So, all week I have had a dilemma: Do I, or do I not, buy myself a new laptop/netbook?

Some of you may know I have my lovely little (not really little... quite huge in laptop terms really) red Dell Inspiron 1520 . Problem is that it doesn't want to run properly a lot of the time and the battery lasts little over two minutes, and that's only if fully charged and on power-saver mode. So anyway, I thought:

Let's buy myself a new laptop, why not. I earn my money and therefore, logically, I should spend it as I please.

But, me being me and me being the way I am with money, I decided. No, actually... Can I justify this? After hours of umming and ahhing, reserving a netbook at Argos and basically torturing myself I've decided that instead of spending £300+ on a new netbook I'll instead pay £50ish on a new battery and put up with my little laptop until it dies completely. Now, let's hope that I ordered the right battery.

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Janvier

As you may have noticed, I titled this particular entry with the french for January (I mean really, it's basically the same word). I do this because my sister today found out who her french exchange is; this will be the subject of today's rant. I, because my sister wants to have her little weekend away in France with her school friends, am obliged to give up my room so that her little French friend (who I'm sure is lovely) has somewhere to sleep... Why Mollie doesn't give up her bed I don't know. When my charming Dutch friend comes over to visit I have to give up my bed for him to sleep in, I don't see Mollie sodding off and gracefully offering him her bed now do I?

- Don't get me wrong, it gives me that lovely little warm feeling in the pit of my stomach when I do nice things for people (like when I lend my friends money so they can buy lunch, or get the bus), I have no problem with the French, and I definitely have absolutely no problem with staying at my nan's for a week. But I do like my bed. I really like my bed. And I'm not keen on strangers staying in my bedroom, where all my stuff is. I especially, and this is the real problem, hate people being in my bedroom, with my stuff, when I can't see them. I get into my room with someone and when usually looking my phone, my laptop and anything like that, would be perfectly acceptable for my friends I make sure it's all locked and unaccessible when in my room... I'm not weird. I'm not. It's just that it's my space, isn't it?

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Q. How impressive is my photograph of Big Ben?

A. Not very.
However, I have a number of excuses. These are as follows:
1. I didn't actually take the photo - My friend did
2. We were on a coach
3. The coach was moving
4. It was a bit of a manic moment - We were passing it pretty quickly
And finally:
5. It's a 5 mega pixel camera

This, as you may have guessed, was my trip to London.
Now, let me explain why I was in London:
In English Lit we've been studying Othello. Othello just happens to be on at Trafalgar Studios at the moment so we (we being... Well, a lot of people) went to go and see it. Incredible. That's all I can say.... You cannot (and I am now sure of this) appreciate a Shakespearean play by reading it in a classroom. You need to see it performed to fully understand just how ingenious the writing is. It was not just the play that was brilliant though - Without the actors with their sheer brilliance and understanding of their lines, it would not have been complete. I wish I'd bought a programme so that I could mention each individually, but unfortunately I didn't buy one and so I can't. One actor from it that I do know the name of though (and I pity anyone who doesn't know this name) is Lenny Henry. He was pretty brilliant really, I thought I wouldn't be able to take him seriously, but from the moment he stepped onto the stage I forgot he was ever a comedian and instead he was (because he is real, he is...) Othello.

I was watching The One Show the other day.... Oh, how it annoyed me. Eating less meat can cut CO2 emissions? Ok, fair enough. But what was the point in telling us? Why don't we just cut out all the real problems out before we start worrying about the number of cows? Why don't we start with smaller things and then work our way up.... Why is Nick Griffin at the Cobenhagen climate talks exactly? The man doesn't believe in climate change (despite there

being increasing evidence) and he's just generally.... Eugh. He irritates me. Really does.

Alright... Rant over, will be posting more often from now on... Well... I'll try to.

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Exams...

Everyone in school everywhere knows about GCSE's. They know one day it'll be their turn, and they know that everything they do now will count towards that.

What nobody tells you is how true that really is. Teachers do, they really do, go on at you about working towards your GCSE's.... "You must take these exams seriously." and "Your entire lives will rest on these exams."... on it goes and you don't believe them the first time. Nor the second. But by the third you're really, really panicking. But really. You need every single thing you have ever learnt - Those lessons in year 1 about how to use capital letters and full stops, the lessons in year two on paragraphs, those spelling tests you used to cheat on. All of them are important.

But saying this now doesn't help the fact that in my English exam this morning I forgot paragraphs even existed. I went through my two pages of answer (Arguing that global warming is not something to worry about - I enjoy being a controversial person just for the sake of it) drawing lines where I should've started a new paragraph... I'm hoping the person who's marking my exam understands that it's meant to be indicating that there should be a paragraph and doesn't think I just decided to start sentences with "I".

Despite how appalling my exam went I was pleased to be off the school site by 11:10 and then at home by 12. To revise, of course. Well, actually, my revision plan isn't a strict one... If I'm honest it's more like a "revise what you want, when you want" sort of approach (I don't recommend this at all).

This is probably what my revision should look like:

And then here's what it really looks like...

Although, yesterday I found the most brilliant way of revising for History. My brother was off and I only had an exam yesterday morning so I was at home by 11:30, we got his Lego and, using the Lego, acted out big things in history like the causes of WW1. So, my brother had 3 Lego men, and I had the other three, and we stuck different coloured post-it-notes on them to represent the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance... I know the causes quite well now, and I think my brother now associates Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary (Now seperate - Austria & Hungary), Bosnia (Now Bosnia and Herzegovina), Serbia, Russia, France, Britain and Morocco, with Lego bricks.

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SPS

My First SPS.. Great week to start too as it didn't have to be of my face! This is one of my beloved Dr. Martens, completely ruined from two years of wearing them to school. It's not a great picture, but it's not bad.

Mum and Dad have both gone to America today and I'm incredibly jealous of the pair of them. A number of times this morning I wondered if I might be able to get to the Airport somehow and go with them, I'm sure my nan would probably die of fright if I were to go too though, and anyway, by then it was too late. It's something I've wanted to do for a while now, and no matter how many times people tell me that the clothes in America are the same as they are here, I am not convinced. On American programs their clothes are always awesome. I don't know if it's just the stylists that these actors have, but to have a decent style it's not all about the stylists, you have to have the clothes to put on in the first place. They did say they'd bring me back some shoes though, only I asked for a size smaller than I usually get. I asked for a size smaller because usually I'll wear a size 6 Converse because they're quite thin shoes and I have quite wide feet. However this means that the shoes are too long and I don't know where they end so i end up stepping on everything and tripping up stairs! Hopefully they'll fit... Otherwise sometime next week you'll be spotting a pair of X-Hi Converse on eBay "Brand New, never been worn".

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Here goes nothing...

Mum suggested I blog. She's been doing it for a year or two, blogging that is, not suggesting I blog. Mum's blog, by the way, can be found at sheapy.blogspot.com. I don't know the last time she actually wrote to it, there may be another entry coming soon though.

The weather recently is something I can't make my mind up about. It seems to be very undecided, windy but warm, sunny but cold, dark and cloudy but dry, light but wet... The possibilities are endless! It seems to me as though it can be lovely for days, lulling you into a false sense of security, waiting until you plan something, and then turning on you and doing completely the opposite. The slightest bit of sunlight and everyone runs to the shops, almost fighting over the last bag of charcoal for their BBQ. Then, as soon as everywhere's sold out, all the BBQ-planer's friends have said they'll come and it's all arranged, the weather turns. The heavens open and buckets upon buckets of water pour from the skys, wetting everything and everyone that happens to be in its way. This always happens in the holidays. I'm not saying I'm an outdoors person; I'm not. However it is nice to look out of the window at the sun and smell the BBQ's cooking. Rain's nice... It is, but that's while I'm at school, in that horrible greenhouse which they call a building. Rain's nice to watch, very intresting, more interesting than some of my lessons at least. But now, with all the revision I've got to do, I'd be pleased with a bit of rain, rather than ever changing weather.

Revsion. That's a taboo. Forbidden. Try explaining to my teachers that it's one of those things that are impossible. You sit for an hour, looking at a book, and none of it goes in. All I can remember from yesterday is that Prohibition happened in the USA and it started in 1918 and ended in... 1933?

Well that's all of my ranting for today... If I don't stop now I'll never stop. From now on maybe I'll attepmt HS:MS:HS, take a picture (after stealing my sister's camera) and then discuss that.

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