When hell freezes over.

Remember a few months ago when I was all “Whee welcome autumn yay woo dance party”?

Yeah, well let’s rewind and give that state of mind a plane ticket to hell.

It’s not even autumn yet- not properly. However, ignoring this fact, my body has clearly chosen the path of the straight, narrow and infected by cursing me with a cruddy immune system and a common cold.

In fact, that’s also something else I find annoying- it’s a common cold. Not a unique cold. Not a special cold. The Hipsters are rolling in their 100% organic cotton sheets as they realise that their immune system clearly doesn’t support their quest for individuality.

 

I’ve been back in education for eight weeks now and it sucks. My days have been a cycle of dark shadows and procrastination, eventually leading up to my exam resit next week (of which I have done no revision for, but we don’t talk about that). My skin has become paler than paper and you can see the veins in my eyelids, complete with chapped lips and a large puffy coat.

 

Male species- get in line.

 

I can’t help but feel as though this is all going to boil down to something. The twenty one hour days, the three hour naps, the fifty minutes of revising (reading fanfiction), the two minutes of brushing my hair, the hours of stressing and ranting and typing. It’s like one day I might just fall asleep and wake up five months later, refreshed and clear headed and mathematically minded.

I think there’s a phrase for that actually- hibernation. It actually sounds pretty brilliant.

There are scarves and Starbucks and stars. There is snow and silliness and foggy sighs. It snowed last night, actually, too light to settle into thick layers that compress under your boots, but it was snow nonetheless. I opened the door and shouted for my brother, savouring the startled noise and the urgency in which we ran outside. We laughed like hysterical children and rejoiced over the fact that maybe, maybe we would have a white Christmas with closed schools and twinkly lights and stupid themed films that we’ll watch because we have nothing else to do.

 

Then the snow faded, and this morning we acted as though nothing happened and looked at the green with despair. 

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Lauren.

So exactly a year ago today I met my best friend. Lemme give you a lil story;

September 26, 2010;

The Glee Cast were in London that week, and twitter went a little bit nuts. Worrying kidnap theories, sneak photos and general screaming was taking place all over my timeline. Then, but I have no idea how, Lauren popped up.

That’s what I love about twitter. It’s like an accidental blind date site. Don’t follow a person? No problem! They’ll pop up anyway and you’ll love them and then they’ll live in like a different city and they make you feel things and you want to live with them BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO MONEY AND GOD HATES YOU.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

A girl with an obnoxious glee related name and the face of Darren Criss was suddenly talking about camping out in front of Big Ben to lay in wait.

As I was innocent and didn’t suspect that this girl could be a mass murderer, I tweeted back “Genius! Fancy a tent buddy? ;)”

Ah the days when I used smiley faces. Lauren has seen the best and worst of me.

In no time she replied and within the hour we had forged a plan involving a sparkly tent, a fake passport and a suitcase. And we’ve talked every day since then.

Well, minus a few days when we were being twats.

The year has genuinely passed in a blur. She introduced me to Tom and Olivia, scary cousins with a sharp tongue and a wicked taste in hats. One loves hitler, the other loves topshop. It’s beautiful.

We formed a role play group and acted out glee scenes like knobs, and arranged to go to blackpool/London/Yorkshire and meet up. Hasn’t happened yet.

We got closer. I twisted theater tickets out of my dad’s heart and travelled down to London for four hours to see ‘Wicked’. That was also the day I saw Lauren in real life. April the 5th may the lord bless you and turn you into a public holiday.

We talked giant caterpillars and ate at subway and she was on her phone and I felt like she didn’t like me. We started sending letters after that, soppy things full of kisses and presents and drawings. She sent me her hoodie and I sent her a mockingjay pin and a packet of minstrels.

We found a social networking site a month or so before April and we’ve been on there ever since, talking as a group and picking on Tom.

The conversations on there have ranged from serious, to awkward, to arguments, and most of the time I’ve gone to bed with my stomach aching from laughter because they’re a funny bunch of sods. 

Tom went to New York once and we all recorded our voices and sent them to each other on soundcloud. He talks like the queen, I’m the farmer, Olivia is the moody teenager and Lauren is Adele. She has a tendency to put bags on her head and make beards out of bubbles, bless.

We’re talking on there right now actually. My iPod keeps alerting me every six seconds. I may have to reply soon before someone starts crying and Olivia deletes her kik account. Again.

Lauren has been tweeting me all day having vowed to announce her love for me every hour. I spent the day at school receiving texts from her. 

All in all, I can’t help but feel lucky. There are thousands of people on twitter- and I met her.

Do you know how unlikely that was? I’m just thankful. I mean yeah, about the fact that she’s not a creepy old man, but mostly because she is the best person I know. She’s been through a lot this year and I think that things are going to look up soon. They have to.

Otherwise I’m hijacking a fighter jet and bombing Essex until she walks out with her hands held up in surrender.

So. We have the same taste in shows, men, and celebrities. We’re both knobs. We’re both immature. We both love each other so much it hurts. 

This post is more serious than my other ones and sure, might not be that interesting. But this is for Lauren, and it only matters if she likes it.

So. Happy anniversary. May we be twats for the rest of out lives.

Love you.

xx

Chair legs are rather handy weapons

Brace yourself- I’m about to admit something that will shock old ladies and send kittens to suicide.

I forgot that my wordpress account existed.

Now, before you sharpen your chair legs and take out your earrings, I have legitimate reasons. Well, not exactly, but let’s just blame this whole thing on a new year at school and mind melting coursework about how breaking your nail influences art work and your view on the world. (Answer- it doesn’t.)

So. Updates on life. Get your notebooks ready.

I went to the Paralympics! Lovely atmosphere, lovely people, lovely food, lovely athletes, lovely situation, annoying old bitch who sat in front of me and told me off for kicking her chair. 

I kicked it a few more times in retaliation because I’m running for Presidency in the land of Mature Adulthood.

Also, half an hour ago I came home from watching Anna Karenina, a film which left me silently curling up in self loathing and insecurity because of Keira Knightly’s collarbones.

The story hit home a little closer than it should have (which is slightly worrying as it was about a woman who cheats on her husband and eventually goes mad), and the camera work was gorgeous. 

I might go see it again.

(Nope, it isn’t because of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s face nope no it is not.)

One can only hope that I come up with something a little more interesting in the future.

I, Novasglow, solemnly pledge to keep updating this blog even in the face of opposition, such as the foredooming school and education continuing this week.

I vow that in rain, sun, wind or snow, I shall be in my rightful place at my desk, typing away. I vow that I shall not let petty troubles of mere mortals bother me in my quest for well written words. I vow that I shall hold to these vows, and may I be struck down with a bad cold and an irregular period for three months if I stray into the paths of the unrighteous. 

So, as the trees bid a fond farewell to their fresh green leaves, the cold skies are rolling in through rough clouds and rain. Autumn is here.

Summer memories~ 

  • I stayed up past 5am and saw the sunrise. 
  • I broke my laptop and held a quiet, one person in attendance funeral service. 
  • I spent a day learning how to hem on a sowing machine. 
  • I went to the Paralympics in London and cried with 80,000 people for our country.
  • I received my GCSE results and cried by myself in the corner of my bedroom.
  • I played football with my brother in the back garden.
  • I got hit in the face by the very same football on a flight of stairs.
  • My best friend got kicked out of her house. 
  • I went below deck on a boat to offer support via text and drown my worry in three cans of fanta.
  • I sat on the floor in the Olympic park and ate chips. 
  • I complimented a wheelchair user on her hair.
  • I argued with my father.
  • I got sick of that aching spiritual hole in my chest and reconsidered rejoining my ex-religion. 
  • I saw people from my school in Co-Op and hid behind shelves.
  • I left school on the final day and felt nothing. 

There’s a stereotype about summer- mostly involving beaches and sunbathing and affairs and love and sun and open top cars and drinking and ignoring work and lazy days.

Summer can be summer without this stuff okay. Want to stay in your room for eight weeks? Whatever, have a go. Get fat. Whoo.

Roll in Autumn, and may we welcome the cloudy skies with open arms and mugs of hot chocolate.

 

Ten little moments that ruin your day.

There are hundreds of posts describing in detail how “the perfect temperature coffee cheers me right up”, and “when you find a dollar your world becomes brighter.” Therefore, I’ve decided to bring your optimism down a peg or two and reveal the top ten minor things that make my life miserable.

Here we go;

1) Those nights where you don’t want to sleep or turn off the lights, so you just sit and stare and twitch uncomfortably.

2) Coming home in the dark only to find thousands of snails having a carnival in your front garden, and you have to hop down the path and try not to kill a member of the conga line.

3) When you’ve got a perfect singing voice in your head when you’re silently miming along to a song, but the second you open your mouth birds drop dead off their branches.

4) Visiting a relatives house and making yourself a cup of tea, only to take a sip and realize it’s like the devil reincarnated into a teabag.

5) When your iPod corrupts and you haven’t backed it up for the last five years. Farewell, my secret ABBA play list.

6) Being locked in the car as your fellow passenger goes into a shop, so everyone around you instantly becomes a serial killer.

7) When you find out your hips are actually convulsive liars.

8) The strap of your bag snapping or breaking in public, so at first you have to act all “I TOTALLY MEANT FOR THAT TO HAPPEN”, before proceeding to carry it around for the rest of the day all “IT’S A FASHION STATEMENT. DO YOU NOT READ VOGUE. SIT DOWN.”

9) When you realize that Sandy from Grease had to change everything about herself to get a guy to like her, so you sit for five minutes in solemn silence.

10) Taking a photo that you think is original and artistic but then noticing at least five other people taking the exact same one as you. [Many a time have I gotten into a “My camera is bigger than yours!” argument.]

 

Shattered rainbows and burnt onions.

This morning I opened up my bank balance and died. The end.

Okay no, seriously, I opened up my bank balance and my heart did this little weak tap-dance before spluttering and laying motionless in the bottom of my rib cage.

What caused this?

 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

‘Nothing’ as in ‘There was absolutely nothing in my bank account’.
Well, not nothing. I think there was like two quid. As I was still recovering, I took these remaining pound coins and calmed myself down the only way a girl could- leaving to get a coffee.

Once hastily saying goodbye to the accountant and my dignity, I found myself sitting in a little window booth of Starbucks and nursing a small latte. Contemplating the incoming loss of house and home is a daunting, depressing state of mind. I basically sat with my head going into overdrive with worse case scenarios.

“I’ll lose my house. I’ll become homeless. I’ll have to become a prostitute. I’ve never had sex. I’ll lose my virginity to a pimp. No, more like drug addict- I’ve heard you have to work your way up the career ladder with these things. Classy. What if I get pulled into a gang. What if I have to start carrying knives. What if I accidentally kill a puppy. What if that puppy haunts me at night with gospel music and shattered rainbows. OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF.”

Then I phoned my mum and she lent me some money as long as I cooked dinner that night.

So here I am now, hiding in my old bedroom, smelling like a burnt onion as my parents sit downstairs eating burnt onions.

No puppies shall be killed tonight.

 

 

The green eyed monster in high wasted jeans.

There’s two dominant sides of the female view on fashion in Britain.

A: The sleeveless-short-shorts-rainbow-print-tie-dye-bleached-hair-skinny-legged-pretty-young-things.

And then there’s us.

B: The slightly-tubby-nun-in-the-middle-of-topshop-who’s-not-a-prude-but-defends-self-as-modest section of the population.

We parade ourselves as 60’s music lovers and Internet scrollers. Our wardrobes have at least three fandom-related tshirts, we wear flannel pyjamas or jumpsuits to bed, and own each and every cardigan we can get our hands on. Our Job Description is “Works well with people” all the while voicing aloud how much we hate everyone, even though secretly we don’t really care.

We spend our evenings considering dip-dying our hair and thinking how cool it would be to have a thigh gap or to pencil in our eyebrows, but we’re terrified that it would make us feel ‘one of the masses’. Our Spotify music sessions are permanently on ‘private’ as we listen to dubstep and house music while doing homework.

Our wardrobe is a cross between trying-too-hard-to-be-different and not-different-enough. We wear long sleeves and block colour close necks and momma’s jeans. We wear Doc Marten boots for their comfort, not for their title in the fashion world. We blush and stutter and spit when we talk too fast, and we scrape our feet across the floor. We’re ‘the quietly funny one’ in our group of friends, and we wish to go to far off places and be famous and rich but are held back by our constant comparison to fashion section A.

As we swing our shopping bags and walk out of Waitrose, our eyes wander to the girl in front of us. Rainbow tank top and short shorts and long legs and thigh gap and hair that we know is damaged beyond repair, but we feel a sudden rush of hate. In our defense, we say it’s because she looks ‘slutty’, or because her clothes are entirely too expensive. Instead, it’s a clichéd comparison. We compare our product-free hair and scuffed shoes and faded jeans and our bloody image to uphold to their careless demeanor, all the while knowing full well our ‘image’ doesn’t exist and it’s a thing we invented in our heads to act as a goal to strive towards.

The conclusion? B are always jealous of A.

On most days we’re comfortable, and that’s something we’re content with. But we read books about dancing in the rain and festivals and threesomes and we have a small ache in our chest, an ache that yearns to be these people. To be the girl who sits on the curb at 3am in the morning with mascara running down her cheeks. To be the girl sharing a tent with six of her mates in a whirl of brightly printed blankets and neon vodka. To be the girl sliding down the pole and knowing full well that all eyes are on her.

6 things you should get up off your ass and do;

  1. Dip dye your fucking hair woman. Who cares about root damage. Go Effie Trinket on your own ass and totter down the street like a stick of candyfloss on LSD.
  2. Go to Topshop and spend fifty quid on a pair of jeans with their legs cut off. Too shy to reveal your pale, bumpy legs to the world? Purchase a pair of wacky tights that cause seizures when looked upon by the naked eye.
  1. Go to a concert. Glastonbury. Glee Live. Opera in the park. Whatever. Learn how to work with a crowd and appreciate the benefits and feel of blending in and becoming something huge.
  2. Tops have progressed from worn-with-a-corset, to worn-with-a-vest, and now worn-with-a-bra. It’s remarkable. Take off your vest and show your lingerie to the world via a flimsy t-shirt. No, I am not encouraging our female population to strip naked and slut drop in the grocery store. (Though I’m not trying to discourage it. You feel the urge to flash the dead chickens in the meat aisle, then you go for it.)
  1. Take your godamn spotify off ‘private’ and take the headphones out of your ipod. Dance down the street to a tune everyone can hear, and sit at the back of the bus and grace everyone in what you think is good music. You’ll have the single mums and grannies sending you dirty looks in seconds. Interpret these as a carefully choreographed eye dance and see who keeps the beat best.
  2. Step out of thrift stores and into the world of Primark. The place is a giant girls bedroom come Christmas time. If you’ve left without a bra or a pair of false eyelashes stuck to your back without your knowing then you haven’t properly shopped and you should go back inside right now young lady.

Accept the fact that fashion is one huge stereotype. Swirls and raggy hair doesn’t have to mean that the wearer is an addict, just as much as our frumpy clothes don’t mean that we’re boring and ugly.

Now go- and be golden.

Problem child

Recently, I was approached by a teacher and called a “problem child”.

Before I go into detail, let me give you a background history.

Now, this teacher was vastly unliked by my year group in school, and the atmosphere that resulted from when she walked into a room was much like a dead turkey laying on the floor of a vegetarian cafe. Much unwanted.

She wears short skirts and clothes that are meant to be fashionable but not for her age group, and she’s the co editor of the school magazine. (Of which I am first and foremost editor. I couldn’t get rid of her; she’s the one who provides the funding.)

I’ve been late to school a lot lately. ‘Lately’ meaning ‘everyday for the past year and a half”. The best part? The fact that I get away with it. My brother was a little piano playing good kid when he was at school, and he was loved by the teachers, so his reputation rubbed a little off on me.

Not all stories have a happy ever after however, and it became clear I wasn’t like my brother at all.

He was an outgoing, loud, funny piano player. He was cool. He was talented. He didn’t believe in school jumpers and half the time didn’t know what a tie was.

Then there’s me. Short, dumpy, curly fringe and too-big mens hoodie I found on sale in Peacocks. Funny in my quietly sarcastic way and unfortunately the teachers didn’t see my witty genius or troubled soul, and failed to understand why I didn’t turn up to some lessons.

And that leads to the ‘problem child’ incident.

My grades, though reasonably the same, are thought that they could be improved. I’m hardly in school, and it’s amazing what the teachers believe so I end up sitting in the library most of the time instead of French class.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t skip because I hate the subject. French is cool, yo. Badasses speak French. Bonjour and stuff. It’s more due to the fact that I hate the people.

Reasonably nice kids, bright, opinionated, loud. Nothing wrong with that.

Judging, homophobic, gossips. Everything wrong with that.

So there I sat, skipping PE, minding my own business checking emails and playing Tetris on my phone from 1996.

In comes my PE teacher. In seconds, I’m thrown into an office. A woman walks in.

“Rachel? What’s wrong? We’re getting worried about you.”

Nothing’s the matter miss. My fingers itched. I was about to get a high score. (Tetris is as boring as sludge but hey, anything to get away.)

A few more questions were asked. Bad times at home? You can tell us. Do you want to speak to anyone?

No. I felt like firmly telling them to go ask the office staff as to why I’m late everyday, seeing as my mum likes to tell them every detail.

I used to throw up every morning before I found out I was wheat intolerant, but that as an excuse wasn’t enough apparently.

“Sorry, Rachel will be late today as she’s still in the shower and then she needs to take her vitamin E tablets and find her homework. Thank you.”

“Sorry, Rachel will be late today as she is finishing her homework after she’s puked her guts up in the sink. Thank you.”

“Sorry, Rachel will be late today as she’s been eaten by squirrels and I need to find my shotgun to chase the furry sods away from my front porch. Thank you.”

That’s when she can be bothered phoning in. Most of the time she kicks me out the door and hopes for the best.

As I sat and planned all the weird, crazy, mathematical ways I could win tetris (basically pressing the buttons faster), in storms the teacher from paragraph one.

She proceeds to inform the other teacher in front of me not to believe a word I say and eyes my hoodie and ripped sleeves with disdain. In all honesty I have that hoodie because it’s comforting, and my family can’t afford a new school jumper because the prices are so bloody high.

Then I’m branded a problem child and sent to class.

Oh. Okay then.

Not weird kid’ or ‘late kid’ or ‘ridiculously beautiful princess’. Oh no. ‘Problem child’. Like I’m about to turn and whip a knife out any second.

I genuinely regret my being late this year, and I regret not feeling stable enough to attend lessons. But a girl can only explain herself so many times.

I’m ill on mornings. I don’t like my classmates. I don’t like my school. I don’t like being split from my beloved retro phone game. Now take the message and tell your goddamn grandma so I don’t have to explain myself all over again.

Moral of this story? When wearing a hoodie, try not to look like a vandal.