Things I learnt while car-booting

This is probably not going to be a very expansive list and I aploogise for that, but I feel I have to write something adn this is the best idea I currently have, but as you can probably understand, there is not that much you can learn from sitting at a table adn trying to flog off a load of your old junk. Still, I have composed some sort of a list.

1) Some people are very mean. For example, the person who haggled us down on a globe from 20p to 15p. I mean, I’m as skin-flinty as anybody, in fact probably more so, but I would still nto haggle five pence off the price of something that was that cheap to begin with.

2) Some people’s junk is even more junky than ours. The person next to us was selling dirty jars filled with dusty cotton wool balls… um…why?

3) One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. For example some chipped mugs I saw selling at another stall. Well, except maybe dirty cotton wool balls.

4) Car booting is not really car booting (or even indoor car booting as they call it) when you are in a hall rather than a muddy field.

5)Don’t buy jeans that only cost 50p. You may think they’re nice shorts, but closer inspection will reveal that they are weird turnups that stink fo cigarette smoke and just look like if you’d rolled up your skinny jeans to just above your knee.

6) Equally, don’t buy tops that only cost 20p. Again, they stink of cigarette smoke with a slight eau de dog, but they will also look massively unflattering on, even if off they look quite nice.And they will have rips in the seams.

Room 101

I have nothing interesting to say about anything and so I will hereby make a list of everything that annoys me and then cast it asunder into room 101, never to be seen again.

1) Shoes. I hate shoes. I have never had  a pair of nice, well fitting shoes, and it seems likely I never will. Every pair of shoes I ever have is either flat, badly fitting or ugly and I hate it, especially shoe shopping. The pair of shoes that fit perfectly in the shop are massively too tight the second you get them home and my balance is just too poor for me to get stilletos. Also, they actually do kill your feet? Why do other women wear them???

2) Hair. I’m afraid another vain one here, but it has to go in there, because just think how easy life would be without hair… yes admittedly if everyone was bald it wouldn’t be quite as attractive but it wouldn’t get in your face when the wind blew in it, you wouldn’t need to brush it which would have to be easier, they’d be no worries of a hair disaster by a newbie hairdresser and they’d be no worries about greasyness, dying, nits, dandruff or any of the other numerous ailments that can affect our hair. Also, on amore important note, is hair in other places. There are just no nice ways to get rid of it. Shaving grows back too fast, waxing hurts and is patchy and everything else is just too expensive or not suitable for things like legs or armpits. Grr.

3) Running. Whoever says this is fun is very very weird…I just find that after about 200 metres I’m sweaty, in pain and out of breath.How is that fun? No, its one of only a few exercises that I find really unpleasant,partly down to school teacehrs, but still I just can’t see any virtues in it at all.

4)People that take an instant dislike to you for no apparent reason. I hate this. Why can’t people at least get to knwo you before forming judgements. I have no problems with people that decide they don’t like me once they find out my annoying features and dislikable attributes, but it’s people that have a preconception ofyou before they meet you.

5) Olives. No particular reason, I jsut think they taste rather foul.

6) Waxworks/animatronic humanoid models like the sort at theme parks. For some reason these terrify me. They make me nervous just looking at them because they’re creepy and the eyes are just teh wrost. Almost like humans but devoid of any emotions.. Eeeh. I can blame this fear on Disneyland. When I was there we went on the pirates of the Carribbean ride and I was just terrified, but we went on it 4 times as I didn’t tell my parents, and they loved it, as I was just so scared they were going to jump out at me. You’d have thought by the fourth time I’d have realised that they didn’t but, nevertheless, since that moment then I’ve always hated waxworks and those animatronics of all kinds.

7) Ice skating. One of the few leisure pursuits that I really dislike, however mainly because I can’t do it. Well, actually my right leg can skate realitvely ok, but my left just trails behind, which tires my right leg out faster, hurts my left ankle and also increases my likelihood of me falling over forwards, so the times I have been ice skaitng I have always ended up with painful ankles and bruised knees.

8) Sensitive skin. Honestly, my skin is allergic to sunlight, it gets irritated from wearing nickel necklaces and face cleansing stuff gives me spots.It is very depressing, and means I can’t wear foundation, some perfumes, cheap earrings and necklaces with big pendants. In my perfect world nobody would have sensitive skin at all.

Ahhhh, now I have got that off my chest. I hope it wasn’t too deathly boring for you to read

An tale of an all day orchestra rehearsal. Or what to do when the triangle has a more interesting part than you…

Today I went to orchestra and it was an all day event today. Normally we do 9:45 until 12:15, however today it was 9:45 until 4pm. I really enjoy orchestra, however I do think nearly 7 hours of it is a bit much. Still, there were some quite amusing moments, and everythign is now more excciting as I am no longer a floboe. For the uninitiated, this is a flute playing the oboe part, as our orchestra has too many flutes and not enough oboes. Second oboe part is not only really low and easy, but it is also kind of boring, and I thought I’d got over that problem, with my promotion this year to… wait for it…. second flute!!! But no, today we played a piece where we had 26 notes in the whole piece, and 1st flute was no better. Why didn’t Prokofiev just say he didn’t want a flute in it, rather than give us that amount in a piece of over 100 bars. The triangle meanwhile, had a much better part. Is it me or does this strike you as slightly strange, that 4 flutes had less to play than 1 triangle???

7 Things I learnt in Barmouth

This weekend, I went up to Barmouth for the weekend with my family for my mum’s birthday. And, in my usual style, I decided to make a random list of stuff that I found out during the weekend.

1)The guesthouse we were staying in was rather over equipped for a place that I’m imagining people only stay in for a couple of nights at a time on a seaside holiday. There was the usual tv, haridryer, shower etc, but also delights such as a trouserpress. Who needs a trouserpress at the seaside???

2) Some parts of Barmouth really haven’t changed since the 19th century. The guesthouse we were staying in was built in 1874, and except for the tv and trouserpress then nothing really had changed. We were staying in a top floor room of the narrow terraced building with a view of the sea, flowery sheets, flowery wallpaper  and an English breakfast in the dining room in the morning. We even saw lots of classic cars around the place, and the cafe we went to for lunch I’m sure hadn’t chagned at all.

3) It is surprisingly hard to find a full Sunday Lunch in Barmouth. We found this out as my grandparents must have a roast every Sunday even at the seaside (the rest of us would have been happy with fish and chips!).

4) I would very much recommend the ice cream parlour by the harbour. Their toffee fudge ice cream is absoutely delicious.

5) The royal hotel is not very good at maths. They undercharged us by about £20 for a meal we had there.

6) The royal hotel also does not have very good disabled facilities. When eating there with my grandparents, we had to eat in hte bar area, which doesn’t quite feel right, but it didn’t matter so much when they only charged us £35 for all 6 of us including drinks…

7) When you get back home from a sesaside holiday, do not empty the contents of your beach bag onto your bed. Unless you like sandy sheets.

“The Apprentice”

Yes, that is meant to be in inverted commas. Today (and tomrooww actually) we have been given, with much hype, an ‘apprentice style task’ in order to ‘learn to learn’. Well, that’s what they said, although actually it jsut seems to be an excuse for them not to teach lessons for the day. We arrived at school at 8:20, so significatnly earlier than usual to sit through an hour long assembly and then to our groups for our exciting busienss task. We got introduced to a man with slicked back hair and a cheap suit who flounced in to the apprentice theme music, said ‘I run 4 companies worth over £80 million pounds each’ and then proceeded to say ‘I hate show-offs’. He then introduced us to our task, as we laughed at this man, who we were convinced was an actor… surely nobody’s that ‘typical businessman-ish’. We had to… make a food service for teh sixth form!!! So far, so boring. Then we had to research this. This did not get any better. I went to a session on ‘problem solving’ where I’d already read the book he was showing us an extract from. Unfortunately my only problem, of being stuck in the lesson was not solved until the end. By the end of the day we had done absolutely nothing… except see Gareth make a 4 bar rock piece to go at the start of our powerpoint, and me and Megan planned our birthday party. And people say that enrichment days aren’t worth the time???

12 Year old chavspotting

This weekendd we went to a party, and we deided that we were going to go on the bus.So, we arrived at the bus station, got on the bus and were laughing about something or other, when this group of mini-chavs (the oldest was about 12) came and thought we were laughign at them. Basically they just wanted an excuse to pick a fight, alhtough why they would choose to do that with a group of 11 16 year olds is kinda weird. Although I guess they realise that although most 16 year old blokes COULD beat any 12 year old girl in a fight in a second, that most 16 years ld guys WOULD not, as it kinda seems a bit cruel. Either way, they start hurling abuse and profanity at us, we laugh at them, and then, just before they pick a fight, the bus driver drives off leavign them to kick/punch/attack the bus. Needless to say this did more harm to them than the bus. We were by this point in hysterics of laughter as we then turn back into the bus station, as it’s not time for the bus to go yet, and they start to attack the bus once more. We then leave, making faces at these kids as they realise that they can’t carry on chasing the bus, and then we have to go back to pick up our friend who left her bag on the bus. These chavs prepare to run back at the bus as we turn in again, but then we just went away and it was really quite amusing…

Why does my bag smell like a foot?

Well, today, what can I say? In fact this weekend has really been kinda boring, as I spent almost all day Saturday on the computer, and today, after calling everyone we managed to organise a grand day out to…. town! This turned out to be a pretty typical outing for our group. Me and Will arrived on time, went and bought the files and the mouse that I needed and then went to subway. Then the others arrived and we went to teh park, got a rugby ball stuck up a tree, got the rugby ball down from the tree, went back into town, went to subwayand then the boys ran off.Then I went home as it was only me and Will again and he had to go home. So that was my day. I would like to put something amusing and witty about it, but I can’t really think of anything to be honest.

Then these last two days I have been at school. This has also been uninspiring. Except you’d be surprising how tiring a day is at school when you have 2 free periods, an IQ test thing, 2 lessons and after school further maths, and that is it for the whole day… And yes, I agree that this isn’t a very blog-worthy blog, but I can’t think of anythign to say and feel like updating (this is why I could never write a book. I enjoy writing, but I always run out of things to say in a format as short as a blog, witha  whole book I’d be writing ‘filler’ from about page 3. As Catbert says in Dilbert cartoons, “it’s hard to write a whole book, when you’re as gifted as me at getting to the point.” Not that I have any problem with rambling on, such as this, but I still just kind of stop thinking of ideas) … I have somehow managged to volunteer myself for house assemblies, which are just an excuse for the lower sixth to get up and stage and do a silly play, but luckily my part isn’t too embarrassing… yeah, anything I now put

I’m not patronising. I just know more than you!

Today had been rather infuriating. But rather than getting mad, or even even, I decided to get blogging instead, which is probably the best option, although I do warn all casual readers that this is likely to be rather a lot of ranting, so you may like to heed that before you read it and don’t complain about it being boring.

In Economics today one guy accused me of being patronising. Well, yes I probably was, but it’s very hard not to be when they haven’t done any of the homework and then acting completely stupid when you explain things that YOU learnt about for homework, btu they haven’t been bothered and now they assume it’s your responsibility to show them just because you have done the work and have then been put into their group. HOnestly, out of 4 people in the group 2 hadn’t done the work at all, one had randomly copy and pasted a few sentecnces that they didn’t understand and only one other person had done it properly. And who got the praise for doing the presentation, as they got picked on? The one who hadn’t done the work. Grrr. Still, at least the world needs the annoying nagging people like me who worry about stuff but get the work does.

Then later in Geography we spent the whole lesson doing thigns that we have previosuly done in GCSE, and yet still one boy doesn;t get it. He is one of those people that feels he needs to call out all the time because hbe thinks it makes him ‘clever’. News to anybody like that: it doesn’t, and if you just stayed quiet then yes, we might miss out on your ‘hilarious’ comments such as ‘ Can you say that again sir?’ (to absolutely everything he said, sometimes more than once.) but we would gain much more time to do everything and would actually ge tout for lunch early rather than 10 minutes late… for the second time today…. grr.

I apologise now for anybody who has actually bothered reading that as it was neitehr funny, informative or anything except me getting things off my chest, but it’s going on here anyway, as otherwise it looks ages since I’ve posted anything. I promise normal service will be resumed as soon as I think of anything non-ranty to say so until then, goodbye :)

Cars I do like. Woot.

So now, after absolutely no demand whatsoever comes my nto-at-all awaited list of my top 10 favourite cars, or possibly less or mroe than that if I think or can’t think of them.

1) The Lotus Elise. This is a proper sports car from what I’m told but at only around £30,000 for a new one it is, compared to supercars, rather cheap and so it is not completely out of the realms of possibility that I may own one one day,especially second hand ones which are even cheaper, which is a nice thought. Yes, their looks may be a little look-at-meish which I’m not normally too keen on, but at least htey look nice so you can be showing off their taste. And apparently headroom is a problem, but I’m short so that’s ok. :)

2) The Fiat Panda.  On a completely different level to the Lotus of course but I think, probably, my favourite small car. It is veyr cheap (you can now get a new model for just over £5000), more spacious than you would think, they look unpretentious and unassuming but still kinda cute if you bother to think about it, which is, in my opinion, how a car costing £5000 should look. Unfortunately due to an odd inside joke with my friends they always remind me of gypsies, but that really should be by the by.

3) The Alfa Romeo 159. Is this the most beautiful 4 door saloon car ever? I love the look of all Alfa Romeos, but I think this one is not only particulary attarctive, but also has almost the practically of a Ford Mondeo. Alfas are supposed to be badly made or something, but surely, for something this gorgeous that is a small price to pay, and if I was told to buy either this or a BMW 3 series, I know where my money would go.

4) Volkswagen Golf. This is probably my favourite of the Focus/Astra type cars available today. I drove in the passenger seat of oen of the new ones the other day and it was very smooth and the interior was quite a lot better than an equivalent focus I’ve also been in. It may not be the cheapest of these hatches, but it has so much choice within it (the GTI for people who want speed, the bluemotion for people who want great fuel economy etc) then I think it could quite easily be the best and being a Volkswagen, it’ll have good German build quality into the bargain.

5) Honda Civic. I have no good reason for choosing this car, except that it looks like a spaceship, which as topgear says, is a good thing. Actually top gear gives it a pretty good review as well so maybe its not all style and no substance. If taht really is the case then it would be a much harder decision between this and the Golf.

6) Aston Martin Vanquish It was this car that, when I saw it, made me think that maybe cars weren’t boring after all. I was on a school trip at the motor museum in year 6 and saw it and for some reason I just thought this, and a Jaguar XKR I think it was, were actually quite cool. I like Aston Maritns anyway now. They just seem a bit classier and less all-about-the-speed than a Ferrari and although they are showy, at thsi price you’d expect it to be. I can’t say anything about the performance of Astons, or whwther you ought to buy one because, to be hoenst, if you could afford one, or if I could afford one, you probably wouldn’t be reading, and I probably wouldn’t be writing, this blog.

7)Mercedes S class. This is a car that ranges from expensive to incredibly expensive in price and for this price you would expect either a lot of speed or a lot of gadgets or a lot of luxury. This car has the last two and that just makes it the sort of car I would definetely have if I become a very  successful business woman one day. (not that I expect to really, I would be very happy if I could afford the Alfa mentioned earlier as my executive car) and it seems to be just as good really, without the overt showiness, of the two most expensive limos on the market the Maybach and the Rolls Royce Phantom. I would just have the S class instead.

8) The Toyota Hilux Pick up truck. I don’t think I’d actually want one of these if you can call them cars, but I do like the idea that I can do anything I want to it and it would never break, as shown by that episode ages ago (or not very long at all ago on Dave. It’s probably on right now actually. Go look. Go. Now.) of Top Gear. And that makes it worth buying, just ofr the cool factor of an unbreakable car, but buy an old one so you don’t waste  your money. And hope that the engines not defunct.

9)The Kia Rio. Actually maybe not, as this is supposed to be rubbish and has very few good points. I’m just runing short of ideas so I think I will stop. Gutenbye, I hope you enjoyed this.

Where would parties be without the Numa Numa song?

Another weekend over, another time where all my good intentions not to waste time went out of the window. One day I really will get round to tidying my room, painting my room and finishing my homework by Friday evening. Honest.

On Friday, after a rather easy  tiring and strenuous first 3 days at sixth form I celebrated with a party at James. This bore all the signs of a good do- no parents, nibbles, 11 teenagers, 2 days and next door neighbours  who didn’t want us to make noise. This sounds like it’s going to be a disaster doesn’t it? Well, for blogging purposes it would have better had it been, but as it was I rather enjoyed most of it and so can’t think of many particularly scathing comments to write about it. Apart from a two and a half hour metallica concert at 1am, but to be fair I did sleep over most of that, and I should have expected it as James really does like metallica a lot and it was his house…

After this we put on Billy Connely but I don’t think anybody listened to that as it really wasn’t very funny (I’m not a big fan of him actually. He’s about as funny as todays geography lesson about glaciers, and certainly as interesting), so we talked over that and then fianlly got some sleep. I would talk more about this but then it gets perilously close to becoming a diary, rather than just a collection of random thoughts so I won’t, especially as noone really watns to hear what I’m saying…