Cake Sale Chaos

Crowds of people today converged on the same place at the same time. An angry mob formed, baying for blood. Shouts rang through the air. Innocent bystanders were swept up into the furore. There was very nearly a serious incident and the organisers only narrowly avoided calling the police.

Revolution? Uprising? Anarchy? No, dear readers, all of this was triggered by a secondary school charity cake sale.

Thanks to Jamie Oliver, cake in schools up and down the land is now a rarity. So, when it appears, it is greeted like celebrity crashing the disco.

The cake sale in question today was madness. I felt genuinely afraid for my life as I pushed my way through the masses. I actually heard someone chanting "CAKE, CAKE, CAKE!" and there were attempts to start a small riot on the edge of the queue.

The small year 7s running said cake sale looked rather overwhelmed as they watched large mobs of teenage girls form and demand their sweet treats. How were they to know the monster that would be unleashed at the mere mention of cake?

A bit later, perhaps the most hilarious announcement I have ever heard came over the tannoy: "Will girls please form an orderly queue at the cake sale." I love the thought of the teacher on duty realising, action movie style, 'This is getting nasty. To the tannoy!' and sprinting to the office.

Muffin madness, cookie craziness, truffle tension, flapjack fury, rocky road-rage, icing insanity, next time, BE PREPARED! You have been warned.

Blue Monday

It's official. Today, Monday the17th of January is the most depressing day of the year. That's right, the worst day of the ENTIRE year. I'm hardly surprised. The weather is awful, the festive season was over long ago, chucked out long ago with the Christmas tree and your Nana's rubbish presents, and there seems to be nothing to look forward to.

Some extraordinarily clever people have worked out that there is a mathematical formula behind our January blues.

where weather=W, debt=d, time since Christmas=T, time since failing our new year’s resolutions=Q, low motivational levels=M and the feeling of a need to take action=Na.

Apparently, this makes sense to some people. I however, look at it and feel an instant desire to run away or  be violently sick.

However, there is some controversy about this Blue Monday lark. Apparently, it is linked to a publicity campaign by Sky Travel, and a university involved has distanced itself from the scientists who worked out the magic formula, saying that they no longer work there. Could it all be a hoax, designed to make us realise how miserable our pathetic lives really are and immediately book a holiday? Perhaps. More on the controversy here:

Whether today is actually the most depressing day of the year hardly matters however. As I write, there are:

348 days

8353 hours

501233 minutes 

left of 2011, all of which could be equally depressing, or fabulously happy, depending on whether you like your metaphorical glass is half full or half empty.

My feeling on all of this is mixed. On one hand, I like the idea of wallowing in self pity. Today is the nationwide equivalent of an excuse to curl up on the sofa in your PJs with some ice cream and P.S. I Love You.

On the other hand however, if we all contemplated  how rubbish the world really was, we would surely be living in a permanently suicidal nation. Chin up! Look on the bright side! Other patronising cliches! As I'm sure a wise person once said, there is nothing in the world that cannot be solved by a cup of tea.The scientists also say in a press release commissioned by Wall's ice cream, that the happiest day of the year will be on the 18th of June. Hooray :)

So, here are some reasons to be cheerful and some things to do to beat the Blue Monday feeling, which could rear its ugly head on a Wednesday, or even a Saturday in January, June or December. If you are extremely down, I apologise if this seems patronising. If you are on cloud nine, savour these for times of trial.

Reasons to be cheerful:
1. Friends and family
2. Spring
3. Valentine's Day (if you go in for that)
4. Or if you don't, being violently Anti-Valentine's Day and loftily scoffing at the horrors of our commercial and consumerist world.
5. Tea
6. Getting hooked on a good book
7. Trashy magazines.
8. Chips on the way home
9. An umbrella in a storm (ooh, deep.)
10.  Easter (and Easter eggs)
11. HOT CROSS BUNS!
12. Lambs and flowers and chicks and baby animals (and other hardcore things)
13. The clocks going forward=more daylight=summer closer.
15. The end of exams is in sight (for now)
16. Weekends
17. A long way off, but: summer! Beach trips, sunglasses, BBQs and ditching the thermals
18. Discovering great music and playing it non-stop. My current obsessions are Bombay Bicycle Club and Caro Emerald. (She's a Dutch jazz singer, amaaazing. Check out Riviera Life)
19. Lie-ins
20. Realising that whatever happens, your life is unlikely to ever be as bad as Kerry Katona's.
21. And finally, if in doubt: CAKE. This is one spectacular specimen that my sister made to raise money for her trip to Swaziland. (Cheeky bit of nepotism... ask me if you want one!)

Here ends my wisdom, roll on spring.

Student Protests-what now?

Last year, fifty thousand people, not just students, were so moved to protest against cuts to higher education and an increase in fees that they took to the streets. The police retaliated with force, and the heir to the throne was attacked. But what happens now? Can we still afford to go to university? Is it even worth the money?

The Essentials:

• Fees will rise from £3,290 to up to £9,000 in September 2012.

• Universities charging over £6,000 will have to prove they attract enough students from poorer backgrounds.

• Students receiving free school meals could get the first two years of their degree paid for.

• Grants will be given to students from households earning £42,000 or less, not £50,000 as it is currently.

• Graduates will pay 9% of their income towards their student loan each month if they earn £21,000 or more.

• If student debt is not paid off in 30 years, it will be wiped

• Teaching budgets could be cut by up to 80%.

To put it bluntly, those in Year 12 or below or Year 13s taking a YouTube-inspired ‘gap yah’ are likely to come out of university with debts close to £38,000 when fees rise in 2012. But will they ever go down again? It looks like students will have to scrimp and save even more from now on.


So, what now?
It seems we have three options: continue to protest, turn to more extreme methods, or just give in and accept higher fees.
Whilst I am never an advocate of violence, I can see why people are frustrated by the lack of media attention given to the majority of protests which were peaceful. Students from University College, London staging a sit-in were branded as lazy for focusing on gaining support through Facebook rather than smashing up their campus. But, if we follow the Suffragettes and get angry to make MPs listen, how long until we have student martyrs, killed for trying to go to university? Is it really worth it?


Taking the moral high ground
There’s no doubt that we should continue to protest, but in a way that shows us to be the mature and thoughtful people we are. The events of 2010 frustratingly lived up to all the stereotypes of teenagers and lost the cause a lot of respect. We need to prove to the doubters, to the MPs and the older generation that what they call ‘teenage angst’ or ‘hooliganism’ is a real passion for education and fairness-we're not just being yobs. We can use our technology addiction and youthful energy to get attention in a positive way. Let’s take the moral high ground and surprise people.


Don’t give up on your dreams
I know, I know, cheesy! But, the most important thing is not to abandon your education. Some may see it as giving in and accepting a rise in fees, but if you want to go to university badly enough, go! Some may wonder why it’s worth paying so much to go in the first place, if you’re not even guaranteed a job in our dodgy economic climate. But, the word ‘education’ literally means ‘to bring out potential’. University is not about ‘paying’ to get a good job; it’s about studying something you really enjoy: knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It broadens your mind, you become independent; you meet people from so many different backgrounds; try amazing new things.


I want to study History, a subject with which you can do everything-and at the same time nothing. I have a list as long as my arm of jobs that I definitely don’t want to do but little idea of where my degree will take me. And that, readers, is the beauty of university, college, whatever. You don’t need to have a set plan; you develop as a person over your three years. And if there are no jobs, well, you can always resort to academia and become a professor. It may well be my back-up plan.


So, here is my advice, which you are welcome to ignore, but it’s here it all the same. Don’t let money put you off pursuing something you really love. Loans can be paid off, debts wiped, but a chance to live and study away from home with other like-minded people is an opportunity we should grab with both hands if we possibly can.

New Year's Resolutions

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It always seems like we draw the short straw at this time of the year. After all the partying and celebrating and eating, we are suddenly expected to snap back into dismal January routines with nothing to look forward to, feeling fat and having overdone it on the mince pies. Just to improve what is, let's be honest, a pretty pants month, some  bright spark decided to invent New Year's resolutions. So we can become healthier, friendlier, more caring and generally better people in the following year, of course.

However, in my experience, this often has the opposite effect. When I was younger, I would try desperately  to achieve my resolution of not biting my nails...only to forget and break it in about two hours. Then, I would beat myself up about not being able to stick to it, bite my nails some more, give up and resolve to try harder next year.

So, I stopped making New Year's resolutions for a while. It seemed silly to make a special effort at the beginning of the year when realistically, I knew it would never last past January 10th.

This year though, I decided to try again. It's my last year at home, I should make try even harder to be a nicer person and do all those things I've always wanted to do while I still have the cosy comfort of my parents to fall back on, I thought.

As you all know, I like lists! So I decided to make a list of ideas for resolutions in my beautiful Emma Bridgewater spotty notebook, because having them all written down nicely would of course make keeping them instantly easy.

Sadly, the first attempt quickly turned into a list of all my failings. I managed to come up with thirty two, yes thirty two things that I wanted to change in approximately four minutes. And this is without even touching the surface of those psychological gremlins that we all have deep down. The more I wrote, the more I disliked myself for not having done any of these things before, so the more things I thought of, the more I wrote, and so on... I would not recommend this exercise for a self-esteem boost!

So you can see the extent of my madness, here is my initial list. Click on it if you need to see it bigger, my scanner has created a monster formatting nightmare.

 Looking back on it, what was I thinking? Number eight, stop watching romcoms?! Never going to happen! Ditto controlling my frizzy hair-it has a mind of its own and I will just have to accept this fact. Speaking French like a French person is also impossible, considering I am about as blandly British as a shepherd's pie. Going on a protest march is unlikely to happen now I've seen the footage I missed at the time of police on horses charging at the students protesters against the education cuts. I am waaay too much of a scaredy cat for that! Oops, guess there goes 'break out of my comfort zone' too, sigh.

I did, thankfully, realise how stupid list number one was, and did another:

Number one: be more realistic- that's more like it.  I do need to achieve number two before going to university, otherwise I will arrive at university looking what I like to call 'bohemian' and 'non-conformist', but what others call 'tramp' due to lack of funds. Stopping procrastinating is also essential so that I can actually get to a university! But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if I watch fewer romcoms, does it? And eleven resolutions is rather too many!

I'm not really sure how to conclude this post, and I'm aware it seems quite negative! The post-Christmas slump obviously unleashed my inner pessimist, who is usually kept in check by sprinkles of optimism and not thinking about it-ness.
But I guess my point is: why bother making unrealistic resolutions anyway? It would be much better if we all just tried to do little things throughout the year. Here's to February Resolutions, to Easter Resolutions and to Summer Resolutions! Good luck! I know I'll need it.