October

"What happened overnight?" I asked.
"It's October," was the general consensus.

The temperature is dropping. The morning was all sparkling sunshine and jagged edges and thick fog sliced through by the sun. It was insidiously cold - it looked beautiful, and you could go out with a coat swung carelessly over your arms, but five minutes later everyone was shivering. The radiators in the common room are on now because of it. I love this time of year. From now until about Christmas, the weather is just perfect.

On to matters beside weather. The rooms in the Derby Wing were freezing today, therefore Steph took it upon herself to drag me to the kitchen and help make the tea and coffee. It was very well receieved, and for once I enjoyed the lesson (Politics). Some stuff about Blair and his speech, some things about "The man's not for turning" and some other stuff about Richard Nixon. I think I once saw a t-shirt - "I don't care that he's dead, I still want to impeach him!"

It being Thursday and my worst day of the week, I then had to go to L6 Extension Studies, "Introduction to Psychology." Today was schizophrenia, and as always happens, when they told us the list of possible symptoms, said symptoms seemed to correspond to everything I have ever felt. Delusions of persecution particularly. Anyway. This was followed by maths-for-science, which I still hate with a hatred that is clean and pure. I hate maths.

I also hate Chemistry practical. I can make more mess with 1.250g (3sf) of calcium carbonate than you would think humanly possible. Anyway. At least my titration didn't go horribly wrong this time, although I am yet to do the calculation and am absolutely sure it will all go to pot. Similarly with all my other homework, which I should actually do at some point and get my arse off the computer.

I met Danny at the station and shattered his illusions by telling him there really is no such word as "undecisive." And then went home. The day has not been interesting.

Rant, rant, rant.

You know what really, really pisses me off? In addition to the million or so things that everyone already knows about?

It's hard to explain. Oh, yes, in order to probe the depths of my deeply pissed-off psyche it is necessary to explain things. Let us begin by the fact that I was in Psychology today, and Rebecca Johnson asked me my A-level choices. I told her. She told me hers - RS, Politics and History. Call me a snob if you like - I'm fairly sure I am - but I don't think she picked those choices because of any aptitude for the study of the humanities. I think she picked them because they were easy. I have a shred of back-up for this - I went on to ask, "Only three."
"I dropped Classics on the first day," sayeth she. "I'd never have passed it."

Look, no offence to cucharita, resident classicist. No offence to purplerainbow, who is just discovering the delights of said subject. But I don't think Classics is hard. I really don't think so. I think it's extremely interesting and a way to combine literature and history and language into a seamless whole. But not hard. Maths is hard. Science is hard. History is hard. Classics is not. If you have a GCSE in it, you can do Classics A-level.

I don't like Rebecca Johnson. She's a two-faced airhead. But that's not why I'm pissed off. This rant is not aimed specifically at her, but of all the people who are similar to her. I later heard her, and someone else, moaning about some essay she hadn't done and some teacher who wouldn't give her an extension and blah, blah, blah.

You fucking lazy cow. You actually think you can just not do whatever it is and expect the whole world to be in sympathy. You're sixteen years old. You're a pretty rich bitch, with parents who are actually shelling out in excess of £10,000 per year for the privilege of Merchant Taylors' Girls School, and yet you can't get it together long enough to write a stupid fucking seven-hundred-word essay. You stupid, beyond contemptible lazy cow.

And then there's me, taking four subjects and hiding out in my father's study just so I can have enough peace and quiet to write the answer to a bloody Politics question, and Clare, taking six subjects, and Hannah overjoyed to be staying at school and so many others who are so deserving.

There are ones who are not deserving. Fucking, Dior-bag-toting, ungrateful little brats complaining that oh, I didn't get the right colour car for my birthday, and oh, I have to go to lessons now and that woman's such a bitch she actually expects me to do work, imagine, and oh, my God, shut up. Shut the fuck up. You'd think by this point they'd realise that oh, hang on, there's a real world out there, and oh, by the way, we have to fucking survive in it.

Or, on the other hand, that might not be the case. For the certain people I am talking about, their parents are... comfortable, shall we say? They don't have to survive on their own.

Other people do.