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60 Years of 'Monarching'

Two posts in two days? Blasphemy!

The thing is, it's come to my attention that my blog has not just been read by people in Britain. Oh no, other countries have briefly looked at it too. So I thought, well, for the benefit of them, shouldn't I explain something English? 

Well, other countries, over the past few days (2-5th of June) HM Queen Elizabeth II has been celebrating 60 years of being the monarch of 16 states known as the Commonwealth. This, my foreign friends, is known as the Diamon Jubilee. And it basically constitutes for lots of flag waving, street partying and telly watching. Oh, and a few free days off. 

Now, our good Queen Liz was born in 1926. And at the time everyone thought it was very unlikely that she would be queen at all- so I bet those people are all feeling pretty stupid at this point. 

The word 'accession' basically means a new Sovereign is taking the throne after the death of the previous King or Queen. And loads of people come to see it, and the special person reads a declaration and takes and oath and it's all well and good. This happened to the Queen on the 6th of February 1952. This begs the question- with all this excitement going on- who was going to be celebrating Bob Marley's birthday? 

After that the Queen did a whole lot of monarching. 60 years to be exact. In which time she made lots of speeches and did lots of good things and was generally pretty awesome. Which is why over the past few days there's been concerts and flotillas (I don't know if you saw, rest of the world, but on the day of the flotilla it was absolutely weeing down which I suppose is a salute to Britain in itself.) 

However, during the concert last night Prince Philip (that's the Queen's husband for the rest of the world) was not present because he's been unwell which is a shame because it was actually a pretty good concert and the queen now has to go to the service at St Paul's Cathedral with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (for the Americans among you, that's so totes Wills and Kate) rather than with her husband. 

The concert opened with Robbie Williams and had Jessie J and Cliff Richard and Grace Jones (who hula hooped for her entire performance, hats off to her) and Elton John and lots of other people. 

Speaking of Elton John, for the entirety of his performance I couldn't get a certain thought out of my mind. 

In America, I'm led to believe they have these things called peeps. They're basically sugar, covered with more sugar, doused in sugar and on the odd occasion dipped in chocolate. Elton John, to me, looked like a melted peep playing piano. 

Can you not see the resemblance? 

I thought I'd finish off with some facts about the Queen: 

The Queen has answered around 3.5 million items of correspondence. If I were her I'd probably be sick of it by now. 

With her husband she's sent about 45,000 Christmas Cards during her reign. 

She learnt to drive in 1945.

She has 30 godchildren.

The queen currently has three corgis called Monty, Willow and Holly.

Today's song feature's Prince Harry on the tambourine! 

Please Let it Not Be Option E

Hello again, blog, how do?
I realise that it has been a while since we last spoke, but y'know what they say: if you drop something for a bit because you're doing something else then technically that's fine and should have no moral or responsibility related implications on your peace of mind. You may want to paraphrase that for future reference.

You see, quite a while ago the board of education came up with this dreadful thing known as 'end of year exams.' The way I see it is that there could be a number of different reasons for them to do this:
a) they enjoy watching teenagers suffer through the monotony and torture of revision
b) they're trying to overcome some past childhood traumas and the only way to do so is to cry out indirectly
c) they want to see how much of the stuff we've been told over the past few years has actually gone in
d) it's some form of natural selection and all those who receive bad results are going to be taken to a chamber and gassed
e) it was all a dream

It may be of your concern that I only add option e for the sake of covering all grounds and in today's world that's how all things seem to end now anyway. If you are, however, interested in this option, you should go and look at this previous post: http://anunladenswallow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/giant-horror-rabbit-at-thorpe-park.html

In other news some exciting stuff has been going on.

A few weeks ago (or last month or something) I wrote and performed a 10 minute piece on living with OCD for my drama class. My drama teacher seemed to be pleased with it (well she said a bit more than that, but with option e I don't want to get my hopes up) and asked me to perform it again for an audience of about 70 staff and students.

Following this, I was asked to perform it a third time (third time) so that it could be filmed and sent to the National Theatre. The National Theatre. At this point I honestly could no care about what happens afterwards because it's extremely unlikely they'll even message us back, but I'm still happy that it happened. I think probably the best achievement I've made over the past few weeks is managing to make 4 audience members cry with this thing. Which, admittedly, sounds slightly twisted in retrospect....

So now I just get to spend the rest of this week off school relaxing and enjoying mys-

Oh. Exams in a week?

You sure?

*begrudgingly snatches revision folder from table* 


Today's song of the day is the background music for my OCD piece. It genuinely is music to cut your wrists to, so I apologise profoundly:

The Curious Incident of the Fox in the Daytime

I say curious, I mean ridiculous and morbid. If I were to sum up this afternoon's events with sound effects, I would do so like this:

'Duhduhduhduh! BEEP! Scree! Eurgh! Grruhhh... Ding! Tap Tap Tap. Ahhhhhhhhh. Oh.'
Interpret that how you will.

Today I had to venture towards the dentist to get a check up on how those bits of enamel in my mouth are doing. We were innocently driving along, listening to the wonderful 'Tied Up Too Tight' by Hard-Fi (see today's song of the day) when we see the fox.

I say the fox not a fox because this particular fox is quite well known in our household. He's got this weird gap of hair in his tail and he waltzes about like he owns the place- he literally stands in the middle of the road and just stares at you with his big foxy eyes. So I decided to name him Spartacus because apparently Spartacus was one of history's rebels, although I simply lack the conviction to look him up.

So we saw Spartacus by the side of the road, and we all look at him and recognise him and mum tries to scare him off by beeping the car's horn. Now, I'm not precisely sure why she did this, her only pretence was 'to scare him off' but I like to think it's so he doesn't hurt our cat or eat our rubbish or something.

But Spartacus doesn't stand for any of this horn beeping mallarky! How dare someone beep their horn at him! He is a champion among foxes! A foxes' fox! A fox for all foxes! A fox throughout the ages! A foxy weapon! Fox Impossible! Fox Impossible 2! Fox Redemption! The Foxinator!

Sorry... I lost my train of thought there...

Oh yes, so Spartacus decided he was going to rebel, he was going to stare that hunk of metal hurtling down the road full in the face and-

Well, the hunk of metal sort of won...

RIP Spartacus...

So then we continued to the dentist, who is pretty much up on my list of least favourite things alongside talkative hairdressers and cheesecake. My dentist has pearly whites to match Tom Cruise, looking at his teeth is like looking into the sun.  So he poked about in my mouth which I did not enjoy.

I'm not exactly sure what the moral of today's blog was. I'm not even sure why there has to be a moral.
'Don't beep at foxes and dentists just want you to have braces so they can buy a bigger boat'? 
Somebody write that down! Make it into the 11th commandment or etch it onto somebody's grave or something!

I hope you all have a good rest-of-the-week!

In memory of Spartacus, today's song of the day is:

A Scientific Study into Baboons and Teenage Boys

I'm not exactly sure why I have chosen this as today's blog topic, but I'm going to go for it anyway.

Every single day during the school week, I get the bus. The school bus. It caters for my school (an all girls) and a nearby all lads school. The thing that I find funny about all blokes schools is the fact that there is even the audacity to call them schools sometimes. Sure, there's the odd exception, but judging by observation (as that is the most scientific way to do things) most of the guys who go to that school are just baboons in uniforms.

I make my case thus:
Although baboons are mostly vegetarian, they are very opportunistic eaters. They'll eat anything from leaves to insects to fish to small mammals. This is highly comparable with the lads who get my bus. If you handed one of the 'boys' at the back a handful of rat droppings on the premise of 'hey, they could be raisins, and I'll give you a couple of quid' odds are that they'll knock those babies back without a second thought. Teenage boys will eat anything, I have observed this in my own home by watching my older brother graze solidly on the contents of the cupboard in which we keep cake decorations, chopped nuts and spices.

Baboons live in hierarchical groups. It won't come as a surprise when I say that this also applies to the blokes on this school bus.


There's lead idiot- he's the tall one who looks like he spends longer than I do on my hair, yet if at any point anyone questioned his sexuality he'd say something rude and laugh.










Then there's his second in command idiot- this is usually the most idiotic idiot of the idiots. He looks like someone's taken a spade to his face and in the process has caused some serious brain damage.









Then there's the lower idiots, the omega idiots, they basically just laugh along with whatever the others do and make generally sexist comments.





Perhaps the main similarity would be the following information I found on a wildlife website. It states that baboons use vocal expressions extensively. They make grunts, barks and screams- and obviously these are not intelligible to us, which is appropriate as sometimes I wonder if the boys on my bus are even capable of speaking English themselves. I think the only time I've understood them was when they were either a) threatening the younger idiots at the front of the bus with physical violence, or b) discussing sexual positions. I have wondered though, what they mean, and so have imagined a short transcription:

Lead Idiot: Urghha ka! Oocha, oocha, oocha screep! Garumph urk urk ooo!(Look everyone! I can fit my whole foot in my mouth! Are you not impressed seeing as I seem to be talentless in every other field excluding sports, but exceptionally with women?)
Second in Command Idiot: Corugh oocha oocha wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! (That's an amazing feat you're performing there!)
Omega Idiots: Powapowapowa wayyyyyyyy ha ha ha ha urghhh! (We agree, though only because we want to stay friends with you and are scared of being called losers!)


That's just a quick 101 for those who are not yet familiar with teenage boy bus conduct. Moving on, during my study, I came across one difference: baboons reach sexual maturity at 5 to 8 years- it's going to take a hell of a lot longer for the boys on my bus.

Kindly remember that this is all meant jokingly. Of course the lads on my bus aren't really like baboons.

Oh no, they're much worse.

Today's song!

Make A Stranger Smile

Sometimes I find the best way to make yourself smile is to make a stranger smile.
It is for this reason that today's blog contains sugar sachets, an envelope and a sunshine.

I was inspired today by the wonderful Keri Smith (http://www.kerismith.com/) to be a bit creative. So I went to an art gallery, and thought about what I could do to make a stranger smile. Strangers are just ordinary people, like you or I, but there is one thing that separates us- we haven't spoken. We haven't made human contact or interaction. Isn't it a shame that there are so many brilliant people in the world with so many stories to tell and personal quirks that we just let pass us by?

So I was in the cafe, and I had armed myself with several printed pieces of paper- each sporting a cheerful message that looked like this:

(So kind of like cute Ransom Notes?)

And because on some days all it takes to cheer someone up (aka make a stranger smile) is some kind words printed on a little slip of paper that they can keep, or leave or throw away in anger.

I've decided to post them around places, leave them for people to find and just generally try to spread a little cheer. (Of course some of them depend on the reader actually wearing a hat- I'm sort of taking it as a given that they're wearing shoes).

I started with the sugar sachets in the art gallery:

in the hope that someone would look outside and agree.











I like doing little creative things like this. I've got a sketchbook which has pages which look like this:

<An envelope for 'found things'







and...

<I must have doodled this sun about twenty times on a scrap piece of paper before finally deciding to paint it- I'm not sure if I was practising or procrastinating.















In the spirit of the warm fuzzy feeling inside, today's song is:

The OAP Maroon 5 Appreciation Society

Today's blog takes place in a supermarket! And not in a kind of Romantic Comedy, bumping of the trolleys and picking up the same box of shredded wheat type way.

I was in TESCOs yesterday with my Dad and we were playing the 'browse the selection of rubbish CDs and make jokes about how we were definitely going to buy the Jedward album' game. This was going heartily, my dad had just pointed out One Direction's wonderful selection of tracks (coughsarcasmcough) and I was groaning for my entire generation, when suddenly, up waddles this old woman.

Now, a lot of people think I'm exaggerating when I say old. They think I mean old like my parents kind of old. The old that you use on 40th birthdays as a sort of dry joke about reaching the era that is being middle-aged. But I don't. I mean old. She had her glasses on a chain, she had a hunch- a hunch. Her hands shook when she removed them from her trolley.

I now require you to use your imagination for this situation, and whatever is typed, I may ask you to picture the voices of the certain people involved. And just for added fun, I've laid it out in script format, should any TV executives wish to make a dramatised version of this mind-boggling spectacle.

Old Woman: (elderly, shaky voice, typical of Downton Abbey') Excuse me, love (she puts her hand Dad's arm in a grandmotherly fashion) Do you know who the song 'Looks Like Jagger' is by?

Dad looks momentarily taken aback, but expertly hides a smirk and gathers himself. 


Dad: (English, middle-aged cool-Dad type voice) I think you mean 'Moves Like Jagger'?

Old Woman: Oh yes, who sings that?

I bite my lip and stare at a packet of apples in our trolley, trying not to show any emotion. Dad and I exchange looks. 


Dad: (grinning) That's by Maroon 5. (He searches the CDs, picks one out, hands it to her and points to the song on the track listing) Yes, here it is, Moves Like Jagger. (Pause) Can I ask, is it for you, or for someone else?

Old Woman: (Cool as a cucumber) Yes it's for me.  I want to Move Like Jagger. It's for my (voice lowers to a whisper, leans in to my Dad) Zumba class.

Both me and my Dad are at this point seriously trying not to laugh. 


Dad: Well I hope you enjoy it!

Old Woman: Thank you, you're a gem. I'll be flying down these aisles in no time!

Old Woman waddles off at true pensioner speed. We both watch eagerly as she turns the corner and then we burst out laughing. 


Dad: That was brilliant!

Don't you just love people? They are so fantastically barmy that you wonder how the world manages not fall into chaos. Now whether we were set up on some hidden camera show, or whether there is genuinely an OAP Maroon 5 Zumba appreciation society I'll never know. But it made me smile.

So today's song obviously is....

(and you better be picturing elderly women busting moves to it)