The Riots.

Words can't really describe how sickened I feel at the riots going on around my country currently.

The trouble started when a man was shot last Thursday by the police. The story from that point isn't very clear. Regardless, it should never have lead to this.

The shooting happened in Tottenham, a London borough. On Saturday, a 'peaceful protest' was organised outside of the police station. Fair enough, you'd think - but it soon escalated into a riot.
The riots only really hit the news big-time last night, when the situation got even more out of control. Trouble spread to other parts of London, with businesses, shops and homes being ransacked in Clapham, Croydon, Peckham, Lewisham etc. - but it also spread to other cities. Overnight there was trouble in Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol, with 'minor scuffles' in Manchester as well. There are currently rumours in various other cities, including Southampton.

I have no idea what the mentality of these people is. When people were looting shops, I was peeved off to say the least - but when they started setting businesses on fire and ransacking people's livelihoods, that got too much.
Yes, it may have started as the 'underclass youths' letting out their anger and frustration at unemployment and the like - but I have no sympathy for them. It is now nothing more than a lust for destruction and violence and is driven by greed. They are damaging their own communities to 'stick it to the man' - but what exactly will it achieve? Prove to the world that they can act like scumbags?

These people are all to ready to go on the streets and blame someone else. Blame the government for cutting back on spending. Blame them because you don't have a job or a proper education.

Shut the fuck up. Get your act together, get yourself a decent education and go and look for a job. You have nobody but yourself to blame.

Apart from maybe your parents, who have let you get so out of control with no respect for anyone or anything.



In more cheerful news.. here's a picture of a flower that I took today.

My Year in Snapshots.

So, I thought I'd post a few images of my year to make up for the shitty overview I just gave you. (:

Berlin, February

Reichstag


Dom (Cathedral)


Beer, because the drinking age is 16 in Germany



USA, April

On Times Square


Capitol building


Oslo, June

Royal Palace


Stortingsbygningen


Opera House



Hopefully, I soon shall have some more images - from my birthday, Cornwall and Edinburgh. I am also looking at going away to Milan, Amsterdam or Stockholm for a few days in October; big up the carbon footprint!

(Almost) A Whole Year

Blimey. So, it seems that my neglect of this blog has reached an all-time high. An entire 11 months of forgetfulness?
Yeah, sounds like me.

I shan't even try and go over the year in any detail, but I shall skim over it a bit.

School has been fairly uneventful. Very fun, as many of my friends are now 17 and can drive, and there's been more pressure on exams, but it's been good. All of my teachers have been lovely, and they feel more like friends than teachers. As weird as that may sound.
I am currently awaiting the results of my AS Level exams.
The entirely non-nerdy subjects I take are:
Biology.
Chemistry.
Maths.
Politics.

In my January AS exams, I got As in biology, chemistry and maths - I didn't do any exams in politics then.
Nervoussss.

I have also been travelling a fair bit this year, too. I've discovered that I absolutely love just getting on planes and visiting new cities. I've been on a day trip to Berlin and Oslo, and also went to the USA for a week. I'm such a nerd, I love taking photos of the architecture. I know, sad xP

This summer is also busy for me. The first week of the holidays was spent at Papworth Hospital doing work experience, as I want to become a doctor. It was absolutely amazing, and I learnt so much - as well as having my desire to do medicine totally confirmed.
Since then, I've been to a few parties and generally enjoyed myself. This Thursday (11th) is my 17th birthday, so I cannot wait to finally be able to drive my car.
Then, on the 15th, I'm off to Cornwall with a few friends to camp for the week, and on the 21st I'm off to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival.

All in all, I'm currently at an exciting place in my life. I am loving the new-found independence I'm getting, and the prospect of applying to university both terrifies and excites me.

Woopsie.

Ok, I forgot to post when I said I would. Again. But, to be fair, I've been pretty busy; school started again today, and I needed to organise everything.
I said I'd post my results, so here they are:
Maths: A*
Physics: A*
Chemistry: A*
Biology: A*
English language: A
History: A
Geography: A*
Spanish: A
German: A*
English literature: It's currently being re-marked.
FSMQ: (Equiv. to A-Level maths) A (highest mark)

So yeah, pretty happy with that (:

As I am lazy, I shall copy and paste how my first day back went from the School Thread on ACC:

Walked with Sadie to school and found out I'm in Mr. Jones' form. I wanted Frau Bower DDD:
Then had an assembly like, "It's wonderful to have you back. You're like homing pigeons, we let you free but you still came back.." etc. etc.

Then, went to form. Oh my God, Mr. Jones is the scariest man alive, I swear. Hannah came in talking, and he was just like, "OUT! OUT, NOW!"
Although, he's one of these people who you can't tell if they're joking or not, sooo..
He's also, like, ridiculously clever, and speaks fluent Latin (he used to give whole lessons in Latin, Christ knows if anyone actually understood him) O_e When he gave out the time-tables, he went to Milky, "Ah, McConnell, you're a clever one, aren't you? That makes two of us; you and I"
When he came around to me, he went, "Lara.. Lara, Lara, Lara... you're a clever cloggs too :D That's three!"

And then he gave a speech about how GCSEs are a doss compared to A-Levels, and how ridiculously hard we'll have to work. Inspiring ._.

There are a few new people in our year, one of whom I swear is about 20. I think he said he'd already done Sixth Form and had also worked for a year in Newcastle, so he's at least 19.

After form, we went to sign on for our subjects. Basically just meant we had to go to the Old Gym, where the HoDs were sitting at desks, and as long as you still wanted to do a subject, they put a tick next to your name and Bob's yer uncle.
At the science one, it really scared me. There was no queue, and three science teachers - Dr. Mulcahy, Dr. Millington, Dr. LeSurf - and they all went, "Ahh, Lara."
I was like O_e because none of them have taught me before..
Then Dr. Millington went, "Yes, yes, amazing results.." and Dr. Mulcahy chipped in, "Well done! Absolutely outstanding!" (apparently I got top in the year for all of the sciences.. according to them?) and beamed a semi-toothless smile at me.
I laughed nervously and walked off quickly.

Then, at the maths one, Merson was like "Ah, hellooooo :D" :L He then went, "If you wish to discuss Further Maths with me, meet me in my room in about half an hour."
I just went, "O.e sorry, could you please re-phrase that?" :L

But yeah. Went to discuss it with him, but took Andy along so I wasn't a loner. Sir kept on looking from me to Andy with a small smile.

I'm pretty pleased with my timetable, and I'll make another post about that soon. Maybe. If I feel like it :P

Feme Parks, innit?

Aloha (: I haven't updated this bloggity in a while, have I?
I would say it's because I have been so incredibly busy I just haven't had time but, well, that would be a lie. I just couldn't be arsed.
I also cannot remember what I have got up to since I last posted, so I shall just talk about yesterday.

Earlier this week, some friends and I went to Louisa's house. Among other things, we discussed what we could do to make things a bit interesting, considering we go back to school in under two weeks' time. Lou came up with the idea of going to a theme park, and to cut a long story short, six of us agreed that we'd go to Thorpe Park on the Sunday (yesterday).

So, yesterday morning, I found myself dragged out of bed at 4.50am to traipse up to the trainstation for a 7am train to London King's Cross.

To go off at a tangent a tad, but I love walking really early in the morning. I had to leave my house at 6.20, and the streets were just so peaceful, I loved it.

Anyway. From King's Cross, we got the tube to Vauxhall, then a train to Staines, and finally a bus to Thorpe Park, getting there at 9.45-ish.
Now, I am not a morning person in the slightest. I detest them. By the time we arrived at Thorpe Park, I was already a walking zombie, so I downed a few Red Bulls and got myself all caffeinated up.

Thorpe Park itself was ridiculously overpriced, but we beat the system by getting 2-for-1 entrance tickets.

Now, when I was younger, I hated theme parks. I was afraid to go on all of the rides, with the exception of the tea cups, and I generally had an awful time watching everyone had fun; so I made up for lost time and went on almost every ride in the park.

All of the adrenaline from the rides made me feel wide awake again - however, seeing my photo from the Stealth ride, I was brought back to earth as I realised I looked like a zombie which was about to drop dead for the second time.

As you may have guessed by my writing, I am not quite in the mood for blogging right now. Tomorrow is GCSE results day, and I am shit scared. So I'll end the blog here, and if I do well tomorrow, I'll post my results.

Cyaaa.

Sweet 16.

Ah, yes. As the title gives away, it was my 16th birthday recently - on Wednesday, the 11th August.
I am one of the youngest in my year, so as school progressed, I saw most of my friends have their 16th birthdays way before mine - one of my friends in my year turned 16 less than a month after I turned 15!
So, I awaited my birthday eagerly - and what a day it was.

I'd gone through many plans when deciding what to do for my birthday. Originally, I was going to get a load of people together for a camp-out, with a BBQ etc. Then, we realised that, actually, that is illegal and the police would be highly likely to find us, so we decided not to do that.

In the end, it was my dad who came up with the idea. My parents hired out a 17-seater mini-bus for the day, so my mum, dad & I plus 14 of my friends went to the coast for the day.
Once we got there, my parents scarpered and left us to our own devices.

I had an absolute whale of a time (I love that expression, aha). We took loads of frisbees, a cricket set, a few footballs etc. to play with on the beach, and we all also took our swimming stuff. I don't usually like the sea, but I got thrown in there by my boyfriend and actually loved it, despite the fact it was freezing cold - I do live in England, after all.

After many eventful games of cricket, extreme frisbee and football, we headed off to the arcade machines. My friend Jordan was desperate to get a toy Buzz Lightyear from the grabby machine thing, and spent ages whittling his money away in vain :L He had to stop in the end because the 'bouncer' - a weedy, scruffy-looking man with a thick Yorkshire accent - was convinced he'd seen him "thumping the machine".
We were all like "Er, whaaaat? O_e"

So we took the piss out of the bouncer bloke for a while, and went back to the beach.

By the time we'd eaten at Pizza Hut and gone back to the beach, it was getting late-ish, so the beach was getting empty. Some people wandered off to go to the place with the larger rides, but I decided not too, as I felt a bit ill.

As it got darker and my friends all came back, we did the cake and let off a few Chinese lanterns. The cake was delish, although I accidentally dropped it in the sand, so half of it went to waste :L
The Chinese lantern bit was amazing, although we set off an alarm because the coast guard somehow thought it was a distress signal, and came to save us..

The night ended in a literal bang, as there were fireworks on the pier at 10pm, which, if I do say so myself, was a rather nice way to end the evening.

Well, I say end the evening, but it wasn't quite - we all piled back into the mini-van, and my dad took us all home to mine for a 'sleepover' - but, of course, none of us slept.
All in all, it was the best birthday in a long time. I spent it with my amazing friends & boyfriend, and had the best day.

What did make me laugh as I looked back at the photos taken of the day is that my friend Sadie seems to have been spying on Andy and I. I've seen a few photos taken from a distance which I had no idea were taken :L

Although I do have one which I like - this one:



I love him :')

'Fun' in the Sun.

Look at the irony in the title. Ahahaha.
-.-
As you may have already guessed from my last post, this wasn't the best of holidays. I much prefer short - say, three day - breaks to overly long breaks. That way, I can go there, do what I want, and then go home.
To be fair, I probably had already decided that I wasn't going to enjoy myself before we even set off. But bear with me.

On the Saturday, we left Stansted airport and flew to Perpignan, in the south of France. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, although when we experience turbulence near landing, my mum almost crushed all of the bones in my hand - she's absolutely petrified of landings, let alone when flying with Ryanair.

As our flight had been delayed by an hour and a half, we arrived in France later than we'd anticipated. This wouldn't have been an issue, had the villa people (we rented out a villa for two weeks) had left us anything in the fridge.
As it was, they'd only left us a pot of half-eaten jam.
This also wouldn't have been a problem.. that is, if the French shops didn't all shut at 8pm.
What sort of country does that?! D:
As we were staying near a town called Ceret, we decided to go out for a meal - but everywhere was full.
I'd not eaten since breakfast, so I feel I was allowed to be a bitchy so-and-so at that moment in time.

Not a good start to the holiday. We ended up getting a takeaway pizza at 11pm.

I can't actually remember exactly what we did over the two weeks, but it did involve a lot of beaches. I got horribly burnt on the first day of the holiday, and spend the rest of the holiday suffering with a second degree burn on my left shoulder.
So, whenever we went to a beach, I spent it sulking under a sun umbrella thing, reading a book. As a result of that, plus the fact that I read abormally quickly, I got through 16 books on that holiday, each with between 300 and 700 pages.

Of course, there were good points to the holiday. There was an adorable waiter in one of the restaurants...
"Ah, 'allo. Are you from England? I recognise your accents, I lived in England for a while."
"Evening. Yeah, we're from Cambridge, do you know it?"
"Ah, Cambridge! Yes, close to Birmingham, where I lived. Le vurst city en England, oui?"

Bless him. Anyone with any geographical knowledge of England know that Cambridge and Birmingham aren't particularly close :P But he was so cute.

There were also a fair few amusing moments. For example, my dad is absolutely appalling at languages. We went into a pharmacy to get something to treat my sunburn, and my dad went, "What is sunburn in French? Salle de bain?"
Anyone with even a tiny grasp of French knows that 'salle de bain' is bathroom, not sunburn :L
After that, we tried to keep him quiet, but we still has a few mishaps - like when he asked for 'the banknote' instead of 'the bill' in a restaurant.

I think the part of the holiday I most enjoyed were the trips to Spain. It's funny, really - as soon as we crossed over the border and into Spain, it was as if we'd arrived home; we just felt so much more comfortable in Spain than in France.
Upon my request, we paid a visit to Barcelona. I'd been to Barcelona before, but that was over two years ago, and we weren't that far from it.
We actually visited it twice over our holiday. The first time, we all bundled into the car and went. We got miserably lost, and only really saw the Sagrada Familia (the huge Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, which is still being built).
On the second visit, however, just my dad and I went. I was the map reader, and if I do say so myself, I was a lot better at it than my mum was on our previous visit.

Our first stop was the Nou Camp, FC Barcelona's football stadium. We went on a tour of it, and then went into the enormous shop. My dad bought me a Messi shirt (: Only at the till did we realise that is cost €93.. ah, well, I love Lionel Messi.
We then went to La Rambla, a street full of street performers and all sorts. We also looked in all of the designer shops, and looked around the Boqueria market, which is pretty amazing.

As this has become an absolute essay of a post, I apologise. I am very glad to be home now; we picked up our puppy on Sunday, I spent another amazing day with Andy yesterday, and it's my 16th birthday tomorrow. Things can't get much better.