More emotion.

Sorry for potentially turning you into the emotional wreck that I am today, but this is also important. And brilliantly put.

Hunting Season

Go and watch it. Please.

This is what my next short fiction piece is about, I'll post it up when I've finished it and handed it in to my tutor.

Writing

So in case y'all didn't know, I am currently at Keele University reading English with Creative Writing and I therefore do a lot of reading and writing.
Last semester for a 'Poetry through Practice' module, we were asked to write a poem per fortnight and submit them in a portfolio at the end of the module. 
This semester, I have a 'Fiction through Practice' module that requires me to write 500 words of short fiction per week, leading up to a 2,500-3,000 word short story to be handed in at the end of the module.
A few of the people on my course have been putting their work up on their blogs, so I figure I might do the same, if that's alright with you guys?
I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to comment on any of it - constructive criticism is just as good as praise people! :)
<3

N.B.
1. Reading list has been updated. Don't be disappointed in me! I know it's only another 4 or so crossed off, but I have also read: Moll Flanders, Cranford, Mrs Dalloway, (half of) The Hours, The Merchant of Venice, Oroonoko, The Measures Taken, The Island (Byron), The Island (from The Township Plays), Wuthering Heights (again -_-), and excessive amounts of poetry, all for my first semester at Uni. I finished The Tempest, which is the first play for this semester, last night. On top of all that, I have read The Mortal Instruments series up to about half way through book four, and I recently read and reviewed the manuscript of Moonfall by Vanessa Morton, which is being published soon-ish.
So please don't be disappointed in me for only crossing off another four from my reading list!! D:
2. Taking dictaphone notes from my Fiction seminar last week - seminar leader comments he keeps coming back to the idea of writing about someone who wakes up with their legs on fire.... Doubt any of us will be falling asleep in class any time soon...

'Neck nominations'

This is how my wonderful university is responding to the 'neck nomination' craze, and I think it's brilliant!

I have helped my friend Elliot do his good deed today, and I am challenging all of my gorgeous followers to have a go at this if you get nominated for a 'neck nomination'.

Spread the love :)

The Famous Brother

Unpublished post from yonks ago:
There is something very disconcerting in reading an article about one's own brother. 
For that moment, the interviewer is not only with him while I am not, but they are then more informed about his current life than I am.
When I was born, my brother was 14 years old and already a budding chef. Almost 18 years later, he is the Executive Pastry Chef et Le Bernardin in New York. Not only that, but he was recently named one of the top pastry chefs in New York. Pretty darn cool, right?
I am so, so proud of him, and so very happy for him. He truly deserves to be recognised for the hard work that he has consistently put in to every aspect of his work. But... he's my brother. And despite the many articles and interviews with him(I have officially lost count), I am still disconcerted by the way they write about the man who used to read me stories and sit me up on a chair next to him as he made his class-A meringues.
The articles are filled with delicious and beautifully presented dishes, which - despite direct experience of Laurie's creations during my childhood - continually astonish mum and I every time we see them. Not that we doubt him, but seriously, have you seen this stuff?! How does a human being do anything this cool?

But this is Laurie we are talking about. And he is the king of cool. The rest of our family are just weirdos. 

Oh balderdash.

I really am shit at this blogging deal, aren't I?

Well, fuckledoodledoo to me.

Sorry.

Sincerest apologies for all my mega-failings.

I hope y'all are enjoying life.

I will try to remember to blog soon.

Honest.

-MISSING HUSBAND-

This is one of those entirely unjust facts of life that leaves me in tears at 1.18am.

Freedom!

Greetings m'dears!
It is officially all over. I'm free of A Levels until Results day! Psychology this morning went well, and I decided the only appropriate way to celebrate would be to read - finally! I also bought two new books within 50 minutes of leaving the exam hall. Is it obvious I have been deprived?
So, updated reading list: http://littleboatfloating.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/reading-list.html because the two new books have been added to the bottom of the list, and I finished Lemony Snicket's new book within two hours this afternoon.
And yes, Snicket(/Handler) did it again. I have thoroughly enjoyed yet another of his excellently penned books, and I (for some reason quite happily) have been left with more questions than answers. Oh Lemony, what are you like :')
I honestly doubt I will ever be able to shake my love of that author.

Anyway, onto new things.
So what to do with this new freedom?
HARRY POTTER MARATHON WITH ZILLA. Yes, we are determined to keep up the tradition. Starting tomorrow, Zilla and I shall be ignoring the calls of the sunlight and closeting ourselves up with cakes and Harry Potter movies until Thursday. It is going to be heavenly.
Then a much-needed girls night with my 4 best girls, Zilla, Hannah, Sophie, and Ife, on Thursday through until Friday. It is set to be a night of films, wine, good food and laughter, and I genuinely cannot wait :') <3
And then, finally, I will be living with George in the very well furnished barn at the bottom of the main house's garden until the end of June. Then we are both staying at mine for the beginning of July until we hop off to sun, GLORIOUS SUN, in Turkey on the 13th :) <3 Very much excited to be able to spend so much time together! <3 
So far, my summer looks thoroughly superb <3
And this is without mentioning the books, baking, films, and other such fun which will be a daily pleasure :)

I hope your summer is set to be as wonderful and book-filled as this!
Enjoy the sun!
Hatter x

Education, education, education.

(This link is also at the end of the post, but if you are low on time and only have time to read one blog post about education at this time in the morning, then I'd advise you follow the link and read this girl's excellent article instead of my blog post: http://the-eleventh-blog.tumblr.com/post/52727074667/made-rebloggable-as-requested)

I'm one of the lucky ones. On Monday the 17th June 2013 I will sit my last A2 Psychology exam and thus end my A Level education. In August, on the annual day of nationwide emotional pandemonium for 18(ish) year-olds, I will receive a slip of paper determining the direction of my life for the next 3 years and thus, in all likelihood, my entire future. One of the frustratingly small yet disproportionately significant letters on that slip of paper will be my English Language and Literature grade, part of which - thankfully for me - will be based on a piece of coursework that I was able to spend 6 months working on. Fairly soon, however, this challenging but undeniably student-stress-saving method of assessment will be eliminated, as will the opportunity for the module-style of exams that I have been lucky enough to endure for at least the last 7 years of my life. Instead, the 'next generation' of student night-owls will be awake into the early hours revising everything they have learned for one topic over the course of two years, preparing to sit a single exam for each subject, which will be the culmination and measurement of their GCSE or A Level education.
Now I don't know about you, but that sounds like a hell of a stressful night to me. Since the 2nd of June I have been up until the borders of the early hours every night, revising for whichever exam loomed the next morning or in the next few days. I've had a nice 11 day gap between my last exam and Psychology on Monday, but that hasn't stopped the oppressive tide of stress heaving through my body, resulting in uncountable cups of tea per day and the apparent motivation to stay up late into the night revising for 2 hours of uncomfortable silence. I am, by my own very loose definition of the word, suffering from exam stress. And I've had my topics split into tolerable, modular chunks which make daunting subjects like Philosophy and Psychology reasonable easy to cope with. I cannot imagine surviving the kind of stress that would have been placed upon me if, on Monday, I was facing just one exam for all the psychology I had learned in the last two years. And yet, that's exactly what next year's students are going to be asked to do. And they can't just survive, they have to prosper and achieve under those conditions. They'll do it of course, because they have to, and this generation of students has learned to adapt exceptionally to the increasingly frustrating challenges thrown at them. It simply seems to me that the government's view of education is outdated and unrealistic, and putting more and more pressure on students in these ways seems demeaning, demanding and downright unethical for some. 
Now my knowledge of politics and the current affairs of the world is intimidatingly lacking, but someone much smarter and up to date than myself has written a fantastic article on this topic here. (As seen at the top of this post). The article is reasonably lengthy but definitely well worth a read if you have time. 
There is so much more that I wish I could say but the article definitely does it for me, and my bed has been calling for over 3 hours now. 
I bid you good night, dear reader, and to any fellow revision night owls or examination-bound: I salute you. Good luck.

I know, I'm awful.

Apologies for the appalling lack of activity on my blog, I am, as they say, drowning under horrific amounts of revision.
Lots has happened, too much to remember and write down in the one tiny moments that is this blog post.
7 years of education at Bishop Stopford School quite promptly ended (in such a sudden fashion that it felt almost rude), and the end of the era was celebrated at our Year 13 prom, surrounded by the crazies that I hold most dear.

 

We knew.

 

Too much pretty, I know.

 

My brother and I.

 

I will not lie about my sense of pride regarding this award, and the fact that my ass is said to rival that of Pippa Middleton.

This woman has been an absolute rock to me, and the knowledge that she will no longer be my every day is possibly one of the most terrifying aspects of the end of Bishop.

My best girls <3

My brothers <3 I did tear up at the thought of leaving these two behind.

Legendary Jasper, keeping his cool as I prove my idiocy beyond a doubt.

Look at his perfect.

Should probably marry this one.

 So there we have prom, in a rather tiny and inadequate nutshell.

In other news, I remain poor and unemployed, my A Level Exams begin on Monday, and I am losing confidence in my plan to study English with Creative Writing at Keele. Beginning to wonder what possessed me to think that was a good idea when my writing skills sit solidly at mediocre.

And yet I am ridiculously happy because George has for some unknown reason, stuck around for almost 7 months now. I love him and I am very, very grateful to call him mine. How the hell did I get this one. Seriously. How is a human being that perfect?

I shall do a better post when my exams are out of the way and I have more free time to freak out about everything.

Soon, my dears.