Fifteen

The map is a metaphor for the journey and the paths you take in life, obviously.

It's my birthday today, I'm 15 and feeling old, my back will give out tomorrow I'm sure. I got some pretty FETCH presents from my parents, friends and family though.

A LABEL MAKER (showcased in the collage above). Ghost World DVD (dont throw rocks I haven't seen it yet but will do tonight), gym sock thingys, a new tripod so I am able to photograph outfits outside the confides of my house, hundreds (literally - not metaphorically - speaking) of packs of fruit salad flavoured chewits (they're my weakness shh), a top I ordered off Etsy for my incapable parents who then gave it to me to wear when roller skating, a new hobby I have decided I am going to learn/take up, and money so I can buy some lovely clothes and hopefully an SLR camera to replace my digital, I am in serious need of a new one and all the pictures I take at the moment are from my iPhone which isn't totally practical! 

I had school and spent the morning with year 3 children who came to our school, teaching them how to throw beanbags; that was fun. (decide for yourself if i intend sarcasm or not). Then I had French and Biology which are possibly the worst lessons I could ever have but people were generally nice to me and it's FABULOUS TO BE IN CONTROL FOR A DAY. However I do need to 'control' my own use of capitals.

I discovered how to use the scanner, yep, I don't know where this will take me, but I CAN'T STOP USING IT IT'S GREAT.

I made a crown out of a tiara my Sister uses when she dances (she does ballet) and some flowers from outside, I'm holding a birthday cake candle in the second picture, and my printer is running out of ink, I haven't grown green lines on my face!

A metaphor for 'Taking the leap in life' - No I am joking this is my grandma when she was younger, probably the 70's, she was voted 'Supermum of Dorset' or something and she is still proud at 58 years old, I just found the picture in the Scans folder, some pesky person in this family was aware of how to use the scanner before me and didn't make me aware.

A metaphor for unity and friendship - Ok this is getting ridiculous now I will stop, another picture in the scans picture from my Grandad and Grandma's wedding, my grandad is on the left, I'd estimate this is from the 60's, hence the 'tashes.

My captions are far too long I am aware, anyway I hope you have had a better than average 25th of May 2012 as I have, the other exciting this that happened today is that I realised there's a very pretty greenhouse a school that I can take pictures infront of, maybe, possibly, probably not. People always walk past it, I don't know, maybe next mufti day. 

Bye!

A hodgepodge

I haven't posted this week, but before I am sent to an early grave I will dispense actual LEGITIMATE reasons as to why not; firstly i had an ethics exam worth 25% of my ACTUAL gcse last tuesday so I was revising for that and I have since been revising for another ACTUAL philosophy exam in a month and chemistry and physics re-sits, I got B's in January for chemistry and physics but I taught myself the whole course in a month to get those, and I did get an A* in biology! I don't know I'm a bit of a perfectionist and want A's ok. I also:

• signed two petitions, one campaigning against use of animals in testing (a year eight girl with green eye shadow and a headscarf who I thought looked really cool came to our form room one lunch which coincidentally was just before our ethics exam so we took it as a sign that one of the 12 mark questions would be on that subject, guess what? IT WAS. Obviously psychics, us.), the second, one on Change.org about banning photoshopped images in seventeen magazine. Us 'gurlz' have to stand up against this stuff.

•Stood from afar envying prefects badges that said prefects have been adorned with. I didn't apply to be one because I suck with self confidence and can't make myself seem like someone they would actually WANT as a prefect so I just put off writing my application and then it was past the deadline and :-(.

•Went to the library for a lunch time alone and found the best books about fashion, then hid a stash of national geographics I didn't know prior to this excerpt that the school library actually owned/hoarded/had that I don't want anyone to read before me. The new junior librarian is also nice although she laughed at my year 7 school picture on my library card, which is understandable. (I will show you the books later this week).

I have been experimenting a lot too this week you could say, I was met with a lot of 'what on earth' stares. I don't mind, I find it quite amusing and treat it like a puzzle that people aren't able to solve because these people have CLOSED minds but basically I went to g&t's last saturday after volunteering at the salvation army (I am a good teenage citizen, ut it also means I get a discount so..), and bought mounds of stickers, temporary tattoos, stars, you get the gist. Anyway, I would show you pictures of each individual purchase but I've used the majority of them so you'd only see massacred remains of glitzy cats and spangly hearts that sadly, had lost their stickiness after my constant rearranging of aesthetic thingy mabobs and got returned to the sheet they came from to grow old and die, no probably until I become so desperate I glue them on instead.

I put stickers on my locker at school, all over my planner, and tried to turn my classmates into festive, jolly looking people in dispensing some charming star stickers reminiscent of the ones stuck on especially good work at primary school for them to put on the lapel of uniform blazers, some accompanying prefect badges *sad, envying face* ok I will scavenge to find and wear my mum's 80s cycling proficiency badge, my monitor badge from year 6 and my mum's old prefect badge to adorn my own blazer in tomorrow. Most classmates obligingly agreed to the sticker adornation. School is a happier place because of me.

The temporary tattoos; although my desire originally was to keep these for a while, got used on the Sunday after I bought them. I've had a selection of them on all week and last week, and as my school has reasonably strict uniform rules (no skirts higher than 8cm above the knee, no make up whatsoever, no extreme 'hair colours', the list goes on, all girls grammar school blah blah blah) I have been pulling my blazer sleeves down all week to conceal them from beady eyed teachers, although namely, this is my year 7 blazer which despite my still minuscule height (5"3) is very small on me, so i had difficulty doing this and the seams joining the arms to the actual jacket were probably fit to burst.

60's FABRIC BACKGROUND. YES. yeah a collage I made.

So here are the ~rad~ tattoos, I felt the peace signs fit in really well with the Woodstock background, they look totally REAL. No really I've just become super obsessed with the Beatles and John Lennon so I'm liking the peace sign at the moment, this love stemmed from watching The Parent Trap (remake) about 2 months ago, I've always loved the bit where Annie (BUT REALLY ITS HALLIE!!!) goes across London with her mum and 'Here comes the Sun' is played, so I began humming it at school and then started listening to loads of other Beatles music in the form room at lunch so basically my whole form, teaching group, in fact my year are singing it (no word of a lie) although they don't seem too keen on the bangles, queen, and a variety of others that I've also been humming.. oh, and THEN, it was the first song on a rookie playlist- do those guys read my god damn mind??! I got to listen to the Beatles in philosophy last week too and I wanted to cry it was so beautiful.

Random collage in which stickers and tattoos are exhibited. Patchy arms exhibit A.

I apologise for this whistle stop tour of my life this week, and the patchy arms in the pictures are due to a DofE walk I did last sunday where I got sunburnt, yay. I got a picture of a cow though.

Toodloo. I won't leave it so long to post next time I promise I know what I will be writing about.

Uptown Girl

You are probably familiar with, or have encountered, self doubt. (If you haven't you are super human so go and become FBI intelligence or something). Myself, I often sit and cry because everything seems so cOo0l compared to me and I feel like I JUST DON'T BELONG HERE BECAUSE I AM SUCH A WORTHLESS COMBINATION OF CELLS or something. I wonder why I bother with dressing like I do, why I have sub zero confidence levels resulting in every word coming out of my mouth sounding so loserish and ridiculous and why my maths grades are so abominable, but eventually I do remember why life is worth living after all by writing down my angsty feelings and trying to meditate them away. Also, time is such a virtue.

I would be utterly lost without dressing as I do, I become so eminently enchanted with clothes so much so that I want to weep at their beauty, on a daily basis. We're always force fed growing up with the idea of 'be yourself' by every adult in the entire stratosphere, and it took me a while to figure some of that out, actualIy, I don't think I've figured out most of it, perhaps I never will, so for the meantime I'm just doing and dressing how makes me happy, those adults probably don't even know themselves I would bet, and I think it's probably one of the reasons as to why many teenagers have identity crises. And my maths grades, ur, well.

My monomaniac tendencies for clothes, aesthetics and fashion, I think, stem from my childhood love of escapism. I read Harry Potter like real life and went to every midnight book release, dressed up as hermione, since I can remember the books existing, which is forever really. I was in year six when deathly hallows came out and I bought it at the midnight release, returned and at school the next day knew the entire plot, as I had finished it at around dawn having read under my covers with my beloved reading lamp into the following day, the same lamp that accompanied me during the entirety of key stage three and saw me immersed in incomprehensible amounts of stories.

As I got older I began to replace this, fashion itself is sort of like fantasy in a way, with every respect there is no literal point to it, yet I place my sanity in the realms of make believe as I have always done. The attraction of fantasy and any way of escaping really is boundless and I still love the doctrine of magic and bewitched-ness, which inspired the zine I started last night I suppose. I doubt it will be finished until 2309 but I have constructed the front cover which I will dispense.

Said zine.

Was that a rant? If so, I apologise but I wanted to write something other than daily ramblings that have no significance to any entity apart from my own self. Hopefully one other person out of the other 7 billion in the world will resonate?

Thank you for reading!