For the first and only time in my life, I have been ordered to blog after attempting to play The War on Terror boardgame rather collapsed. So! Let’s throw this open to the floor…
Jakov: <eastern european accent> In my country… </eastern european accent>
Emily: Hi *meekly*
Saoirse: What happens when asteroids crash into each other? Thhhhey break up and change orbit!
Alice: Ci (this is Welsh apparently 
)
A slightly belated welcome to 2008 
SexFest 08 was a great success, packed with people and generating a giant street pillow fight at the stroke of midnight, as per tradition. Lucy lent her artistic skills to the creation of some excellent sponsorship posters 
and we left the party at 2am seeking sleep, hence benefiting from New Year’s free travel. Woo! In fact, the bus to Joshua’s provided excellent entertainment itself in the form of a vaguely deranged man playing Yankee Doodle on the harmonica, and shouting that Ken Livingstone was a communist and that Mussolini would get the buses running on time. “Bring back Mussolini!” I wasn’t aware he actually ever filled the position of Mayor of London, but no matter
Onwards, to the future?
You never know, if I keep doing this it might become sort of tradition – yes, it’s the yearly review thingy! Again! So here’s what happened in 2007…
January
Once again, the year began at Joshua’s New Year Party (or SexFest 07, as I affectionately named it, for tongue in cheek reasons of course) with an exciting street pillow fight at midnight. A few days later, Cambridge offered me a place 
hurrah! January was also the month of my new(ish) phone, Uber Ninja badges, module exams and shouting ‘condoms!’ into the dark Kensal Rise night.
February
Possibly the most enduring memory for this month will be seeing my first (and quite possibly last) ventriloquist act on stage. Though that’s not all that I saw: Frost/Nixon, Hot Fuzz and Notes on a Scandal also featured. Joshua’s 18th birthday party featured the memorable case of Robert’s missing trousers, whilst at school Saoirse was baking Communist cakes, my calculator was dealing out death and we were all casting teachers as James Bond characters. Plus: mother came to Cofton!
March
Surrounded by socialists, I bravely defended fuzzy centrist politics at an SWP meeting. They were pussycats, however, compared to Joshua’s attack for closing Quote of the Day (sorry!) which I duly did anyway. Emily had a birthday picnic, and there were various stresses at school, both personal and work-related. I still came out smiling, but perhaps I spent too much time morphing Mr Kanj into Ross from Friends.
A scene from Xenophobia
April
History was made, as Andy Kings visited the Self dwelling to witness Holly and Hanan direct Egdar and Ms Hook in Xenophobia, a masterpiece of film set in my bedroom! (Surreal high point of my life?) Meanwhile, ‘Da Spittings ov DALEK RED’ briefly came into existence, and this blog turned three.
May
What a month: the last of the dreaded Physics Practical exams, going to Blackpool with Lucy on a holiday beautifully organised by Nic… and the Demon Headmaster I also went to see The News Quiz being recorded, as the frantic winds of exams were just about to start…
June
Friday 8th June. My last day at school. Celebrating the event with a flurry of photos and one very strange video, it wasn’t long before A2 exams started. In case that wasn’t enough, I turned 18 – with an exam on my birthday, and a beautiful shiny laptop of joy – and then it was all over. The English groups had Literary High Tea, and the country got a new Prime Minister after 10 years of Tony Blair. Everything was changing.
July
No school, and no exams! July was an odd month, but it’s not like I did nothing: I became Carolyn’s PA, worked for the UCL Summer School again and visited Chesham for the silliest of reasons. This was also the month of the final Harry Potter, The Simpsons Movie and The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged).
Working hard on the Welsh beaches
August
Aw, our family holiday in Wales! I’m still not sure how I managed to get sunburnt, but I did. Once back, I distracted myself by revamping this very website (hello, orange!) before exam results came out on the 16th and I thankfully got what I needed for Cambridge. So, with that out of the way, I went to Brighton with Lucy 
where we fell in love with a ride, and later in the month was induced into the darkly competitive world of Trivial Pursuit. And exciting packages from university started to arrive! And we had picnics on the Heath! Life was good
September
To be honest, life was still very very good. I went with mum to Russia, visiting Moscow and St Petersburg in a week. Soon before, I’d seen Regina Spektor live in concert via Lucy’s birthday present, which was an amazing night. There was a Cambridge party for Freshers, and some even better goodbye parties: most of all in Camden, drinking mango beer with wonderful people. And then, at the very end of September, I left.
October
My first month at uni Filled with meeting new people, trying to get unpacked and – for the first time in months – work! I loved it, though, and was very busy but in a nicely directed way. I only left for one night, to attend Troy’s wedding, which was also lovely to be at!
Lucy and me in my room at Cambridge
November
And so term continued in a fast-paced blur: I went to see Lord Levy and Martin Bell speaking at the Cambridge Union, and also went along to debates on the Middle East and comprehensive education, the latter from which the image of Peter Hitchens has been permanently seared into my brain. Us Historians went out for birthday meals, threw juggling balls at each other and generally avoided the notorious 5th week blues until suddenly it was the end of term already!
December
Hurrah for short terms 
I returned home at the beginning of December, and threw myself into seeing people: Joshua was back from the jungle with exciting tales, and there was another night out in Camden; I stayed overnight at Rishal’s in Leicester, and also to the Wesley Waseley Sixth Form Christmas party… it was busy! There was also deep sadness at Kelly’s funeral, but with people that I’d also missed seeing, and I’d even missed seeing the school which I managed to sneak back into once or twice. Once again, I had a wonderful Christmas… and Joshua’s New Year’s party is only days away!
Wow, what a year 
bring it on, 2008!
Just a quick post to say Merry Christmas for that which has just been, and Happy New Year for what is soon to come! I had a lovely Christmas day and have amassed lots of lovely presents
Thank you to everyone! My sisters were great this year: Tasha got me Hot Fuzz (great film) and a delicious chocolate fudge cake (she knows me), and Katie got me Bill Bryson’s book on Shakespeare which I’d been hankering for. Thank you to Lucy, who got me The Atheists Are Revolting! (and more to come 
) which is very me! Thank you to Nathan for his Babble Secret Santa present: I Am America (And So Can You!) which I really, really wanted. And thank you Santa, parents and relatives!
The only Christmas TV I’ve watched so far (OK OK, aside from Shrek The Halls, forgive me) was Doctor Who and the Christmas special of Extras which I really enjoyed. Tonight we went to the Tricycle to see Doubt which performed the useful job of pairing the family off on two different sides over the guilt of the fictional priest
Goodnight!
The universe was pleasingly joined-up this week. OK, as an opening line to a blog post of pretty disparate things that’s rather bad, but hear me out, because it extends slightly further in truth than the fact that I came out of seeing Blade Runner in the cinema to see a ‘Bladerunners’ hairdressing salon opposite, and smiled at the neatness. Ah, Blade Runner. I’d never seen it before, and this was apparently the newly re-edited version with the ‘happy ending’ removed. To be perfectly honest, it’s hard to imagine the original crying out for more bleakness in the first place. It’s not exactly a cheery romp, and although it’s good (in fact it’s very good) Blake references always make me edgy. I half expect him to pop out behind me, offering me up more poetry to despair at before gallivanting off to worship a hallucination of the Virgin Mary. Why oh why must all dystopian futures be set in a big grimy city? Remember Hot Fuzz? I liked Hot Fuzz! That was really on the right lines. Big grimy cities really aren’t so bad, and at least you don’t have to live in a parish.
My grandparents live in a parish. I went to see them with dad on Tuesday, and it occurred to me that their names have probably never been published on the Internet at all: not even on a single Facebook page. But I won’t break that now. Suffice to say, growing old isn’t easy, is it?
We dashed back from Suffolk to make the QPCS Winter Concert, which was (as it usually is) really very good. In fact, why not go all excitingly multimedia and check out a video or two? I am always rather in awe of the people who get up to perform – especially to sing – but they pull it off with gusto. In the interval, I saw Clare again, who always gives flatteringly warm greetings, and then span round as Saoirse appeared to slam a large, fat book into my hands. The Women’s Room, by Marilyn French. I’ve got to read it by New Year, too. No worries, though, because I’m really enjoying it so far. (Perhaps ‘enjoying’ is the wrong word, but you know what I mean.)
The only downside is that Marilyn French – or rather Saoirse, because I’ve never met Marilyn French and they seem to be largely identical aside from bracket usage – has now taken up semi-permanent residence in my brain at the slightest provocation. So when watching Enchanted today (what do you mean it’s aimed at young children? It was a grandparent – grandchildren trip, alright! And I got a free meal out of it!) I spent the film mentally complaining about reinforced gender roles and a terribly stifling view of marriage. Even though it was tongue-in-cheek. Largely. On the plus side: some catchy musical numbers. I better move on quickly.
Quickly to bed – and more reading – but politics, politics. No, that’s not an excuse to stop reading. I forbid it. And I’ll be quick. First up is the tragic news of splits in everyone’s favourite association of racist thuggery, the BNP. According to BBC News, ‘BNP leader Nick Griffin is accused of “behaving like a dictator”‘. This made me laugh more than it should do. Soon they’ll be complaining that the party’s equal opportunity policy is getting a little rusty. Over in the Lib Dem camp, newly-elected Nick Clegg got a momentarily glance of the spotlight when it turned out he didn’t believe in God. Hurrah indeed, but then he goes and undoes it by trumpeting the fact that he’s bringing up his kids as Catholics. Presumably, there’s a nice way to put this without wondering outright how wise it is to publicly acknowledge that you’re bringing up your children to believe lies?
Ah, well. I’m all for Ricky Gervais, who put it to the Archbishop of Canterbury that you wouldn’t want an adult to still believe in Santa, so why God? “Belief in Santa doesn’t generate a moral code, it doesn’t generate art, it doesn’t generate imagination”, he said in reply. So there you go. Not only is the Archbishop clearly ignorant of the entirely theology of being naughty or nice, but he’s also keen to defend religion on the basis that belief in it apparently produces nice things, not that it’s in any way true. Fascinating. At the moment, Mira from The Women’s Room doesn’t believe in God either. But then I’m only at page 156. So we’ll see.
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
