18 posts from 2006

As friends and avid readers of this wondrous blog may know, Suz and I have just finished with two weeks of mock exams. This means either cramming or relaxing the night before, then being shunted into a large, cold hall by means of a calling out of numbers system, not dissimilar to those used by airlines who still assign seat numbers.

Once seated in seemingly endless rows of identical maroon jumpers, we write our little hands off, scribbling out all we know, between finger-stretching breaks and craning round the room to check nervously if everyone else is still writing furiously, looking much cleverer than you. Then we are dismissed, only to be sent home to cram/relax for the next one. If you’re lucky (or unlucky, in my case) you might finish the odd exam a few minutes early, and have time to look around the hall, at the rows and rows of students and think about how you’re just a number…

What I mean by this is that every GCSE student is identified by a four digit number. And as our tests are sent off to be read by examiners up and down the country, or by computers, nothing matters but that number. While organisationally beneficial, it’s rather demeaning, don’t you think? If you’re not a number in the sense of identification then you’re a number as a statistic – GCSE trends printed in the media. If the nation has done well, then the tests are too easy – your innocent little test mark is turned into a shameful signature of the country’s future university-bound generation. If the nation’s marks are poor, then we’re all thick. Being reduced to a number is not flattering.

Also making us (or at least me) feel very small and insignificant (despite the fact that we’re constantly being told that our GCSE results will determine our future university placements, salaries, even partners) is being presented with the grade boundaries with phrases expected to be used for model answers for each exam. At this I regret to say I threw a small fit of indignance, guffawing at the insult of being expected to perform my English exam using a series of practised phrases and terms, when surely the point of English is to study literature and learn to express individuality through writing? How are we supposed to flourish and become individuals at a time when change and opinion is rife within us when we're expected to learn the answer for an original writing piece? What has education, nay, the world come to if we cannot express ourselves without first consulting a revision guide? Is this reasonable, I ask you? Is this education?!

On a calmer (but no less worrysome) note, being a GCSE student is often a confusing thing. One minute we're being told that we should work our little knuckles to the grindstone, or we'll never succeed in life - whatever that is, and the next it's a 'Just get those five crucial A to Cs and you'll be fine, kids!' We're also comforted by teenage-help agencies telling us that the second we turn 16, government issued child support will end, we'll be a burden to our parents and we'd damn well better think about getting a job. Oh, it's a confusing time for us all.

Yesterday I made my first real, extensive trip to a vintage clothes shop, namely ‘Reign’ on the Cowley road. It is probably ridiculous that I, resident of Oxford and aspiring journalist have not made such a trip previously, however it is true, and that is the way of the world.
I had previously popped into ‘Unicorn’ and ‘Uncle Sam’s’ both of which are very nice and come highly recommended both by me and by C at work. But had never quite made it into this one, and what a paradise I had missed! It seemed that the world was my eclectic, wonderful, good value and yet tidy oyster!
The first allure of vintage clothes is that you can be almost sure that no-one else will have them, furthermore, no-one will be aware of the price! Reign has a particularly good t-shirts section, I bought a charming ‘brownies’ t-shirt (I know, I know, everyone has them these days but I still wanted one) while my companion bought one which bore the amusing slogan ‘family dentistry’. Their hats and shoes also deserve a special mention, one day I’m sure I’ll think of an occasion when I can where a royal blue pin-on with a netting vale. Of course, you do have to be prepared for the fact that often you’ll see the perfect thing only not in your size. However, this is something you will have to live with, and is worth it for the number of things you can find that really are! All in all, it’s a very valuable shopping experience. As well as the Oxford store there are also shops in Portobello and Brick lane. Call 01865 250004 for more details.

I would like to start this article by saying it will not be a rant at Sony and how incredibly useless they are at all things technological. I am not going to waste an entire literary opportunity outlining how astoundingly rubbish they are at the following things: customer service, repairing parts, providing the consumer with functional and useful technology, and having helpful telephone operator reader outy-ladies who CANNOT PRONOUNCE LETTERS PROPERLY WHEN READING OUT POST CODES. No, I really won't waste my breath on how every Sony product I have foolishly purchased in the last three years has been faulty. I'm completely above that. My laptop is also definatly not made by Sony.

Are we sitting comfortably? Then let's begin. I have spent a lot of time in internet cafes. It's because I've lived in a lot of places where internet is slow, unreliable, and very expensive. It's far cheaper to go to an internet cafe and do an hour's solid work than it is to fiddle around on a dial-up connection and get distracted by cups of tea and television. Internet cafes also come in handy when your laptop breaks.

Beware.

There are a few characteristcs of internet cafes that always give a hint as to how much time you'll want to spend in them. Here are a few of the indicators that will tell you the type of things you will find.
Step one: check your seat. If there is anything sticky or stainlike on it, you want to move, and I mean quickly. No one wants the embarrassing ordeal of having to walk home with a piece of chewing gum or a stain on your bottom.
Step two: inspect the keyboard. If you're in an internet cafe abroad, your keyboard will probably have a few letters different to the typical English version. This is because foreign people are stupid and can't make proper ones. Lithuanian keyboards should be fine, Greek ones might come with a few surprises when you press shift, and German ones have a few wacky letter switches. These are all quirks that just spice up your writing, rather than harm it. If, however, you're at a French keboyard, you've had it. You'll never type normally again. Not even when you get back home to an English keyboard, because by then, your brain will have acclimatised to the French keyboard and you'll still be pressing the wrong buttons. My word of advice to those facing French keyboards? Give up. Write a letter instead.
Step three: check the favourites on the internet browsing program, and look out for any pop-ups. If there is any porn, this is not the sort of place you want to be hanging around in. Do what you need to do and then make a run for it. You know for a fact that not only is this the sort of place men come to look at porn, but it will also be full of Type 2s (see below.)
Step four: if you waited in a queue to get to it, or there's a queue forming at the till, then you might as well pack up now. Normal people enter an internet cafe, but when forced to queue, they turn into the most impatient, irritating, grumpy and rude humans ever to walk the earth. And I mean that. My own mother would probably grow horns upon joining such a terrible thing as The Queue At The Internet Cafe.
What's that? You think it's ok? They'll kindly wait their turn? Oh, dear, sweet reader. Your naivite is almost endearing. You are very wrong. The internet-cafe queuer is not kind. He is not patient. He is not understanding.
You sit down at your computer. You might look at some fun emails, maybe you check your favourite blogs, you may visit a few leisurely websites before you get cracking on some proper work. The minute you start typing, he (internet queuer) will come over and ask you how much longer you're going to be.
"Uh...about half an hour?" you say. You are uncertain - if there was an exact time frame for you work, how would you know it until you were finished? Internet queuer raises their eyebrows, sighs, and walks off, presumably to pester other computer users.
However, as soon as they see you lean back in your chair, stretch, or even look away from the screen, they are on to you like a shot.
"Sorry, are you finished now?" they ask.
"No, not yet. I'll let you know when I'm done," you say, a little wearily.
"Ok. Thanks."
You wait a few seconds for the to leave, but, having recognised you as a weak one, they'll stand behind you; not just because they want to unnerve you, but also because they're bored and want something to read. They also want to check that you're really doing work, and not just messing around. God forbid you recieve an email during their stay behind you, or click onto anything fun, because then they'll launch into attack mode:
"Um, sorry," they'll say. But are they really sorry? "Sorry, but you don't really seem to be doing much work, and I've got a deadline. Would you mind letting me use the computer now?"
"No no, I am working. I was just having a break," you clarify. Again, they raise their eyebrows and sigh. They continue to stand behind you, sighing frequently to remind you of their presence. The worst kind of internet queuer will point out any spelling mistakes in your work, breathe loudly, and keep asking you for the time.
If your computer has passed all of these steps so far, well done. This is a sign you might be on to something good. But while you may have excaped Sticky Seat, Crazy Keyboard, Porn Preoccupied, and the deadly Queue Quack, you have not yet been warned of the people sitting next to you. Beware...
You can always tell when someone is looking at you in an internet cafe. Out of the corner of your eye, you can sense someone glancing over at your screen. They're nosing at what website you're looking at, reading your instant messaging conversations, or are suddenly facinated by your friend's holiday pictures.
There are three kinds of internet cafe people. The first is friendly. They're usually women, middle aged and fairly computer illiterate. One of those people who click print about five hundred times if their document isn't printed a millisecond after they've sent it to the printer the first time. These people are terribly jolly and only ever show up at an internet cafe when you're either stressed out, very busy, or grumpy. They sense this, and begin glancing over at your screen. Seeing you glaring back at them doesn't put them off, in fact, it seems to give them the impression that you would love to converse with them about their illiteracy in computing, which makes you wonder why they're here in the first place.
"Gosh, you type terribly fast!" they say.
"Mmm," you reply, non-committically, indicating how incredibly busy you are.
"I'm a bit useless at computers, me. Art's more my thing," they add, in case you were interested.
"Oh," you reply, staring hard at the screen, willing her to go away.
"Yeah, I did a degree in Art in London in '86? No, '87! God, I must be getting old!" she elaborates, with a hearty chuckle at the end.
At this point, you find her a little bit too irritating for words, so you instead grunt and root for imaginary things in your bag. Depending on how long her chuckle went on for, you might even start writing down imaginary notes from the screen. Both are indicators of how busy you are, how much you mustn't be disturbed. She is oblivious. So oblivious, in fact, that she decides you want to know all the details of her time spent obtaining the aforementioned degree, including boyfriends, trips abroad, and a breif family history. You don't. This is the horror of internet cafe person Type 1.
Type 2s are marginally less offensive. They don't make you want to shoot them in the leg so much as feel uncomfortable. You'll feel their eyes on you, but they won't speak. Usually they're either looking at your breasts or looking at a pair of available breasts on screen. These are the kind of people (note that I'm saying people, but I mean men) who come to internet cafes to look at porn. They will let their eyes linger on the screen-breasts until you are outright staring in them in a 'Hey, stop looking at my/my friend's/my sister's/this picture of someone I don't even know's breasts' way. Then they will smirk, turn their eyes back to their own computer - the screen of which you notice has a boring looking email on it, but the minute you turn away you know they're either writing frantically to their friends about how they've just found a link with some excellent breasts in it, or they're searching for it. Type 2 will also sport any of the following: unfashionable light blue jeans, a leather jacket, a moustache, a bad haircut, a sweaty forehead, a nervous temperament, and a habit of resting their non-mouse hand in their lap. Type 2s are nowhere near as dangerous as Type 1s, but they have equal abilities in making you want to change seats.
Finally, Type 3. Type 3 internet cafe person is a nuisance rather than a threat to your sanity. Type 3 is someone like you or me, who is bored. They have come to the internet cafe to do some emailing, and are just trying to get their money's worth of the half hour they paid for, since their emails only took 3 minutes to sort out. They will sit there, racking their brains, thinking of anything they could do while accessing the internet. They read the news, they google something, and then they check their emails again. They still have 20 minutes of their paid for time which they are determined not to waste, so their eyes fall to the screens of the people around them, looking for inspiration. If you are doing any of the following: having an animated conversation with a friend on MSN, reading an exciting looking newsletter full of celebrity news, or are on a dating site, internet cafe person Type 3 will latch on, and like a blood sucking leech, they will read every word over your shoulder. This makes you incredibly uncomfortable, and you shift in your seat, attempt to turn yourself or your screen away from them, and glance around you in desperation, to see if anyone else is noting this blatant invasion of your privacy. Anything to get rid of them. A particularly bored and/or absent minded Type 3 may even chuckle at something amusing you have written or read. The worst part about them is that they are oblivious to even the hardest of stares. Once you've got a Type 3, my friends, there's no getting rid of them.

It's best you trust me on all of this; I've spent a lot of time in internet cafes. When you have a Sony laptop, it's something you learn to do.

Her Royal Highness in all her glory

As Sue Townsend wrote in her series of articles for the Sainsbury’s Magazine, “I vow to never be one of those authors who continuously writes about the antics of her cat.” Well, Sue, we both failed.

My cat is called Nibbles. She is 8 years old, and half Burmese half local tabby, as her mother was a bit of a slut. She likes chicken flavoured cat food, chasing flies, and being stroked on her tummy. Oh, and she hates me.

I don’t know when this happened – we used to get along fine. But as soon as my beloved Nibbles came to , she decided she was no longer my friend. I bring this up now because yesterday I witnessed my friend S and her cat frolicking outside their house. When S called her cat, it not only responded to her voice, but actually came running. When S talked to her cat, it paid attention, and, I like to think, thought of helpful or amusing anecdotes to add to the conversation. And, best of all, when she told her cat to get inside the damn house or it would be out in the cold all night, it got inside the damn house.

Nibbles is one of those cats who, instead of complying with the typical pet-ownership behaviour patters, i.e. eating food provided, sleeping on owners bed, and providing footwear, (maybe that’s only Grommit, but I’ll be damned if I turn down an animal that could do that for me) Nibbles chooses to walk haughtily around her dwelling, surveying the lands and testing furniture for damages. She sharpens her claws on her personal claw-sharpening device, (my thighs, the sofas, and anything wooden) sprawls across her exclusive heated seating facilities, (radiators and laptops) and feasts upon her vast fields of fine vegetation (mother’s plants.)

Her Highness atop her personal heated seating facillity

Nibbles, being the supreme ruler of her domain, comes inside when she wants to come inside. The only problem preventing her free entry of our house is our distinct lack of cat-flap, forcing her to deign to tap her delicate paw upon the door, or even hop up on window-sill and call, waiting impatiently for her servants (we who feed, groom, and stroke her) to give her entry to her feeding quarters (the kitchen.) Sometimes, however, madam decides she would like to come inside, then changes her mind once she sees that her servants have opened the door, and there is nothing interesting to do once she gains entry. Then, as she stands, paw and nose poised, mid-doorway, she changes her mind, meows, reminding us how terribly incompetent we are for thinking she would really wish to come inside at such a time, when she has her grounds to survey, and her rivals to feud with, and turns, tail in air and behind waggling in a haughty and impatient manner, irritated at our ignorance.

This process is repeated several times, until Miss Nibbles decides she does indeed wish to enter her home, and check that we have not stolen or misplaced any of her belongings. We, her humble servants, must, however, endure the taxing procedure of getting up from our desks/chair/sofa/scrubbing the floor, lumbering over to the back door, hauling it open, coaxing her highness to come inside, and then, upon inevitable failure, slamming the door in frustration, causing the royal feline to add a surprised hop to her step as she sashays away. She then glares back at us, indicating that we’ll pay for that door slam later.

And indeed we do. Or, at least I do, since she hates me. When I’m tucked up in bed at night, reading my book and dozing off, suddenly, I hear something. A tapping sound. I brush it off and continue reading. Again, the tapping sound. I freeze, listening intently for the sound, but there is nothing. I return to my book. Then, oh so slowly, my door creaks.

“Um… hello?” I call out to the empty house, as I know Nibbles will only have her revenge when she knows it will hit me worst; when I’m home alone.

Silence follows. I carry on reading, determined to ignore the noises and tell myself that it’s my overactive imagination. Then my door creaks again, and a bar of light from the hall sweeps into my room. I reach for my phone, my finger hovering over the nine button, and remain completely immobile, not even breathing.

Creeeeeeeak. My door continues to creep open, and I wet myself. ‘Please please please please don’t let it be an attacker/robber/rapist/crazy person/ghost/demon. Please just let it be someone who’s gone into the wrong house and is opening my door really slowly, please god please,’ I pray over and over again. My door creeks again, and I break into a sweat. Then, in comes Nibbles, with a look upon her smug little face as if to say, ‘What? You didn’t think it was a ghost did you? God, Bran, you’re such a baby!’ Then, she will hop up onto my bed, completely nonchalant, and practises her bouncing technique on my stomach, in a playful yet determined manner. Satisfied by my shaking hands and the state of my sheets, she will trot out of my room, triumphant, knowing she has petrified me enough for one evening, and gained her revenge at my foolish door slamming antics earlier. Yes indeed, Nibbles hates me.

It's Saturday night. I've just got home from the supermarket. The roast is in the oven, and I'm in front of the computer with my apron on. How quaint.
For some reason, this evening I had a sudden desire to cook a roast dinner for my mother and I. She nearly fell off her chair when I told her. But we have often spoken about how girls in my generation don't learn to cook like girls in her's did. And before you all protest, I know that most people my age can knock up pasta or soup, but admit it - most of us live on toast, instant noodles, and leftovers, when left to our own devices.
In these days of ready meals and take-aways, obtaining instant food is too easy. Besides, who can resist chips? This has obviously provided ample opportunity for our nation to become Europe's unhealthiest. But when our parents were younger, they learnt to cook by helping make dinner for their parents. Therefore, they know not only how to prepare the meat and two veg that our nation used to rely upon for its' evening nourishment, but fancy things, like trifle or roast beef. Things that we can just buy, ready made from Tesco's, but presumably are much nicer home made.
I think (I'm not sure yet, I tend to find out at the end of an article) that my point is that no one my age knows how to cook proper things. This excludes my domestic goddess of a friend K. She can even make jam. And she knows how to use a sewing machine. In the words of my beloved Eddie Izzard, Jeezy Chreezy, the girl can do things around the house. But yes, why is most of our generation not taught to cook properly? Especially in this day and age of high divorce rates, consequently single-parenting, and cooking shows bombarding our televisions at all hours of the day. And I was just forced to ask my mother how to make roast potatoes, a staple of the traditional British diet!

Just say no!

Does one not agree that if we, the youth of tomorrow and all that, were taught to cook the old fancy meal every now and again, or even simple things, healthier than going down to the local chip shop, (stop me at any point if I begin to sound like Jamie Oliver) that we might have less of a chance of our arteries clogging up with filth and suffering from heart disease, leading to eventual termination of life at 60? Why do children reject healthy food and insist on crisps and burgers?! Why do adults allow them to eat this way?! Ever heard of salad!? (I may be somewhat embracing a Jamie Oliver approach to this subject now.) But our nation would not be as unhealthy as it is today if kids new how to cook the old roast vegetables instead of fried in batter, or a bit of salad instead of a burger, as things were less than sixty years ago. So I implore you, good people of the world, ask your parents or teach your kids (or indeed both) to show you how to cook roast potatoes before it's too late.

    I’ve just done 20 sides of A4 on revision notes, which is how I learn best, and while I fully intend to recycle these papers, I cannot help but despair at what a waste it is. A thousand revision guides are printed and then discarded after use, millions of exam papers themselves, thrown away after each student has completed them. Would it not be more practical for exams to take place on a special program on a computer? In this high tech and modern world, not to mention one that needs to change its outlook to waste and recycling.

On a brighter note, my obsession with saving everything is a huge benefit to some things, such as doing the supermarket shopping online – I have cut the total average price by about £20, wahey! Turning off lights, switching off my computer at night rather than putting it on standby, and doing all my washing at 30 degrees rather than 40, and closing windows when the heating is on are all good, eco-friendly things. But since economising has now become a way of life, I am now economising by instead of erasing a whole string of text when I changed my mind on what to type, I now “save” several letters, to avoid writing them again, thus saving my fingers vital typing energy. Additionally, I will re-use the same tea mug up to eight times a day, rinsing it sparsely, of course, between uses, in the thought that ‘there’s no need to use all our mugs when I can just recycle the same one over and over again!’ Economising has indeed become a mindset.

I grit my teeth as I write this, as my mother has just pointed out I’ve left my bedroom light on. The woman doesn’t understand that I was just about to turn it off. Obviously.

I was also thinking about how one can economise ones’ brain cells. Being a teenager, I know the lyrics to a thousand songs, I can spout celebrity gossip I hear on the radio, and can name most of my friends’ subject timetables. If only, I thought, as I tried to cram eight weeks’ worth of chemistry lessons into my head one afternoon, if only there was a way of removing such unnecessary information from my long term memory and instead replacing it with chemistry. Not permanently, obviously, as I need to know who will be available for texting when I am bored in my design technology lessons (L, who has art), the words to every Paolo Nutini song, and how many times Pete Dougherty has been arrested. But it would be useful to periodically empty out my brain and fill it full of marginally more useful things – if only for a few hours at a time. I long for the days when information can be implanted in one’s brain by means of a USB memory bar, and can be deleted or stored as necessary. Until then, the old pen and paper method will have to do…

This is an article I wrote in April, and so is quite dated- I now own skinny jeans and a decent amount of playground-chic jewellery, but I decided I would post it anyway.

There comes a time in everyone's life when they are pressured to act/dress/think/speak/look on life in a certain way. This comes to me every time I reveal to some people some of the music I like. Most merely toss a nonchalant comment or a polite remark my way, but some say 'wow, I mean, that's quite surprising, you don't really dress like those bands do you!?'.
Having spent many an hour surfing the delightful pages of myspace I can indeed reveal that a lot of the truly very emo people in the youth of today do indeed like bands such as straylight run, matchbook romance, and all of the stuff, among many other genres, that i like. Although a lot of these people dress and seem to act (in cyber world anyhow) very strangely, I am never closed to new ideas and I did see some stuff on them that I liked, and so began to look around when I went shopping for some of the things i had seen and liked, however it went a bit wrong.

Scenario one: 'cheap jewellery'
Location: Oxford shops, 5th April 2006

I was in DNA, a shop that I do rather like, when I saw some plastic sort of playground-chic jewellery around the counter that i had seen displayed on various emo-mullet-girls in the past. Although an extreme hater of the mullet, I was rather fond of the bold colourfulness of the jewellery. I headed over to the counter, and picked up a big, shiny, red and yellow plastic brooch thing in the shape of a flower, with a button as the middle. A little garish but rather good, I looked at the price tag on the back: £7.50 it read. I threw it back down on the counter (well actually put it down very gently and politely so as not to cause a scene, but in my mind I slammed it with a vengeance) and walked out of the shop. Normally I would not shudder at that price but for a hunk of plastic I must draw the line. I instead went to Primark and bought a pair of shorts, an underwear set and a wallet, altogether spending £9.50, much better.

Scenario two: 'drainpipe jeans'
Location: H&M, Paris, 13th April 2006

Drainpipe trousers are another scenester trend that I am not set against, partly because everyone is wearing them anyway, so, spotting a pair of black ones for about 20 euros it didn't seem like a bad idea to try them on. Unfortunately, the actual putting them on part was rather hard. A sudden oncoming of leg cramp in all my wiggling and stretching meant that I was sitting on the stool in the changing cubicle, in extreme pain, for about ten minutes. When I emerged, Sophie (my French seventh cousin twice removed, yes really) looked a bit puzzled at my long trying on session and at my mild limp on my left leg. Obviously all that Jack Daniels makes those emo girls immune to leg cramp.

Scenario three: 'lip piercing'
Location: the Eurostar, 14th April 2006

Me: 'mum, what would you say if I got my lip pierced?'
Mum: *looks at me in a very worried way* 'why?'

Obviously I am just not cut out to be emo after all.

In April of 2004 I pierced my nose. I had been whining about it to my friends for a long time, talking about how I wanted it done, and lo and behold, one evening we passed a piercing parlour. (I lie; it wasn’t a piercing parlour so much as a jewellery shop with a woman and a stapler)

“Hey, Bran, there’s a place you can get it done! And it’ll only cost a few euros!” comes the enthusiastic cry of my dear friend J. Suddenly I come over all pale and flustered.

“No, no, I don’t think it’s quite the right time J,” I confess, palms sweating and looking around for an escape. Best friend L chooses this moment to join in.

“No, Bran, come on! You’ve always wanted to do it, and it’ll be really cheap and you’ll look great!” and I was taken firmly by the elbow and led into the shop.

Sweating profusely now, I was placed upon a stool, and the woman in the shop proceeded to stick things in and out of my nose, and make pen dots all over my face. For symmetry, she claimed. This, to me, seemed a tad rich, coming from a woman wearing cheap plastic accessories and only one eye properly mascara’d. (I don’t usually notice these things, but her face was within extreme proximity to mine, not just because the shop was so small.) I picked a nose stud, a scarily thick looking silver bar with a cheap ‘jewel’ on the end, and was held down by J and L, giddy with excitement at their friend’s predicament and presumably delighted that this would finally put an end to my whining.

Still sweating and getting increasingly scared, I tried to think of ways to get out of it, ways to escape and remain a normal, two-nostrilled being. There were none. And even if there had been any, the vice like grip with which I was being restrained was showing no signs of release.

The asymmetrical woman approached me with something that looked suspiciously like a stapler but had the chosen stud implanted in it, and attempted to shove two fingers up my nostrils. I recoiled and whimpered slightly, much to her enjoyment. She instructed my two friends to hold my head stationary, (on afterthought, why are they still my friends?) and once again approached me with her extended fingers and stapling device. A clicking sound was heard, accompanied by a loud shriek, the sound of a rack of trinkets tumbling to the floor, and the chuckling of the woman as she pulled away, her work done.

To avoid causing my mother angst, or so I thought, I had craftily had my nose pierced on the opposite side of my face than was most visible to her in driving me to school every morning. Since my mother was frequently working abroad at the time, this was the most concentrated amount of time we spent together. For two whole weeks, I got away with it. Foolishly, I thought if, after fourteen days, she still hadn’t noticed that her beloved second daughter did, in fact, possess a third nostril, she never would. Disaster struck upon the fifteenth day.

Lying in a pain only a woman can understand, wrapped in a duvet on the sofa, my dear, sweet, life-giving mother appeared with a cup of tea. She approached as if an angel, a golden light shining around her, halo atop her beautiful golden head. She leant down to place the tea on the floor next to the sofa, as I, as was by now reflex, turned my head away so my nose-impalement would not be visible.

“Hang on – what’s that on your face?”

Alarm bells sound. A thousand excuses rattle their way through my head, ranging from, ‘It’s just a spot, mum! Stop making a fuss about nothing,’ to, ‘I fell on an earring and it got stuck!’ not forgetting the golden classic, ‘what? There’s nothing on my face! God, mum, you must be going mad!’

“Let me see your face Bran.” Says my mother in tones only those who have given birth can produce. Quivering slightly, I turn to face her.

I’ll spare you the dramatics, but a large teenage daughter versus mother fight follows, which, as I was home from school with my woman-pains, lasted for much of the day. Over an hour of heated discussion and accusations of drug taking, excess alcohol drinking, sluttage and other examples of extreme disobedience later (I have chosen to forgive my mother for accusing me of such things, as I was until then her best behaved daughter, and, it seemed, the trust was broken.)

I spent the entire afternoon trying to reconcile things with my mother, making cups of tea and sitting down for a chat about how to resolve this broken trust issue, since I hadn’t received her permission (indeed, I hard hardly received my own!) for the piercing, and she was upset. No reconciliations were made until the afternoon of the next day, during which we agreed I would not go out that weekend and my pocket money would be briefly halted and decreased. It seemed fair. I wasn’t expecting anything more or less, as my mother is not one for discipline.

My mother has a theory that all children want to test their boundaries at different points in their lives. And since she raised me with no boundaries, just trusting me to be sensible, and the fact that I had done something considerably un-sensible was foreign territory for us. Therefore understanding her anger was key, as was tending to my very sore nose. (The protocol for nose piercing is puncturing the hole with a very thick bar, then two hours later pulling it out and shoving something considerably smaller in the hole, then twisting and turning it, trying to cause yourself as much agony as you can, five times a day. It’s painful business.)

The next months were spent being fed abuse on how I would never go to university, I would never get into a good school, (we were in at the time, looking at possible schools for my GCSEs) I would never get a job, not with that “thing” in my nose, at least. This, I put up with. I could see she was angry, although I was slightly sceptical about the second to last notion, especially now having attended Suz’s and my school for a year.

I’ve now had my nose pierced for a year and a half. The benefits? I look like a cool person who has their nose pierced. And the negative aspects? The studs constantly come out. In my sleep, when I sneeze, when I blow my nose, and when I toss my head energetically. I have also had a few sleeve-catching-on-nose-piercing escapades, which were unpleasant and painful to say the least. Why do I keep it, I hear you ask? Because I look like a cool person. And I also like the fact that I faced up to my fears and actually did something I was scared of, which, I am ashamed to say, is something I rarely do. And I like nose piercings.