"Let it be me (this is not a fighting song...)"

I have had a hellishly busy day, which did however culminate in a terribly long and self-indulgent bath, so I'm feeling much more ready to face the world now. Pity I didn't feel like this at eight o'clock this morning, all things considered.

But the day did go as planned. I needed to get myself a shirt for the photograph (long story, but I no longer possess a striped shirt), arrange a mock interview, go down to the local Labour party, take Politics and Biology mocks, do a titration, hand in an essay and start my political campaign. All of these things have been done. I am tired but feeling rather pleased with myself. The Politics was a paper on presidential nomination and coalitions of the Democrats and Republicans, and I made an unholy mess of it. Ditto Ecology and the Environment. I decided to miss out a few strategic questions just for the hell of it and wished I'd revised the behaviour of saprophytes just that little bit more.

At lunch, I escaped from the horrendous school photo in enough time to go sprinting across to the Labour people and pick up the bag Claire Curtis-Thomas left for me. I didn't look inside, merely glanced at it and sprinted back again to the library. The first time I'd had to sit down all day, and there were only five minutes left of lunch. C'est la vie. I felt very short-changed for a minute and then sat down anyway.

As I did so, Miranda asked, "You know your Ninth Doctor ficathon?"

I made some vague noise designed to communicate the idea that yes, I had some vague idea of the concept while rummaging around in the bag.

"Sam wants to take part, only she says she can't because she's not a good writer, and guess what I said?"

"Beta-readers is love," I suggested, elbow-deep in VOTE LABOUR! leaflets.

"Well, she could have the Doctor and Rose on a desert island with the TARDIS double-parked..."

"...in Venice..." Sam added.

"in Venice, yeah, and they've been extradicted..."

I meant to ask them what the hell they were talking about, I really did, but that was the moment I pulled out a sheet of stickers, about five hundred posters, a lot of flyers and ten red balloons from the bag and abruptly decided I needed to stay sitting down.

Sam is the only artist of my acquaintance. Therefore I asked (read, begged) her to start thinking about a poster for me. (The Conservative ones are already up with "VOTE BETH!" and irritating me at every turn.) Once she does, I will photocopy, and if the other candidates want to follow suit, I will ensure they are charged. Anyway, I eventually went off to Chemistry trailing Miranda and a whole load of propaganda.

Chemistry was an experience all by itself. We were doing a practical today, this one involving an auto-catalysed, self-indicating hot titration of ethanedioate with manganate(VII). Amazingly, I did not make too much of a mess of it. I was just running through the manganate when Mrs Colvin wandered across and sat herself down on the bench next to me. "You naughty girl, you haven't filled that burette properly" - she gave it a miniscule tap in just the right place, and the managante began to run into the beaker - "and did you watch Doctor Who?"

"I loved it," I said, and promptly burnt my fingers on the conical flask. "There's one piece of dialogue that sold it for me. 'I'm the Doctor-'"

"-'run for your life!'" She laughed, and then shook her head as my solution turned pink. "You've overshot there. By about half a drop."

I'm going to miss Mrs Colvin. She's my favourite of the teachers I have (though I'm rather fond of all of them), and she wrote her last report for me a couple of days ago. As many of them did, she veered off the actual subject of Chemistry and wrote generally about the last seven years; she called me a true polymath, and the most interesting student she'd ever taught. I actually got sniffly.

This is the beginning of the end, I think. Five weeks of school left, and there are so many last times. Emma was telling me about how she went to Stanfield when she was four, and now she's leaving Merchants' at eighteen. The same school for fourteen years, and now it's coming to an end - it doesn't bear thinking about.

Emma also told me she'd made a decision. "You know Russell T. Davies?"

I made a noise that was supposed to indicate yes, I had an idea who he was (I was busy not-revising for my Politics at the time).

"You could do his job."

It stopped being a bad day round about then. Later, Sarah and I were planning on what superlatives to award to our various friends and acquaintances. We'd done Sarah herself (Most Likely To Succeed, I said - she wanted Most Likely To Become A Social Recluse), Fidan (Most Likely To Spontaneously Combust In Front Of The Television) and me by the time I had to run off and rejoin my campaign team. The library is to be kept non-partisan, so I hid the balloons in the porch. Tomorrow, we hit the campaign trail proper. Labour even included a guide for mock-election candidates.

Now, work. Also, Ninth Doctor ficathon! You know you want to.