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Tuesday 2 November 1999
For the first time in my life, I have a green toothbrush. Feel free to nominate me for "Most Profound Opening Sentence Of Journal Entry" in the diarist.net awards. I am doing rather well financially: despite acquiring a load of groovy stoof in the last few days, the only thing I've had to pay for is a bus fare. 1. My parents brought me a t-shirt back from their holiday in Crete. 2. I went to a Stranglers concert last night. On hearing all the seats had sold out, my parents took a stand against going since they couldn't stand to stand, which I couldn't understand. I failed to convince Will that he wanted to pay fifteen pounds to see a band he'd never heard of. I didn't bother asking Marion since she took a lot of persuading before she was swayed into seeing Suede last time I wanted someone to go to a concert with. And Smill, as far as I knew, wasn't at home. But my cousins and uncle and folk were going, so I arranged to meet up with them. When I arrived, before I could get to the counter to buy a ticket, a bloke said, "Hey, want a ticket?" "Ok," said I, and attempted to give him fifteen pounds for it. But he refused to take it. "I won it in a radio competition, but don't want it," he explained. I watched people entering, and reached the conclusion that the people with a "1" at the start of their age could be counted on as many hands. There were probably more at the Northern Symphonia Concert I went to last year (well, some of the people there were over a hundred). The support act stayed true to The Laws Of First Support Bands:
There weren't a lot of people present even for the main attraction, so I stood, quite comfortably, a couple of metres from the stage. Unfortunately, I was also a couple of metres from a heauge speaker, so I was deaf in one ear for the next day. The Stranglers played for approximately three seconds. Then someone threw a glass of beer at the bass player, and he spent the next minute was spent in audible discontent while he ensured that his instrument still worked. After that, the audience got their money's worth, especially me. They played quite a few old songs which I didn't know, but that only made me want the older albums. Anyway, next acquirement: I was tempted to buy a Stranglers shirt, but the cost put me off. But my uncle got one for me. Yoj! 3. On Monday morning, the doorbell rang. "Not MORE trick or treaters!" everyone groaned. They had been laying siege on our house since Friday night. Friday's had received a load of sweets ["Some of them were bigger than me. And they had a scythe," Noj explained.] Saturday's got "Bog off, Hallowe'en's tomorrow" from my Dad. Sunday's got all the loose change in the house. [A large group of them approached as Mum and I were setting off for the concert, but to my glee, they reached the conclusion there was no one in and walked on by.] But it was only the postman, who had a package for me! A load of CDs, courtesy of my online friend AevilSteve. "Wow!" said everyone. 4. I phoned the careers centre for advice, and they told me to come for an interview at midday. So I went. In nearly an hour, the only useful things they gave me were a UCAS form and a list of addresses of local computer dealers, but that's quite good for Cumbria Careers. After that, I had seventeen minutes before the bus left, so I looked in a few shops. The new Madness album was in Our Price, but I resisted the temptation as twas v. expensive. In WH Smith, I found The Guinness Book Of World Records and Halliwell's Film Guide, both millennium editions, which seemed like appropriate ways of getting rid of the book tokens I won at speech day. Together, they should have cost £38, but instead they were only £25. So I've still got £25 worth of book tokens left. One of the most shocking statistics in The Guinness Book was that the 110 titles in R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps" series have sold 220 million copies worldwide. So two million geens have bought "Piano Lessons Can Be Murder"? Ayp. The second title ["Say Cheese And Die"] was rather groovy, I'll admit, but after that they went waaaaaaay downhill. Not that I'd know or anything. Anyway, I was reading the advice about how to set a record. "What could I do?" I wondered. Start a collection was something they recommended, but that was something I really did not want to hear. For the last three years, I've collected Smartie tops, empty ink cartridges and biros that no longer work, but two days ago, I was tidying my room (unfortunately it looks a lot messier than it did to start with) and decided to throw them all away. Gah. 11 November 1999 I have become a regular at The UCAS Website. I walk in and everyone knows my name. The bartender knows exactly what I want (the course of my dreams), and if you ask me what the thirty seventh listing in a search for HND courses in Papier Mache in Wales, Humberside and the Northwest, I can tell you. The UCAS Website, for the unenlightened, is the website belonging to UCAS. I have no idea what UCAS stands for (although I have reason to believe it's "Urgh! Courses! Arg! Smink!"), but they're the people you send money to in return for eight hundred leaflets about student railcards and bank accounts. Oh yes, and they deal with your university applications as well. Clear? Foggy? 5/8 Visibility? Whichever, their website lists every Further Education Course Type Thing available in the UK. And I must have been there a hundred times in the last few days. I'd do a search for a certain subject, get a list of courses, spot one that looked vaguely interesting, then go to the relevant university website to find out more details. Then repeat the process ad nauseam. And I stiiiiiiiill haven't found what I'm looking for! The situation is this:
I initially assumed that I'd apply to do Computer Science at a university with a chocolate machine, a longer term and a reasonably sized workload. Whenever anyone asked, "Do you still want to do Computing?" I replied, "I can't think of anything else." But then Mum asked me what I liked doing. I answered, "Writing stories, listening to music, eating Yorkie Bars, talking on the phone and Internet, reading, watching films, solving interesting mathematical puzzles and typing." (In that order.) This is mind, Computer Science didn't look like the ideal course. Theoretically, it matches my abilities: my mathematical and linguistic capabilities, my creativity, my familiarity with computers. But it isn't calling, "Zeeeeeed! Do me!" and it never has been. Ever since I played my first computer game ("Snapper", a Pacman variation, in 1985), I've wanted the ability to write computer programs, but I've never gone out of my way to learn how to; the aforementioned interests took priority. To study Computer Science was simply a means to a good job; I was excited by the prospect of going to university, but by the non-academic aspects of student life. So, what course should I apply for? Thus far, I've considered Computer Science, Mathematics, Media Studies, Creative Arts, Writing, Film, Popular Culture, British & American Studies, English, Law, Philosophy, PPE (Philosophy, Politics & Economics) and Psychology. And in hours of surf(fer)ing, I've found exactly one course I like the sound of: BA (Hons) Scriptwriting for Film And Television at Bournemouth University. And I'm supposed to apply for six courses. You can apply for as few as you like, but six is traditional. And what if I don't like Scriptwriting? Looks like I'm going to spend tomorrow investigating Agriculture, Civil Engineering and Oceanography. I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want: to do Creative Writing. Sadly, you can only either study it at Pantsville Polytechnic that requires you to be able to write a three-word sentence to get in, or with English Literature. I thought about doing A Level English this year, and spent a while searching for correspondence courses and homeschooling information. Which sounded ok, but the prospect of studying English at university as a major subject wasn't so yojful. To make matters worse, everyone I've spoken to over the last few days is giving me conflicting advice. If that.
Director Of Studies At Cambridge: Want you back! Want you back! Want you back for good!
"God Save The Queen" by the Sex Pistols stuck in my head and I keep feeling the need to sing the line, "No future!" But not all is not bad. As of Monday, I will be a Junior Software Support Technician working 37.5 hours a week at A W Computer Solutions Ltd! Tomorrow, however, it's another day of being Office Worker At Omega Music (UK) Ltd While Anne Is Ill. So I'd better go to bed. Friday 19 November 1999 I have a problem. Apart from the obvious one (i.e. my mental health, or lack thereof.) It is Will. Awwwwww! Wooooog! Zed's got boy trouble! No I haven't. For a start, Will's a girl. He likes pop music and romantic comedies and isn't gay, so he must be one! For a finish, it's not *that* sort of problem. You see, I have decided what I want to study at university. If I can't get into Scriptwriting at Bournemouth, I intend to study Film & TV elsewhere. Never mind the fact that I watch approximately three hours of TV a year. Never mind the fact that of the 23000+ films listed in "Halliwell's Film Guide 2000" I've only seen about a hundred, and half of them in English lessons at school. It is what I want to do. Since realising this, I have had manifest weird ideas for scripts. [Aside: does a film about coming off heroin have a methadone script?] I want to write a contemporary urban tale set in the middle of the desert. I want to write a Monty Pythonic sequence (with slightly more continuity) beginning with a woman who only ever says, "Me too." I want to write about a girl who disguises herself as a boy and commits a v. aevil crime just so she can be in prison with her boyfriend. Finding the opportunity to actually write them is another matter. Finding the time to even fill in my UCAS form to apply for said courses is another matter still. Work eats my days, and in the evenings, like Sheryl Crow, all I want to do is have some fun. I wake at 7am. My mother metaphorically levers me out of bed ten minutes later. At 7.40, I set off for the bus stop. I catch the bus (with one hand) at 7.50. I read a book, since writing on a bus 1) is graffiti and 2) makes me feel sick. Arrive at 8.20. Attempt to take New Route to work. Get totally lost. Find self again. (A Moving Experience, in more than one way.) Take old route. Still arrive twenty minutes early. Play with Flash and get electric shocks off aevil binding machine. Go back into central Carlisle. Sit in comfy chair (not The Comfy Chair!) with soft cushions in Ottakers book shop for half an hour, feeling very guilty for just looking and not buying. [Started reading Harry Potter Book 3 today. Couldn't resist.] Sit on bench outside. Eat lunch and watch fingers turn to ice. Return to work. Try and work out how to use Access and write ridiculously long equations containing hundreds of parentheses. Leave at 5.30. Board bus at 5.50. Read some more. Disembark at 6.20. Get home at 6.30. Eat. Go on Net. Watch TV, which is now a highly academic pursuit. Suddenly realise it is midnight and I am going to be well tired the next morning. Go to bed. Dream about work. And so the routine begins again, at my creativity's expense. But that wasn't what I wanted to complain about. The real difficulty is, having decided to do film, in a fit of magnanimity I told Will, "You can have a part in my first film." After all, he does have a silver award in Speech & Drama. Unfortunately, he took this promise too seriously, and will probably elbow me to death if I go back on it. So I need to come up with a really pants part for him. The question is, what? I thought about making him a geen who systematically murders the Spice Girls. Except, because it would be a no-budget movie and he'd enjoy working with them too much, I'd have to use cheap replicas. Scary = me. Posh = Smill. Sporty = Roe [note: joke]. Baby = um, well, Will as well. They bear a striking resemblance, and it would be well cunning to have an actor murdering a second character played by himself. Only trouble with that line-up is, we're all way too good at singing for it to be realistic. So, what other Part Of Pants could I inflict on Will? The front? The back? The elastic? Ah, I know. I could force him play Zed's boyfriend or husband. Nihihi! Not that I'd want to act opposite him, you understand, but it would be extreme torture from his point of view- BRAINWAVE! Stage 3 of The Plan has just been conceived!
1. Write script containing v. dodgy scene.
Bwahaha! Thursday 25 November 1999 I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of the worst chat-up line known to man (men?) But, in the oxymoronic recently established tradition of Strange Things Happening, today it was spoken in the presence of Zed and Zed only: "Oh, look! It's my house! Would you like to come in for a coffee?" "No ta Kenneth," I replied. "I don't drink coffee." "Tea then?" "I don't drink that either." "Water?" Will was getting desperate at this point. "Oh, all right." How could I resist a glass of water? Ten minutes later, after watching a bit of TV, he realised the error in his ways, and that I was not, in fact, Baby Spice, but Zed Superwench. (An easy mistake to make. Well, it is if you're Will, who, like Smill, is blind. Judging by their reactions to traffic lights, anyway.) "I'd better get you home. The wind's picking up," he said. I suppose it's an original excuse, anyway. You are probably not wondering what I was doing in Will's car in the first place. However, I will tell you anyway. After work (another day of making the company's website front page with FrontPage but I'm making progress), Miss Smill picked me up in her pathetic excuse for a car. We spent the next hour buying window shopping. Then we travelled to school, to see the school play, passing an establishment called "The Millennium Restaurant". Wonder if they'll change their name to "2001: A Culinary Odyssey" or sommat when Y2K madness has ceased? We had arranged to meet Will (who has a new and funchie hairstyle) and Les (who is dead against marrying anyone called Bearn) outside the school chapel at 7.15. We were five minutes late; they were fifteen minutes late. And so, in the meantime, I was besieged by teachers, dead excited to see me. "How's Cambridge? Have you made friends? How's the course? Have you got exams? You're home early, aren't you!" Gloops. I thought the word was out. My parents told the biology teacher, who is a family friend who gives me a ten-pound Boots gift voucher every birthday and Christmas. (Although I'm pretty sure he gave me a Lego car / boat / helicopter one year, which I appreciated much more.) And he said he'd tell the relevant people. And I wrote to the headmaster re: someone writing a reference for my UCAS form. ("Thanks for your letter," he said tonight. "Quite all right," I answered.) So you would have thought he'd have mentioned it to the other teachers. But he hadn't and I hadn't the courage to tell them. The Young Enterprise company names are getting worse. I know "Wood Be Goods" was a tough act to follow (I thought of it), but last year's called themselves the oh-so-imaginative "Picture This" (they sold picture frames). This year's geens have taken the pretty word option: Synthesis. They were selling cushions outside the school chapel: a very good idea, since the pews in there were well 'ard. Wouldn't get into a fight with one of them if I were . . . me. But, owing to lack of mutual finance, us four Old Boy/Girls spent the majority of the play (Murder In The Cathedral) thinking about our behinds. Since the play was not, as the title suggests, written by Agatha Christie but T.S. Eliot, it proved a bit hard to follow. Two of us (Smill and myself, who took scientific A Levels) are relatively lacking in knowledge of T. S. Eliot although I'm familiar with Mr Prufrock's ballad, and our religion teacher read us "The Journey Of The Magi" in a Religion lesson in January 1998. The other two did English A Level, and have had enough T. S. Eliot to last them a lifetime. Nevertheless, twas dead well acted. And of course, afterwards, we all told the English teacher that we'd understood it perfectly.
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