Tardis Cafe

What a week it has been. Unfortunately, due to circumstances well within my personal control, I have been unable to write anything on this tardy blog for the past few days. Only on the Friday before last were we told that all coursework must be handed in the following Tuesday. This sparked a frenzy of activity amongst the GCSE students. I have always sniggered at the people in older years who are being chased by ruthless teachers for coursework around this time of year. "It can't be that hard, why do you always leave it till the last minute?" is a frequent question on my mind. Now I know exactly the pressure these people are under.

That's not to say of course that people snigger behind my back when mad Australian Geography teachers chase me for work: they have much more obvious things to laugh at me about. Take for example the mangy locks circumnavigating my head in a drunken fashion. Jingo said to me about three weeks ago: "Gosh, you need a rather viscous trim." I replied: "Gosh? I may need a haircut Jingo, but we are not in an Enid Blyton novel you know."

Further to the point, I was in town on Saturday morning enjoying freedom from work for the first time in roughly a month. My mother and I (for she had tagged along to try and absorb some of my über-coolness) ventured into a small cafe near the Met Quarter (the apparently trendy end of town - but lacking in character) for a quiet drink and a danish pastry. This place was owned by a bald, bog-eyed, fat Italian man wearing spectacles similar to those in a 1960s Michael Caine movie. He is actually an genuine guy. He used to be the manager of Costa Coffee in Waterstones, but about a year ago he started complaining about the shit food this franchise was selling: four day old sandwiches, warm soft drinks and the most appalling Cappuchinos (I could make better coffee drinks. No really I could - I took my work experience in a café) to ever grace a chipped Costa mug and wrong sized saucer.

So instead of putting up with the customers' complaints and bad publicity, he decided to go it alone. In fact, he complained so much to the owners that he got sacked. After a bit of research and locating suppliers around his home town somewhere in the north east of Italy, he set up the cafe that I presently sat in. I had the most exquisite carbonated orange juice from a can that even had a foil seal on top so as to stop dirt getting around the rim, and subsequently down your oesophagus. It was a but pricey (95p) but I didn't pay for it anyway. What goes in must come out, so I set off the find a toilet. The Italian dude informed me that it was through the door at the back. I took his advice and swung it tenaciously open.

It was like a friggin' Tardis. I nearly wet myself. On the other side of this cheap panel door was a hair salon, in full blown Saturday trade. I stood and gawped for at least half a minute at high-rollers having cut, wash and blow and all the rest of it. Eventually someone noticed me looking bemused. A rather attractive looking hairdresser came over and asked: "Would you like to get started?" I turned and replied: "I need a piss."

"Ah, you've come from the cafe. Take the escalator up to the third floor. It's straight ahead of you from there." She turned and began stacking bottles of conditioner on a table next to me.

Slowly, I stirred back into motion and groped along the walls to the lift. I pushed the button and the doors sprang open. It was like something out of a Carlsberg advert. Inside were five identically dressed and beautiful hairdressers. I stepped inside assertively and pushed '3'. Slowly their welcoming smiles inverted themselves as their eyes were drawn to the mess sitting astride my large head. By the time I reached the third floor, I think they could smell the sweat that had quickly seeped through the layers of my clothing, and had turned to face the other direction. I disembarked quickly and sprinted through to the lavatory ahead, just as promised by the woman downstairs.

After relieving myself with rather poor accuracy, I managed to break the tap. Those crappy continental taps are obviously not built with the brutal tendencies of the average scouser in mind. As I left, a hairdresser waited patiently outside. I'm sure I heard a yelp of disgust as she entered behind me. How would you feel if there was piss all round the rim and no way of washing your hands?

Courseworkout

The onslaught has been unprecedented. We were alerted during the arduously boring morning assembly:

"But in the end... [headmaster's favourite catch-phrase to tag on to the beginning of nearly every sentence] The final deadline for all coursework is Tuesday the 27th of March. That is actually next Tuesday in fact. The final coursework deadline for 5th year students is in fact next Tuesday the 27th of March. Now, that is not long away, is it?"

"You tell me," I murmur, collecting harsh glances from the obese teaching staff, already thinking hungrily of break time.

So that's the picture people. A rather sordid picture of me locked in my bedroom all weekend listening to Dinosaur Jr (remember them?) and my Courseworkout playlist on iTunes, comprised largely of medium paced dance music to keep my fingers typing (Chemical Brothers mainly). Writing this post is actually today's break from work. On Saturday I made the dinner.

I have somehow amassed nine pieces of coursework despite taking only 8 GCSEs this year (French and Maths last year: A* oh yeah). For English we have to analyse 'An Inspector Calls A Whore' by I P Freely. In Geography its 'Examine the Urban Land Use Patterns of Liverpool'. In IT we have to design a database on Microsoft Access which seems to keep breaking and crashing and opening 20 copies for some reason. There is only one piece of software worse than that program in circulation: Windows itself. Physics involves measuring the resistance of a piece of wire (whoo!) and writing 3000 words on it (uurgh!).

In other news:

My form wins the annual house football tournament. I say my house because I just sort of stood around on the pitch in a slight daze. Jingo was worse though, he was conscious and still played crap. It was a bitter victory with 6 bookings for the other team. We scraped through though.

All Business Studies students (that's me) had to pay a "voluntary contribution" of £5 to go to the Jaguar factory (see last post). It was shit. We watched several hundred old men (and women) screwing

pieces of car together. I really couldn't tell the two genders apart some of the time.

Muscle Cramp

After along and arduous week slaving away behind a badly designed desk, I ventured in the city centre for the third Saturday in a row to purchase muscle pain relief creams and chocolate bars to rub into my tired arms and sell to friends, respectively of course.

The bus journey was surprisingly exhilarating. I must be getting too used to staring at a blank piece of paper, wondering how to start the next coursework task: anything seems exciting these days. Speaking of coursework, I scooped full marks on the first draft of my Business Studies. Jingo currently trails me by 7 marks. How I wish it was out of eight.

Tomorrow we have yet another pointless trip to the Jaguar factory at Halewood. This time it is for the everlasting benefit of the appreciative Business Studies students. We are having a talk on finance. It is sure to be exceedingly boring. If nothing else it just another way for the school to get their dirty hands on our hard begged cash. £5 just for 'the cost of transportation'. I'm not sure how much it costs to hire a 60 seater coach for three hours, but 60 students x £5 gives you £300 quid straight up. It is entirely possible for all of us to get the 80A bus down to the Speke/Halewood area for 70p a go. Despite having to stop at every bus stop in the whole of South Liverpool, I'm sure it would still be quicker. You know what these coach drivers are like. I once went somewhere with my primary school and instead of going through the Mersey tunnels under the river, he instead went the long way round (an extra 1 hour/30 miles) across Runcorn bridge. For those non-scousers out there: he was a dick OK. All that effort just to save the £1.35 toll fare. Groan. The system bites.

Enough of my pre-complaining. It hasn't actually happened yet. The day could run as smoothly as a cloud on an oil slick.
Check back later this week for a full report on the inner workings and financial accounts of the Jaguar factory.

In other news, my lemons haven't germinated yet. Damn. My life will be so much more vibrant when those lemons germinate. Now for the weather...

Home Security 101

Jingo seems rather agitated in French. He is constantly shuffling around and fiddling with the pen he just bought from me. This behavior is very unusual. We are in French for Chirst's sake. He is normally completely unconscious with boredom and ignorance at this stage of the lesson.

"Torquer!" he whispers loudly to the right of me, "I've done big shit!"
"What? You've shit yourself?" I ask, trying to hang onto the last threads of my linguistic talent (A* in GCSE) as they are blown through the open window.
"No! Even worse."
"Oh God, worse than that?"
"I've think I've left my house this morning with the bedroom window two foot open and my laptop on the table and my dad's laptop on the floor and my iPod on the...oh no I've got my iPod...but my bank details, including statements, cheque book...that's right I've got a cheque book and you haven't, ha...debit cards and other related literature with my name and address and pin numbers all over it on my window sill next to the window that's two foot wide open with easy access via wheely bin and top of the porch," he sweats.
"Whoa, that is big shit," I stare back blankly at his cringing face. And then it hits me:
"Bloody hell you retard!"

He then goes about drawing a plan with equations and diagrams about just how much shit he is in. To make matters worse, his parents can't sort it out because they are at work in London.

And so the rest of the day progresses with me trying to calm him down, constantly the agitated by the though of his neighbour and arch enemy Zong stealing all his stuff, worthless as it is. Even the fight at lunchtime did little to distract him.

So, I've decided to compile some home security tips for my clumsy friend.

1) Check all windows when you leave the house to go out. Make sure they are locked.

2) Don't leave valuables on display: either on your desk, window sill or where ever. Put it under the bed in an inconspicuous box/folder/toilet role tube.

3) Don't leave wheely bins lying around that can make a nice leg-up to a window.

4) Make sure your parents have their own set of keys.

5) Move into a respectable area.

6) Have a security alarm with a code - a code that only you know.

7) Chain your valuables to something heavy - try a Kingston security lock, most things computery have it.

8) Finally, I offer lessons in common sense, I'll give you a free 1/2 hour session.

Queen Coleen

Today, I ventured into town to purchase more stock (Blue Coat Redemption is going well). I got some kick-arse deals on Penguins and Kit Kats. Perhaps Jamie Oliver will close me down unless I start offering fruit at break and lunch. Kit Kats only have 107 calories though- it can't be all bad.

After grabbing a selection of saleable confectionary, I continued down Bold Street and arrived in some sort of ration queueing system outside Waterstones. I'm sure in the 1940s people were a lot more civilised when obtaining their daily bread. What I saw here was gangs of teenage girls squabbling over square inches of pavement, all bristling with copies of a peculiarly pink book: Coleen's Autobiography.

"Shit on a stick" I thought. It seemed that some no-mark slag had boned Wayne Rooney and now she is entitled to have her autobiography published and achieve instant national fame. I could understand the hysterics if Mr Rooney him self had visited the dump aka Liverpool to scribble more clumsily than my 6 year old brother over a chunk of paper with his ugly face printed all over it, but come on!

I asked one of the many Waterstones employees crowded around the crowd what was going on and how I was supposed to get inside. He told me Ms Rooney was performing a book signing in "this very building". I asked him what time it was starting. "Half past two," he replied. I consulted my watch: 11:15 it read. "Innit," he smiled at me again, "Most of these people have been here since ten o'clock." "Wow," I sighed and pushed myself round him and into the main foyer.

Now what I was looking for was a copy of Queen Camila by Sue Townsend. When I went inside, shelves by author from R through V had been moved to make way for Queen Coleen and an army of agitated photographers. I asked an employee if I could access the 'T' section. My request was declined. Darn.

I left in a disgruntled manner, knocking over some of the special £1 World Book Day books in protest. Outside, there were more protesters. I'm not sure if this Coleen woman regularly wears fur or something, but there were anti-animal cruelty, anti-fur and anti-footballers wives protesters all gathered round on the opposite side of the street. They were all jostling each other in the most uncivilised manner, vying to get the attention of the camera crew who seemed to be recording the whole book signing affair. Funnily enough, I haven't seen any mention of the event on the local news this evening.

After that intolerable experience, I decided on some soothing retail therapy in the form of browsing aimlessly around, and not actually buying anything, in Lewis', a huge independent department store in Liverpool. To my horror, most of the lower facade of the building had been plastered with signs proclaiming: CLOSING DOWN SALE- EVERYTHING MUST GO. For some explicable reason, I decided to enter to see if there were any bargains to be had. There were none. Instead of the racks of '99% off everything' that I wanted to see, all there was were a few ornate teapots and pointless teddy bear picture frames being mulled over by old women who smelt funny.

I sighed and departed, instead spending my hard stolen cash on an Angus Burger in Burger King. Pretty decent sandwich that.

Trash Wars - The Condom Strikes Back

To waffle on about my new television would be the hight of tedium. I will therefore refrain from a full scale invasive inundation and give you only a sprinkling of techno-babble. Instead of the dual-scarted, Freeview built-in, 26" television that I was hoping to get, we have ended up with something that ticks none of these boxes (except being a television). As mentioned in my previous post, my tight walleted parents were eyeing up a single-scarted, non-Freeview, 23" Philips in the Richer Sounds Catalogue. Thanks ever so much, Jason Richer, for stocking crap TVs at cheap prices. Sigh. Even when my step-father unwrapped it he seemed slightly surprised that it only had one scart. I won't bore you with the consequences of having only one scart. This is the iPod listening, Internet browsing, heroine taking generation - I'm sure most will be more than competent.

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be much litter around Princes' Park these days. Our clan (Jingo, Robin and I) have been out there in the wilderness collecting beer cans and Mars bar wrappers. It seems slightly odd that a chocolate covered caramel-fest of a snack bar is supposed to help you work, rest and play. How can 300% of your GDA of sugar in just four mouthfuls help you to rest? Last time I had a Mars Big One, I couldn't sleep for a week. Damn you New Order for adding Blue Monday to their latest advert.

Fun ensured however when Robin decided to climb a 30 foot high tree in the park. That's not to say he climbed up to the top; he only managed half-way, despite his monkey-like qualities. As we were leaving with our sack-fulls of trash, three ten year old kids marched over with a Rotweiler.

"Oi mate, why you'd climb that tree over here then?" the smallest belched.
After deciphering what their first message meant, Robin replied: "Because I wanted to."
"What? You're crap at climbing," he complained, surrounded by an air of arrogance, and his cronies.
"OK," Robin concluded the lengthy conversation.

We turned or backs on them and set off for the humble comforts of Robin's two pokey flats. For some reason, Jingo had the nerve to turn his head round and to take a glance at these kids. General rule of thumb: don't stare at yobs, no matter how small and young they are. What a rookie, he never lived in Tokie. This place was Robin's current 'hood and my formed 'hood. I buggered off out of Toxteth to the suburbs, after being the only one in my primary school without an ASBO at the age of ten. What he then saw made us chuckle and chortle all the way home. These kids had only made it a third of the way up the tree that Robin had failed to scale and were instead struggling up a small dead tree that was bent over so that the highest part was about a metre off the ground. Rebels.

Robin's dad then came screeching down the path towards us on his bike to embarrass his son in front of his mates with talk of private family matters seemingly regarding toothbrushes.

Back at Robin's flat, I read the sports supplement of the Guardian. Jingo shredded the rest.

I then bored the others with camera jargon whilst Jingo snapped happily away with his Canon Ixus into direct sunlight, completely disregarding my advice about the 'rule of two thirds'. What he found to photograph in Robin's bleak and untended communal garden, I'll never know.

Absence of Technology

Pip! Fssst... Oh dear, the television has just exploded. Shit. I'm gonna miss Coronation Street in half an hour. Oh wait, I just remembered, I don't watch crap telly. Phew! Still, the television going bust is not what you want in today's modern society of Hotel Babylon, Ugly Betty and Lilies (only some of these I watch by the way- my TV life is not as proactive as some). I just hope World's Wildest Police Chase videos comes out on DVD quite soon, I'll miss the last three episodes.

In my house, we don't have broadband. In my house, we don't have Sky HD. In my house, we don't even have an iPod docking station. We seem to be stuck in 2002. And that means the hurt of England's world cup catastrophe, the boredom of Ferrari dominating F1, and the pain of S-Club 7, is still rife.

After the controlled explosion that sent acrid smoke throughout the house, our beloved (actually, I hated it. It didn't have teletext) 1985 Sony Trinitron 20" television had eloped to the world of broken televisions. Otterspool waste dump, to be precise. That's right people, since last Monday, we have been crowding round a TV that predates me and scart leads. Thank God for RF adaptors.

Now however, we are all huddled around my mothers first television: a 1987 colour portable 13" Ingersol Television system! Yet again, it predates me and scart leads, and doesn't even have a remote or teletext. The origin of this TV is actually my bedroom. Losing this has the added side effects of no PS2. Sigh.

The one thing right now that I would like more than a Digital-SLR camera, the latest MacBook computer, Broadband, iPod docking station, Sky HD (with RF adaptor: Ingersol is scartless remember) or tickets to see Liverpool against Sheffield today, is a modest (not asking for much here) 26" Panasonic with double scart and built-in Freeview. Price tag: £499 ($899?). Live a little dear parents.

I'll never be as happy as this pair

In other news, the allotment season has started again. That means regular (twice weekly) trips down to our squalid patch of land to plant potatoes and chard (yuk :-§ ). My usual job is to remove chunks of broken glass that seem to mysteriously accumulate on our soil. I am convinced our neighbors sprinkle it on our plot when we're not there. Last year was just the start. Now its time for full scale mass production of oddly shaped carrots.

Break! What Break?

Although its name does not specifically imply a holiday, you would naturally assume that 'half-term' was some kind of break from the continual grind of arduous college life. Nope. Here in Liverpool, our tutors have been specifically informed by the governors of the school to lay on as much work as possible to keep our tired little minds churning away throughout the whole of February.

In reality, half-terms were designed by the government as a means of cost cutting across the country. Some distant and probably now deceased Chancellor of the Exchequer was told by the equally dead Prime Minister to save money on Education. My bet it went something like this:

"I have a cunning plan, Prime Minister," chuckled the Chancellor hysterically.
"What's that PM-wannabe?" answered the Prime Minister.
"We will send all of the children home once a term, and call it 'half-term'! That way, we can set them lots of work over the holiday. They'll still be educated to the same standard, because teachers these days are just like having none whatsoever and then we'll save a bundle of money. Less teachers to employ, less utility bills to pay, schools can be rented out for rock concerts and WI days and we'll have more money to spend on invading other countries," the Chancellor rabbled on, some drool coming from the side of his mouth.
"Brilliant, I like it Chancellor," smiled the PM.
"Now can I be Prime Minister?" he pleaded.
"No," scorned his nemesis.

So, to sum up, I have the following work to complete over the week:
Business Studies coursework (approx. 3 hours)
Business Studies exam revision (approx. 2 hours)
English essay (approx. 2 hours)
Read Of Mice and Men for English revision (approx. 2 hours)
Geography coursework- all of it! (approx. 5 hours)
Physics Challenge revision and practice papers (approx. 3 hours)
Physics coursework (approx. 2 hours)
Additional Maths revision (approx. 2 hours)
Teach myself Chemistry GCSE and complete coursework -teacher is downright lazy- (approx. 5 hours)
Biology homework and revision (approx. 2 hours)
Citizenship homework, coursework and revision (approx. 2 hours)

Total learning/revision/coursework time: 30 HOURS

Divide this by 9 days and you get 3 hours and 20 minutes of work each day. It might not sound like much when reading this. Then you have to introduce the fact that I have to collect a 6 year old brother from school each week-day (his half-term was last week) and cook the God-damn diner. It suddenly becomes a whole different affair. I have only just found enough time to write this post in between boiling potatoes and watching my sole 1/2 hour of television a day. Perhaps the tutors never considered that we might like to relax somewhat before the real manic build up to exams starts. I am dreading it. I felt completely emotionally drained last year after taking just 2 GCSEs early (French and Maths). I cannot wait until the summer, breezing down the open road - to the job centre. I still intend to continue with A-levels next year but really need a job over the summer to finance an Digital-SLR camera. We all have our financial targets. Jingo's is nearly three times mine. He is gaging for a £1,500 Apple MacBook Pro. I already have a laptop but he already has a decent camera. Does this mean he will have to work triple shifts down at the local Tesco? As long as I don't have to its fine by me.

Adverse Conditions

School's out and half term is in full swing. Yesterday, my cronies and I ventured out to the vast white expanses of Sefton Park - the largest park in the city (I think). Me, Pask, Dave and Rich met at the latter's 'cosy' house (squalid damp flat, to be precise) and busied our selves constructing spheres of ice from the frozen precipitation around us and throwing them in the direction of the other members of the congregation.

Unfortunately (possibly fortunately) Jingo and Nick couldn't make it. Nick was jetting off to some distant country to contribute to climate change and Jingo had some kind of dentist appointment. There is a 24 hour appointment reschedule allowance. Use it next time.

Then Robin, the perennially late one, arrived to a volley of flying ice smattering him in the face. He tried to retaliate but there was not much snow in the middle of the road where he was walking. That'll teach him to use the pavement. Eventually, once his face was blue and blistered he greeted the new arrived, grabbed a football and strode off towards the park, only a matter metres away. And to think that once rich, Victorian merchants and their families had the park all to them selves, surrounded as it was by lavish mansions. Now these great edify to the past have been bulldozed to make way for Richard's seventies communal commode. He even pays for his electricity by pay-as-you-go top-up card, and has Sky TV but no washing machine.

Anyway, the park was completely deserted. There was literally no-one around except our little group. That may have something to do with the fact that there was 45 degree sleet pelting into the ground at Mach 2 and it had been likewise for the past four hours. Perfect!

You may assume intentional sarcasm if you wish, but actually it was the most fun I've had since inventing sliced bread. The conditions were absolutely horrendous. We split into teams of two and three and defence seemed to consist largely of pelted muddy ice at the opposition every time they came forward with the ball. Robin correctly identified a turd in amongst all the mud and inquisitively covered it up with a large mound of snow. Richard inquisitively announced that it looked like a large penis. We all applauded his imagination.

Then in an ironic twist of fate, Robin slid in hard to get the ball, and perfectly took out the long, hard pointy thing that he had built to warn unsuspecting footballers of the dangers underneath. Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how he managed it, he avoided to get any of the excrement onto his clothing. He took it all in the back of the head instead.

Such an issue is not really something to joke about although I did enjoy a jolly good chortle while writing this. I say, steady on old chap.

All in all, it was a bloody good afternoon in the park although my right shoe was completely full of ice and grass. My body mass must have at least doubled with all the compacted snow in various pockets and up my sleeves, not to mention my saturated trousers.

To add to all the glee, only two hours before, I had successfully bartered with the woman in a camera shop and saved 1/3 of the price of a memory card for my camera. Always go to the older staff, no matter how ugly and decrepit they are. These people are more likely to be managers who will have a bit of flexibility when it comes to wheeling and dealing.

Taster Sessions

With A-Level choices imminent, our school decided to lay on some 'taster sessions' to allow the students to sample some of the subjects on offer. I haven't really got much of a clue about what I'm going to be in the future. When someone asks me "What do you want to be when your older", I reply "Undecided", and let their opinions waft over my unconscious self.

First up was Chemistry. This was one of my many considerations, albeit a more serious consideration than, say, French. As you might expect, the teacher brawled on about how Chemistry is everything and when the world ends, all the chemists will be called upon by God to join him in the garden of heaven, and all the artists and historians will rot in the cesspit of hell. Did I mention he was a psychopathic creationist - teaching a science?

Second was ICT. There are two options here, IT or Computing. IT involves the general sort of questions and applied knowledge and creating problems and solving them etc. Computing involves programming and spawns many new computer nerds into our universities every year. These are the sort of people you see in a darkened room with 4 different computer screens covered in code and binary like something out of the Matrix. Neoites I call them.

After break in which I had a sausage wrapped in a slice of toast with brown sauce that taster like hand cream, a half-hour of Geography followed. I have always liked Geography, although now it seems like we won't actually learn anything new. The tutor told us we would study plate tectonics (done in 3rd year), tourism (done in 4th year), ecosystems (also done in fourth year) and farming in the UK (just finished it last week). What he should have said was: "GCSE? You're sorted mate. Don't bother coming back."

The next session to follow was Economics. I am currently taking a Business Studies GCSE and this sort of follows on from that. What we were told was that universities favour the more traditional subjects, and Economics is apparently one of them? I though the sciences, languages, Geography, History, English and Maths were viewed as being traditional, but not Economics? The teacher told us that he teaches with great knowledge, passion and with a true love and desire for the subject. This made all the girls laugh hysterically and flutter their eyelids. He merely smiled, but with a distinct twinkle in his eye. Maybe it was the fluorescent lighting.

Finally, Physics was attended by many students. The teacher told us that he would not lie to us. He told us that half of us were probably better off walking out the door right now, waffled on about quantum theory for a bit, showed us a video on You-Tube that he downloaded about people falling off roundabouts and gave us a poorly photocopied sheet on the subject.

Bonus. Now it was time to return to our final normal lesson of the day: IT. This lesson last thing on a Friday afternoon has traditionally been a sit-off where no work is conducted whatsoever. Alas! A cruel plan to dig boredom into our small little minds. "A meeting with the deputy headmaster and careers adviser in the school chapel?" How they got permission from God to talk about money and salary in his own bloody house I'll never know. They droned on for around 40 minutes about the importance of making good combinations of choices and not just doing things because your friends are. Personally, I would be glad to get away from some of my 'friends' once in a while to avoid their persistent nagging, stabbing and crude jokes based on other people's sexuality (usually mine).

So in conclusion, not quite sure what I'm going to be doing with my time on this mottled lump of rock hurtling around the sun. Maybe I'll be a professional blogger. Or maybe I'll get a life.

Read Jingo's account of the taster sessions