moroccoccocco

 

Am off to spend the week in Fes, the old medieval capital of Morocco. Have never been to Africa, but after this will only have Australasia to go until visited every continent (Apart from Antarctica, which doesn’t really count)! Anyway, I have been instructed by my lovely father to not bring anything short, in case I get arrested. Although I think seeing the inside of a Moroccan cell would be quite an experience, and I would get to learn some Arabic, I think he is probably right, so I went on a search for floaty long legged and sleeved things. I found a few, but we’ll see if it’s enough. The good news, however, is that I am going to use my superduper camera to take lots and lots of photos. So be prepared…

Tuesday on our bikes...

Thanking the Goddess Ariadne for the good weather…

The sun was shining, and it was just one of those really perfect days. We cycled pretty fast, but ate our signature picnic of hummus and bread to give us back our energy! The sort of day that makes me love British weather.

 

 

We fed the fishes, fed the ducks, and fed ourselves.

 

 

 

A cheeky little bit of meditating by the lake was all we needed to relax us…

 

All in all it was a great day to relieve all our exam stress! We have already made plans to go back on the last day of school, and this time with bikinis to jump in. I am excited already… look forward to the photos!

So here is what i'm planning for the Great Bedroom  Revamp now exams are over, or almost over at least. In Oxford at the weekend I went to this amazing old shop selling amazing framed preserved butterflies. I managed to get them to let me take a picture of their back wall, and here it is! Although I only really want one, or it a gets a bit creepy and taxidermist-like, i am now officially on the lookout for one for my bedroom! They are just so pretty...

Am just about to embark on a trip to the local charity to shop run to rummage for old photo frames, as I need to fill up all my white walls! I want small ones for the peg hanging scheme and some big ones to stand on their own. When I FINALLY get round to charging my camera I'll put some photos up!

  

I have been collecting these fantastic old school rulers for ages without any real idea of what I was going to do with them, and finally I have an idea! The hint is I'm going to use them with some old letterpress blocks...

And finally the colour of the month is... dirty yellow! I know what you're thinking, but I have decided it looks amazing and really brightens up a room with an unexpected flash. I decided this after seeing my friends guest-room (whose mum is incidentally a designer)

It was a bit like this one from elle decoration! Airy with little flashes of yellow...

So I have decided to paint a few photo frames and surprising objects around my room this happy colour...
such as Farrow and Ball's Babouche...

Exams.

OK, so exams are really begginning to get to me now. English on Monday, critical thinking Tuesdsay, and then french a couple of weeks after that and then, big sigh of relief, we're done. Finito.
But all these exams got me thinking,a nd the really strange thing is that we have so many to do at all. I mean, what really is the point? Could we not just take a few huge, and undeniably stressful, exams at the end of our whole school life, and then just be done with it? Or couldn't they come up with a more representative way of testing, using coursework and general teacher comments and a few modules? Anything really, just to avoid the general dreaded association every 17 year old has with May and June.

I can still remember when the summer term was long, unbroken, and downright idyllic. Friends would come home for tea, spend hours swinging in the hammock and giggling, and leave at 7, perfectly happy and guilt free at having spent an evening not revising. Lunchtimes would be spent climbing the forbidden trees on the edge of the field, and the final few weeks of term were a blur of school trips, sport days and prize ceremonies. In short, the summer term involved very little work, and was often nearly as good as the holidays that followed, although none of us would ever have dared to admit it.

Maybe the answer is to move to Australia. There, I assume, the exams are in the Winter. Surely that means something? Short of simply going on strike, I don't see what else we could do.

My new project!

Went into Clifton Village today, and visited one of my favourite all-time shops, focus on the past. Found some beautiful old French hooks which I bought… planning to hang them on the wall and hang old dresses and photos etc of them! VERY excited.

 

http://www.focusonthepast.org/about.html

Hope to put some pictures up soon, but for now the camera battery has run out. Typical.

This is about as close to the hooks as I can find… but mine are a rusting green and all metal, including the back, and generally much nicer!

I also have an old chest to paint and an armchair to buy, and am planning to get very busy with my room the moment exams are over! I have so many ideas and things to buy, just need to start earning some proper money again. I can’t wait until my room is completely finished.

childhood myths

Today I picked up a small child from primary school, and took him to the park. Not for free, of course. Passing the ice-cream van he asked why children get chicken pox if they have too much raspberry sauce on their ice-creams. Automatically I desperately began to invent some crazy tale about hormones and red blood cells when I suddenly stopped. Perhaps slightly too abruptly, I simply said:

"I don't know who told you that, small child (I am very conscientiously not revealing his name) but it is wrong. Either they are very misinformed or someone is trying to trick you"

He simply looked a bit dissapointed at my lack of creativity and continued chewing on his Ben 10 (Ben Ten, Ben10, BenTen?) rucksack, but by now I was begginning to feel indignant.

"I don't know why adults continue to lie to kids," I reeled, "I mean, think of all the embarrasment that would never have been felt. It's just an impulse, a laziness and something we should change". I emphasised the "we" and nudged his shoulder in an attempt to stir up some sort of enthuthiasm. Nothing.
But I feel a magnificent-Daisy-list coming on, so:

1) I used to have an irrational disdain (not hatred or anything near, merely a vague feeling of superiority towards Scottish school children). O why, you may ponder.
Becuase for years everytime I asked why the clocks changed the answer was because the Scottish school children want to walk to school in the light.
My response was, of course, the selfish little things. Needing to change the time of the whole of the country for a whole 6 months so they can see the sun when the go to school. Did it ever occur to them to start the schools later in the winter? apparently not. It wasn't untill embarrassingly recently I learnt the truth.

2) Untill I was about nine I really really really wanted to drive to france. Just so I could see the fish through the channel tunnel. Seeing the bottom of a real ocean would easily make up for the overcrowded eurocampsite, and all from the comfort of the car.
(I don't know if anyone actually told me the tunnel was glass, or if I just assumed it)

3) My nursery teacher told my friend off once for picking her nose in the sandpit, and explained she was actually picking her brain and so "forgetting your alphabet". I became so paranoid I made sure I ate every bogey I picked for about a year to keep it in my system. What a pointless lie.

4) My dad said spinach made you strong like popeye. I still secretly get a tiny bit worried every time I eat spinach that I am going to go bald.

5) and finally, because I am getting bored and I'm sure you are, I thought the car indicators showed my mum which way to turn. To be fair, she had pointed at the little arrows and explained seriously that "they show which way you are turning". Easy mistake to make.

So as I trudged beside my charge to the park, I told him that these things weren't true. He seemed slightly bewildered, but it's all for his own good. HE will never be left feeling apprehesive when meeting Scottish cousins or check his hair after every spinach and pasta meal.

Later this afternoon, on the way home, he kicked a car, just like that. I told him the police would see him. He said that his his mum said there aren't prisons for small people. I said wouldnt he feel sad if someone kicked his car? He said he'd have a car kicking party with all his friends if he had a car. He added he wanted a super jet one. He kicked the car again.
Well, I said, that is a super jet car. Actually it's the blue power ranger's car and he has special bullets for anyone who kicks it. "Oh" he said respectfully, and edged away from the car. And that was that.

This is what I feel like when I have a lot of revision
When I get really philosophical (never good, in my experience) and begin to resent all the stupid mundane things in life, like too cold tomatoes and inside out tights and hair sticking to lip gloss and getting apple skin in between my teeth and cutting my nails to short.
I am sick and tired of exams.
I also feel very sorry for any readers, as I should be giving an insight into the life of a teenager. And this is not an accurate representation, I suspect.

Not so perfect memories

I think a touch of humiliation is good for everybody. No one likes arrogance, and everyone loves a bit of self-deprication. And if you hadnt already caught on, I do some pretty embarrassing things sometimes. Seriously, if I met me I'd think I was doing it on purpose, but no. But then as a friend once said to me (who is incidentally going to Durham to do medicine, so I am not going to attempt to argue with her), imagine if noone ever did anything stupid, life would be so much more boring. And although sometimes, whilst picking up tampons and a suspiciously mouldy looking satsuma from the floor of the common room and stuffing them back into my bag, desperately willing my face to turn a more becoming shade than scarlett, I have my doubts, I think overall she is right.
So for your amusement,and my embarrassment, here are some of my not-so-finer moments

Firstly, The Big Issue Man issue. Last week I was walking along in a unprovoked good mood. A really really good mood, for no reason, and so of course when I saw a big issue seller with only one magazine left I had to buy it. Feeling undeservedly charitable (as if I had actually done something that required any sacrifice on my part) I smiled cheerfully and paid for the big issue, and should have left it there. But no, I had to patronisingly add "you can get off home now!". How irritatingly middle-class.
Of course, he replied, with a mixture of irony and resignation (i wonder how often he gets this kind of thing) "That's the point".I looked at him blankly. "I have no home to go to, that's why I stand here seelling these all day" he elaborately, and I smiled politely, apologised and walked off. My ears were burning.



And then there was the time (yesterday, in fact) when I was working at the bakery and asked some customers standing very confusingly behind each other if they were ordering together (two men) and I innocently asked "are you together". And they looked really surprised, and one said "no, we're just friends". Ok, so it was probably a joke, but it was still embarrassing.

And then, of course, there was the day in school PE, SEVERAL years ago, becuase of course I would never do anything so stupid nowadays, when I forgot to put my skirt on. Yes, I just forgot, just like that. And I ambled down quite happily to the netball court with my best friend, WHO DIDNT THINK TO MENTION that my spotty girl boxers were on full show. Only during the high knee warm up did I notice, and byt that stage everyone was laughing. It sounds like an unbelievable story I know, but believe me, I am capable of some unbelievably stupid things sometimes.

Me looking embarrassed on my first day of secondary school

Now I've started humiliating myself, why stop?

Well, I've many more stupid things i've done, many many more, but not today. Simply because I have to have learnt the whole of Russia's history by my A level exam next tuesday. So for now, adieu x

p.s if you have any really embarrassing things you've done, please share them - even if it's just to make me feel better!

Lime Juice and Pansies - Entry for journalism competition

(The theme was women through the ages) When I was twelve years old I discovered the 1930s. I watched Brideshead Revisited, learned what a cocktail shaker was and read Daphne Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek. And Lady St. Columb, I miss you. Your life seemed so perfect with your games of lawn tennis, the lime juice and gin on the verandah at 6pm prompt, the pleated skirts, the neat drawers of matching gloves, the racket presses, the reliable Hillman. Today's teenage girls no longer lie long-limbed on the lawn making daisy chains and flirting at the cricket club over lemonade. We’re juggling school work, growing responsibility at home and saturday jobs, and then calling Mum at 2.00am the next day because we’ve lost the taxi money. We barely have time to eat with our families as we struggle with the next university prospectus, update our facebook and twitter pages, remember we have history exams, let alone send scented valentines and perfect our croquet. Mothers aren't taking off their floured aprons for a pre-dinner brandy on the veranda at 6pm, they are too busy reading emails while helping with the homework, booking the holiday to France and checking the lasagne hasn’t burnt. Katharine Hepburn had milkmen and free dentists, the trains were clean, the teacakes home-made, the GPs came round to your house, men proposed after they'd kissed you in the car, a home was affordable and families ate together. No wonder we all secretly hanker after the simplicity of Brief Encounter, the idea of bridge parties in the afternoon, planting pansies in the borders and eating tea in the conservatory. But was it ever really like that? Your average 16 year old would be pining after freedom over a half completed cross-stitch, torn between the domestic bliss of emerging icons such as Hepburn and the first opportunity to become a respectable woman with a career. I would have been helping mother polish the fish knives, scrape the marmalade off the table cloth and do the hospital corners before elevenses. In Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, a 1950s novel by Penelope Mortimer, "the wives conform to a certain standard of dress, they run their houses along the same lines, bring up their children in the same way, all prefer coffee to tea, play bridge and own at least one valuable piece of jewellery." The heroine, Ruth, is going mad. Or as Pink Floyd put it in The Dark Side of the Moon, "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way." Sixty years is a long time, women have forgotten how restricted and predictable many women's lives once were. Our's now seem so chaotic and complicated and we have so many choices that we think we are worse off. We've become so exhausted by doing everything, we crave boredom again. Women are giving up on work, they've forgotten the point of it. They don't need to prove themselves in a meeting, it's more relaxing to go for a skinny latte on the way home from dropping off the kids, before contemplating a quick trip to the gym and logging on to Mumsnet to share a joke. Child-care costs are so high that there is little financial incentive to continue a career and women are constantly being told that their children will suffer without them. And us youngsters are afraid for the future, with the ever more competitive job market and the possibilty of lifelong, crippling debts. Our lives are uncertain, and for us there is little chance of a proposal outside a golf club in a fashionable Rolls-Royce. We face years of cramming, bedsits and a range of rollercoaster relationships. But we do have what Lady St. Columb never had - the freedom to choose.

Daffodils

There is a pot of yellow daffodils on my window sill.

The edges are turning brown, and curling, and beginning to flake and

crack, like snakeskin.

But they stand tall and proud on my window sill, bringing a slice of spring

inside.

The middle of the petals are a creamy yellow,

a dreamy yellow.

and when I wake from my cocoon,

my crysalis of quilt, and the sun is mumuring,

humming round the heavy hanging curtains,

I see the crisp cracks of the edges of the yellow daffodils

on the window sill.

And last night, as I shed my clothes

like a lizard shedding old skin,

I see the daffodils are gone, and all that is left

is a ring on the wood

of my window sill.

But look closer, and there is a pile

of nutmeg coloured dust on the swept floor.

And I smile, and I know

in two years I will leave the cocoon of Bristol

and my life here.

And I too will be taken away and start again

with a new skin.

But I will leave a ring from many mugs of tea on my bedside table

beside the window sill.

summer fetival anticipation...

looking through some pictures I took at Womad at last year... its making me so excited for this summer!

three sets of hoolahoops

some mini festival goers

my fairy friends...

where's wally?