It has been so long since I last blogged that I forgot my own URL. Shameful. More shameful still is that I only recently decided to make the effort to blog again is to make myself look fancy on my UCAS form. We are forever being encouraged at 6th form to partake in any activity we can which makes us look like good studious and 'involved' people who care amount the community and all that. However, for a whole school year, only 30 hours of service is required, and we are encouraged to, instead of doing it in weekly installments, spend a week of our holidays slaving to get all that pesky good person work out of the way. Being a spectacularly good person myself (ahem) I have already signed up for medical volunteering at the local Orthopedic centre, not least because it's a hefty requirement for all aspiring medical students and am therefore feeling smug as others scrabble around trying to avoid teaching the bratty young ones maths.
The first week of sixth form was spent telling us that our A*s at GCSE meant nothing, you have to be incredibly stupid to fail them, and that AS levels are serious business and any work we did last year could have been done by blindfolded monkeys. Heartening. Then we were told not to come to lessons without homework done, not to be late and how trusted we are to make our own decisions. In my biology class two boys have been put under scrutiny for writing on a desk, the third girl of our year group is pregnant, and there are rumours that the boys toilets have already been vandalised. The ten thousand pound fingerprint-recognition attendance recording system lies in ruins (not least with so many of our students refusing to submit their fingerprints for fear of the information being handed over to the police) and our lessons are plagued with naughty boys sent out from other lessons to learn something from older students - recently we had a lesson without a teacher and when the naughty boy (there seem to be a popular three) was sent in, we decided to ask him to write out 40 rules of how to behave into a science lab. Surprisingly, he got to twelve before running out, which was rule 13).
Having done all that moaning, I like sixth form. Despite being heartily encouraged not to take on 5 subjects, I ignored all advice (I have decided to do this since all English teachers assured us heartily that we would not be examined on Denise Levertov's 'What Were They Like?' poem before it came up in our exam, much to the anger of most students apart from me, who so smugly had decided to study it on hearing we shouldn't.) from staff and went ahead with English, history, chemisty, biology and maths. Biology being the soft option here, we were immediately told in our first lesson that it's not a doss subject and then spent the rest of the hour making a poster.
The benefits of 6th form include being free to wear our own clothes instead of the poxy burgundy jumper, having a whole room full of comfy chairs instead of a corridor with benches, and a superior choice of snacks at our very own Pam's - the 6th form hole in the wall for food. Pam's also leaves us free from the new and bizarre government-enforced rule that anyone in compulsary education is no longer allowed to buy one of the packeted muffins or sweets without purchasing a sandwich along with it, presumably along the Jamie Oliver lines of children being healthy. However, when the sandwiches served are a white-as-paper freshly defrosted roll filled with grated cheese or tuna, this is hardly doing the kids any favours. I have noticed that the bins around campus seem to have a large amount of uneaten rolls sitting on the top, or for the busier students who don't have the time to get over to a bin between kicking things at people or lurking in hallways being naughty, littered artfully around the bins.
Something wonderful about being in 6th form and wearing our own clothes to school means that the lowly compulsary-education types below us have a habit of parting when we stride through importantly with our own pens and paper (Britain is the only country in Europe to provide its students with paper, and also the worst for teen pregnancies and alcohol abuse. There might be no connection between the two, but all I'm saying is that in Holland there's a 2% under-18 pregnancy rate and the kids bring their own damn paper.) to let us past. A friend and I were striding around importantly on our first day back when some 12 year olds jumped out from behind a corner to boo us into shock. When we remained unscathed and continued up the stairs, they commented to each other that we couldn't possibly be scared as we were grown-ups. How right they were!
In the spirit of being a good person and filling the large void in my life that was last year my precious yearbook, I have joined the Debate society. I have little experience in debate but I do have a very poor performance record for impromptu speaking - in Athens I went to the Panhellenic Forensics Tournament (not, as it sounds, a race to chop up bodies, but a debate, drama and public speaking event between the international schools of Greece - an event which those who stammer and go blank should be fiercely warned against and if you are foolish persue to make a mockery of yourself in front of 40-odd other judgemental students when you are unable to make a 3 minute speech about a given subject. Mine was cats and I froze after the 6th second, the only thought coming to my head was to do a vigorous and enthusiastic cat impression but instead opting for the turning red and apologising before dashing to my seat approach. However, I enjoy debate; it makes me strangely excited and passionate about British type subjects which usually I would be fairly unopinionated about - e.g. the morals of sending antisocial children away to boarding schools or abolishing the monarchy.
I enjoy this 6th form business. We all feel very privileged and motivated to do lots of learning. Mainly because there is lots to do, but mostly because it is no longer obligatory; none of us have to be here, but we are, in our comfy jeans and jumpers at that, armed with big empty folders and blank notebooks, ready to soak in knowledge and agonise over it come exam season. How willing and naive we all are.
Debate
You may have noticed that the profile picture on this blog has changed from Susanna and Branwen at night doing Greek theatre comedy/tradgedy to Susanna and Branwen in Lithuania! That's right, the Ironic Observations team took an executive journalistic trip to Lithuania, generously funded by an energy consultant and physics lecturer, who funnily enough, are directly relations.
The trip was kindly hosted (in part) by the Vilnius in Your Pocket Team, an old favourite magazine close to the Spector/Ryding family hearts. Both of us gained some invaluable writing experience (cham is apparently not a real English word but according to the editor, 'nibblies' is) which was published in our name. Well, for us to know anyway, as we have no representation on the masthead.
Anyway, the first publishings of the blog in an international company! We awarded ourselves 10 points each and returned from a week in Vilnius much wiser, accidentally cameoing in a wedding film being filmed on a Trakai bridge, full of Lithuanian-interpreted Chinese food and packet noodles and talking like Eddie Izzard. The latter a common side effect of the two of us being alone for more than a few days at a time.
Previously a haven to teenagers and youngsters all over Vilnius, Akropolis shopping centre was the first proper, Western style mall those of us who had been there long enough had ever seen.
It held an ice rink, a food court, probably over 30 shoe shops, often lined up in groups as if afraid of separation. It had a Danish Jysk, an 'Indian' cafe serving Earl Grey, a huge and bewildering Maxima supermarket, and, well, not much else. You could never have a successful shopping trip there as there was really nothing of interest to buy - unless you needed to supply footwear to a small transvestite army.
Returning to Akropolis made it seem even more depressing than it really was. Apart from a sign that Lithuanians were continuously getting richer (judging by the amount of cars and people there on a Tuesday afternoon), the walk up the motorway and the surrounding wasteland were a sad sight, as was the fact that the shops and merchandise still hadn't changed. After wandering through the Maxima to show Susanna that buckets of mayonaise really do exist and counting the shoe shops, dining on some impressively poor Chinese food cooked by impressively Chinese looking chefs, we took a 40lt (£8 - pittance in England but shockingly high in Lithuania) taxi home by an impressively rude taxi driver who sped and honked and swore. Clearly some things are meant to stay the same.
Lithuanian markets haven't changed. Vilnius in Your Pocket sent us on a market reviewing adventure to document the rubbish that they sell. We wrote a self-acclaimed fairly rubbish article here. We apologise for the quality but we were under pressure to be funny and it backfired.
Normally the image of a street market in Europe might conjure up images of fresh fruit and vegetables, bright colours and lively shouting. Not in Vilnius. The Kalvariju market we used to frequent as a mother-daughter vegetable and plant buying team remains exactly the same - drab, grey, selling reasonable fruit and veg but, to the trained eye, also plastic bread from sheds, sponges, mobile phone chargers and massive piles of women's pants. The central market was no better, selling competitively larger piles of pants and sausage. Susanna and I were impressed only by the few stalls devoted only to denim - the sort that only the Village People might sport and were consequently empty, even at peak shopping hours. Shame.
This hut for the security of some embassy or other on Ausros Vartu street in the old town of Vilnius provided Susanna and I with much entertainment. It was there when I was a resident but I never remembered having this much fun with it. We invite you to play guess the author's legs in the reflection!
Luckily the first statue we visited made it easy. Impossible to find and posted on a windy corner, Romain Gary was quickly christened a craptue. We were thoroughly disappointed and both of the opinion that no one should be taller than a statue.
Next on the list was Doctor Tsemakh Shabad, conveniently sculpted for a cuddle or handshake and in a more central and convenient location. He also had some Hebrew on him, which won brownie points.
I was pleased to see Susanna being excited about the same things I can get excited about in Eastern Europe, or indeed Europe. Here are some things we both enjoyed:
While it was wonderful to go back to my old home and potter about as a grown up, I found it slightly depressing. Now that Lithuania has joined the EU, I found a large proportion of the friendly and welcoming people who would immediately address you in English and talk about wanting to go to England or America and be optimistic have now left and it seems only the sulky leftovers remain, who are rude and don't want to speak English or be friendly, which is a great shame. My fondest memories of growing up in Vilnius include strangers making conversation straight away to practise their English. However, Susanna and I did make the acquaintance of one 13 year old boy who, having overheard us in the supermarket, followed us to the nearby park and declared to us that he was half-English and went on to prove it by showing his Union Jack wristband. He certainly showed us up when we claimed we were also Britons yet unable to produce a similar token of nationality.
Lithuania is great - I urge everyone to go there for one of those trendy weekend breaks. Stroll through the old town, buy Vilnius in Your Pocket, visit the lakes, drink the beer and try some Bum Gum. It's lovely.
