being chased by a ghost. The person running would be cornered into a dead end and the ghost would close in on them. At that point, we would cross to a shot of someone playing Pacman, and the viewer would suddenly realise that it was really just a game of Pacman, which had just been lost. It was a great idea in principle. In practice, it was a little hard to do.

Before filming, we had to find the costumes, i.e. the ghost's costume. You see, it's all very well to go 'I want a ghost to be in this film,' but what you're basically looking at is someone in a sheet. In this case, Apple in a sheet. We managed to find one in room 15 and a half (yes, it exists, look for it). Skeith got considerably tangled up in it before I dragged him, and it,  away. We were just about to begin filming when Apple objected to Skeith's appearance. 'I mean, he's been running. He has to look exhausted. Sweaty and tired and that kind of thing.'

His solution was to spray Skeith with water, something Skeith strenuously objected to. They spent a good ten minutes arguing about this, trying to attack each other with the sheet, locking each other in girls' toilets, etc. Eventually Apple got annoyed. 'OK, Skeith, we're not going to spray you with water, all right?' He wandered over to the bubbler to get a drink. Once he'd finished, Apple turned around and spat water into Skeith's face, thus giving the effect we'd wanted. Skeith didn't see it that way. I would have tried to help out somehow, but I'd unfortunately collapsed with laughter.

Somehow or other, despite numerous impediments - we couldn't find a dolly for a shot Apple wanted, so we put the camera on a wheelie chair instead - we managed to get to the editing stage. This film was actually worth part of our mark, so we wanted to do a good job (it should be mentioned that this whole project was actually a couple of weeks ago, before our grades were finished). Finally, we'd finished all but the final scene, of someone playing Pacman in the Media classroom. It took long enough for us to get our shot of the game screen - everyone else was getting annoyed by the constant Pacman noises - but then Skeith had his prima donna moment and refused to do it. I still don't know why he refused. Our pleas were all to naught. Finally, Falcon stepped in and did the final shot, which is basically just of somebody getting annoyed. And we were ready for the editing.

Editing is my forte in Media. 'Forte' in the sense that I'm not that good at it, but I'm better at it than at filming or planning or anything like that. Anyway, both Apple and Skeith seemed to think that I was better at it than them (or possibly they just weren't prepared to spend the next few lessons speeding each individual shot up by a tiny bit at a time in an attempt to fit it all in and still keep it within the time limit). Editing isn't a hard job, but it does require a lot of concentration. Which is a hard thing to get in our Media classroom.

In one instance, I was trying to find the place to fit in Apple's vertigo shot, which is the one he'd needed the wheelie chair for. Falcon had found a really small bicycle and was trying to ride it around the classroom. 'Hey - hey, Leslie, I'm staying on - no, wait. Let me have another go.'

'You're not going to be able to stay on,' I told him absently.

'Yes I am, look at this - no, the seat's too small. There's got to be a way around this . . .'

A few minutes later, and he'd found a way around it.

'Look! I have a chariot!'

'What do you mean, a chariot?' I asked, turning around. 'Oh. Right. A chariot.'

And it was a chariot, if you can call someone sitting on a wheelie chair while peddling a small bicycle in front of them a chariot. He rode around the tables for a bit then got bored.

'Hey, can somebody open that door?'

'Why?' I asked warily.

'I want to try riding it outside.'

And he did.

A focussed lot, my Media class (still, what can you expect from a class with three girls and twenty-one boys?).

It was a bit better when we actually finished all our projects and got to the point when we were watching films. Recently - actually, the day before yesterday - Jig came up to me and asked to conduct an experiment on me. Jig, too, has appeared in this blog before, but under the pseudonym of 'STUDENT 1' in my 'Not-So-Sweet 16' post. Anyway, I was a little suspicious, but agreed.

JIG (J): So, Leslie, will you give me something? Let's say, your jumper?

LESLIE (L): Um . . . I'm going to say no.

J: OK. Well, watch this.

(He undoes two buttons on his shirt before my horrified eyes)

J: Right. Now can I have your jumper?

L: NO!

J: Damn! Why does that work for girls and not for guys?

Wow, Jig. I have no idea.

RAVE

Ah, RAVE. The most pointless subject of all. Pointless, that is, unless you decide to become one of those Evangelical preachers whose only purpose in life is to make money out of their so-called flock. Like this guy.

Luckily, I haven't had any RAVE lessons in the past couple of weeks. It would be a blow to me if I had actually been studying to be a priest (I could be the leader of the church of Boltssna). As it is, I think I'll live.

And that concludes part 2 of my end-of-the-year special (now, if I can only find someone to pay me for it . . .). This year's over, and we have no idea what the next one will hold for us.

Actually, that's not true. I do have one idea about it:

So long as it doesn't contain Science, I'll be happy.