Ah, my dear friend Alysa is back from Paris, where she spent a wonderful five days with her boyfriend...oh, how jealous I am! Also my other dear friend Ben "Ben G Ship" has returned from an activity holiday in the south of France, where he got to kayak down the Ardeche, or something.

Anyway, I'm knackered. It's late (23:21 according to my computer clock) and I'm tired...bah, I'm having some buddies over for breakfast tomorrow and then we're going walking, hopefully. There's quite a nice footpath near my house, called the Saxon Shoreway, and it should be lovely weather tomorrow too!

I just heard that if you have a generator and you generate too much energy to use, you can sell it to the National Grid. How exciting.

Who else likes smoked salmon? with scrambled egg? on brown bread toast? mmm, me too

Oooh you should all listen to The Now Show, on BBC Radio 4...for our international readers, a podcast is available on the website.... Haha, I'm listening to it now, it's so good!!!

Also, you should all read this article on glass, and the urban myth about it being a supercooled liquid or something...
Ben has been making me feel like I should be more intellectual and science-y, and this is something I've been thinking about for a while.

You ever heard the story that glass is actually a liquid, proven by the 'evidence' that glass in the windows of reeeeeeally old houses is thicker at the bottom than at the top?? Apparently this is actually not true; although the window panes are thicker at the bottom, this is due to the manner in which the panes were made. At the time, glass could only be made through the process of glassblowing, which involved making a bubble of glass and then cutting it and laying it flat. This always caused one edge to be thicker than the other, and for reasons of aesthetics, the glaziers would put the thicker part at the bottom, to give the window more sparkle (apparently...I don't know, do I, I'm only an unemployed ex-student!).

I think the article will explain better. Also is quite interesting!

Oh, and Clanny, the mp3 of me singing should be up soon, but my friend and I have to record some more duets, and then she's waiting on someone else to be available to sing with her...so complicated!! But be assured that I shall post as soon as the track is available.

Kisses and love and hugs xxxxxxxxx

AND THE LADY RETURNS!

How have you all been, my pretties???

I am SO sorry I haven't been posting, it's just been.... well, actually, my life has kind of caught up with me and started smacking me about a bit. So when that happens, I tend to listen (otherwise it smacks harder, owwwie).

Anyway, how have all your lives been?? Mine has been singularly ordinary, I must admit.

Since I last wrote here, I have done a few things:

a) Won an award encouraging young sopranos and tenors to join my local choir, Canterbury Choral Society (henceforth known as CCS) - I'll get £100 each year "upon completion of a successful season with the choir" which I assume just means turning up to rehearsals, singing loudly in the concerts, and NOT running-over / trying-to-sleep-with / stabbing / doing-anything-else-not-very-sociable other members of the choir

b) Applied (successfully, yay!) to university, and been accepted by the two I want to go to (Kent and Surrey, relatively local in case my dad has another illness, bah)

c) Got relatively not-rubbish grades in my January modules in Biology and Chemistry, a B and a D respectively (well... ok the Chemistry was a bit rubbish, but I only need a C to get into my Firm Conditional place at uni, so I'm not too fussed) I was amazed at my Biology though, I thought it would be much worse than a B, and a good solid B at that, none of your "2 marks off a C" stuff... SOLID.

d) Been preliminarily been offered a 7 or 8-month job at my old place of work, C&H Fabrics in Canterbury, while I'm having my gap year (yay!) - they pay quite nicely, thank you... and the manager of the store really thinks I'd be an asset to the company, even for such a short time (double yay!!)

e) Sung another solo with my singing teacher's choir, the Canterbury Singers, and been paid for it (£25 ain't no fortune, but hey, it's employment)

f) Sung in the Albert Hall with selected sopranos from CCS in the Good Friday annual performance of Handel's Messiah

g) Been a VERY VERY silly girl at a party whilst INSANELY drunk, and as a consequence had a traumatic time for a few weeks... oops

h) Realised that my incessant lack of a love life is probably down to my stupid high standards and the fact that I don't "get out there" enough... oh, and the fact that I have a chronic tendency to develop deep crushes on older, usually married, men who are in positions of power (i.e. teachers at my school, that sort of thing... I know, I'm mad!) and that these usually obscure my bloke-vision for a good few months at a time, meaning I tend not to see anyone else as attractive. Which is how apparently all men feel about me, which makes it a mutual thing.

i) Also realised that I will have to find another singing teacher in a few months, because my current teacher only works through my school and I'm leaving soon - I've found out that my piano teacher's brother gives lessons, I might make some discreet enquiries... Also my mate Zaskton (who lives near me, and has singing lessons) says she knows someone, so I'll do something about it either way.

j) Found out that The One I mentioned in my previous entry here did actually like me, but only in a quite strong platonic way... I sent him a Valentine's card (silly, silly girl) and I got a marvellously sweet text message that evening saying basically he doesn't fancy me, but he really really cares about me anyway, as a friend. Which should, by rights, have made me ecstatically happy. But strangely enough didn't. And then when he next saw me in person, he said "Please let me be your best friend?" which nearly made me cry. As if I could deny him anything! He's so marvellously lacking in confidence, it's sweet but at the same time it worries me SO much, someone's going to take advantage of him through that one day, and I will rip their balls/tits off with rusty blunt pliers washed in the blood of ill people...

On top of that, I managed to remember you lot!! It's been madcap here at MonkeyNoise Central, you know...

Love to all, toodles xxxxx

goes to me!!

I never thought I'd be this quick at starting to not care what someone thinks about me... But it, mysteriously, has happened already... Perhaps because his girlfriend (despite threatening to *ahem* "kill me"...) has not said a word to me since the beginning of term! Ha!! So she doesn't frighten me, so there is nothing to make me feel guilty for liking him... which I think might be what makes me not move on from people...

Anyway, I'm quite pleased how quickly I've stopped caring (quite so much...) about him. Unfortunately it leaves the way open for all the other guys I never got over to come flooding back into my mind, which is inconvenient to say the least. This one guy from AGES ago has lately made a huge re-appearance in my thoughts, which leads me to the unhappy conclusion that I never completely get over people. Well, it's unhappy when they never (to my knowledge) reciprocated my feelings, slightly less unhappy when they never knew I liked them in the first place. Unfortunately this guy has been "The One" for about seven years. The One I have never been able to get completely out of my head. The One I always dream about when I'm sad - dreams of him taking me away to a place where everyone has everything they could ever want, and nobody cares what you look like, or what clothes you wear, or how clever you are; dreams of him telling me he loves me, and that he wants to be with me forever and always. The One who I first saw in a concert I went to nine years ago with my Brownie troupe. I saw him in the alto section of his church choir and thought "hmm he looks nice, I wonder if he lives near me" and it turned out he did, but I thought nothing of it until Induction Day (a kind of introduction to your new secondary school) in Yr7 when I saw him again, and thought "Phwoar! He's quite attractive" and it then also turned out that we were in the same choir out of school as well! Which was quite a coincidence. We grew to be great friends, and I began to feel more than just platonic admiration for him. His father approved of me, I knew, because we (the boy and I) regularly talked on the phone and often his father would answer. One particular time, the boy told me in fits of laughter that his father thought I was "a nice, quiet girl" which is quite untrue, by any stretch of the imagination, but a lovely thing to say.
But then I made the mistake of telling my girlfriends I liked him whlist on a residential choir course. Of course, as pubescent girls are wont to do, they yelled it out of the window at him at every opportunity. Bang went our friendship. We eventually managed to tentatively rebuild it, over about 4 years, but my stupidity and lack of ability to "let sleeping dogs lie" meant that I blew it, yet again, a few years ago, and it's never been the same since. Yet now, again, I seem to be thinking "Hmmm he's looking at my legs... and there he goes again! And now he's looking up my legs to my knees... And now he's watching me... could he like me?". Why can't I let it go?

I think I could be really good for him - and he could be really really good for me. So why can't I just let him be happy and do what he wants? If he wants me, surely he knows where to find me? But then a little niggly voice in my head says "But what if he doesn't know you still like him? Maybe you should tell him again... what have you got to lose? It's not like you're that close any more, go for it... You never know!"

But I'm terrified that I do know... and that what I know isn't what I want to hear.

Other than this, I have been mostly:
Thinking about our Sixth Form Pantomime!

This is purely for those who may or may not be following the SAGA that is my feelings for a certain person.

I told him.

His girlfriend found the message.

She sent me an abusive message back.

I am now terrified that I will never find out how he feels, and find it even harder to move on than before.

And I feel more stupid than ever.

Fuck. Sorry.

It's not worth me even telling you this, but before I collapse and sob myself into a turbulent and broken sleep I want someone to know.

The guy I like - oh, fuck it, let's just call him by his name - TOM, is now going out with someone. I was too frightened to tell him how I feel, and now he's gone. What's worse is that the girl he's dating - let's call her, oh, say LAURA - has on numerous occasions in the past said she thinks he is a twat. Now I don't know if that's just LAURA-speak for "gorgeous sweet kind lovely person" but somehow I doubt it.

You see, the reasons I was worried about telling him how I feel are:

1) I thought if it turned out he felt the same way, then it wouldn't work because I'm staying in Faversham for two years while he's going to university in Cambridge.
2) I thought that it might not be something he'd like to hear, ergo I would get brushed off, maybe lose his friendship and possibly never see him again.

So I thought it was better to wait until I had prepared myself. But oh no. LAURA had to come along and force my hand. So I don't care if he's taken, I'm going to tell him how I feel. I don't think it will matter how I do it - by text, letter, voicemail message, or perhaps boiling his girlfriend in a vat of COW SOUP - because I have nothing to lose. I never thought we were that close as friends, so if I lose his friendship it's no biggie. But by doing nothing I may be missing out on a relationship that could do me and him a lot of good.

So, before I hyperventilate, tell me what the FUCK I'm supposed to do. Am I over-reacting? Because I feel about him the way I've never felt before. Ever.

Do I risk a mediocre friendship for that?

Well everyone - here's what happened at the party I was so worried about.

Before I even left I had a splitting headache. I got there are no one else I knew was there yet. I sat around waiting for an hour until some guy I vaguely know spotted me and pitied me and decided to teach me how to play poker. Then my mate arrived, rolling drunk already, and proceeded to grab me and drag me onto the dancefloor where I stayed for the whole night. ARGH my feet were killing me. Anyway I'd given the guy his present by this time, and he hugged me etc to say thanks, which made my day. Then when my mate dragged me onto the dancefloor she dragged him too, and my thought was "Oh shit, she's drunk - she's going to make us slow dance together! oh shit oh shit oh shit" but actually she just danced with both of us, which was ok - and when we were dancing, he kind of searched for my hand with his and held it for ages!

I know, reading WAAAAY too much into that. But a girl can dream, right?

Bye then xxxxxxxxxxxxx

P.S Tell me your woes! I miss the fact that my friends are all happy now, cos I used to be Lizzie, Agony Aunt Extraordinaire! Now I'm just Creepy Fatal-Attraction Style Obsessed...