A selection of items…
- A Simpsons advent calendar with chocolate. Welcome December
- A ticket from a recording of Radio 2’s new sitcom ‘Teenage Kicks’ in which Adrian Edmondson plays an ageing ex-punk living in his teenage kids’ student flat
- A balloon stolen from school, smuggled home under a coat and certainly the highlight of our lunchtime yesterday
- A bag from Cadbury Sixth Form College in Birmingham. I suspect anyone who goes there must be very cool
- A QPCS Music CD including performances from the Jazz Band, the Percussion, Brass and Wind Band and the Steel Band
- Hamlet – a rather excellent play
- Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience – frustrating poetry (sorry GG) which hits rare moments of success but all too frequently simply leads me to sigh ‘Blaaaaaake!’ in a frustrated manner
On Saturday the final stage of the grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary rolled out (yes OK, sometimes I think our family operates as a quasi-commercial entity) with a visit to Starlight Express – or more specifically, The 3rd Dimension or… something, which is some kind of revisionist version. Anyway, it was odd! I think everyone enjoyed it, though mostly through discussion of the bizarre plot and the really strong emotional connection to different ways of powering a train engine.
“What’s next…” we asked, “the heroic battle between different elements in the periodic table?”
(I think you have to have seen this musical to understand it, actually, so I’ll stop trying to explain. I’ve been advised to think of it as an 80s roller-skate disco, so I will.)
I then saw Casino Royale on Sunday. The problem here is that I’ve never actually seen a Bond film in the cinema before – the most I’ve come to it was seeing some of the classics on video years ago. So I wasn’t amazed and astounded this this one was better than the last few because, erm, I haven’t seen them. So I left the cinema agreeing with mum – a fun film for a fiver at Willesden on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but not a woaaah amazingly outstanding experience. It’s James Bond, I guess, what do you expect?
Though I’m glad we’ve sorted out that beautiful women will betray you, even if you wear a dinner jacket. Or if you’re a steam train, as in the case of Starlight Express, except of course ‘beautiful women’ then becomes, ur, ‘coach’ as demands that peculiar metaphor. I think I’ll stop attempting to connect these two bits of entertainment now and go to bed 
If you nosed around my school asking people why exactly they had turned up that morning, chances are most students would offer something in a range from ‘because it’s compulsory, innit’ to ‘what else am I going to talk about on MySpace tonight?’. Once you get to the Sixth Form, however, you start to (finally!) acquire a group of individuals who actually, genuinely, honest-to-god want to be there. It matters to them, because most of all they want to pass exams.
But why exactly? I was reminded today of the very clear idealogical divide that exists between two competing groups of students and teachers. On the one hand, you have the rationale that thinks it’s bloody obviously why you should want to pass exams – university, duh! And that’s going to be great because you’ll end up with a degree, and everyone knows degrees are great for getting you jobs, and hey, everyone wants jobs. Jobs = money. Money = stuff. Stuff = a really fast car painted to make it shinier, or, for the tenderer souls, a chance to buy a boat and sail off to a desert island for a while to escape that awful consumerist world back home. (Urgh. It makes you so angry that, like, the media is forcing you to buy things and you’re so glad you’re not going to conform like all those other idiots in your sociology class.)
Those are the optimists, by the way. The pessimist variant is that you better damn well make sure you succeed, because it’s a ‘highly competitive world out there’ and if you don’t get that A in English Literature Unit 2 (with coursework, naturally) someone is going to fuck you over in a job interview 20 years hence and you’ll die poor and sad and lonely in a box on the corner of the street opposite where your rich, clever friends live.
This is basically what I heard today from one teacher, who began to scrutinise a friend’s AS choices to check she wasn’t about to waste her life. Naturally, I jumped in (with a friend) to object.
“No! Don’t be silly, you don’t need to choose a career now. Do what you want to do, have fun, drink some alcohol (religious tolerances permitting) and don’t worry about it.”
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Just back from a big family weekend in Dorset for a surprise party to celebrate my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Tasha has actually beaten me to the online publication of photos, but here we go anyway (She actually has put the whole lot up, so do check them out too.)
Waiting to surprise
Haha facial expression of joy
He was generally much more cool and collected about it
Nice group photo in la casual clothes
I get shoved at the back now
Aww then we dressed up
This is a Dominic tie photo first
Parents made an effort too
Formal group!
I like this photo of Dad and Josh too
Certainly a whirlwind few days… starting with Friday, my ‘fake Cambridge interview’ day. Robert, Promise and I trekked down to Harslesden for this event which included a workshop on interview skills and mock interviews to try and give us some idea how how it would go. My first interview was great – I made a point quite early on that he really liked, so everything flowed like a natural conversation that could have kept going for ages. The second interviewer was a bit tougher, asking a few questions I didn’t really know the answer to and damning my lack of knowledge on the history of the college but he said at the end it did go well and that I kept good eye contact, hehe.
Oh, and I met a Tory ‘Catholic but not really’ boy who has exactly the same voice as Alex Trafford! We argued jovially a bit, so shout-out to David Allen, wherever you are! A distinctly un-shout-out (a boo-out?) to the two pretentious boys in suits I sat next to for a bit who sneered at everyone else’s lack of preparation in not brining notepaper.
Friday evening saw the return of Quiz Night! (Remember that?) Fabio and I were on marking duties this time, after various people gave excellent and understandable excuses and a further person gave a lame one Oh, and Mr. Birch gave us a free QPCS Music CD! Well, better than getting chocolates that have gone off, Waseley crew?
Saturday was Lucccccccy day, which turned into House of Mase day as I got dinner and everything 
thank you! I returned to London by train, shunning the Megabus for leaving me stuck in a traffic jam in god-forsaken Coventry that morning. (Ask Lucy if you want to see the cartoons I hastily drew to relieve my frustrations with the residents of said town )
And the train was interesting to say the least – an ever-changing carriage of entertainment. From the group of kids with voices curiously like mine, to the fare-evading boys who tried to hide under chairs, to the girl who stopped me to ask “you don’t happen to know who was kicked out of X Factor tonight do you?” “No” I replied, but not wishing to sound boring, adding “it was probably the one with the most talent and potential though”.
My my my… MySpace. That’s the other thing. I finally caved in and submitted to intense peer pressure (OK Lucy told me to) and got a MySpace account. So, y’know, if you’ve done the same and fancy adding me… 
Though I’m already having the inevitable ethical dilemmas on how to manage the ‘Top Friends’ slot. Hehe addiction.
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
