It's Terrifying

I have just spent the past hour researching Cambridge University. From this I have learned two things:

1. I am not a normal teenager.
2. IT'S SO SCARY.

First things first, I need to attain A's or preferably A*'s in every exam for the rest of my time in secondary school. I also need to write fantastic, provocative exams for submission to Cambridge. I need to begin reading the newspapers so that I know what's happening in the world.

Most importantly, I need to START READING. This is how I envision my interview would go in my current situation:

"Are you interested in a particular period of literature?"

"Oh, yes. I adore Victorian literature."

"Ah, Victorian! What are your thoughts on [enter the name of an obscure Victorian author]?"

"Um...what? I liked Great Expectations..."

"Right. NEEEEXT."

Terrified. I'm off to read some contemporary literature that doesn't help my case in the slightest.

Drama Drama Drama!

I had such an excellent day today. It began with Drama, in which our group is putting on an extract from Nikolai Gogol's 'The Government Inspector' for moderation. Today we sorted out our set (complete with an AMAZING door set piece) and rehearsed the first scene. I don't actually have a role in this scene (though I'm the government inspector himself in the next one - so. Many. LINES.) so I just sat around shouting 'suggestions' to people and eating sweets. It was such a wonderful rehearsal.

The rest of the day was just pleasant: Geography, English, swimming in games. After school I had another drama rehearsal, which was equally as fun as the first.

Good day. I'm incredibly tired now, however. Oh well.

An Abnormal Attraction to Japanese Authors

Have I ever talked about Haruki Murakami on this blog? Well, I adore him.

The first novel I read was 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle', which is an abstract sort of novel full of confusing symbolism, but was ultimately excellent due to its strange, wonderful characterisation and scantly elegant writing style. It also made me appreciate wells like I never had before.

Then I read 'After Dark' - 500 pages shorter, and arguably better. It was much more understandable but retained the elegant writing style and rich characters, without beginning to drag or inflict migraine. It was like a 180-page window into a square kilometer of Tokyo at night. Splendid.

Continuing my love affair with Murakami, I recently got 'Norwegian Wood' from the public library. I've been told that Murakami writes two distinct types of novel: the bizarre, otherwordly 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' variety, and the stable, flash-back type 'Norwegian Wood' variety. So far I've only read his strange novels, so I'm very excited to see what Murakami does in the real world.

Excited!

Other things to read:

• 'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo
• 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare
• 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck
• 'The Sea, The Sea' by Iris Murdoch
• 'Finding Cassie Crazy' by Jaclyn Moriarty

The last one is a silly little teen tale that I'll read when my brain is melting.

Monday

I DIDN'T POST ANYTHING YESTERDAY. The world is going to fall apart.

The laptop is about to hibernate so this is just a quick little up date.

I just watched 'The September Issue'. It was very good. I'm not sceptical on the topic of fashion, so I didn't really need persuaded to see the 'serious side' of fashion. Grace Coddington is a fantastic human being - full of romanticism and creativity. Anna Wintour is...admirable.

Must dash. Skins!

Saturday's Thoughts

Oh dear. My neurotic friend has become increasingly neurotic because I go places without him. There's a whole big story that I don't really want to tell.

It will be Sunday in thirty-one minutes! I love Sundays. They're so slow and lazy. And the best part is the Sunday Times. Style! Culture! News Review! Travel! Home! Other sections! The paper takes an absolute week to read, and I'm in love with it.

Just a small post. Goodbye Blogger.

"Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."

I've recently fallen in love with the idea of blogging - sharing yourself with the world, via the internet. It's fascinating. Snippets of somebody's life far away in another country, which give me a feeling of how...stuff is there. For this reason I'm going to make an impossible pledge to post something on my blog every single day, even if it is about three words long.

Today I got more exam results back. That's not very interesting. What is interesting is that I'm going to Belfast (the capital city of Northern Ireland) for a little shopping trip tomorrow. There is one particular shop that I must always visit when I go to Belfast: Hollister.

"But Matthew! Boring, thoughtless, prosaic people shop at Hollister! Why would you want to buy clothes from a shop as dull and uninteresting as Hollister?"

Reasons for my love of Hollister:

• IT SMELLS AMAZING. There is not a font large enough to describe that immersing scent. I am in love with it.
• The clothes are bright, nice, easy to wear and the hoodies in particular are fantastic for throwing on whenever you feel like it.
• I am completely and utterly in love with this 'SoCal' lifestyle. Yes, feel free to hate me. In fact, a little part of myself died when I typed that. I apologise. I've been told by my friends and schoolmates that nobody likes Hollister any more because everybody loved it for a month (we got the shop in November 2009, I think) and now it's just old and plain, but there's just something about it that is endlessly pleasing to me.
• The shop is heaven to me (apart from the crowds - not so pleasant). Good music, warmth, luscious smell, hot shop assistants. I even love the pretentious low lighting that so many people complain about. It's beach-y. And my favourite part is the TWIN SCREEN LIVE FEED OF MISSION BEACH. Coolest. Thing. Ever

So that's why I'm a clone.

I'm about to start reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' for my book club. My friend assures me that it is sublime. High hopes.

Introspection

After over two weeks of intermittently sitting exams and revising for them, I finally started getting some results back today. I'm doing well, as I expected. I won't say any actual statistics, but there are lots of A's and A*'s flying around. It's terribly exciting.

This next paragraph is going to sound like I'm bullied or something, which I'm not. So immediately stop thinking that. In my year group I'm famously good at English Literature and French, to the extend that my classmates will eat me alive if I do anything less than outstandingly in tests and exams. French wasn't a problem, because I got 100%.

Brief moment of ecstasy.

WHEE. YAY. YAHZAH.

It's probably important to mention that I'm also a massive braggart. Unfortunately this was cut short in French today because my perpetual linguistic rival was...somewhere else. It was therefore impossible to point out that although we both got 100% MY RESULT WAS STATISTICALLY 0.3% BETTER THAN HIS.

I'm sorry for being obsessive compulsive.

So French turned out beautifully and I will be elated if I can do that well in my GCSE in June. English, however, was another matter. In my first Language paper I got 52/60 which is probably quite good by a sane person's standards, but since I'm a crazy elitist this was not good enough, especially since my friend Ruth got FIFTY-THREE. I could bear that, but Literature was just tortuous. I got 82/105 (three shy of an A* which is unacceptable in a subject that I want to PLACE IN THE COUNTRY IN), whilst Ruth and my other friend Ben got 83. Ruth was kind - she understands my neurosis. She assured me that in the actual exam I would smite her (which in a bizarre, narcissistic way made me feel better), but Ben was merciless. It was painful.

That's really just the background to this post. I had really wanted to discuss the high standards I set for myself. Now, ordinarily, since I'm so fond of shoving words where they don't belong I would have said 'impossibly high standards' just for a little added oomph. But they're not really impossible. I have a very porous mind and I'm naturally intelligent, and I'm meeting my goals in most other subjects, so if I had bothered to do any Literature revision I definitely would have come out with a better mark. I know for a fact that Ben re-read the two set texts before our Lit exam, which would have given him the advantage, for sure.

Oh dear. I'm being insane again. Why aren't I satisfied with a good mark in Literature? Probably something about literature being my 'identity' and if I don't have my high grades I have nothing. Oh well.

I just finished reading composed entirely of diary entries and letters. It made me want to blog.