Sniff

Today I have been more sniffly than a Niffler from Harry Potter. (anybody else remember the nifflers?!) There is a pile of tissues in my bin that you could burn a small child with. Oh dear, now I sound grumpy and evil! I'm not! Despite my nose, I've felt gradually better as the day's gone on. I think a packet of Percy Pigs from Marks and Spencer cheered me up (they really are EXCELLENT, aren't they!) See, just look at the photo above: I took that today at my "composing station" in my bedroom.

I've made an effort to be productive on what could have been a slug day, as I call them. I've done about 90 minutes of piano practice today (not as much as I might have liked, but I had a headache for quite a while). I've started off a rather interesting compostion for the next Aldeburgh course. It's a trio for French Horn, Violin and Piano. It really makes a difference to how I compose when I know the people who will be playing it in a few weeks!

Today I've been on Twitter a lot. My follower numbers have risen from 70 to over 100, and I have Lisa Lynch to thank for that largely. (https://twitter.com/AlrightTit) I really love Twitter, and if any of you haven't got it yet, then DO!

Other news now, and yesterday I received a lovely letter from Dr Jeremy Thurlow, of Cambridge University Faculty of Music. It was his crit on my composition that I submitted to the Cambridge Young Composer competition. I came third out of over 30 entries, which I'm chuffed with, and his comments about my piece were really nice. 

I hope to be back at College tomorrow!

Thursday

First of all, an apology. I'm just a weeny bit lazy when it comes to blogging every day presently. Actually, no I'm not - I just have to get various other things done, and various other things, as you all know, add up to a lot. I've called this post Thursday because I'm sitting here now, at my desk, and I'm thinking just what a good and varied day I had yesterday. 

Jamie and I did the best non-Aldeburgh-Young-Musician percussion jam that I've ever done today. Of course, they're great at AYM (we have worked with several world class percussionists) but it was amazing fun today. Basically, we found every single bongo, conga, tom, snare, cymbal, maraca, shaker and set of chimes that was in the Hathor Room. The number exceeds 50, when all put together. We dismantled the drum kit and placed all the pieces in an arc around us, put the smaller bongos, shakers and chimes on the side surface, then got out some big congas and put them next to the larger floor toms. Then we just had the biggest, longest drumming session ever! It was very fun, and we plan to do it every lunchtime we can. It's theraputic too.

Some chavs were being stupid outside the door of our history classroom today. Mr Dunbavan noticed. For any of you who know Mr Dunbavan, you'll know what's about to happen. We're all just sitting in class, writing about World War One naval strategies, and he strides over to the door, smashes it open, and bellows: "GO AWAY!" in the most earth-shatteringly loud voice imaginable. They didn't go away (like any sane person would) so he started chasing them down the corridor shouting at them EVEN LOUDER. When he came back into the classroom to a captive and just-slightly-terrified audience, he actually grinned, just a little bit. We all applauded loudly. It was one of those really nice moments that I will remember for a while.

Also, the dentist appointment was good, though the likelyhood is I will have braces within the next few months. In my violin lesson, I played some duets by a really interesting composer called Orlando Gibbons. Now, with a name like that, anybody would think he's an ultra-cool New Orleans Jazz guy from the 1920s. In reality, he predates Bach and even Purcell (who were born in 1685 and 1659 respectively) - see this is the kind of trivia I know! He was born in the 1580s, and wrote the most gorgeous fantasias and duets for treble viols (the predecessor of the violin). They were suprisingly modern and jazzy sounding, especially considering they were written before the invention of equal temperament.

So that was Thursday. A good day all round.

Culture

In the two days since I last posted to this blog, I have been feeling rather cultured. It's a feeling I rather like, because it's something that people think sending their children to Public School will make them. Well ha. Ha to all the snobs out there, with that pale skin, stinky perfume and constant "this person has just stepped out of a skip filled with rodents and excrement" expression etched across their comfortable, rounded faces. Ha to all the kids who have quite obviously never had to do anything for themselves except complain about the quality of the restaurant they've been dining in. Ha to the kids who have grown up in houses with more than two bedrooms, slept in rooms bigger than the instrument store cupboard at school. Because us state schoolers can be just as cultured as them - if not more so.

Yesterday I went to a fabulous piano concert, on the request (perversely) of my violin teacher. The concert was given by one Masa Tayama, who is the most awesome (in the true sense of the word) and inspiring pianist I have seen live. He opened with Mozart's 12 Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It still amazes me what a sense of humour Mozart appears to have had when you consider his somewhat tragic life. I must watch Amadeus again at some point. It's a really exciting film about Mozart, and is all about how Salieri may or may not have poisoned him... It also has quite a lot in it about his Requiem, which particularly interested me last time, before I sang it with Swavesey Community Choir last summer.

Also in the concert were pieces by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Gershwin. The Chopin pieces were heart-achingly beautiful (typical of Chopin), the Rachmaninoff was completely mad and incredibly exciting (ditto), and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue really shows of the piano in everything it does. And what a piano. A 9 foot Bösendorfer!!! Wowee! And I had a look at it properly at the end when we were getting the CD signed by Masa Tayama. The great thing about it was that it was shiny enough to give a clear reflection of Tayama's hands as he was playing, so I could see exactly what he was doing (astounding control and touch noted particularly).

And then today, I went with my parents to see Frost/Nixon at the cinema. It was a wonderful film, and I very strongly think that Frank Langella's performance as Richard Nixon deserves the Oscar it's been nominated for. But it made me feel very cultured going into Huntingdon Cineworld, standing around loads of chavs/yobs/sweaty people, then going into the most sophisticated film in the whole place. I felt suddenly extremely grateful that I've been brought up properly, that I've been lucky enough to go to the best school in the region, that I've got friends who are interested in more than the clothes I wear.

So, I'm feeling good. Will post again soon. x

Superb

Superb is a great word. It's superb in fact. I don't know why it's so underused compared to "super" which, unless you say it in a squeaky American voice resemblant of Bumper from Bambi, is nowhere near as amazing. Maybe it's not used because nobody has enough good things in their life to warrant another adjective to describe them. Well at the moment I think I just might do.

I've had the most superb day, in particular the last hour of it. I hope the person involved knows just how hard it was to do piano practice when my mind is so firmly fixed elsewhere. :D

My iPhone has been very useful recently. I have a very satisfying morning routine of getting up at 6.30, getting down for breakfast by 7, watching BBC breakfast, and using the iPhone. I like to check Twitter, Facebook and my inbox in the morning, and it's good to be able to do it from the sofa in the living room.

I'm sure I will find more to blog about very soon. Watch this space. x

Inauguration

This is my first blog post under the presidency of Barack Obama. I'm extremely pleased. It's the first inauguration that I can remember seeing in my lifetime, and I'm so pleased that America can change for the better now Bush has no control or power. Right now I'm pretty jealous of the way America has an indefinable kind of collective joy presently. The hope and triumph of Obama's victory is something that the UK could do well to relish and share in. It would be wonderful to watch an unknown rise out of the obscurity of the general public to lead Britian into a new era. But I don't think that's going to happen, at least not any time soon. Obama is just about the only beacon of light to be seen through the thick smog of the current economic downturn.

When I think about it in my head, I see Britian as depressed and grey, and America as big, bright and colourful. I don't want to emmigrate or anything - everyone I know and love is here - I just think that when I'm working I will want to travel there regularly. I think everyone should have more sun in their lives than what we get here.

The spag bol I made at school today was delicious. I made the dish simple this week because I did my showy marinated chicken breast complete with diced carrots and dauphinoise last week. I'm not very impressed with the way the food department is run. We've been given a half term to cook anything we feel like so long as we photograph two of them for coursework evidence. We don't have set times to cook, so in theory we could just take 2 weeks to cook and the other 4 to do absolutely nothing. That's why it's useful to have a cooking-mad mum - she is teaching me more about the subject than I'm learning at school. That's why I'm not going to do Food for GCSE. 

Josh is wonderful: he is typing out some science for me because I didn't take a sheet by mistake. I really value things like that, and I'll repay him very soon in some form or another. Maybe I could give him a free piano lesson! No, perhaps not. Anyway, I will find a way!

Love.

I'm just going to warn all you lovely readers that the beginning of this post contains a lot of writing that some of you may find a bit too lovey-dovey. If you don't want to read it, skip on. I don't care.

Becky is the most wonderful thing ever to have happened to the world, not least to me. I rang her today, and we had the most lovely chat ever. My life wouldn't be complete if she wasn't in it, and I can not find fault with her. I love her to bits. I just absolutely can't believe that she feels the same way about me, and wake up and go to sleep feeling like the luckiest person in the world.

Maybe you're wretching silently where you  sit now, maybe you're not. But I started this blog to write down what I was feeling, and that's what I've been feeling overwhelmingly today.

There is something strangely and yet incredibly satisfying about doing piano practice with slippers on. I did 1 hour today, which for a Monday is brilliant. Woop woop! I do at least an hour a day on weekdays and 2 hours a day at the weekend. I really have caught the practice bug. I want this distinction extremely badly. I think I will never stop grinning if I get it.

I'm going to go and watch Mock the Week on Dave with my mum now. Dad's asleep (he needs to get to bed early to get up at 4...) and I really don't know what my evenings would be like without Dave on. It's great - I can watch QI, Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You all in a row. Only I've missed QI tonight because of my compulsive blogging. Oh well! 

Extended Curriculum Day tomorrow! Something about jobs, apparently. I will let you know what it's like very soon! x

Crowds

Last night I went to see Oliver in the west end with my parents. It was, on the whole, great. The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the most renowned theatre in the world. My dad was company manager there for 4 years, so it was kind of odd for him to be going as an audience member. Rowan Atkinson was fabulous as Fagin. He got a massive cheer as he made his first appearance, and stole the show with "Reviewing the Situation." Burn Gorman (Owen Harper in Torchwood) also impressed me as the flawed and foul Bill Sikes, especially considering this is is first musical. Gwion as Oliver was as good as he could be, since Oliver as a part is a complete wet blanket. Although the title role, Oliver's only there as a pawn for all the other pieces to move around. The Artful Dodger was far more interesting to watch, and in my opinion the boy playing him had far more charisma and charm.

The only slight let-down was Jodie Prenger as Nancy. It was quite funny that in the programme there was so little to say about her past career they wrote "and in 2005 Jodie won first prize in a weight-loss competition: Britain's Biggest Loser." She wasn't appauling, but "as long as he needs me" wasn't nearly as moving as it should have been, and she actually couldn't sing the end of Oom Pa Pa. At least she didn't completely mess it up though, but my mum was saying how being inexperienced vocally means she doesn't have the stamina to carry all the big numbers off every night, which was shown pretty clearly last night. And, even funnier, they've got another actress to play Nancy for 2 nights every week, because Jodie can't manage the full 8 shows! (like everyone else can and does.)

I don't like the London commute. I don't know how Dad does it every day. Everyone is so grumpy! It was so crowded in Covent Garden tube station they had to shut the barrier so that people wouldn't start falling in front of the trains. I found an effective way of dealing with this though: When we were all crowding around, trying to get in the lifts that would take us up to ground level I started loudly and frequently mentioning the opening sequence of "Speed." (a lift gets sabotaged and almost blown up.) People gave me a wide berth from that point on. I was tired on the way home so my mum bought us some Yum Yums from M&S in King's Cross to eat on the train.

I'm looking forward very much to tonight. My friends are wonderful. I only wish Becky could come, but it's not my decision! Becky spoke to me briefly this morning. It was good to see her (her dad has a webcam) and her hair looks great. Actually, why do I always talk about Becky in the third person? She's one of only about 10 people who read this, so I'll write this too. Becky, your hair looks great! You are wonderful in every way. :D  

Izzy's been talking to me this morning too. She is an amazing person, and my longest-standing friend (11 years now!) It's good that I have such strong friends (and I think particularly of Izzy, Helen, Josh and Jamie here) to rely on. Thank you very much.

Wow, haven't I waffled! You all love it really! ;)