Everything happens at once

Due to unforeseen occurrences last Sunday I was unable to give a an update on my blog as I ended up spending my free time helping my grandpa move old radios and so on. As such this will cover the events of last week as well as that of the week just gone. 

 Last week was marked by the arrival of my January results, a coinciding fancy dress day and my DofE gold training day. However the first event for me was a lecture at oxford uni on neutrinos, I can't remember who gave the lecture, but it was good fun. As mentioned the second major event for me last week was my results which was the same day as had been chosen for the 6th form fancy dress day. I went as a cowboy, dressed in jeans, boots, checked shirt, a hat and a leather waistcoat. I thought I looked the part, but apparently not even my rubber band gun could complete the look; instead some of my friends had to make me a gold star to make me a "Proper Cowboy". It was quite good and as such I wore it with pride. Then at break time I walked down to the lecture theatre to collect and sign for my envelope. 

 Inside was a sheet of A4 paper with my results on. No "A"s or "A*"s however the one paper I cared about I achieved a "B" and it was only 3 UMS below an "A". I was pleasantly surprised with my chemistry as I was only 2 UMS below a "B" and my fears were confirmed with maths. In maths I had only managed to get a mid "D"  however I was expecting this due to running out of time in the exam and struggling with a few of the questions. As a consequence of these results I am getting my papers back for both drama and chemistry to have a look for extra marks and I am resitting my maths paper. Later that day a group of friends and I visited Laura’s house for a post results tea party, wherein we consumed pizza biscuits and tea. As well as watching the first half of Thor.

On the Saturday I travelled over to Buckingham to stay the night at my grandparents in order that I could attend the DofE traning the next day as the number 32 bus doesn't run on a Sunday. I missed the bus and as such had to wait an hour for the next one to arrive. Eventually I did arrive at my grandparents and I set everything up ready for the next day. 

 The training day itself went well and a lot of fun was had by all, activities included a first aid quiz, pitching a tent and boiling water.  After getting back I had planned to update my blog and then do some homework, however my grandpa asked for some help. I ended up cleaning his pond filter and pump, Moving old radio sets and digging and watering his allotment as well as making dinner for everyone. 

All in all, I felt that the week had gone relatively well however I knew that the week after would be even better. 

The first big thing for me this past week was winning the schools chess club competition as I ended up one point ahead after winning my last game with a total of 19 out of 21, I was quite pleased. However the biggest and most anticipated event of the academic year so far was only just around the corner. RLS Cern Trip 2012.

Thursday started as any other Thursday would, apart from a few minor details such as the following; I was awake at 3.30 AM and I was leaving the house at 4 AM. 

Or so I thought, however Tabitha's parents arrived about 7 minutes early, while I was still eating a bowl of cereal. So after rushing half a bowl of cereal and grabbing my bag I jumped into the car. On the whole the ride there was fairly uneventful even though the fog was so thick in places that we could only see a few meters in front of the car. We arrived at the Luton airport about half an hour early and had to wait for everyone else including Mr Croft and Mr Write (I don’t know how to spell his name) to arrive. Early as Tabitha and I were we still nearly missed the plane because Jamie Baskeyfield arrived over 10 minutes later than latest we could be there as stipulated by the numerous letters sent preceding the trip.

The flight there was remarkably uneventful apart from heather and I had to reassure Tabitha that everything would be OK as strangely for a regular long distance flyer, she developed a phobia of her ears popping. As such heather and I had to convince her that it isn’t that bad.

Anyway, once in Switzerland we had breakfast in the airport, suffice to say I personally do not regard a croissant and a cup of tea as “Breakfast” After that we caught the bus to the tram station and proceeded to board the first tram that arrived.

 It was going the wrong way, no biggie and one change later we were heading to cern, the first part of it that we see from the tram is their new exhibition centre “The globe”.

After departing we went into the main centre and had a look at their exhibition for a while before crossing over the road to see a short film in the newer centre. We then had a look around there before heading to lunch in the staff canteen.  I made up for the small breakfast.

Next we returned to a garden we passed through to lunch in order to have a group photo in front of some old experiments. We then had an hour or so to do what we wanted before the lecture and tour started. A group of friends and I visited the gift shop where we disappointed by the lack of pin badges, none the less I bought 6 postcards, a t-shirt and a 4GB memory stick  and received for my troubles a free poster of the standard model in French.

The lecture was interesting, but after being up for ages and being given the chance to sit down in warm comfy chair in a dark room, myself and many others nodded off a bit. This would have been ok if I had not been sitting in the middle of the front row, so I had to keep one jerking myself awake.

The chance to see linac 2 was brilliant and our tour guide was very interesting, and as well as linac 2 we saw the lead particle accelerator before crossing the border into France to see their computor room. It was massive.

Anyway that near enough completed our tour and visit of cern so we headed off toward Geneva to check out the sights. Including Lake Geneva and the massive fountain. To take a Closer look we took the boat across the lake, walked along the promenade a bit and then got another boat back before heading to a restaurant and having pizza for dinner. After the Pizza we all headed back to the train station and boarded a double decker train to the airport. The flight back was once again relatively uneventful apart from Tabitha worrying about her ears again. We dropped off tabby and I went to bed.

Nearly everyone turned up the next day and not ever so much was said, I gave a postcard to Alice who was unable to go. And yesterday I visited my grandparents to give my grandpa some of the leaflets I had picked up for him.  I also decide to trade in a few games to amazon and as such spent half an hour fixing his printer before going into Milton Keynes on 5 o’clock bus and posting them seconds before the post office closed.  When I got home I decide to pre-order kid Icarus as it comes out on Friday.

This next week I have the release of Kid Icarus, and gradback camp to look forwards to

See you all soon 

Matthew 

P.S. If you want to see some photos of Cern i have made an album on facebook 

Milestone

Hello once again.

This week has been relatively uneventful for me, as a lot of it has been preparation for next week as at school next week is not only charity week but we receive our January results on Thursday, as the sixth form are having fancy dress :)
However what has happened includes the dancing night at explorers, and our annual paper aeroplane competition  at cubs. A few meeting at school regarding DofE and chess.

Now the Milestone that I have alluded to in the total happens to be that this blog has Finally achieved 1000 total views

Sorry that there is very little this week
Thank you for all of the continued support and I hope to bring more news this time next week

Matthew

After fall out

Hello,

 Once again there is a reasonable gap between today's blog post and the last, and as such I apologise for the delay, So I have been considering trying to update this blog every Sunday before I go rowing. How long this is kept up for I am not sure.

  Over the last week a few things have occurred, namely pancake day being a major event with me having pancakes a total of 4 times over the last week and a half.  In addition to that I have also attended meetings regarding both my upcoming Cern trip and DofE Gold practice expedition in the lake district. I have also done fairly well in chess club up till now, I am still In first position however since losing to the person in second place I am only 1 point ahead. 

 Yesterday, I attended my capsize training for rowing at Stantonbury campus pool, It involved swimming the length of the pool half head above the water,  half with our fully submerged followed by treading water for two minutes and the swimming back on my back, then I had to throw a safety rope and pack it, and how to get out of a boat when it capsizes, for me it involves hitting the top of the boat three times and then pulling the release cord for my feet as they are big enough to not slip out of the shoes, It also happened to be the first time I have worn my rowing kit even though it was ordered in October because I didn't pick it up till mid January. 

In the holidays I watched "The Graduate" a brilliant film about a man who falls for the daughter of the woman he is having an affair with. Then last night after training I watched "Rumour has it" which is the sequel.

Over the last week and a bit, I have been playing my 3DS ambassador games a lot, completing "Super Mario Bros" (SNES), "Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap"(GBA) and "Yoshi's Island Super Mario Advance 3"(GBA) and I am currently playing "Metroid Fusion" I beat the SA-X only to loose to the last boss immediately after thereby meaning I have to try again. Also "Pokémon Black and White 2" were announced late last night and there is a lot of confusion about them, however I personally dislike them as firstly I didn't enjoy white all that much and they are DS games not 3DS games which sucks. 

Since asking her out the girl who I asked out and myself haven't spoken much and in the one session where we did sit together during a free period very little was said and I feel that she has been avoiding the topic.  A close mutual friend asked her why she said no and apparently it is because she wants to concentrate on her studies, I find to be reasonable and valid excuse, however it still broke my heart and I still feel fairly shy around her. Even though I received some lovely advice from friends, such as Sohumm and Sam, after last post about that "I am a lovely man" and "she is making a huge mistake by rejecting one of the kindest people that they know", etc.  Yet sometimes I feel as if I will never get anywhere with women. However, I can but hope. 

On a happier note I upgraded the software on my phone for the second time last week and I now run 2.13.401.3 before with speedtest I was getting a download speed of 3.42 Mbps I now get 4.83 compared to my wifi speed of 0.09 Mbps this is brilliant 

Until next time 

Matthew 

  

Between Myself and the Dark ...

"All you have between you and 'The dark' is Bear"

Helen Thompson

The past few days have not gone well for me, not well at all, and as a result i have returned to my bear because it is one of the small pieces of comfort and stability i have left.

As this was the last week before the half-term holidays and valentines day I had decided that i would ask the person I like out, initially, on Tuesday I think, I asked her if she would like to see the woman in black with me sometime in the holidays, seeing as we had both seen the stage play in December together I thought it might work. She declined, saying that it was too scary. That put me out a bit, however it was a valid reason and as such i decided I would ask her again, I just had to wait for a chance when we were relatively alone together to ask her. Days passed and my chance still hadn't occurred, so on Thursday evening I decided that I would go all out to ask her on Friday, I got out my new suit, polished my shoes, sorted out my bow tie, and had an early night in order to help steady my nerves. My chance came at lunch time as we both went up to the library to do homework and we both sat at the table facing the window, down the side away from others. We both got out some homework and preceded as normal, occasionally asking each other for help on a question we were stuck with. That continued for about twenty minutes to half an hour all the while i was trying come up with the courage to ask. Eventually I got there and spoke her name (there was no backing out at this stage) she replied yes and I asked her, "Would you go out with me please?" .There was a second or two of silence before she answered, each seeming like an eternity with my heart pounding in my chest, as fast as if i had sprinted the length of the school field. "No" the bottom fell out of my heart and it filled  up with despair, after a second or so, she continued "I'm sorry that sounded a bit harsh but, No" the despair continued to fill the cavity I felt. 

  And so we sat there for the rest of lunch in silence continuing our homework, neither speaking to other very much. I don't know what was going through her head, but through mine were many thoughts asking what was the point of asking as I had always known it would be that way because I am fated to forever alone, my sadness deepening. At the end of lunch she left and i wished her a happy holiday and stayed where I was even when a group of my friends who I also shared a free period with asked my to sit with them, I just wasn't in the mood for people at all.  This mood continued for most of the free period until i decided in the last five minutes that I would go say hello to my friends. She was there which resulted in a little bit of an awkward silence between her and myself that a couple of my friends' picked up on, and then we all continued to our last lesson of the half term. 

 Later that evening I attended the district explorer shooting competition, but at the start we built a couple of bonfires, while snapping wood for the fire I stood on a nail and I went through my shoe into my foot, luckily it missed the middle of my foot instead catching the inside edge. I half walked, half limped my way back up to the building where some of the leaders were, removed my shoe and sock, saw that it was bleeding and asked if they had a plaster or something, Sharon refused, stating "you knew we were at the quarries you should have worn proper shoes" to witch i replied, I came for a shooting competition. 

tesco is open 24/7"  he then said sort out out amongst your selves so I have decided to but a small packet of sweets a quarter of the price of the box of chocolates and then charge the receipt to explorers.

It is as I went to bed and fell asleep that my emotions hit me hardest, and the depression returned from earlier, driving me to find the only one I can truly depend on, Old Bear.

The next day I had my London 3 pokémon  tournament, my dad gave me £30 for the train and so on, I got on the 8.27 to Euston, took the northern line and changed to the Piccadilly line, where i ended up going the wrong way, so I had to backtrack. Eventually I ended up at the London Trocadero centre where i signed up,  I then begged a focus sash from people eventually getting one, I ended up in the top 32 which isn't bad considering the number of world class players that were there, I also came top 8 in the retro tournament held on pokémon stadium 1, We then went for dinner in "Wong Kei" restaurant in Chinatown, which i found very nice and very cheap, afterwards i went home on the train only to find that when I reached the bus stop it would be a half and hour wait in temperatures well below freezing, and so I walked all the way home from the train station in a little under forty minutes, meeting my brother en route on his way back from his girlfriend's.  

Anyway I got home and went to bed, yet once again the feeling of loneliness and worthlessness returned and for a second night in a row I cried myself to sleep hugging Old Bear.

Matthew 

Apologies

First and foremost I would like to aplogise for the long delay since my last post, however since then i have been busy with some very impostant and interesting things.
 To start with i spent the first couple of weeks of this month reviseing for my three exams, maths (C1), chemistry and thetre studies. On the whole they went fairly well, unfortunatly though I  did run out of time on a couple of papers, those two being my chemestry paper , whitch was very hard, and my second drama paper ,( the one on shadow of a gunman by sean o casey ) however on the whole they went freasonably well.
 Since then i have started rowing again and finaly after ordering it in october i recieved my kit for the rowing club so i now have a unisuit, leggings and a tech top. I have also won my first two games in the uk chessland competition eaven though i am already through to the next round. I have continued my keyboard playing and explorers, with Burns night last Wednesday and me burning myself on the oven the week before that.
  I have fixed my panier rack on my bike and bought a light for it, I have bought my brother's birthday presents already. I have read all of shaman king and started the following manga, DNAngel, Fruits Basket, hayate the combat butler I have continued with vampire knight and started blue exorcist.
 I have bought a new pair of shoes, and tomorrow I have a route planning day for DofE gold.
My group has been decided alonh withe the play i will be doing for my moderation in drama on may the 2nd
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*Above was Written last saterday*

Since then, The route planning went well and i will spend my birthday walking ti the top of Hellvellyn, or dieing in the attempt. As such i have instated a program where i get up at 6 am and do 20 mins of exercises before school in an attempt to get fitter.
 On other issues I have continued sorting stuff for drama, so that is progressing fine
and i am considering going to see both the muppets movie and the woman in black, although with the latter i may need to take a friend in case it is as scary as the play,

Matthew
P.S. Hopefuly it wont be so long until my next post, and therefore it will be more organised etc

Happy New Year

Happy New year, I welcome everyone to the first of many blog entries from myself for this year, I hope you all enjoyed your Christmases and so on. To business. 

  I spent Christmas day over my grandparents because they don't receive carers on Christmas day. I received presents from several friends as well as family. From Tabby I received a "rat race" toy, from Tammy I got a lovely Spike Milligan diary and a "jaguar" pen and from Polly i got a red illoom balloon and a giant lolly. 

My brother gave me a lovely leather belt and Shula gave me a handmade phone case and bracelet. One set of grandparents gave me one of their "Goodie Bag"s as they are known in my house, containing, marshmallows, popcorn and a small sum of money inside a Christmas card. The other set of grandparents gave me 3 shirts, 2 CDs (Immersion by pendulum and Doctor Who series 5 soundtrack) and a 28L Triple pannier bag, as well as a book " Ray Diffen Stage Clothes" detailing his work in costume design during his career. One of my aunts and uncles got me the "Terry Prachett's Discworld Collector's Edition 2012 Calender" as well a Pannier Rack for my bike. On the other side of the family one of my aunts and uncles gave my a Michael McIntyre DVD Boxset and another set of uncles have put some money into my bank account. 

 From my parents I received 3 T-shirts, a box of Randoms, a box of york fruit, a small umbrella for school and a  new 1L Platypus bag as the valve on my old one wasn't working so well. 

On boxing day we travelled down to the cottage in Norfolk and we visited our neighbour in their family Christmas, we didn't have a quiz this year but we did watch the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film. We stayed at the cottage for the next 3 days generally doing homework, relaxing, fixing the floor down in my

 bedroom and watching

 the "Bourne Trilogy" that my brother recieved for christmas. 

 We returned on the evening of the 29th so that on the 30th I may visit the  library for manga club and drop off some books at the bookcrossing point upstairs in MK central library. The other event I attended previously in the holiday was the "Mario's is coming to town, 3DS Tour" which I visited and had a good chat with the people there, they concluded that I knew more about the console than they did and that I was a "true fan", thus they decided to give me a plush toy, so I chose Yoshi. 

That sums up my holiday for the most part however yesterday and today was spent sorting through all of my clothes to find what does and does not fit, as such I am having to wave goodbye, sadly, to 6 of my T-shirts including all my "Hanna-Barbera Collection" shirts, i.e. my wacky races shirt, my popeye shirts and so on. As well as my "Pac-Man" shirt and others. 

 In addition to sorting out my wardrobe I also helped clear up hedge trimmings and photograph stuff for ebay, I saw the new year in by sitting in bed, by myself with my laptop wishing people well on Facebook.

As for new year's resolutions, I have decided to weigh myself and record my hight at least once a month to compare myself month on month. In addition I will strive to have better relations with my friends and so to hopefully change my life for the better. 

As such once again I wish you all a happy and prosperous new year and good luck with every exam  that you  take 

Thanks for reading 

Matthew 

Merry Christmas

Once again it has come around to that time of year, the dreaded "C" word, Christmas. As is usual I along with all peers, are on christmas holiday, unfortunately because i have january exams i have to revise this christmas.
 However it hasn't been all bad as christmas camp went fairly well last weekend and i received gold colours for drama.
Unlike me I did not get around to making anybody christmas cards this year, so if i haven't sent you a personal message or told you in person , have a merry Christmas
 As those of you who read my blog will know that i am struggling with my inner demons, mainly cowardice and loneliness the first i may be able to sort soon, however it is unlikely and the latter is dependant on the first
 Oh well, what will be, will be :(

anyway see you all soon
Merry Christmas
Matthew

PS next entry will probably be longer