I remember, I remember...

If you've all ready read Miss Laney's most recent blog entry, you will know that we recently had our last lessons of the year. It was quite emotional, in the sense that we were doing memory prompts. The task was to write none stop for twenty minutes using the prefix 'i remember'. If I'm honest I wasn't that surprised by what I wrote - I don't have a great memory...but anyway, here's the list...

* I remember the run down double decker that passed my secondary school every day at 4:30. Better still I remember the day I discovered that it was actually the college bus I was to board for the next two years.
*I remember confusing a litre and a half for a pint and a half.
*I remember being scared to death of my English paper only to discover it was a summary of Walt Disney.
*I remember falling down the cliff at Heights of Abraham and my Mum's suggestion to smother the wound in hand soap.
*I remember going to two funerals in one week and mixing up who was in the casket.
*I remember laughing at my Dad because he sunburnt his face.
*I remember writing my first poem.
*I remember visiting my Nan's grave for the first time and getting lost in the cemetary.
*I remember when my Grandad had a stroke and I stayed over at my Nan's.
*I remember when the teenage years started at 13.
*I remember the shady kid in the playground who believed he was a distant relation of YoHans.
*I remember family barbecues.
*I remember feeling important because I knew the headteachers first name.
*I remember school assemblies and 'that weird finger syndrome' that causes everyone to talk when the projector is switched on.
*I remember when Tiddley Winks was the best thing ever.
*I remember trying to learn to ride a bike despite the fact I was bleeding profusely.
*I remember my neighbour calling me 'jelly tot'.
*I remember having my hair cut short.
*I remember pinning a picture of Captain Hook to the back of my locker.
*I remember explainig to my best friend that I was vegetarian, three days before the birthday meal at her house.
*I remember my mother putting Lindtdor hearts in my lunchbox on valentines day.
*I remember dancing to the time warp in the sixth floor corridor.
*I remember the guy who convinced everyone he was fourteenth in line to the throne of Spain.
*I remember having my belly pierced.
*I remember the love of my life.
*I remember asking a friend why the book was backwards and the condescending look on his face as he explained that it was manga.
*I remember walking into my prom, having recently been dumped.
*I remember visiting the cinema three times in the same week to see Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End.
*I remember getting tipsy on one shot of rum.
*I remember wondering where babies came from and the rage when I found out.
*I remember taking my sunday night bath early, just so I could listen to the top 40.
*I remember watching Spirited Away for the first time.
*I remember when hair transfers were cool.
*I remember wishing I was Sabrina.
*I remember reading the first line of Wuthering Heights and shoving it back on the shelf, only to learn about eight years later that I loved it.
*I remember seeing Steps at Sheffield Arena.
*I remember when PCs were the height of technology.
*I remember thinking everybody lived near a paddock.

'Strange Kind of Suicide'

I remember him standing there; blue eyes, dark hair - brooding statue of a man in front of me. Any clue of feeling, any gesture could give me away.

I hated how he watched me, expecting me to shatter. Waiting for some kind of switch to activate my emotions. A switch he believed existed in the deepest, darkest room of my soul.

I remember just the day before we laid on the grass outside the cemetery, in the shade of an enormous chestnut tree. Dreaming of the future with his head next to mine, there was a part of me that knew these were our final moments.

Taking this knowledge, I gave myself to him completely, believing that this way we could never be separated. We were fated to be apart - I knew it as well as he did - but right then, it seemed we were both oblivious.

I remember waking the next morning, proud in the knowledge I had saved us. Putting on my favourite song and turning up the volume, my heart filled with praise for whoever had given that man to me. The impending distance seemed inconsequential.

He called me some three hours later, sniffling down the phone line; despite the fact he had requested me, I couldn’t get him to speak. In the end, I requested his presence, hoping to shed light on his mystery.

So there we were, eying one other, waiting for checkmate. In the end I didn’t need him to say anything, his face said it all. Eyes, once red with wildfire lay cold and empty.

This was the moment I realised I was a murderer. Laying under that chestnut tree, I had torn his heart away, leaving him lifeless. The man I loved was dead and open-chested in front of me.

I remember giving him back his heart, wrapped in a silk handkerchief. Having won it at a fair when I was seven and treasuring it ever since, I deemed it the perfect container. Perfect for the man I shared my first dance with, tripping due to my oversized heels.

Gazing upon the bloody package, he stepped towards the door and I knew. As I slept in the grass that day he had killed me as well, kissing me softly on the cheek.

He never gave me my heart back, instead chose to keep it in a dirty tissue in the back pocket of his jeans - bleeding through for all to see.

Adorable - borderline creepy

Let it be known that I am never eating carrots again.

'Unsigned'

To everyone that knew her, Alice was the bookish type, retiring to the library after classes to catch up on her reading. Nobody at school knew much about Alice, only that her personality lay reserved to the pages of her favourite hardback and the few words she spoke outside of class were to the librarian.

For as long as she could remember, Alice had loved James - the mathematician in her class. She loved his brooding nature and passion for the subject matter, matched only by her love for fantasy. He didn’t know she existed and that was the way she liked it - from a distance she had the chance to wonder how it could be between them.

In reality, James loved only one woman and that was Jessica, whose fairy dust freckles had been the talk of the classroom since she first arrived. It would be incredibly gauche to say that Alice did not know of Jessica’s existence - rather that she ignored it.

At the back of maths class one afternoon, Alice sat scribing a letter to James. The note she sat writing told the truth of her desire - written with the same degree of bleeding affection known only to poets. During the five minute interval, she wandered over to James’ desk and slipped the note into the top cover of his exercise book - scurrying back to her own after the deed was complete.

Break soon finished and the students plodded back inside - James arriving next to last. Alice watched in silent anticipation as he seated himself and opened his exercise book, picking up the note as if contemplating whether or not he had in fact seen it before.

Alice’s heart leapt into her throat as James refolded the note and turned, though not in her direction - bringing to light Alice’s mistake in sending an unsigned love letter. He solely smiled for Jessica.

The Muse's Song (Final Version)

I listen to your heartbeat
A language long forgotten -
There is no one there when I turn.
Who woke me from my slumber?
I reach to you and you shiver in cold
As I bathe in your reflection,
Dreaming of the day
Our shadows cross
And you know me.

Nothing says birthday like TAS

It was my birthday fairly recently and even though I knew that I had friends to celebrate with, I really didn’t want to be excited.

For one, I had about three deadlines on that day - all of which were monsters of assignments. I really didn’t want to be a)working or b)handing anything in on my birthday, so I spent much of the week before at my computer screen, moaning to Laney about word count.

It was also going to be the first birthday I had spent outside of Whitters. From being a kid, my mother has always done the same thing on my birthday; arranged my cards behind the clock, decorated the front room down to balloon confetti at the breakfast table, singing happy birthday out of tune as I walked through the door.

The knowledge that she couldn’t do it this year made her extremely gloomy and throughout the week she made me promise that I would do something worthwhile. The trouble with this picture is that my idea of something worthwhile is being tucked up in bed with the latest copy of Immortal Rain, or watching 300 with my closest friends. Still, I knew deep down that I had to do something - if not for my mother, for the fact that my assignments were almost over.

It was for this reason that in the preceding hours, I spent pretty much all of my time downloading all of the abridged episodes that I could, finding that the more of them I downloaded, the more excited about my impending birthday I became.

I knew I was happy to be nineteen when I woke up at a minute past midnight to a text from Lucy, reading, ‘Happy Birthday, Olivia’, proceeding to recite the song from Madagascar. Deep down, I think I was always excited about my birthday - just didn’t know it until right then.

I didn't know you read Mill's and Boon..

If you don't understand Death Note, this may seem a little random, though hopefully you will still be able to enjoy it anyway ^^




He sits in the chair, thumb in his mouth and plate of cheesecake in his hand.
Twirling a polished silver fork, plump strawberry on the end, he rifles through the overfull pad of paper.

“Hmmm…” he murmurs. “It would appear there is a 99.2% chance this story was over the word limit and edited several times.”

Slowly the young detective slips a sheet of paper from the file while an elderly butler enters the room. The butler is pushing a trolley with a dish in the centre - it’s contents hidden by a silver lid large enough to shield a large turkey. Lifting the lid, there is only a plateful of gummy bears and several sugar cubes.

“Ryuzaaki, sir,” the butler addresses. “I brought your…”

But he is interrupted, for the detective leaps from his chair and peers deeply into his face - the sheet of paper tightly gripped between finger and thumb.

“Watari,” he says, lifting it until the small type is centimetres from both of their faces. “I have made an important breakthrough.”

Taking a sugar cube from the plate and crunching the grains, he shows the paper to Watari.

“The use of themes in this story indicate unrequited love,” he explains.

Watari is confused, his old face cannot disguise it.

“But…what does this mean, sir?”

Ryuzaaki turns and sits back in his chair, knees close to his chest and thumb tight in in his mouth. He considers an answer for some four and a half minutes.

“It means, Watari that considerable research was undertaken,” he states.

Lifting up the paper so it is in clear sight, Ryuzaaki scans a number of scribbles he has made on the paper.

“This story shows the same characteristics as many other romance stories of its kind - it is written in the third person and speaks of a love letter,” he explains. “I understand love letters are quite popular in romance fiction.”

First a face of confusion, now Watari’s face is a picture of shock.
“I did not know you read Mill’s and Boon, Ryuzaaki sir,” he comments, but gets no reply.

Lifting the plate of gummy bears, he hands it to Ryuzaaki, who takes one and chews thoughtfully.

“I feel I could understand the mind of this deviant better if it were Mill’s and
Boon,” he comments. “This story concludes in none of the regular ways. In normal romantic fiction the hero and the heroine fall in love at the end.”

His words are laced with a formation of gummy bears, shaped like a courting couple.

“And in this story…they do not?” questions Watari. He undoubtedly knows the answer all ready - but also knows that questions are the best form of developing genius.

“No,” mutters Ryuzaaki, gently laying his thumb on his bottom lip. “The heroine is rejected, for the love of another.”

Watari takes the story from Ryuzaaki and scans the paper himself. Perhaps there is a further clue - something they have missed.

“Perhaps the writer has no affection for love stories,” he suggests.

Ryuzaaki says nothing for a while and instead picks up the courting couple scene that he made, devouring the pair.

“I cannot help but wonder, Watari,” he finally says. “Why the writer chose to omit the text of the love letter. It is central to the story.”

As if in reply to this question, Watari scans the text closely. There is a hidden message there, he knows it. A message that he cannot see.

“Perhaps the writer believed the letter was not central to the text and in fact it was the effect of the note that was central,” he suggests, pointing to the end of the page. “See…it is the idea of the note as an object that causes the conclusion, rather than what is written.”

Glancing over at Ryuzaaki, he gasps inwardly; the panda faced detective has spent the interlude building a tower of sugar cubes.

“You may be right, Watari,” he answers, peering from behind. “Though I am not quite sure how it relates to the second piece of evidence.”

Watari has not been informed of this so it is new to him. Ryuzaaki also knows this, but he is too far gone in contemplation to worry.

“This poem confuses me,” he says, taking a second sheet of paper from the file and passing it to Watari, who glances over the type.

“How so, sir?” he asks, taking in the images and looking back to the detective. Ryuzaaki is chewing a stick of pocky and thoughtfully staring into space.
“This poem also speaks of unrequited love, but there is no narrator - the person speaking cannot obtain affection from a loved one because of their ambiguous nature,” he murmurs, pocky crumbs dropping to his knees. “This poem is titled ‘The Muse’s Song’ so the narrative speaker is more than likely intended to be a ghostlike creature. Perhaps the two pieces are linked.”

Watari looks back at the poem and wonders what kind of individual would write such a piece. A mad one, undoubtedly.

Taking hold of the trolley once more, he rolls out of the room - partly to ponder the circumstances of the evidence, but also to fetch Master Ryuzaaki more cheesecake. Ryuzaaki does not notice this.
“That must be it,” he mutters. “The poem must be the missing love letter, the heroine’s missing words.”

The crumbs from Ryuzaaki’s lap now sit upon a small coffee table in front, moulded into the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Hugging his knees against his chest, he stares at the keypad of a telephone on the wall, pondering the case over and over.
“Hmmmm…” he whispers, rocking slightly in his swivel chair. “My suspicions of this writer are now 99.5%.”