Forget it, thinking of decent blog titles is a waste of time when there are all these ideas floating in my head.

Exams are coming to an end as soon as they begun even though, ironically enough, my exam period has been ridiculously overstretched over an excruciating 5 weeks of not knowing what to revise next. It's been peculiar, especially with A2s still going but slackening off a little.

And yet in those five weeks there's been an explosion in the media about...yeah, that's right, those politicians and their expenses. Quite frankly it was shocking when it first came out, but now it's any excuse to screw politicians over for minimal expenses. Maybe it's because us British - with our *a-hem* heightened sense of moral responsibility and need to doll out praise or blame (more often than not, blame) - should be as outraged by the hundreds of pounds going to selfish causes as it is for the thousands of pounds going to selfish causes. After all, it's the same principle isn't it?

We should know by now politicians are unlikely to be the most trustworthy creatures, so it's not the best idea to get on our self righteous high horses and trample on the people who got themselves so high profile that their mess becomes national knowledge.

Then again - to back off slightly - we put our trust most in these guys. I mean, the politicians and bankers. We trust they will keep this country safe in many ways. But, the chances are that these expenses might not have come through if there hadn't been an economic crisis; it's swings and roundabouts. And let's face it, after we've adjusted to economic distress, the British need something new to complain about.

Then again, I have moaned about the lack of resources for struggling schools, about teachers struggling to provide for disabled children that might actually be able to make something of their lives... At this point I get on my self righteous high horse and say it's not so much that it's the fact that politicians are spending "OUR taxes" (maybe it'd be a bigger deal if I was actually eligible to pay taxes...) but the fact that there is an awareness about these problems and yet these people still take expenses for their own benefit.

The irony is that, even if banks (and resources) were nationalised, they'd be in the hands of the politicians who prove to be equally as irresponsible as the top bankers claiming rights to a pension they shouldn't have while jeopardising the jobs of many.

Heck, I stink of my own hypocrisy here. I mean, here I am criticising the British public for their moral indignation and here I make a big deal about the injustices of the system. It's all very well being a surly teenager who doesn't have to pay taxes. It's all very well being totally ignorant in politics and economics. I'm still a child to the world, but the adults drown out my cries: "It's not fair!"

Then there's a nagging voice each time: "Life ain't fair buddy, get your head down and just do what you can."

Let the weeping commence

It was a dark dark day. It had reached a point of desperation that all students hope will never arrive. Realisation sinks in as they can barely tear their eyes away and get something done, but I - in a state of guilt and shame - I had made the decision.

It was time to deactivate Facebook.

My heart had sunk into a state of near apathy as the emotional blackmail filled up the screen before me: "Jo, all these friends will miss you!" I turn my face away, blindly clicking somewhere, anywhere, so I didn't have to witness myself deactivating with a sense of dread.

It is finished! Facebook, forgive them for they know not why they deactivate!

Well I do, it's so I can revise. Ironically enough it's just encouraged me to find new ways of procrastinate (to procrastinate being the definitive Hills Road buzz word). I started reading a 460 page book last night, I'm already over half way through - quite an achievement as my reading tends to be slow and thorough. Oh well, at least it's a little more productive.

The end is nigh, for exams are upon us all. I'm giving myself a few days to recover from withdrawal symptoms before taking revision seriously once more. It's weird that it's the last few days of teaching at Hills with no lower sixth. It's odd how many friends I've made in the year below, and I'll miss them. Uni beckons though; we'll see what the future has to bring.

But one thing's for definite. As soon as I get home from my final exam on June 16th, I'm reactivating Facebook.

Always winter and never Christmas

I’m walking down a slightly sloped street; I turn the corner bending to the right and see the house I used to live in, my childhood home. The houses on each side have the familiar lighting, and I can see the candle arches in the windows. I take my key out and bend down to open the frustratingly low lock on the porch door, step in and open the main door. The Christmas tree in all its elegant glory brushes against my jacket as I step in and my previously long hair catches on the candle holders on the tree. I never saw the point in putting candles on the tree without lighting them. This tree was always decorated in a warm sophisticated red and gold, an oversized star precariously balancing on the folded over top branch. The decorations zigzagged across the ceiling were vibrant red, gold, green, the ceiling looking several inches lower. The staircase was to the left, but I walk past it and turn right into the living room looking back at the garland fixed by permanent hooks on the banister. The smaller tree is in the front room; it’s more colourful than it is tasteful. A round thing hangs in the centre of the room and cards hung on the wall. Wreaths are attached to the light fittings on the wall. I walk to the small table with the tree on it and take a candy cane. “One a day Joanna, or you won’t be able to have one tomorrow,” says mum. I still needed to be told when I was 15.

I’m out the door again, walking up to the bus stop to catch the 2 into town. I go up past Swanshurst Park and remember its beauty on a Saturday morning covered in white. Then I see the Jelly household (I promise I’m not making any of this up, or at least, not the name of the family) covered with flashing lights that could give someone who was unused to it an epileptic fit. The house diagonally opposite would always try to compete with its flashing Santa going up and down the chimney at a speed that even magic couldn’t keep up with.

I’m on the bus and reach the Stratford Road, the predominantly Indian/Pakistani area [ironically] covered in as many Christmas lights as any part of town. The tinsel lights wrapped around the lamp-posts were tasteless but I grew up seeing them and loved them all the same. I get off the bus outside the rag markets and walk up to the Bull Ring, light pouring into the open area from Borders and the bottom floor of the shopping centre but also from beautiful blue light suspended above. I walk up the slope pretending I’m not getting out of breath and veer to the left making my way up to the German Market.

I only discovered it two years before I left, which I was most gutted about. It’s the most wonderful market you could ever go to (or at least the most wonderful market I’ve been to). The lights were so bright that they probably used enough energy to power a small town for a week. The smell of pretzels and ginger and spicy sausage was so strong that it absorbed itself into your clothes so that when you were home three hours later your scarf would still smell of German stuff. There was a waiting list for German market hot dogs, but the half an hour wait was worth it simply because they were German. Teenagers who would have thrown their parents the most evil glare if they suggested going on “baby rides” would queue excitedly for the carousel and helter-skelter simply because they were German. The German Market was a jewel, not least tacky and plastic, and I found it too late.

Cambridge in comparison is, simply put, minimalist. The main attraction at Christmas is a temporary ice rink accompanied by a small market going along the length of it. The most lights in any one place are on the facade of the Guildhall and John Lewis, the latter being marginally more tasteful. The lights swinging from one side of the trees lining the path of Christ’s Pieces to the other are beautiful and simple. They remind me of the loss of myself that fateful night of November. Lights dancing in his eyes and they in turn dancing for others more beautiful than myself.

Family and future

That's right, the time of year where we eat and drink and may well just be merry with relatives has come and gone, the witty banter that causes hilarity to be forgotten the day after.

The great news is that two more second cousins are on the way! While shopping with my parents in Tesco t'other day ('cause I'm that cool...or 'cause I'm a wonderful dutiful daughter *ahem*) we looked at all the baby clothes and toys for present ideas. Just seeing those tiny baby shoes and cuddly toys made me squeal because they're so adorable (and that's rare), but also made me think. Would I get married? When? Would I have kids? Would I make a good mother? If I wanted the best for them and had the means would I send them to private school?

I wouldn't. For one thing I sometimes resent private school kids (if I'm perfectly honest), even though I do have friends who went to private school. I wouldn't want my children to be spoonfed methodology, and I would want them in an environment that prepares them for the real world. I probably shouldn't, but sometimes it feels like a competition with those kids; I feel good when I gain the upper hand, or when I do something well. Then you're not just resented for being common, you're resented for being common and being mildly intelligent. Most of the people I know from private schools who I admire are those who got there because their intelligence earned them a place, not because Daddy has lots of money.

Maybe it's at the point when I say that education shouldn't be based on how much money you have. Why have these elitist schools when an inner-city school is struggling to educate? Why slosh money round to spoonfeed children when money is desperately needed for kids who have learning difficulties or behavioural problems?

My first inclination is to say "tax the rich more", although it'd be an incredibly uninformed statement and to some people it may sound 'dangerously' socialist. Or would it? We live in a society that promotes equality on all levels (gender and race), but its odd that the gaps between the classes aren't sealed.

Anyway enough about my rant about the rich and private schools...back to family and future...

I was talking about the not-so-distant future with my cousin about university and learning for life skills. For some reason we got onto talking about the laundrette and somehow I said "you never know who you could meet..." Now it's official that I plan to meet my future husband in a laundrette; he'll be waiting for his socks in the drier while I lament the loss of a favourite jumper to the wrath of washing machine shrinkage.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what my life might just amount to.

Tangential Musings

A stranger knocked on my door one day asking
For a place to rest his feet
Against my better judgement back I stood
Welcoming him in from the bitter-cold street

No sooner had he entered the door he smashed
My porcelain pride, and shattered my glass heart
He turned the house upside down
And tore the place apart

Amid the chaos he sat, gazing
At his masterpiece on a hard backed chair
A smile on his face, his beautiful face,
That charmed me, always unfair

I stood without knowing what to say
Except to ask his name
Love, he told me, for so long he knocked
On my door, shut out again
And again and again.

Pullman's alethiometer - an advocate for determinism?

Re-reading through an article for my extended project the idea flashed through my head like some kind of crazy flashy thing.

I didn't quite yell "eureka!"

I did decide to publish it in my blog.

In His Dark Materials, Lyra's alethiometer is a truth device telling her all that is happening in the present. It is powered by Dust, this giving me the following idea. Dust to Pullman's Church is Original Sin, but to the narrative voice and outsiders to the Church it is experience and wisdom. We are made from it, it is our conscious and even unconscious being. Surely this Dust, which is in us and in the very fabric of Pullman's universe, is the means by which Pullman can claim that everything is determined.

Mind flashes back to rather strange super computer illustration in philosophy.

Imagine there is a supercomputer that knows all the laws of nature and knows every human action that has happened since the beginning of time. In other words, imagine a machine with the mind of God. If you asked it what would happen in the future it would collect together all this information to form a cause which in turn would result in one unique effect that forms our future. The future is closed and cannot be otherwise.

Does this ring a bell? Liken the supercomputer to Lyra's alethiometer. The alethiometer contains the substance which is the essence of human experience and the nature that surrounds it. When Lyra asks it a question it can only ever give one answer, regardless of how cryptic it may be.

The only question in my mind now is why Lyra never asks the alethiometer about the distant future.

Maybe she, like the rest of us, didn't really want to let go of her fond attachment to what Pullman may call an illusion: freewill.

Just a thought, or two...

I had the most peculiar feeling walking down my well-trodden route into town. The feeling that once I had been a complete stranger to this land. I remember the first time I set foot in Cambridge city centre nearly two years ago down Emmanuel Street.

The first things that came to my ears were the melodious shoutings of "Annnnybody like a Big Issue?" (the staples come for free don't you know, it's multi-purpose...in the worst case scenario it can be used as a substitute for a handkerchief or toilet paper; preferably not both). Maybe it wasn't going to be so different from Birmingham after all. Then again, I decided to be as melancholy as possible. It was small, and it wasn't familiar and I was with my parents. Being 15 that was justification enough.

I never comprehended the move until it actually happened. I remember the weird transition moments when I knew that I would no longer see my friends at Church every Sunday, that I would no longer reminisce about the plastic sword fights every Saturday at orchestra. It was the small things that I appreciated at the end of the day - when two guys brought me a cake and stuck as many candles in it as possible and lit them all while it was balanced precariously in its flimsy cardboard box. The plastic swords made my last day there memorable.

But my last day altogether in Birmingham was lonely. I look back and chuckle to myself as I remember sitting on the work surface in the kitchen, snuffling from a cold and being told by a removals man that I had a "pretty smile". Disturbing at the time, if not a little sad, but evidently something to be remembered. It would have meant more from someone with a little more integrity.

And since then it's been a time of massive development. A time to grow up a little; a time to force me to be more confident and outgoing. Last year had its ups and downs, and in various ways was strange. I was acutely aware of my growing familiarity with Cambridge and began to forget to compare it to Birmingham. It's a new life, and a new life requires a new mindset. However there is one huge thing I miss. Cambridge is overtly beautiful and I take it for granted. Odd it may sound, but I enjoyed the hidden beauty my suburb had to offer. It was a nice change. Everything's too open here. It's too...taken for granted.

But I took for granted the culture available to me in Birmingham. If I'd been brought up in Cambridge I probably wouldn't be so interested in other religions. A clear memory was the Leicester trip last year in R.S. and the girls were fascinated by the rich Indian and Hindu culture that dominated the street we shopped in. I almost thought "so what?" when I realised they hadn't had the luxury of seeing such a street. In Birmingham I'd go past Stratford Road every time I wanted to go into town; where saris would be hanging in shop windows and Indian run kebab takeaways were rife. It was different to Cambridge. One of my R.S. classmates told me a few weeks ago that I was "cultured" or seemed to be so. But is not everyone cultured? We belong to a culture, whether it be financial or fashionable, musical or in the media. I was just lucky to be exposed to a variety of cultures, and to even be a relative minority within the school I went to.

And so these are just a few thoughts from my first year or so in Cambridge; many more still occurred to me and either I have forgotten them or I feel I am not in a position to disclose them because they are so personal. Either way it's been a fantastic opportunity (although I would complain about the music service, Birmingham's is clearly much better), and I wouldn't be the person I am now had I not moved. I wouldn't know all the wonderful people I know now.

Wow.

Didn't you fall in love when you were thirteen?

Or words to that effect. It was odd being asked that by someone several years my senior, although the conversation did lead to it.

We'd been discussing the representation of Christianity in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and I happened to mention that Will and Lyra fall in love at the end. He voiced his surprise while I voiced my cynicism towards two children falling for each other.

Then he asked, “Didn’t you fall in love when you were thirteen?”

That one caught me by surprise and I answered semi-truthfully when I said no. But then again all is relative isn’t it? At thirteen those kinds of feelings seem powerful and overwhelming, which convinces you of their certainty. However it’s possible that believing you are in love is all part of human development. Falling in love requires so much more than a profound admiration but at 13 it takes an extraordinarily emotionally mature child to know the fullness of being in love.

However, it is evident that both Will and Lyra have matured emotionally at a rate that far outstrips other children by their experiences chronicled throughout the trilogy. They have seen men die, come close to dying themselves and Pullman presents the contact between Pantalaimon (Lyra’s daemon) and a nameless doctor as rape. All this tragedy would force the children to respond in a manner that is uncommon even for grown men and women. They could understand what it was to be in love at a young age because they could understand how to react to something expected from someone way beyond their years.

Thinking back to the question that I was asked, it did seem odd to be asked that by someone I barely knew. I hadn’t fallen in love when I was thirteen, no, but I may have considered myself to be in love at a relatively young age. It’s partly why I often fail to take myself and others seriously at seventeen or eighteen who say they’re in love or consider thinking about being in love. At least, there are few exceptions. It’s not just a state of mind; it’s a physical and emotional connection or reaction. It’s being able to see past what you want with a person to find a route that allows you to travel alongside each other, developing and supporting each other and building character. At eighteen you’ve reached the end of childhood but still continue growing. As my companion said, you don’t realise your full identity until you’re about twenty. Does that not mean your values continue changing, so much so that the person you believed yourself to be in love with may not mean anything to you?

Maybe that's what's wrong though. Telling yourself you won't fall for somebody was almost as foolish as flinging yourself into their arms without any knowledge of who they are. It just happens. Time for a shock.

"Love recklessly, and to hell with the consequences."