Education

High School diaries IV

A fierce-sounding alarm rang. I awoke from a peaceful sleep paralysed with fear and surprise, for a few seconds unsure of what had happened. The alarm continued to sound. Before long, I became annoyed by the sound of the alarm and , (grudgingly) moved gradually upwards and took a tired step out of my double bed to press the 'ALARM' button on my electronic Alarm-Clock-Radio.

I sat for half an hour watching the television, and across all three English-speaking channels breakfast news programmes were broadcast. I stared out of my bedroom window as the world was slowly waking under a blanket of thick fog which hung from the pale blue sky. A chilly crisp breeze rattled the trees in my garden, forcing their long bony fingers to brutally scratch the thin panes of my window.

I walked to the kitchen, which required moving through the hallway. I had to pay particular attention and care to walking in the area that morning, because a large novelty King Cobra stuffed toy which I had won at Blackpool Pleasure Beach just a few days ago. Breakfast was nothing special at all -the usual: a bowl of dry cornflakes, a slice of toast with thickly spread marmalade, and a glass of cool, refreshing orange juice. It was 7 am. Breakfast news poured from the television screen as I paid no particular attention to it whatsoever. I was in one of those moods -tired, and deliberately arrogant.

I quickly showered as I hate the feeling of being late for school. Today was no exception -I carefully placed the hairbrush in exactly the correct place to part my hair as I usually do, cleaned my teeth (trying desperately to remove the remains of toast stuck in them) and walked to my bedroom, half covered in a towel, the rest literally hanging out.

At exactly 8 am, the Prime Minister released a dossier of Nuclear and Biological weapons being created in Iraq. I sat staring hopelessly into the television, worrying about the prospect of never-ending war in the world.

Quarter of an hour later, I left with my father in the car. He was kindly driving me to school to avoid me catching an illness of some sort in the harsh autumn morning cold. I wasn't prepared to fight a cold wind that for ten minutes would repeatedly breathe in my face.

An early start in school saw me face a simple Maths lesson which was made complicated by my classmates permanently looking over my shoulder to copy my answers. Even in a world of highly-developed society, there are still cheats.

A Science lesson of Electricity questions was next. I find Science fascinating because everything that has ever happened in the history of man can almost certainly be answered by Science. Today, the topic of the work was analysing several circuits printed inside a textbook.

My next lesson, following an extremely short break-time, was a cooking lesson. A practical cooking lesson. A practical cooking lesson spells disaster for me, because I'm totally useless at handling and cooking food. Today I was making sausage rolls. I was very surprised when I got them home and they tasted like professional sausage rolls.

In Art we learnt how to draw 2-point perspective with ease. Unfortunately, it didn't quite go that smoothly for me. I managed to cope once again with the embarrassment of not being able to draw properly, but deep down inside the mocking which comes from my classmates hurts.

Lunchtime was upon us. I raced straight from the Art Classroom at the other end of the school to the foyer, where I enjoyed a lunch (after a minor interruption from a lunchtime supervisor, but let's not talk about that) of Roast Chicken and Cheesecake. I thoroughly enjoyed the food, as well as the sight of hundreds of pupils racing about their business in a loud fashion.

My French lesson was today in the Information Technology room, where we pretended to type an e-mail to a friend telling them if we had a computer or not, and if so, what type of computer we had and the software we owned. We also told them which hardware devices we owned.

My English lesson gave me this as homework. I was emotionally devastated when I got into the classroom and found we not only had homework, but we weren't continuing the work that we had received homework for in the previous lesson.

I walked home at quite a pace to make sure I had enough time to finish this particular diary before I left for my football practice at the local sports centre. I passed person after person and became increasingly embarrassed as I was holding a tub of crushed sausage rolls at the time.

Once I arrived home I barely had time to breathe before I began homework. Sitting at a dull, lifeless computer screen listening to the Greatest Hits of Eric Clapton, I began to type this. It took roughly an hour and a half to finish, by which time I was cursing the names of a thousand people who had annoyed me at school.

I left for football practice at 6pm, feeling tired and stiff. I think this had something to do with the fact I consider myself fat, overweight and unfit. But life's life - and you get what you're given. My body's the greatest and most powerful instrument I will ever own, and I'm determined to use it to the best of my ability. So I struggle on.

After an hour of listening to some of the worst English grammar you will ever hear, I returned home to shower and eat my tea: a delicious meal of Sirloin Steak and chips.

By this time I began to scrawl the events in the last few hours of the day on a small piece of paper, ready to type up. Before long it was a few minutes past ten and the day had been long and tiring. My beautifully typed up diary was complete and I was ready to change into my pyjamas and head into bed.

And tomorrow? Who knows . . .