Changes

At some point between the ending of last year and the beginning of this one, my year group went through the traumatic stages of moving on from being an immature, emotionally inarticulate bunch of Year 10 rabble to reaching the dizzying heights of Year 11-hood, Senior School, and all that entails.

That’s the theory, anyway.

In practice I haven’t noticed that much difference between us as Year 10s and us, two months later, as Year 11. There have been changes, certainly. But a great deal has stayed the same.

So, I thought for my first official post of the school year I’d discuss the theme of CHANGE. I was hoping to play David Bowie’s ‘Changes’ over the top to really prove my point, but unfortunately one of the things that hasn’t changed is my inability to work any kind of technology with any degree of competency. I’m fine with that, though, because I hate the song.

Anyway, this post is going to cover this exciting new stage in our lives. Which things are different, what hasn’t changed, all neatly set out under a series of headings. It’s the start of the year, after all. I’m one of those people who begins the year incredibly organised, books all in the right places, sheets tidily glued into the relevant books, small plastic turtle blu-tacked to the door of my locker (for those of you that I haven’t shown it to, yes, I have a turtle attached to my locker door. I think it’s trendy). Then, after about a month, things start to go downhill. I’ve a feeling it will be the same with this blog. Right now I’m feeling capable of knocking out about two regular posts a month, complete with pictures, headings, interesting Chaser clips you’ve probably seen but I’ve decided to show you again. And yet by this time next month I’ll struggling to get out so much as a couple hundred words with maybe a couple of unrelated graphics. It’s because of difficulties like this that I have established my groundbreaking timesaving BFTP project. More on that next time, however. For now, CHANGE, its effects and its repercussions.

UNIFORMS

One significant benefit of being a senior is that we get a new uniform. It’s not that much better, to be honest. We get white shirts and red skirts (but the boys wear grey shorts, not skirts. I’m glad I remembered to add this parenthesis in time, I was just re-reading the post quickly before clicking ‘Publish’. That could have been awkward). I actually quite liked the old, blue uniform – although the shirts are more comfortable, and it’s nice not having to wear the odd sack-like dresses any more. The important thing about this uniform is that it can be used to inspire RESPECT. Theoretically. Again, different in practice. The only real difference is that now we all feel more important. I thought it had worked on a group of Year 9s yesterday – they were definitely looking more respectful than when they were Year 8s and I was a Year 10 – but then I kind of screwed that up by walking into a pole. Less embarrassing than my whole injuring-the-backs-of-my-hands-after-chasing-Gwen-humming-the-theme-song-to-‘Whose-Line-Is-It-Anyway’ (an incident slightly less traumatic than the title is long), but still not pleasant. Also I now have a bruise on my forehead.

SUBJECTS

Ah, the joys of doing subjects you like instead of struggling away doing Geography, Physics, or PE. The pleasures of discovering that you have a double English that day, and no sciences, and then remembering that you’re not actually studying any sciences. The mind-blowing awesomeness of looking at your timetable and going ‘Yep, it’s a good day, no bad subjects’ – and then remembering that you ONLY study good subjects now and every day is a good day. Except days when you have assessment due. And man, are there a lot of those.

As an English double major, I’m currently studying Shakespeare, Ninteenth Century Literature, French, Hospitality, Specialist A Maths, and War in the Modern World (my History unit – it’s just on my timetable as ‘War’. My friends have long ago gotten tired of me saying ‘What have I got next? Oh, I’m going to war’).

Incidentally, bear with me over the following passages. Many of the paragraphs mention things that will only make sense to people in my classes. Otherwise just find me at school, and I’ll explain it to you.

My Shakespeare class – which Ariane and Marie-Clare are both in - is currently reading a play called ‘Dead White Males’, all about conflicting ideologies and Shakespeare’s relevance in contemporary society. It’s become pointless to attempt to persuade an outraged Ariane that the characters aren’t real people, and no matter how long you spend loudly criticising their actions, it’s unlikely to change anything. It’s especially pointless when you consider that every single other person in the class is doing exactly the same thing. I mean, what the hell were you thinking, Angela? Grant Swain is using you. USING YOU. He’s twisting you to be like him. Swain is a symbol of the repressive patriarchal ideological system he claims to be so set on overthrowing. Run away with Steve, leave Melissa and Swain to their own devices, and live happily ever after. I’ve had my say now.

Giuseppe, Lala, Kapish, and Hitler are all in my Ninteenth Century Literature class. We’re doing Ibsen. Yes. The other class get to do Oscar Wilde and we’re sudying Henrik Ibsen, that most famous of Norwegian playwrights.

It’s not that bad, honestly, it’s just that I really like Oscar Wilde. Still, I’ve shotgunned Dorian Gray for my oral (in the sense of having chosen him rather than of having sent him to a bloody and violent death). If you’re reading this, fellow-Oscar-Wilde-fan-in-my-class – and you probably don’t know who you are, from that description – it’s too late. Do The Importance of Being Earnest. Or the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Either that, or you’ll be cursed forever with the heinous crime of having broken the rule of shotgun. The choice is yours.

French, too, is good. I’ve actually got a French exchange student living with me at the moment. I won’t write any more about her as (a) it might technically be a breach of privacy, (b) most of you will meet her on Monday anyway and (c) I don’t know the French for ‘What blog nickname do you want?’.

Hosipitality, as is true for any subject in which the majority of assessment is down to you cooking things in class and then eating them, is FULLY AWESOME. Ness is in my class. We made cheese-and-bacon muffins. It was fun. That is to say, I burnt myself three times (once on a piece of bacon and twice on the hot water tap, which, considering I’m a Senior, I should have learnt how to use by now), dripped oil all over the bench, and then found a piece of bacon behind my ear. Still no idea why it was there (I don’t remember touching my ear . . .) or how it managed not to fall off. I suppose it will always remain a mystery. Anyway, the muffins were fantastic.

The only less good thing about food is that we’re supposed to wear proper button-up white jackets, checked trousers, and flat chef’s hats while cooking, which, while being impractical, makes us all look like prats. We even have to wear a checked necktie while out in public. Oh, yes. Because the addition of the necktie will make us so much less ridiculous.

I’m not even going to begin to talk about Maths. Chinny and Gwen are terrific. Peanut and I sit together and try to figure out how we’ve managed to get different answers using the same working (sadly, this happens a lot. Even more sadly, she’s usually right).

And, finally, War. I have Mr W as a teacher.

Earlier this week, a fly was trapped in our classroom. For some reason it seemed irrationally attracted to Mr W, persisting in returning to him whenever it got bored of trying to fly into the ceiling fan. This was evidently quite annoying to Mr W. At least, I assume so, as he’d occasionally stop talking to growl at the fly. Anyway, at one point the fly went farther than it had tried to do before and flew right in front of him. Mr W pulled a sword out of his bag, hacked vainly in the fly’s direction, then calmly put it away and continued his lecture. He may have missed the fly, but he’d evidently taught it a lesson, as it didn’t go near him again.

Just today, Giuseppe joined my history class. Mr W was on top form. He pretended to be a Trappist monk, put on some music to make himself feel more like he was in a monastery, started telling us about John Stuart Mill, got distracted and recited three verses of Monty Python’s ‘Philosopher’s Drinking Song’ (and got the last line wrong, by the way. I’m kind of a big Monty Python person), told us who would be first against the wall when the revolution came, spoke some indecipherable German, and then bounced across the room. If I hadn’t known that Giuseppe had already had plenty of experience with his classes, I might have been concerned for her. As it is I think she’ll get by.

NB: This is a picture from 'Sanctum', a new film about caving (thus making it relevant to the heading), which Andrew Hansen is in. He wasn't actually in this scene. So I photoshopped him in.

AREA

As Senior Students, we are now located in the Senior School area. This is a good thing for some people. Marie-Clare, for instance. Ness. Brandine. Vyvyan.

For the rest of us, unfortunately, that means we now have our lockers in . . .

. . . THE CAVE

Which is, as you should be able to tell from the writing, not a good thing.

The Cave is part of the Year 11 locker area. I can’t tell you what the exact dimensions are, but it’s pretty small. It’s also u-shaped. I’m near the back in the middle of the U. Aviator is directly opposite me (hence why he found it so easy to figure out my locker combination), Mercedes is in one of the corners, and Lala is right at the back.

It’s hard to decide the worst part of the Cave. The way it gets hotter the further back you go would definitely be a contender. Or maybe the way people leave their lunch on top of their lockers and forget to take it off again, despite the fact that the top of the lockers are sloped and it’s theoretically impossible for anything to stay there. But if I had to pick the absolute most terrible thing about that area, then it would be the crowdedness.

It’s especially noticeable after school. Everyone’s crammed together, desperate to get to their bus on time, trying to put books in their bag without treading on the person below them, trying to move out while the people opposite them are nearly pressed against the and there are other people, trying to get out or get to their own lockers, and shoving in all directions . . .

Aviator has decided to remedy this by putting up signs saying ‘ONLY TRAVEL CLOCKWISE AROUND THIS AREA’, with helpful arrows for people who own digital watches. That’s the general gist of the sign, anyway. The actual one had a distinctly more Communist flavour to it. It said something like:

EVERYONE MUST MOVE CLOCKWISE AROUND THE CAVE

EVERYONE HERE IS EQUAL AND HAPPY

BUT IF PEOPLE DO NOT DO THIS, THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES

To be honest, it hasn’t proved that effective so far – although it’s fun going around anticlockwise just to annoy him – but there’s always time.

VENDING MACHINES

The vending machines are certainly an important change in our lives, maybe even above subjects. Whether a good one or a bad one, I’m not sure. I’ll let you decide.

I haven’t bought a single drink for myself yet out of the vending machines. Gwen bought me one when I gave her a pastry we made in Hospitality. Phoenix bought me one after I jinxed her (we both said ‘Who needs a visa, I’ve got a pink slip,’ at the same time. It’s a long, complicated, and pointless story). Regarding these two stories alone, the vending machines might seem like creations of good. Not so, though. They are also harbingers of evil.

Gwen has recently been getting annoyed at Eggleston and Falcon for drinking bottled water. They, however, claim that it tastes better. Some kind of deciding factor was needed. So we had a competition. We gave them each three bottles: one containing bottled water, one with tap, and one with filtered rain water that Gwen had taken out of her tank. Sadly, they both managed to get the bottled water right, although they screwed up over the tap/rainwater conundrum. I think it’s a combination of the school’s water system’s and the vending machine’s fault. The water system’s, because I’m sure regular water doesn’t taste as metallic as the stuff we got out of the bubbler. And the vending machine’s for working as a machine/fridge. We did try to warm the bottled water up in the hand dryers in the bathroom to make it closer to room temperature but it didn’t work. There was still a temperature difference.

Anyway, we now have to buy them drinks. It’s all right, though, as Gwen has her revenge planned. Sadly I can’t say what it is as we’re still in a crucial stage of planning. However, it’s going to be epic.

All of this isn’t even mentioning the Peanut Effect. Whenever Peanut – or Peanut’s money – go anywhere near one of said vending machines, things break. We don’t know why. All we know is that while any of us can purchase something from the machine and rely on it working, if somewhat erratically, it’s not the same for Peanut. I mean, yesterday Mercedes and I tried putting a 10-yen piece in the machine to see what would happen. It rolled out of one and got temporarily stuck in the other. Yet the next time we checked – today, I think – it was fixed. We can get away with this kind of thing, and yet if Peanut tried the same thing the machine would probably die. I believe that Phoenix is currently conducting a social study about this bizarre phenomenon, among others. Be assured that as soon as she delivers her thesis on the Peanut Effect to me I’ll publish it on my blog, as the surrogate website for the University of Uttoxetercamfordbridgedam.

Somebody else I had to buy a drink for recently (today) was Aviator. In hindsight, it was a bad move to bet him that he couldn’t find out my locker combination by the end of the week. Especially as he now knows my locker combination AND has achieved victory over me. Not an ideal scenario.

NB: This video is relevant because it has the word 'people' in it. I bet you didn't know Andrew Hansen was in a band called The Fantastic Leslie.

PEOPLE

Many people I know – formerly friends and colleagues – have undergone dramatic change during the migration from Year 10 to Senior School. Some haven’t changed at all. Gwen, for example, is still her anti-bottled-water environment-saving self. Aside from Peanut’s disastrous effects on vending machines, everything about her seems essentially the same. Giuseppe, too. Therefore I’ve restricted myself to discussing the people who seem most changed by this new environment.

Aviator has lost his braces and acquired glasses. He thinks they make him look like a Harvard professor. Ariane thinks he looks like Harry Potter. I think he looks like somebody’s grandmother. Who knows. Maybe the real answer is in some creepy combination of all three.

Seeing as Marie-Clare is now in the same area of the school as 25, I would have expected her to be slightly more excited. As is, she just seems vaguely embarrassed whenever I point him out to her. At first I was wondering if she really had undergone some major form of change, in which she doesn’t obsess over people she has never talked to, never even met, and who she has little to no chance of ever getting with.

That was until I remembered that she was just in love with Mark Zuckerberg. Compared to the 6.9-billion-dollar-man, all other romances probably seem trifling.

The greatest change I’ve noticed has been in Phoenix. Until recently – since Year 8, in fact – Phoenix has insisted in contacting us with emails and emails only, never speaking to us, hanging out with different people, and even going so far as to attend a different school. In a different country.

Now, however, she’s once again happy to speak to us and hang out with us. Yes, we have wrenched her safely out of the hands of the Americans. Luckily she still has her Australian accent as otherwise it might have been an impossible job.

NEW STUDENTS

(also known under their scientific name of ‘PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T HEARD THE ELF JOKE YET’)

That’s another big change. Now, when I see unknown faces in my locker area, it doesn’t just mean that I’ve forgotten somebody in my year level. Sometimes it does – my memory is reserved for important things, like obscure British comedians and Andrew Hansen’s birthday, not people I see every day – but more commonly, it just means they’re new to the school.

What this also means is that I have a lot of new names to learn. There’s one boy who I’m convinced looks exactly like a Dylan, so much so that I told Vyvyan this was his name. It turns out that he’s actually called something entirely different, but I still think he looks enough like a Dylan to merit calling him that on my blog. Although it could theoretically get tricky not to confuse him with Bob Dylan. Still, I’ll work something out.

There are a number of new students in the Senior School, but one has been unluckier than most. Yes, one poor undefended student has joined our group. I bet she didn’t know what she was getting into.

I have dubbed her Mercedes, and she’s spent the last week and a half witnessing my friends (and me) at our best. Whether it’s Giuseppe, Aviator, and Bob Dylan wondering what they’d do if they met their doppelganger; Phoenix and I discussing our new plan of setting up a kindergarten especially for people who want their children to be wine tasters; me pretending I can speak semaphore; me claiming to have spent the weekend in the West Indies with a giant turtle; if I was in her position, I’m not sure I would have stuck around. However, she has, which is good because she’s nice and we like her and it’s good to have someone less mental around. Just in case.

BLOG-RELATED THREATS

As the end of the old year slides smoothly over to the beginning of the new one, I’m having to make some important life decisions. What university I want to go to (University of Sydney or bust). What career I want (I’m going to be a journalist). And whether I want to keep going with my blog.

Year 10 was, relatively speaking, fairly chilled. There was plenty of time to fit school work, netball, free time, and blog writing time into the week. But with Senior School I not only have about five times as much work to do, given the amount of extra commitment I’ve taken on, I have much less time to do it in. Frees help. But then again, I share a free line with Brandine, Vyvyan, and Spoon. Frees don’t really help.

So, do I really have time to keep a blog running?

On the one hand, I hate doing this. I hate the fact that I’ve stayed up until midnight typing, that I’ve now spent so long staring at the words I’m typing ‘hoswe’ instead of ‘how’ and ‘totwthe’ instead of ‘the’ and just not realising it until I go back and proofread. I hate that I’m doing this instead of doing one of my many assignments, when in reality this post is about four times as long as the assignment has to be and has taken just as much work.

On the other hand, however, I wouldn’t still be doing this if I didn’t like it. Don’t worry, I’m definitely keeping the blog up. I didn’t even want to be a journalist until I realised how much I enjoyed writing this. I just wanted to temporarily worry some of you (MARIE-CLARE. MARIE-CLARE) so, perhaps, you’d stop threatening me. It would be nice.

If I don’t put this post up by Monday, apparently, Marie-Clare is going to slap me. I’m tempted not to do it until then to see if she follows through. I’m worried she might, though. I mean, it’s unusual to have a realistic threat made. Normally Marie-Clare and Aviator just warn me that if I (a) don’t write or (b) write anything they don’t like they’ll burn my house down. That’s assuming that they wouldn’t actually burn my house down, of course – I wouldn’t put it past Aviator, but as he hasn’t actually done it yet, I’ll assume he’s relatively safe.

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.

And In The End . . .

Dear everyone,

It is, basically, the end of the year. Exams are over, spring's come - at last - and the holidays are, once again, in view. It's time, once again, for my end-of-the-year post (that is to say, considering I started this blog some time in July, it's time for my first ever end-of-year post. But that sounds less effective). 

In fact, any number of interesting things have happened between now and the publishing of my last post. Unfortunately, I've been far too busy to write about them. And even more unfortunately, my school is a fairly interesting place, and my year group are people who do fairly interesting things on a more or less regular basis. I could be a slacker, I suppose, and try and fit everything into one post. But really, I have no excuse for doing that. I have no homework - at least, none that's assessable, although the Geography teachers clearly still have much to learn about the pointlessness of giving us assignments after our exams have finished - and as I'm currently spending my time moving between Facebook and trying to find a website that will let me watch that episode of Top Gear with Andrew Hansen and Craig Reucassel on it (something I haven't succeeded with yet, so any advice would be welcome), I think I can devote the time that is needed to truly cover this end-of-the-year fiesta.

So, don't consider this as an end-of-the-year post: think of it as end-of-the-year part 1. I'm hoping to cover many of the school related eccentricities that have been occurring in my - and others' - day to day life. My next post will cover everything about school I haven't had the time or the energy to write about in this one, specifically stuff related to the way the different teachers and subjects I take are reacting to the end of the year, such as my last-ever PE lesson, the time I nearly killed Gwen, Falcon spilling acid on himself, and why I'll never be able to look at Pacman in the same way again. I think I'll only need one more post after that, about everything that's been happening out of school, from Malice in Wonderland, Vyvyan's torch-breaking experience, a truly insurmountable amount of time spent in town, and exactly why Peanut should never be let near anyone religious. For now, though, the educational end-of-year celebrations.

The end of the school year is a time of great celebration. We get the fete, exams, and the end of exams (which is, frankly, a lot better than the exams themselves - obviously). 

The fete is, generally speaking, fun. It was a lot more fun this year as I was one of the Year 10s who hadn't volunteered to help out, and there's something quite enjoyable about watching your friends slave away to entertain/feed/help the bored/hungry/incompetent masses. I arrived about half an hour after the fete started - only hoping I wasn't too late to prevent the fateful moment that seems to occur every year. For the story of what happened up to that moment - and what occurred afterwards - read on.

1. Arrive at fete. See Gwen, Kapeesh, and Marie-Clare - both of whom volunteered to help - standing at school entrance, holding big cardboard signs saying 'NO PARKING INSIDE SCHOOL'. Go to talk to them and gloat about the fact that I don't have to do anything.

2. Talk to Marie-Clare, who is bored and tries to persuade me to stay with her.

3. Pick up cardboard sign. Stand with Marie-Clare. Berate myself for being such a pushover.

4. Man comes up to talk to us. Asks how we got stuck with this job. Explain to him that I have no idea.

5. Begin to question logic of having Year 10s holding sign when sticks would do the job just as well. Decide it is down to high price of sticks, whereas we are basically slave labour.

6. Peanut, Ness, and Shoelace arrive.

7. Abandon my post as cardboard holder. Walk off with Peanut, Ness, and Shoelace, with Marie-Clare's threats ringing in my ears.

8. Peanut and Shoelace decide to go on a ride. Ness decides not to. I decide not to. Ness and I are left holding their things. Decide cannot be bothered to carry Peanut's hat, so wear it instead.

9. Vyvyan arrives. Refuses to go near me so long as I persist in wearing two hats. She tells me I could not be more embarrassing.

10. I prove that she is wrong.

11. Vyvyan agrees that she was wrong, and furthermore asks me not to sing in public when with her.

12. Vyvyan films Shoelace and Peanut on the ride (which I cannot find a picture of, but which looked like a kind of partial ferris wheel).

13. Ness and I look forward to seeing Shoelace and Peanut screaming in a terrified way at top of ride. Are much annoyed to see they are, in fact, having a calm conversation. While upside-down.

14. Wander around looking at stalls. Everyone is extremely amused to see signs marked 'pre-loved'.

15. At this point I bought some things, but I don't think it's really important to mention what as the moment of truth was coming up: the moment which I have, since coming to this school, learnt to dread.

16. The moment of truth arrives. Shoelace spots the White Elephant stall.

I don't think I can go on without explaining exactly why I dread this moment. So I'm going to smoothly segue into an anecdote. The last fete I went to - not last year's, as I was on camp, but the year before - I was unfortunate enough to be left behind with Shoelace. It was the end of the fete, and in the White Elephant stall, they had this thing going in which they gave you a cardboard box, you filled it up with whatever you wanted, and they charged you $2. Shoelace, who is always glad to find a bargain - in the past, she's bought items of clothing from Hot Dollar, for heaven's sake - was keen to take advantage of this generous offer. However, she does have several unrealistic notions as to what you can reasonably fit in a cardboard box. I was looking at something when I turned around to see her (unsuccessfully) attempting to shove huge blue beanbag into a box.

LESLIE (L): Shoelace, that is not going to work.

SHOELACE (S): Yes, it is.

(We both watch as she tries, fruitlessly, to cram the beanbag into the protesting box. A small girl arrives)

GIRL (G): Sorry to interrupt you, but I was just about to buy that.

S: Well, you can't. I saw it first.

G: But I only left it there so I could go and get the money!

(I intervene. The small girl drags the beanbag away with her. Shoelace looks disconsolate)

S: I was just about to buy that!

L: How would you have got it home on the bus?

S: Oh, yeah. Right.

(We both go our separate ways again. Once more, however, I turn around to see Shoelace trying to fit something inappropriate into the box)

S: Leslie, can you give me a hand with this?

L: Shoelace, I appreciate that you're trying, but there is NO WAY you will be able to fit a swivel chair into that box.

S: Just watch me.

She didn't get it in.

That was the last fete I went to. This time, I was more prepared. Also, Vyvyan was with me. We managed to talk Shoelace out of buying an owl made of shells, a fluffy picture frame, an intercom, several classical music tapes (yes, tapes. Not CDs), and a box of biscuits that had expired some time in the previous decade. All in all, we were rather off our guard when she spotted the miniature spacehopper. Luckily someone else bought it just in time. Shoelace was annoyed.

'That was the only thing I wanted to buy!'

'In that case, can we go and buy ice-cream now?' Vyvyan wanted to know. So we left. A potential disaster neatly averted, I thought.

Then again, I can't really talk. After the same fete where Shoelace tried to buy her chair I came home with two toast racks, a suitcase and a Doctor Who lunchbox.

The fete was actually some time ago - a few weeks, anyway. But it's in the pre-exams period which, to me, at the moment, feels like years in the past. We did the exams this week. Geography, then Maths, and then English first thing the next day. I don't actually mind exams and tests so much as some forms of assessment. They're over relatively quickly. Still, there's nothing like the moment when they're over, as anyone in Year 9, 10, 11, or 12 will agree.

The Year 12s, for whom the end of this year is probably far more significant than for any of us (that is to say, it's a path to later life for them, while for me it's only a source of material for me to rant on about in the vague hope that some of what I write turns out to amuse people), get muck-up day. The really excellent thing about muck-up day is that I always forget when it's on. Which is why it was especially confusing when I turned up at school a couple of weeks ago to realise someone had constructed a giant string maze in the Year 10 locker area. Don't get me wrong. It was AWESOME. I get to school ridiculously early in the morning - thank you, new bus timetables - and there were very few people actually there. The few that were there were having considerable trouble trying to get through the string to their lockers. It's actually a lot harder than it sounds, trying to get through a string maze to your locker while carrying a large bag on your back. Oh, yes, and the lockers were all sealed with cable ties. Nevertheless, I was prepared to give it a go. Chinny, who also gets to school early, watched me with surprise. 'Leslie, what are you doing?'

'Just a minute,' I told her. 'We can continue your Chaser education as soon as I've gotten through this. Can you hold that bit of string up for me?'

(NB: As Chinny has had little or no contact with popular culture over the course of her life, I'm attempting to solve this by showing her a Chaser video on my blue iPod every morning. Not sure if it's working or not, but I'm determined to give it a go anyway).

Chinny tried to hold up the string for me, but, as mentioned above, I was wearing my school bag - 'extremely tangled' doesn't cover it.

'Why are you trying to get through that string?'

'So I can get to my locker,' I said with as much dignity as it is possible to muster while tied up in jute string. Chinny sighed.

'Leslie, your locker is on the other side. If you just go around, you can get to it without having to go through the string.'

I considered this. 'In that case, can you help me get untangled?'

As it turned out, by the time I was fully untangled my history teacher had come out with a pair of scissors and was cutting the string with an annoyed expression on his face (well, where else would his annoyed expression have been). I considered asking him to leave it up, remembered that he was (a) carrying a pair of scissors and (b) not in a good mood, and decided not to. He was halfway through the cutting of the string when Tip arrived unexpectedly. He gazed around in astonishment at the string, the cable ties, and the clingfilm (which had been artfully arranged between several poles). 'So this is what it's like when you get to school early!' he said in amazement.

I won't go into the rest of the day. I'm sure people wouldn't be interested in hearing about how Year 12 somehow managed to get Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall' to play out of the school loudspeakers, or had a real MarioKart race at recess (they were using cardboard boxes with pretend wheels stuck on; several people in my tutor group found one of these cardboard karts during tutor period, and pretended to drive around in it until it broke), or persuaded one of the most serious teachers at our school (in my opinion, anyway) to do a version of the Old Spice ad.

Being in Year 10, the end of the year is fairly significant for us too. We're all choosing subjects, getting prepared for Senior School. I swear that there has never been a less decisive bunch. I believe I wrote a post about it some time ago, although I can't actually remember (you'd think I'd be able to, but I was reading some of my old posts a couple of weeks ago - right before the English exam, actually - and I couldn't remember half the stuff happening, let alone writing about it). Anyway, I wrote something about how Midge was one of the more certain ones. Not so. I have been up to Mr L's office with her three times now, to change her subject choices. The first was to swap from Photography to Biology. She then realised that she was doing six Ts, and swapped from Geography back to Photography. Finally, she swapped from Maths Methods to Maths Apps. Marie-Clare isn't any better. I can't remember how many times I've been up with her so she can change subjects, but it's a lot. Mr L now knows me as 'the girl who accompanies people'. He knows Midgie and I so well he's taken to letting us out the back way of his office.

Not that I can be entirely absolved of blame. Until recently I was doing a double English next year. Then I decided that it would be sensible to 'broaden my portfolio', as a lawyer put it to me, by taking a single English and doing Chemistry instead, just in case I ever decided I wanted to become a doctor (which is not going to happen. Really. I can't even watch the gory bits in House without closing my eyes. I refer you back to my post 'Tales of Mocktails and the Fail Whale', August 5th, about a third of the way down the page). Even more recently, however, I made an important discovery:

I SUCK AT CHEMISTRY

Like, I've doing it for a whole term and I STILL can't remember the difference between an ionic and a covalent bond. Or the whole 'base + metal = salt' thing, or whatever that's about. So possibly - just possibly - swapping to Chem next year wasn't the brightest thing I've ever done. Coupled with the fact that I somehow managed to get full marks in the English essay - despite using the word 'bigness' twice - confirmed this fact.

Which leaves me heading back to Mr L's office for the sixth or seventh time this term. Luckily, Marie-Clare was with me, as she'd decided to do what Brandine did and swap from Methods down to Apps. We both managed to swap - I went back to double English - reassured Mr L that this time would definitely be the last time we'd come to see him (I doubt he believed us; I certainly didn't) and went back to the locker area. I don't think it will be the last time. So much for decisiveness.

Anyway, that wasn't the point I was trying to make, I was just trying to fit a mention of Marie-Clare in so she doesn't come to my house and stab me in the middle of the night, something she once told me she'd do unless I wrote something soon. In fact, I think I might finish this post with a little archive of the comments Marie-Clare has made to me on Facebook regarding my non-completion of certain posts. Assuming I get time, of course, I don't want to wake up dead tomorrow.

The point I was actually trying to make was about the Year 10 jumpers and jerseys. Almost everyone in Year 10 recently received their choice of a jumper or jersey to commemorate the fact the fact that we came to this school. You got to choose a nickname which was written on the back. Some people went with their real names. I went for 'Leslie M.' on the back of my jumper, for reasons which you should have picked up by now. A gratifyingly large number of people went with the nicknames I'd given them. In some cases - Peanut's, or Lala's, for example - this had nothing to do with the blog, it was just their actual nickname. In the cases of Giuseppe, Marie-Clare and Aviator (to name but a few), they all went with blog names. I love the nicknames. It means I don't have to think when picking a name for somebody new, I just have to chase them around and figure out what's written on their back. It's not that much simpler, but there's less thinking involved - although I do then have to think of an excuse as to exactly why I was running around after them.

At last count, me, Giuseppe, Ness, Shoelace, Peanut, Marie-Clare, Eggleston, Gwen, Aviator, Lala, Midgie (who is now Brandine), and Ames (ditto Sharona) all went for their blog names. If you have gotten your blog name on the back of your jumper/jersey, and I've forgotten you, tell me; I'm hoping to get a group photo of our backs to post on the blog. I may not be able to reveal any of our identities, but I don't think our backs are going to give much away.

At the very least, the jumper/jersey nickname thing has shown that I have several readers, at least. Actually, a surprising number of people I don't know all that well have turned out to read it. This has led to a number of interesting incidents. I've discussed this blog with my Geography class, my PE class, someone I was running a race with (while we were running), with people in line at the canteen, and I recently had a conversation with somebody about it over my English classroom; he sits on the opposite side to me, leaving a fair number of people between us wondering what we were talking about (the person I was talking to doesn't have a nickname yet, but you know who you are: I recently had a loud, albeit brief argument - well, it was more yelling than arguing - with you in the library as to whether Matt Smith or David Tennant really is the better Doctor. Why does everyone disagree with me about this?).

Also - quick point of interest - if you Google 'gratuitous Andrew Hansen' my blog is near the top. So if Andrew Hansen ever gets up and goes 'Man, I'm feeling pretty gratuitous today. And it's about time I Googled myself again,' he'll find it. It could happen. That wasn't related, I just thought you might find it interesting. If you didn't, just don't read it. Which you can't, because if you're reading this bit, you've already read the bit above. Whatever. Seriously, what else were you going to do with those fifteen seconds of your life?

If you read the blog, and like it, tell me - as you'll soon see below, I get enough negative comments already. I'd like to find out exactly how many people read this blog. At first I thought of doing something like going 'If you read this, stick a post-it note on locker 669' (which isn't my locker, it's Peanut's), but I'm not sure what I - or Peanut - would do with that many post-it notes. So if you do read the blog, please tell me. Believe me, read Marie-Clare's comments and you'll see why I need it.

Here ends part one of my end-of-school experience. Read my next post to figure out exactly why I've been too busy to post recently. Here, for your enjoyment/disgust/delectation, is:

Marie-Clare's Negative Blog-Related Comments Throughout The Ages™

(from Andrew Hansen's birthday to the current date, featuring Ness)

NB: Whenever the name of the comment's author is not mentioned, the author is Marie-Clare

18 September: "LESLIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! why did you not post anything on your blog tonight???? hmmm???? Not happy."

27 September: "LESLIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am disappointed :( Why have you not posted something on your blog recently??? Not happy."

28 September: "You still haven't written anything!!!!!"

2 October: "Stop making that minging scarf and type something on your blog."

3 October (NESS): "Dear Leslie, 

We (your wonderful friends) are all getting pretty bored without new posts on your blog. So I am begging you to....STOP KNITTING YOUR GOD DAMN STINKING SCARF AND START TYPING WOMAN!!!"

3 October: "Good evening....

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you not just type something on your blog, it is really starting to get to me. If there isn't something written on your blog by Saturday, there will be SERIOUS consequences....."

6 October (NESS):  "WRITE SOMETHING WOMAN!"

16 October: "Another good effort on your blog, though a little more of me would be nice....."

20 November: "Write on your blog woman!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You haven't written anything all month you slack ass."

And they wonder why I take so long to write the posts.