Murder, money and ulterior motives

Words that can only be associated with a murder mystery.

Celebrating her 15th, Ali hosted a murder mystery party - a marvellous one I might add. Rather than going into the details of  murder mysteries, I suggest you google it and then, in awe at the concept's amazingness, you must organise one - remember to invite me.

Everyone must dress in the costume of their character. But, there was this underlying rule when it came to the dress code. Everyone must dress as extravagantly and provocatively as they dared.

I was the police woman. Naturally, I wore heels, a short black skirt, black fish net hold ups, a see-through blouse with only 2 buttons done up, a tie draped round my neck and - just an unnecessary added extra - a police woman's hat. I was quite positively a kissogram.

Unfortunately I didn't get anywhere with solving the murder. It transpired, that I was in fact appropriately dressed as a fake police woman. I soon discovered that I was actually a con artist, my ulterior motive being to con as many people as possible and to make as much money as possible. Didn't get very far with that either. I made more money by seducing my poor victims.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. And photos have already been uploaded on facebook. Enjoy!

End of term

I realise that I am a bit behind with the posts - my apologies. Ok, my last post was about the DofE expedition. I will briefly divulge into what has happened since then, giving details about the more exciting things in later posts. 


Since the expedition I have been really busy with ridiculous amounts of homework, coursework and controlled assessments. I managed to get through all of it. And looking back, I wonder how I managed it without having a nervous breakdown, trying to juggle my hectic social life along with all this work. 


With each piece of work, there was a reward. Not always relevant to the job, but it was a reward nonetheless. I had evenings out, a meal to celebrate my mother's birthday. I had a lovely 2 day weekend in the middle of the week - that was profiling. Unfortunately, on the Monday, when I had to go into school to be profiled, I was hit on the head with a tennis racket, and had a huge egg on my forehead for a fortnight. But I didn't care. It was interesting trying to talk to Dr Crawford about my school report when I had a huge ice pack strapped to my head, acting as a barrier between us. 


Then there was sports day. Once again, I managed to get through another sports day without participating in anything. Not even the fun run. I am not unfit, I just choose not to participate in any unnecessary sport, if I can help it. However, Sophie, my friend but also Cedar's Vice House Captain, threatened to have branches and leaves sewn onto me, and have me wander round Palmer Park as the Cedar's mascot - the Cedar Tree. Somehow I managed to get out of it, and she harassed some poor little year 7 instead. 


After Sports day we went back to Martha's and had a picnic. A good hour or so after the end of school, when there was no risk of any teachers still being there, (and once we were all fed) we went back to Palmer park and played in the park just outside. It was great being a kid again. I don't often get the chance to just muck about, having no responsibilities. But that half hour on all the swings and big elaborate climbing frames was complete and utter bliss. What a shame it started raining when we got back to Martha's, so I was unable to walk home, and so my Dad had to pick me up. Such a shame. 


I went on various shopping trips, both at the weekend and after school. That's is another advantage of walking home. Not only do I not need to waste money on ludicrously expensive bus tickets, but I can go home whenever I like. Not time constraints. I don't need to be anywhere by any particular time. I don't have to worry about missing the overly crowded, hot, clammy bus. I can just amble through the town centre, which is on route home. I can go into any shop I like, and spend money which I, otherwise, wouldn't have had. 


And finally, Ruth's birthday party. Shakeaway. How I love it.


There is most definitely other things that have happened since the end of term, that I have missed. But I am sure you have had quite enough. 


So I must end with:

22/07/10


Kendrick Girls run wild round Reading
Students of Kendrick School ignore the wise words of their Head Mistress: "And remember girls. Go. Straight. Home". Instead they choose to spend their first few hours of freedom, now that the summer holidays have begun, roaming the streets of Reading singing "Floreat Kendricka" at the top of their lungs. It just goes to show that Kendrick's strict attitude to intensive child labour only messes with the girls' minds. A passerby says, having just been ambushed by a group of provocatively dressed year 8s "Well rounded girls my arse. They're all bloody loonies."

LOST!

I had my DofE expedition this weekend. Just like before, still with extreme weather conditions, except this time it was a huge heatwave whereas before we had continuous monsoon rain. Another different, and perhaps a more important one, was that this expedition was our final.

Things started off quite well, aside from my ridiculously heavy pack. The general guideline is that you should have no more than 1/4 of your body weight on your back. I had 14 kg and I weigh *whispers* 46kg. Now, if you do the maths, that is quite a bit more than 1/4 of my body weight. The reason my bag was so heavy was because I was carrying the all the tent, apart from the poles and pegs, and most of the trangia. Admittedly, the second day's kit was divided up a bit more fairly, although I still carried more than some.

We got lost a ridiculous number of times over the two day trip. Although we got lost most on the Sunday, particularly in the woods. We managed to get back on track each time, so we still passed. I learnt not to care that we lost. Once I started to relax, I saw the funny side of it. At one point we were walking through the woods near Rushall Farm, just south of the motorway. We knew we had to cross the motorway, which ran straight from east to west. With a great deal of thought, we realised that as long as we continued walking north we would eventually get to the motorway, and then it was just a case of walking along it until we found the crossing. That meant, that it didn't matter that we had no idea where we were and that we were in fact walking through a load of ferns that were taller than me (I know that doesn't really say much), not following a footpath at all. We must have spent several hours in that wood, but we eventually got to the bridge. The misleading thing was, we could hear the cars on the motorway from miles away, so for about an hour and a half, we thought we were only 5 minutes away from the motorway, when in fact we were several kilometers away.

Despite all the getting lost, we still passed. I really enjoyed this expedition, a lot more than the last one. It's amazing how much the weather changes your mood. Yes it was ridiculously hot, but at least I came away from this weekend with a tan.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense

A lot has happened since my last post, which, I now realise, was written nearly 2 weeks ago - my apologies. 

Firstly I must explain the previous post. As you may have gathered, my second rabbit died that day. I miss her so much. We are not having any more pets, so I will remain rabbitless for the rest of my years at home. But I can assure you, as soon as I move away and get my own place, I will get more rabbits. I suppose it is an incentive to work hard, to ensure I can afford a rabbit and a garden to put it in. 

I have also had a little look at my end of year report. This is where the title of this post comes in. Many of you may know, that I have been really struggling with Latin. For some ridiculous reason, unknown to me, I chose to take it for GCSE. In my defence, I wasn't struggling last year. However, I was only comparing myself to the rest of my class at the time, and when I turned up at my first Latin lesson of Year 10, I was in for a big shock. I may have been finding it ok in my old class, but I had never been taught by Mrs Giddings. As soon as I started GCSE Latin, I realised what an amazing teacher she is, and how much Latin I had missed out on, when being taught by the other Latin teachers. I noticed a clear division within the class. There were those who were finding Latin ok, whether it was because they had been taught by Mrs Giddings before or because they are pure genii, such as my friends Sophie and Becca. Then there was me. I couldn't understand any of it. We had never been told to recite any verb or noun endings and I have always struggled with the vocabulary. We hadn't translated half the passages in the previous text books and so I found there were huge gaps in my knowledge of Salvius and the other characters that keep reappearing. Things hadn't gone too well in the first term, and in my interim report, I was given a B as my "very optimistic target grade". Many of you would say that isn't too bad at all, in a way it isn't. But I knew that Mrs Giddings had only given me that, so as not to dishearten me too much. Really I should have had a much lower grade.

Despite this, I worked, and worked and worked. I still wasn't very confident, but I started noticing that I could get through more translations without checking the back of the book. I had set myself 10 words to learn each day, and I chanted my nouns and verbs on my walk to school, which really helped, because my walking pace helped keep rhythm. My test results still weren't brilliant. I was getting 60% maybe 70%, whereas my classmates would get over 90%. But as time went on, I improved. I was pleasantly surprised with my end of year exam. I found the first paper reasonable and got 55/60. I was really pleased with this. Although I struggled with the second paper, my overall percentage was only a few percent below the median, which is pretty good considering it's Kendrick. 

I know there is still a lot more work to do, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am now predicted an A in Latin. And I can see, that if I continue to work as hard as I have been, that grade may be pushed up to an A* by the end of next year. 

And here is an even more positive note. You may consider me a bit of a geek, and to be honest, I can't deny it. But all it is hard work, and I don't sacrifice my free time to work hard, I just use my time wisely. But the hard work pays off. In my report, I am predicted 9 A*s and an A (which is Latin). 

Tomorrow is this lovely day called profiling day. This involves going in for the day, and spending 20 minutes talking to your form tutor about your report before joining your classmates in off timetable activities such as a cheer-leading course. I have Tuesday off school, while the second half of the register have their profiling day. And Wednesday is this life saving word called INSET! So there won't be much work to do this week, which gives me plenty of time to fret about my DofE expedition next weekend.