The Red Rose

This is a beautiful story that I heard the other day...

It was England; it was wartime.
Somehow, through a friend, a young man and lady had started writing to each other. They wrote often, even whilst he was away fighting at the warfront, and through their letters they found they shared a bond, and became very close.
One day the man wrote asking for a photo. The lady refused.
After a while he repeated his request, but she again refused.
Then finally, just after the war was over, they decided to meet each other.
The man asked for a photo, so that he would know what she looked like when he came to meet her at the train station.
She refused, but told him she would wear a red rose, so that he would know who she was.
The day came; and the man stood waiting on the platform as the train drew in. It crawled to a stop with a whirl of smoke, and several passengers alighted.
As he stood on the platform he saw a young dark-haired woman wearing a lovely green coat, walking towards him, and straightaway he thought: 'It must be her!' But when he looked, he saw that she was not wearing a rose; and she passed him by and walked out of the station.
Then he turned, to see an old lady with a stick, hobbling towards him. In the lapel of her brown tweed jacket she wore a red rose.
His heart fell, but he thought to himself, I must be polite, I will take her to the restaurant and I will make sure she has a wonderful time. I must not show my disappointment.
And he greeted her with a smile, and took her arm and led her out of the station towards the waiting taxi.
Then, just as they stepped out of the station onto the pavement, the old lady turned to him and said: 'My dear boy, as we were nearing the station, a young lady in a green coat told me that you were waiting to meet her here, and she gave me this rose and asked me to wear it.' She looked at him, and smiled.
'She told me it was because she wanted to see how you would treat her when she was old.'

Exams

I repeat my title.
Exams.
(Just trying to rub the word in; fellow-sufferers, groan in unison)
Don't we just love them?!
Actually, our mutual dislike of these horrific forms of torture (with the odd boffin excluded) are really rather undeserved (as the odd boffin would agree).

I mean, what are these exams doing, but trying to help us?!
They're teaching us hordes of interesting information on a wide and varied range of subjects that stimulate and increase our knowledge besides sharpening our brains and increasing our IQ levels to at least rise above that of a potato... they're providing credentials to look good on our CVs (that is if we pass them, obviously)... they're propelling us into avenues by which we may further our education...(avenues as in blah blah rather than the tree-lined kind)

I sound like an odd boffin.

Somehow, I feel that is not a good thing.

At least, not at my age.

Really I should wait until I have at least grown a beard.

Awkward silence.

Moving on...

Well, what about this amazing quote?
'Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.' - Thomas Edison.
Obviously for me, it's the other way round...!!
No more to be said.

Well, lets face it then: exams in a month, and I'm now at the cramming stage!

It's where you get down to it and grind.

It's called pegging.

I like that word. It invokes such wonderful imagery: me with ink stains all over my face and my tongue hanging out the side of my mouth in concentration, as with wild eyes and fiersome gaze I desperately and  frantically peg sheets of scribbled paper onto a washing line.

Epic.

You can probably tell I'm trying to study for an English IGCSE. Right?!

As you all know, I peg money onto washinglines just to pass the time. 

Something I've always wondered about... why does Jo March in Little Women, think that the word 'pegging' is slang?! Is it slang? And why is it apparently a 'boyish' thing to say? I'm no feminist but I don't get it.
I mean, pegging is what most women are doing at least every other day, at least, the ones with families who don't use tumble dryers?

English language is crazy.

Latin is even crazier.

NO, we're not going into Latin!!

Save that brain-grinding subject for some future post; I need to go away and finish pegging up my money on the line... :)

French Horns.

So last week I just started attending wind orchestra! It was an absolutely amazing experience... playing in a band... how every note is different yet in harmony... how all the instruments weave together to produce that Music...

Except this was slightly dampened by the fact that I had three french horns blasting out behind me.

Literally.

We arrived a little late, so I found myself with the second flutes on an extra chair placed at the end of the row... which meant I had the horns plonked directly behind my back.

What made it worse, was that with all the rush of things, I was sweetly unaware of this fact.
Therefore, when, in the middle of tuning, as I was sitting contentedly (and... maybe also rather smugly as the conductor had pronounced that my tuning was perfect and I had no need to adjust my flute; he's a very nice conductor!) - I almost suffered a heart attack when a deep and extremely loud HONK blared out a few centimetres away from my head.

I like french horns, as a rule. They are extremely... uh... nice... instruments! They have a very lovely resonant tone. No wind band would work without them.

But I do object to having one played a handspan away from my head! (No offence to all my friends who play french horns. I'm a flautist. I'm allowed to debase you!)

Anyway, when we started playing I was too busy sight-reading to notice.
That was another thing...
Our Dear Conductor seems to have a thing about speed. I am positive that if he drove his car as fast as he set the tempo for us, he would have lost his licence and have written off any poor vehicle he happened to be driving within a hair's breadth of writing off himself.

That kind of speed is... not good for sight-reading.

I managed to start on the right note, I did! Then I got lost somewhere in the third bar, floundered between a few phrases, tried a note here and there (and subsided because my fellow flautist was giving me odd looks) and ended up pretending to finger the keys and hoping that nobody behind me had noticed that my fingers were doing something utterly different to the flautists next to me.
They were probably too busy sight-reading themselves, so I think I got away with it... just.

I adore this picture! That is a real mouse! With a real french horn!

Anyway, well this week was un upgrade! We now have six flautists and a new trumpet, which meant that the layout had to undergo drastic changes so as to fit everyone into the room (conductor tearing out his hair).
Now we second flutes are in the corner behind the firsts... and the horns are in the other corner!!

I am not complaining.

This week was also an upgrade in that I had been practising feverishly all week, and barely made any mistakes!

I like upgrades.

'There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.'
- Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Logic. Bees. Buzzing Noises

'That buzzing-noise means something. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee.'
- Winnie-the-Pooh

Now that is what I call pure logic!

 I just thought I'd post this because that quote is so awesome. At least, I think it's awesome.

Coffee

So, I am the sort of person who starts a blog full of Enthusiasm, Hope and Resolve... which gradually fades away until the last post there is dated three years ago. Okay, okay, not quite three years. But almost.
Well this time I promise, promise, PROMISE to keep on posting!!
*bright smile*
You tut tut and shake your head like one of those Churchill Home Insurance bulldogs that people stick on the dashboard of their cars. I know. You're right, it probably won't last. But if I can't even keep New Year resolutions... how can you expect me to keep a resolution made in the middle of September...?!

Besides my tendency to ramble, which effectually bores any poor readers I might have to death (which means that all you who are reading this are obviously still surviving, CONGRATULATIONS! you must have very hardy constitutions) I can never think of anything to write!!!
It is a constant source of irritation to me.The hours spent uselessly at the screen, frozen by lack of inspiration into a statue of immobility... which means, being a statue, I would no longer be alive, and therefore, wonder of wonders! will have actually expired before my readers! Unheard of.
Actually, come to think of it the above declaration is a contradiction. You probably noticed it before, but I didn't. Being a statue, my brain wasn't working very fast... I say I ramble (the dictionary definition of the word, verb, type four: 'to talk or write in a discursive, aimless way' Yep. That's me.) yet I claim I cannot think of anything to write? Scratch that. I probably mean that I can't think of anything worth reading to write. Scratch that as well. If I carry on like that, most readers will probably have been frightened away...

I don't think congratulations are enough to reward you for have managed this far. I offer you my felicitations, commendations and condolences... Readers, I salute you.
(I have no idea where that sentence came from? but it sounds good. Go away, genius, go away...)

Anyway, now the usual first-post-of-the-blog blurb about inspiration (or the lack of it) is over, let me continue...

So, I have this new blog. A marvellous thing. And I plan to fill this blog with scribbles, hence the wonderful title.
A sort of online journal.
Minus the private thoughts, secrets, and feelings that I've heard people write in their journals. Obviously, if I wrote about them on here, they would no longer be private.
Which therefore makes this an online blog.
Back where we started, methinks!

Well, I have come to the conclusion that I talk too much! So much so that by the time I've realised what I'm saying, I don't even know what I mean anymore. That's happening right now.
I'll stop.
I could say that it's because I've been drinking coffee.
What we do without caffeine to blame?!

So I guess I'll just go have another cup to rejuvenate my spirits... because who can look at that picture without wanting to drink it...