"You would cry too if it happened to you!"

I overslept this morning. Hardly surprising as I couldn't sleep last night; Patrick, being punctuality itself, texted me on the stroke of midnight and after that I decided it really wasn't worth going back to bed.

But I digress. I overslept; my mother woke up too early, and she did come and see me and give me a card before disappearing back off to bed. I got the train and went to school. Hannah texted me, as did Fidan - in German! - and when I got into school, Becca was all squee-y and gave me a hug. She also gave me a gift bag, which contained an intriguing parcel wrapped in about twenty layers of tissue paper. When I finally extricated it, the present turned out to be "You May Not Tie An Alligator To A Fire Hydrant and other Dumb Laws." She remembered! I loved the book, of course; I haven't let myself read it properly yet, though, because when I do I'll probably race through it because it's just so funny.

Emma gave me the traditional Miniature Heroes, which I ladled out with a liberal hand. And they both gave me cards. Becca's read "I couldn't ask for a better friend" and then, upon opening it, "maybe a more normal one." How utterly appropriate it was amused me.

Meg, Nicola and Bev all forgot.

I went to Chemistry feeling unaccountably depressed. We were all sitting there waiting for the lesson to start, and Rola and Steph weren't there. And then, suddenly, Rola nipped across and turned out all the lights, and then they came in singing with a cake and candles! It was a fruit cake like the one I liked so much at Medlink, and they'd put seven gold candles on it, and put it on a plate with an envelope, a large Dairy Milk, a small box of Celebrations and a silver-wrapped something. I tearfully informed them all that despite everything, I do love them.

And blew out the candles, which proceeded to smoke for another hour. I opened the card, and found a pretty one with messages from all of them, including Mrs Miller - calling me "Iodo-"! - and Mrs Colvin - "To the quiz queen, who remains the only person who knows what 'tautological' means!"

And after the lesson we cut the cake into nine pieces - one for each of us, and one each for Mrs Miller and Mrs Colvin, who both apparently wanted to annoy everyone else in the staffroom - and I opened the silver-wrapped object, which turned out to be a small, rather cute teddy-bear. They'd all already named it, they informed me. Its name is, unsurprisingly, "2,2-iodochlorofluorobromobutanoic acid."

And other lessons followed. And lunch, which was a stressful affair because of certain things. In any case, Becca and co. did sing Happy Birthday to me, which was more embarrassing for them than it was for me. It was amusing. So was the first rehearsal of Daisy Pulls It Off, which came next. We were only having them rehearse the first couple of scenes, but I think we picked good people from the auditions, because they were all very good! They really were; particularly Daisy, who is Lauren Murray. I found out that she is the sister of Vicky Murray, otherwise known as Thomas's girlfriend-whom-he-is-no-longer-going-out-with. There are a lot of sisters in L4G - there's Freia, Verena's sister, and Yasmin, who is sexy_saba's sister.

Moving on from that, I did have to go to lessons again but I wasn't in the mood. For some reason Mr Evans won't stop talking about Chile and Pinochet, which is hardly uplifting lesson material, and then when I went to Biology, I ended up having to debate religion with Rice-Oxley - again! She claims that mRNA and DNA transcription are evidence for a Creator. I groaned and yelled, "There is no God!", which didn't win me any friends (nor really express my opinions on the matter) but it did make me feel better.

I got home a couple of hours ago; the house is very quiet and rather depressing. My mother's down in London, staying with Mita and Mani, getting ready for her exam in the mad panic which is her usual method of dealing with these things. She's rather occupied; so are Pedar and Dadi, although with what, I'm not sure. It's not as if they've forgotten, more as if... well, it's slipped their minds.

Still, can't complain. My friends are more important, and they remembered.

So, I'm seventeen years old. I have a few friends, a boyfriend, ten GCSEs, three thirds of my AS modules, and well, yeah. It's going okay.