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.

The Day

Today was the day. Or rather, The Day.

Or, to be even more specific, Aviator's day.

It was the middle of lunch, and Giuseppe and I had just entered the grass area where a good part of my year group invariably spend their free time. Aviator was standing in the centre of the lawn, holding a banana peel and looking at us solemnly. He said 'Today's the day, I can feel it. Watch this.'

This seemed to mean something to Giuseppe, as she immediately stopped to watch; I did the same thing, although at this point I had no idea what he was on about. Aviator turned and threw the banana peel towards the bin (and luckily not in the direction we were in), which, as we estimated later, was a good twelve metres at the very least. The peel arced gently across the lawn, bounced off a wall, and landed exactly in the bin.

Aviator promptly turned around, hi-fived Giuseppe, and cheered 'Today was the day! It's the day! At last!'

I was still confused. Luckily, Giuseppe took a moment to fill me in.

According to Giuseppe, virtually every day, for the past year, Aviator has valiantly attempted to get his rubbish in the bin from at least ten metres away (I'm not sure why. It can't be laziness, as after he's thrown it he has to go and pick the rubbish up from wherever it's fallen to throw it away properly). And every day, for the past year, he's missed.

'You can tell this is a big deal,' Giuseppe added when all this had been duly explained. 'That's only the third time I've hi-fived Aviator in my life. The first time was by accident. The second was when I made that call about how Aviators have never gone out of fashion at your Doctor Who competition.'

She and Aviator then discussed the awesomeness of Aviators (as in, the glasses) for some minutes, so I'll resume the conversation after that happened.

'You should write about this on your blog,' enthused Aviator. 'I think I'm making a bad impression. Last time you represented me as a pervert who has a thing for Doctor Who actresses.'

'That's what you are,' Giuseppe pointed out.

'What's wrong with some more flattering descriptions?' he replied indignantly. 'What about "Aviator, with his sense of style and rugged good looks . . ."'

Giuseppe and I both assured him that there was no way that description of him would make it on to the blog (in Giuseppe's case, quite forcefully). 'All the same, though,' said Giuseppe after we'd finished, 'I think you should write about it. We should give this day a name.'

'Really? I thought it was just "The Day",' I said doubtfully. 'Anyway, I don't think I'm going to write about it.'

Look how that turned out. Anyway, back to today.

'I like "The Day",' Giuseppe agreed.

'It's The Day. Nothing can go wrong today,' said Aviator happily, going off to boast of his astonishing feat to the others.

And so, here we are with 'The Day'. It's not only Aviator, in fact. It's become quite a sport recently to throw things in the bin from a distance away, but with a different conclusion. It's called 'Pants-off'. You shout somebody's name, throw something in the bin, and if you get it in, they have to take their pants off. It's not complicated. And, speaking as someone who has now seen Aviator, Lox and Cuttlefish remove their trousers on separate occasions, it's honestly not that pleasant, either. It's actually extremely unpleasant. Even dwelling on it is causing painful flashbacks ('The pastiness! My God, the pastiness!') so I'm going to stop now.

The fact that everyone is throwing things doesn't excuse Aviator from doing bizarre things. As with all my friends, he is still a Stranger Thing. On Friday I happened to be walking past him when he stopped, shoved a piece of folded paper into my hand, muttered 'I have completed my task. The prophecy is complete,' and took off. When I unfolded it I found a picture of a wheelchair. It was, in fact, this picture, although the one he gave me was in black and white and was far more pixellated.

I had to wait until this morning to ask about it. Even then, he refused to say anything beyond 'The prophecy is complete. It is now your responsibility.' Personally, I'm convinced he's doing it purely to annoy the hell out of me. I could be wrong, though. If we wake up tomorrow to discover that the whole world is slowly and painfully burning up, then it may possibly be due to the fact that I didn't pass the picture on to the person it was intended for. Either that, or global warming is progressing WAY faster than previously expected.

Anyway, the point is that I wasn't entirely ready to believe Aviator when he said 'This is an auspicious day. Everything after this moment is going to go perfectly.' Although, to be honest, I could do with an auspicious day. My own weekend was particularly inauspicious in parts.

I was recruited - even I'm not totally sure how - to help with the 'pre-loved clothing' stall at the school fete they were having at my primary school. Don't get me started on 'pre-loved' clothing. What's wrong with 'second-hand'? Is it just a marketing technique? Do these fete-runners think we're more likely to buy 'pre-loved' than 'second-hand'? If so, I'm not sure it's working. I personally am relatively happy to purchase clothing which I know has been previously owned. I'm not so sure about clothes that have been 'loved'. What does loving entail? It may be something perfectly innocent, like that the previous owner wore the item of clothing every day of their life until they regretfully decided to pass it on. Or possibly died (maybe even while they were wearing the item of clothing), and then had it passed on for them. Makes you want to go right out and buy it, doesn't it?

Not that anyone would have wanted to buy this stuff, as most of it was memorabilia from the late seventies and early eighties. Velvet sparkly shirts, retro flower prints, a weird kind of faux-leopard skin jacket I saw three people try on, but which nobody bought. You could tell that all the parents of the little kids had just gone through their wardrobes, gone 'Well, I haven't worn this since I was in my twenties, you never know, maybe it's cool again - I'll give it to the clothing stall.' Which, apart from anything else, doesn't exactly fit as 'loved clothing'. I appreciate I'm not an expert in these things. A casual remark in my third-ever post about 'Aviators supposedly coming back into fashion' prompted a debate that is enduring even now. But surely, I thought, no one would want to buy a black velvet singlet with a huge number of diamantes glued to it, as well as the numerous glue spots where the diamantes had fallen off?

I was wrong, actually, the singlet was one of the first things to go. But I believe the general theory was sound. The problem was with the customers.

Oh, yes, and something else about the 'pre-loved' clothing stall that weirded me out a little (or a lot, if I'm going to be honest): the underwear. Yes, previously 'loved' underwear. Sound tempting? No? Why not?

Luckily there was a second-hand (NOT pre-loved) book stall right next to it, as well as a white elephant stall on the other side, so I spent as much time as possible escaping from the hand-knitted belts and ski jackets and in those stalls instead. The book stall was especially good. I bought the Chaser Annual from 2007 for $2. It was in extremely good condition, and I was convinced I'd got an awesome deal until Aviator told me about what his older brother had managed to do at the stall, later in the day. Apparently he'd just brought a shopping trolley along with him and filled it with all the leather-bound textbooks he could find. They charged him $1. He paid them $10 (clearly Aviator's brother has a greater social conscience than Aviator does) and filled up his bookshelves in the hope that it looked impressive. Then again, this story is from 'Yes, Leslie, my grandad is the Grand-High-Freemason of Australia' Aviator, and therefore cannot be relied upon.

On the other side of the clothing stall, as I've previously mentioned, was a white elephant stall. The high point of my day was when an eight- or nine-year-old girl, having had several Barbies (as well as one Ken) pointed out to her by a woman who was presumably her mother, went 'Let me get this straight - there's four of the girls, and one guy? That's a bit dodgy, isn't it?'

The lowest point of the day was probably watching my dad, brother and uncle playing in a band. My dad was the guitarist. My brother (Drummer Boy) was the back-up drummer. My uncle was extremely noticeable insofar as he was wearing a bright pink-and-aqua Hawaiian shirt I could have sworn he'd bought from the pre-loved clothing stall. Also, he was playing a banjo. An extremely stylish man, my uncle. Luckily there were about eight people in the band altogether (they were playing mostly Irish folk tunes), and much of the crowd's attention was being given to the ten-year-old accordion player, so I was saved from any major embarrassment.

So, given that my weekend, if interesting, was not overly enjoyable, I think it's about time I got something back. I know it's nearly the end of today, which wasn't that amazing either. The most interesting thing (apart from The Exciting Adventures of Aviator and his Rubbish-Throwing Abilities) was watching Mr W's novel way of dealing with students who yell outside his classroom when he's trying to teach. It consists of going outside, yelling at the student in question (in this case, it was a student called - well, not actually called, but this is what I'm going to call him - Arch), and then dragging said student back into the classroom and introducing him to the crowd of Year Eights. It worked extremely efficiently. I for one am never going to yell outside Mr W's classroom. Or wolfwhistle at Mr W, which is what Aviator nearly did once (a few weeks ago, Marie-Clare, Giuseppe and I had persuaded Aviator to wolfwhistle at the next person who came around the corner. It turned out to be Mr W. It's probably lucky Aviator managed to stop himself in time, as that could have gotten extremely awkward). Anyway, I think I'm about due for something amazing to happen. Like the news that The Beatles have somehow regained their youth and have decided to do a concert here. Or that Strictly Speaking will be back on TV (THEY AXED ANDREW HANSEN'S SHOW! THEY AXED IT! Well, they say they're 'moving it to another time slot, on a different channel', but it's been AXED. That's it. Here's a gratuitous clip of Andrew Hansen doing his stuff, just to keep us all sane).

Anyway, as I was saying, it's unlikely that two of The Beatles are going to come back to life, or that Andrew Hansen is going to turn up outside my door holding chocolates in one hand and the complete Series 5 of Doctor Who in the other (which would be nice - although just Andrew Hansen, without the chocolates or DVDs, would be fine by me). Still, there's a couple of hours left, and I can always hope.

After all, today's the day.

The Big Decisions

Everybody in Year 10 at the moment is stressed. Friday - that is to say, yesterday - was the day on which we submitted our final subject choices for senior school. People are falling into a number of different categories:

1. The Coolly Collected Over-Achievers

The people who have already decided what they want to do; have all their forms filled out; and spend their time strolling around nonchalantly, watching everyone else scurry about in a terror of indecision. Say things like 'You mean, you haven't decided yet?' and 'Yes, I'm doing six T subjects. It's the only way to go.' People who fit into this category are Giuseppe, and, to a lesser degree, Gwen.

NB: If you're not part of our ACT/NSW school system, you may not know what T or A subjects are. A T is something that contributes to your final grade - an A is one you do for fun. Everyone picks six subjects, and most people do five Ts and an A. That's what I'm doing, certainly.

2. The Quietly Uncertain

The people who come into school with their forms filled out, but who still aren't certain about a couple of the things on there. 'Well,' they think 'I want to be a doctor, so it's good I've written down three sciences - Physics, Biology, and Chemistry, but not Geology, because nobody does Geology except Marie-Clare - but what happens if I decide to do a law degree? What happens if I don't get a high enough ATAR at the end of Year 12 and have to fall back on being a computer technician? Should I have some IT subjects on there? What if . . .'

There aren't any specific examples of this person, as I'm not a mind reader and I can't tell who's thinking this. As a rule, it's anyone who isn't rushing around like the people in the third category, but aren't commenting on the behaviour of these people like the Over-Achievers™. I would have thought that this would be the largest category. I was wrong. See below.

3. The Specific Procrastinators

Generally speaking, these people don't have that much trouble filling out most of the form. Generally they're taking five Ts and one A. The T subjects are fine: as a rule, these people are fairly confident in what they want to do in university or in later life. But the moment the merest mention of an A subject comes up - it's too late. They're like enraged bears. The only thing you can do is stand your ground and hope you come away mostly unharmed at the end of the conversation (enraged grizzly bears, that should have been. They're nothing like enraged polar bears. If you're ever attacked by an enraged polar bear, you should slowly remove pieces of your clothing and drop them on the ground in front of you, in order to distract it. Surprisingly, this approach doesn't work at all with Procrastinators™).

It's surprising how even the meekest soul can be transformed with the prospect of the perfect A subject held just in front of them, much like the sword of Damocles. Except less lethal than the sword of Damocles was. The problem is - the main problem, that is, I'm not going to get involved in the 'My-parents-want-me-to-do-that-but-I-want-to-do-this' debate - that nobody knows exactly what the perfect A subject is.

Marie-Clare wanted to do Hospitality, but then decided Photography was the way to go. She wrote down Photography on the sheet, handed it in, and made her escape, literally running so she wouldn't be tempted to go back and change it to some other subject. This was the sensible approach, and the only thing you can really do once identified as a Procrastinator™. Others were less sensible. Lala spent lunchtime in a frenzy of indecision between Woodwork and Drama. I was less than helpful at this point, I think I changed my mind about what she should choose more often than she did. She confronted Ariane, Ames, Midgie, Lox, and her English teacher, who happened to be passing. The final score was Woodwork: 2, Drama: 2, Photography: 1 (Midgie is very keen that everyone should do Photography. Almost aggressively so. It's scary. She deserves another category to herself). In the words of Lox, who was currently made up with large quantities of stage make-up, in preparation for his drama performance 'Lala, you should do Drama. I say so. And you should always do what the glittery clown tells you to do.' Even now, I can't remember what she decided. A decision was reached, though, which is what's important. Ness was another one who couldn't make up her mind: she decided to do Hospitality, in the end.

The reason I haven't mentioned myself yet is because, in my opinion, I was one of the worst. Gwen received the brunt of my indecision. I couldn't decide whether to do Hospitality, Photography, or Media (I decided on Hospitality in the end - just to spoil the surprise for you).

As you can tell, this category is almost certainly the largest. It is not, however, the worst.

4. The Complete No-Hopers

I can't give any examples of these, as most of the people I talk about in here read the blog. Even people I don't talk about read the blog. Here's looking at you, Eggleston. Also Diego. Don't blame me for the name. Giuseppe chose it.

Anyway, luckily, I don't know anyone who's a complete no-hoper. Some people are quite no-hopery, but haven't quite reached that high level.

A Complete No-Hoper™ is someone who, despite having been given two weeks to decide subjects, still has no idea on the day, and comes to school with incomplete forms.

5. The Pushers

I've been considering it, and I think Midgie deserves her own category after all. It's for people who are so certain of what they've chosen they're trying to encourage other people into taking their subjects. It works a lot of the time, most notably on Specific Procrastinators™. No-Hopers™ seem to be relatively immune: the high panic levels seem to block encouragement.

There are my categories for you. They aren't only applicable to subject choices: they work for virtually any decision you have to make. And so, here is a scale for you. If you ever need to work out the exact indecisiveness level of yourself or others, feel free to use it.

It is currently the night of the Australian federal election. At this very moment, votes are being counted. Only too soon we will know whether we have a female, red-haired, Welsh Labour PM or a deeply Catholic, Speedo-wearing, doesn't-believe-in-climate-change-despite-insurmountable-evidence,-the-fool, Liberal. The only thing I can recommend for Tony Abbott is that his first name is Tony. On the other hand, Julia is the title of a Beatles' song. And so, name-wise, I think they're about even. Policy-wise, I'm not sure.

I am, currently unable to vote. If only the election had been deferred by a month and two years, I'd be fine. To think, I came so close! As is, my only contribution to the election has been to hang around the outside of the voting hall, giving meaningful glances to people who looked like they were intending to vote Liberal (basically anyone over the age of 50, or anyone wearing a suit. This doesn't mean they actually voted Liberal. I'd hate to place a stain like that on someone's character with no evidence. It only means I thought they might). I'd like to imagine that I made a couple of people think twice about going for Tony. In hindsight, though, that's probably quite unlikely. They may have thought I was mentally encouraging them to vote Liberal. Or possibly they just thought I had a bad squint (meaningful looks are incredibly hard to do consistently). At any rate, whether I deterred them or confused them, that was all the difference I was capable of making.

Sometime in early 2009, I and several others founded a party called the 'Fruitcake Party'. We only lasted a day, and the only reason I remember it now is because I wrote some of the information down about it at the time. I was the Head of Party. Vyvyan was Treasurer. Peanut was vice-Treasurer, deputy Head, and Chairman. I'm not totally sure as to why we needed a Chairman, as I'm fairly sure we weren't Communist, but even I can't explain the workings of my fourteen-year-old mind. Gwen was Press Secretary, as she was the only one who knew how a political party worked. Chinny was the reluctant Policy Advisor. We wanted the death penalty to be re-introduced for several specific people, and all Mexicans to be painted green before entering the country. I have no idea, not even the faintest clue, as to why we'd want this. Clearly we were very sick people. Probably still are: it's unlikely to have got any better without treatment. I put it down to schoolitis.

Anyway, this got me thinking: what would the ideal prime minister be? Here are my criteria. I'm not saying this is all we need. I'm perfectly happy with the government we have now - or, at any rate, had last week - save for a few issues. Some of them they may already have, some they may be working on, but at any rate, here it is. Just give me a second to ready myself mentally for the criticism Giuseppe and, possibly, Gwen are going to rain on me on Monday for my limited understanding of politics. Marie-Clare, and anybody else, you don't have to read this. I just need a way to vent about our political system. Writing it down and posting it on the internet seemed a better idea than going on a Charles Mansen-type killing spree, humming election jingles. Which, by the way, do not work. They just succeed in annoying potential voters.

1. Strong climate change policies

I'm not even going to emphasise the 'strong'. Just 'climate change policies' would do. If we get Mr 'Don't-worry-the-Earth-is-actually-cooling-down' Abbott I'm going to commit hari-kiri. Or move to Mexico.

2. Legalisation of gay marriage

I don't understand Gillard's reasoning on this one. She's an atheist, isn't she? What can she have against gay marriage? And yet, she doesn't support it.

If she was a deep, deep, committed Catholic, I suppose I could partly understand. Some passages in the Bible are pretty condemning of homosexuality.

Leviticus 18:22 says "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." It should be noted that Leviticus also tells us that hunchbacks, dwarfs, and people with poor eyesight are unholy in the eye of God. I'm not sure a book written thousands of years ago by who-knows-who is the best way to deal with this subject. How can you claim to be non-discriminatory, to not see any difference between gay and straight couples, if you're then going to give one the right to marry and go 'Too bad,' to the other?

There were a great many rhetorical questions in there. I feel they're all justified, though.

3. Helping NOT banning the boat people

I couldn't research this topic fully. Every time I try, articles pop up about the awfulness of the boat people, the way they're taking our jobs, our land, our water. Believing several pages like these, the best you'd be able to say of the boat people would would be that they'd never actually burnt down an orphanage for blind, crippled children, and that's only because there is no solid evidence. So, I'm going to have to look at it logically. I know, logic and politics don't mix well, but I intend to try nevertheless.

So. Boat people. Refugees flee to our country to find sanctuary. We lock them in prison camps and forget about them, except to occasionally drag the term up to persuade soft-minded, xenophobic members of the middle classes to vote for [insert name of political party here]. Somebody said recently that at the rate they're coming in, they'd take twenty years to fill the MCG. So why are we worried? Because political parties need a target, and starving, homeless people can't fight back.

The problem - or solution - is not up to us, at any rate. It stems from the countries they're fleeing from, and I know that's not up to us. But you're the PM! You can't pretend you have no influence.

No, I can't think of a logical solution to this 'problem'. Some of our best minds have tried and failed. Some of our worst minds have tried, and come up with election policies. But I can't even vote. I'm allowed to be idealistic, and irrational.

4. A secular system of government

Yes, I know our government isn't religious, but we could at least have a go at making policies without having to worry about offending religious groups. I mean, we all know God doesn't exist. It's only a matter of time until they find out.

5. A PM who can actually say what he/she means. Yes, they're politicians, the truth-telling instinct was drummed out of them on their first day in parliament, but it would be nice to have a prime minister who can make strong policies and stick to them. The fact is, people don't like to be scared. They're like kindergarteners - 'No, I don't like the story about climate change! Tell me something else! No, not about the horrible boat people either. Can't you tell me something happy, like how young people are fulfilling our worst expectations of them and no matter how often I want to drive my Porsche around, it won't contribute to global warming? What do you mean, it doesn't work like that? I don't like you any more.' And we have a new PM.

Unless it's Abbott, of course, in which case he will go 'Don't worry. Global warming is all made up.' He will then probably proceed to kiss the child in question, thus infecting it with Liberal germs, in his cunning plan to get at the younger generations. As opposed to just being a paedophile. I personally can't see the difference, but I'm sure there is one.

NB: I am not suggesting that kindergarteners drive Porsches, or, indeed, that we should allow them to drive Porsches. I think that would be a very bad idea indeed.

Anyway, because of this, politicians have learnt to pander to the punters' needs. If it was not for this narcissistic desire to see the world through rose-coloured half-full glasses no matter what ridiculous half-truth or 'a-bit-like-the-truth' or even 'who-are-we-kidding?-this-is-a-lie' we are forced to swallow, we could get so much more done. And so, what I'm really saying here is that we don't need to change politicians. There is certainly room for improvement, yes. But what we really need to do is to change is the mindset of the complete human race.

Let's face it. We're doomed.

α. This isn't a proper reason, so I haven't given it a proper number. My final criteria for what would make a good prime minister is this. There should be enough of information about them, and they should posses enough unique characteristics, so as to allow The Chaser to satirise them on TV with ease or even - who knows? - start the newspaper up again. The website is fine - http://www.chaser.com.au/ - but it would be nice to have some new articles.