I’m not a big fan of misery and despair so will try to keep this brief. 
This week has not been the best for me. On Tuesday night I felt sick and – along with writing my still-brilliant Othello coursework – managed to throw up 
in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Fun! But, me being me, I still went to school. Lying in bed ill has never really been my favourite pastime and I’d rather not have missed another Physics double. So I sat by the window, burning up and hoping not to spread bird flu. (OK OK I did skip a tiny bit of school – ‘Enrichment’ in the afternoon. Happy now?)
So then Thursday was the after-effects ‘Aghh headache!’ day but I gulped down some Paracetamol and got on with it. And got my exam result for that terrible exam too – a B. I know what you’re thinking, that’s not so bad, but I could have got an A and I want to get an A and I will retake (sometime) and get an A unless I die of bird-flu-with-revenge first.
What about the English result, you ask? Well I don’t know. Should find out tomorrow. Which is making me all nervous and depressed because I was relatively confident until my teacher emailed with “Are you on line?” this evening. Well if it was good news she’d just put the grade in, wouldn’t she?!
Gah – I dunno. At least tomorrow is Fabio’s party (Happy Birthday btw 
) so I can either drown my sorrows or celebrate an unlikely upside to an otherwise bad week. And I won’t be able to get a hangover either if I’ve already got a headache, right? Always a silver lining…
(Oh, and The Apprentice result this week was bollocks.)
Daily Mail Screenshot
When I was about one year old, Tom Cat came into our garden. He was a stray, older than a kitten, we guessed about a year or so older than me. And he didn’t seem to have an owner, so he stayed.
Tonight we had to have him put down. He’s had problems with his teeth before but on Tuesday night something happened, almost like he’d had a stroke (cats don’t really have strokes, so the vet thinks it was renal failure.) He became very still, and he wasn’t eating anything. So we took him to the vet and, as I thought might happen, he was euthanized. We were all there to watch, and I’m really glad we did.
So yes. The house is empty now, even though I can’t really believe he’s gone. (Already I’m hearing mewing from the hallway.) My strongest memory of Tom Cat is him jumping up the fridge and freezer to get to his favourite spot on the top of the kitchen cupboards, which always used to impress visitors. But I also remember when we moved house, and had to go out for months with a picnic basket to get him back from our old flat.
Tom Cat
b. Who knows?
d. 03 \ 03 \ 2006
I’ll miss you Tom, but remember your life with love and fondness 
Linda Smith
I didn’t know until today that she was President of the Humanist Society too. RIP Linda Smith, and thanks for all the laughs. You will be missed.
Right, also have to say that I saw the school play Dracula Spectacular tonight, which was rather excellent and I know others enjoyed it too. And Tasha was great, of course. 
Some other memorable performances (out of many) were Miss Naïve, Dracula himself and Dracula’s mother played by our friend Anna-Ciara. Woot! We also agreed that for the next production the school should really invest in some mics for the stage. Well, they’ve already bought new curtains…
Saw this George Clooney film at the Tricycle Cinema on Saturday night. It’s about the famous journalist Edward Murrow (who I’d actually never heard of before) and his taking on of the infamous Senator McCarthy who orchestrated the hysterical anti-Communist witch-hunts in 1950s America. Oh, and it’s filmed in black and white – something I got used to surprisingly quickly, but I think that’s cause I’ve watched quite a bit of 1960s Doctor Who 
So yes – to be honest, I don’t think this film deserves quite the glowing praise it received – but it is nonetheless very worthy and worth seeing if you’re interested in that period of history. Or current affairs, of course, as the obvious metaphor to the role of the media today… although I couldn’t help feeling incredibly uplifted after watching the film about the role the Internet now plays. It’s no longer a question of a few corporations controlling the ability to get your message out there, although of course they still command the mass audiences, anyone has the ability to publish, at least in many parts of the world. Damn the sponsors, we’ve got Google.
The other organisation that came to my mind was the BBC. The speech bookending the film about the role that television plays is a powerful reminder that in Britain, our culture has been shaped by an organisation that is not dependent on advertising revenue and does uphold a public service ethos (at least some of the time!) to inform, educate and to entertain.
Appropraitely we ran into my History teacher on the way out – he was going to see the later showing. And my other cinema anectode was the labelling of the vanilla ice-cream as ‘natural’. That annoyed me. Why is vanilla any more natural than strawberry or chocolate? Stop the organic-natural-reallyreallygoodforyou-food nonsense soon please.
Also – have just completed my first draft of a rather tricky essay on another era in history – Britain’s role in the Middle East. I read it through and realised I know exactly what the teacher is going to say: too much storytelling! How do you avoid storytelling in an essay that stretches from 1917 to 1956 though?
Good night, and good luck blog readers. This blog post was brought to you by the correct spelling of aluminium.*
*(In the film they say aluminum. Aluminum?!)
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
