Recap 2
Let's get up to speed, shall we?
Saturday was a really rather wonderful day: I slept in late, read a really rather excelent book, ate the best apples I'd eaten all year, and saw Helen. What more could a guy want? :P
Okay, so maybe those need some elaboration...
The book was Captain Corelli's Mandolin (#16), and was definately one of the best books I've read all year. The characters are so beautifully drawn, the perspectives so cleverly managed, and the style so easy to read that the book just works seamlessly; and when the story turns serious it packs a hell of a punch. The range from side-spliting humour and irony to the hell of war and other people is impeccably managed; they're all human beings, and the world is hell in a handbasket...
There is a point in the book at which everything hits rock bottom and they continue at a horizontal, and the time it takes them to climb is heartbreaking. But it ends with a new begining; it is a wonderful book.
The apples were Braeburns, just red enough and yet firm enough, with just the right bite and sweetness, and were the best thing I've eaten in a long time. I really like apples.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that I bumped into Todd and people in town when I went to meet Helen, and was pursuaded into buying a Young Enterprise CD of unsigned local bands for six quid (which I then managed to accidentally give to someone, but hey). And that in the evening I had some truly riotous conversations on MSN with stripyglove and Helen. And that The Brick Testament is a work of sheer genius, and that I never realised how screwed up Zionism was until just then; and also that it leads to very, very very interesting hypotheses about the nature of God's Chosen People... :P:P:P
(Also, Helen has my watch.)
Sunday I went to Robbie's, and we had great fun watching films and tickling people and wearing hats and being remarkably silly as we always do. Impromptu comdey sketches about bakeries are fun, as is Robin Hood Men in Tights. :D
I then came home and did some laundry and things, and read Alexei Sayle's short story collection Barcelona Plates (#17) which was much better on Sunday when I read the second half than it was when I read the first half on Friday evening; I didn't find it half as boring or irritating, and although I'm still not a fan of Sayle's writing I hate it with less of a passion. (pleezpleezme, I take some of it back...)
Then I footled about and put up the banners for my mother with Debz, who had by this point returned home, and stuff, and eventually, after my parents went to bed and I did Recap 1 I went to bed and read Iain M Banks' Use of Weapons, (#18) which was as good as I've come to expect his stuff to be. It wasn't quite on a par with Player of Games, but still good enough to tower of most sci-fi by a considerable margin. I wasn't expecting the reveal at the end at all, and at some point want to read it again to see if I can see it; and the idea of telling a story both backwards and forwards from a point in time was not only very clever but also executed magnificantly. (I'm actually vaguely put out by this - and the fact that the Will Self book by my bed begins with an Epilogue - because I'd had a pipe-dream of writing something clever like that and then I discovered that they'd both done it, no fair.)
Today was mostly less fun, due to lessons and exams and silly things like that, although there were some interesting points, like me getting up and having pain au chocolat for breakfast and discovering that my parents had brought me little pots of really interesting jam back from their hotel. School started with a video of Mr Stone bungee-jumping, and involved lots of me going 'Aah, where's Mr Walker, hide me!' English involved conversations about, in this order, very dodgy Greek plays, that iguana thing and the sex-lives of seahorses. And the link made sense, and we got there legitimately too.
Maths involved Ashley really irritating me to the extent that I was actually irritated, which was not due to the fact that I was mysteriously ravenously hungry to the point of feeling less hungry once I'd got within Simmons because simply receiving food through diffusion from the air increased the amount of sugar in my bloodstream exponentially. Then after school I went to a lecture about Euthanasia by the Bishop of St Albans, who was on the Select Committee examining the Bill in the House of Lords, was very professional and had an odd habit of saying 'Let me explain thingy-and-such-and-such' and then pausing and then explaining it. I was also suprised to see Caroline, Lucia and all_my_words, who snuck in about three minutes in, which was very nice, and meant that I could have a very nice conversation with Lucia on the way home and then also get a lift half of the way home. I then did lots of maths and typed up most of this post and spent lots of time speaking to Helen and went to bed.
Which brings us up to today.
This morning was somewhat less pleasant than yesterday's, because it involved my mother shouting at me and threatening to ground me. I am very lucky in that I live within walking distance of my school, and it only takes fifteen-twenty minutes to walk, and thus I don't really need to leave the house before twenty-five two to get there comfortably. My mother, alas, refuses to accept that this can possibly be true, and so any time that she is home on a school morning she gets very upset - despite evidence that I get there easily on time. I got to school with plenty of time - to the tune of being the first one in our form-room by about five minutes. Lessons were not especially interesting - in ECDL I took and passed the first two tests and that's about it - and, after school I went to see people in town as intrepid readers may have already gathered.
(I shall, however, make cryptic references to two rather cunning plans that are coming to fruition nicely right now despite being sorely under-developed before this lunchtime, because I cannot have any information leaks at this critical juncture. Mwuahaha.)
Now I need to go do lots and lots of homework. Oh dear...
Saturday was a really rather wonderful day: I slept in late, read a really rather excelent book, ate the best apples I'd eaten all year, and saw Helen. What more could a guy want? :P
Okay, so maybe those need some elaboration...
The book was Captain Corelli's Mandolin (#16), and was definately one of the best books I've read all year. The characters are so beautifully drawn, the perspectives so cleverly managed, and the style so easy to read that the book just works seamlessly; and when the story turns serious it packs a hell of a punch. The range from side-spliting humour and irony to the hell of war and other people is impeccably managed; they're all human beings, and the world is hell in a handbasket...
There is a point in the book at which everything hits rock bottom and they continue at a horizontal, and the time it takes them to climb is heartbreaking. But it ends with a new begining; it is a wonderful book.
The apples were Braeburns, just red enough and yet firm enough, with just the right bite and sweetness, and were the best thing I've eaten in a long time. I really like apples.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that I bumped into Todd and people in town when I went to meet Helen, and was pursuaded into buying a Young Enterprise CD of unsigned local bands for six quid (which I then managed to accidentally give to someone, but hey). And that in the evening I had some truly riotous conversations on MSN with stripyglove and Helen. And that The Brick Testament is a work of sheer genius, and that I never realised how screwed up Zionism was until just then; and also that it leads to very, very very interesting hypotheses about the nature of God's Chosen People... :P:P:P
(Also, Helen has my watch.)
Sunday I went to Robbie's, and we had great fun watching films and tickling people and wearing hats and being remarkably silly as we always do. Impromptu comdey sketches about bakeries are fun, as is Robin Hood Men in Tights. :D
I then came home and did some laundry and things, and read Alexei Sayle's short story collection Barcelona Plates (#17) which was much better on Sunday when I read the second half than it was when I read the first half on Friday evening; I didn't find it half as boring or irritating, and although I'm still not a fan of Sayle's writing I hate it with less of a passion. (pleezpleezme, I take some of it back...)
Then I footled about and put up the banners for my mother with Debz, who had by this point returned home, and stuff, and eventually, after my parents went to bed and I did Recap 1 I went to bed and read Iain M Banks' Use of Weapons, (#18) which was as good as I've come to expect his stuff to be. It wasn't quite on a par with Player of Games, but still good enough to tower of most sci-fi by a considerable margin. I wasn't expecting the reveal at the end at all, and at some point want to read it again to see if I can see it; and the idea of telling a story both backwards and forwards from a point in time was not only very clever but also executed magnificantly. (I'm actually vaguely put out by this - and the fact that the Will Self book by my bed begins with an Epilogue - because I'd had a pipe-dream of writing something clever like that and then I discovered that they'd both done it, no fair.)
Today was mostly less fun, due to lessons and exams and silly things like that, although there were some interesting points, like me getting up and having pain au chocolat for breakfast and discovering that my parents had brought me little pots of really interesting jam back from their hotel. School started with a video of Mr Stone bungee-jumping, and involved lots of me going 'Aah, where's Mr Walker, hide me!' English involved conversations about, in this order, very dodgy Greek plays, that iguana thing and the sex-lives of seahorses. And the link made sense, and we got there legitimately too.
Maths involved Ashley really irritating me to the extent that I was actually irritated, which was not due to the fact that I was mysteriously ravenously hungry to the point of feeling less hungry once I'd got within Simmons because simply receiving food through diffusion from the air increased the amount of sugar in my bloodstream exponentially. Then after school I went to a lecture about Euthanasia by the Bishop of St Albans, who was on the Select Committee examining the Bill in the House of Lords, was very professional and had an odd habit of saying 'Let me explain thingy-and-such-and-such' and then pausing and then explaining it. I was also suprised to see Caroline, Lucia and all_my_words, who snuck in about three minutes in, which was very nice, and meant that I could have a very nice conversation with Lucia on the way home and then also get a lift half of the way home. I then did lots of maths and typed up most of this post and spent lots of time speaking to Helen and went to bed.
Which brings us up to today.
This morning was somewhat less pleasant than yesterday's, because it involved my mother shouting at me and threatening to ground me. I am very lucky in that I live within walking distance of my school, and it only takes fifteen-twenty minutes to walk, and thus I don't really need to leave the house before twenty-five two to get there comfortably. My mother, alas, refuses to accept that this can possibly be true, and so any time that she is home on a school morning she gets very upset - despite evidence that I get there easily on time. I got to school with plenty of time - to the tune of being the first one in our form-room by about five minutes. Lessons were not especially interesting - in ECDL I took and passed the first two tests and that's about it - and, after school I went to see people in town as intrepid readers may have already gathered.
(I shall, however, make cryptic references to two rather cunning plans that are coming to fruition nicely right now despite being sorely under-developed before this lunchtime, because I cannot have any information leaks at this critical juncture. Mwuahaha.)
Now I need to go do lots and lots of homework. Oh dear...