Because these entries have been archieved the most recent ones are at the bottom.

28th April
Some time after 9:00pm
Am sitting in the middle room with my brand new laptop. This thing seems like the perfect opportunity to resurrect the old website journal thingy. I can take it with me to school and the shop and work on entries there and stuff, also I should hope not to lose this in the same way as I did with my old entries, ha.

Right now Dad and I are watching The Jazz Singer I really wanted to go to bed by now, I’m shattered, probably not helped by the fact that I’ve spent the past few hours sat in front of this Laptop. That’s bound to make your eyes tired.

I only got it yesterday and I’ve spent most of my time since then playing on it. Yesterday I took it down the shop with me in the bag that Will got for me to carry it in, but, being the clever-clogs I am, I left the games I wanted to put onto it at home (CSI and Age of Mythology). I didn’t want to put too many games onto it as it’s supposed to be a studying machine, for Uni. But I was bored, so Dad gave me one of the games he had down the shop, something called Galactic Civilisations which is quite complex and I suck at.

Today I took the laptop to school and while I was there I did a little HTMLing, played some Spider Solitaire, typed a little of a pseudo-English-essay and then later installed the CSI game. It took so long to install that by the time I was done I had to shut it all down. So in the end I stayed down the shop and played CSI. THAT I’m good at, kinda. At least I got 100% for the first two cases, I kinda went down hill after that.

Yesterday was brilliant, it was my birthday, which is nice enough in itself. Eighteen years old! I stayed up until 1:20am to see in my birthday, that was the time that I was born at, although by rights I should have started celebrating at six the previous evening, as that’s when my Mum’s waters broke. Technically I only saw up to 1:17am, as I dozed off shortly afterwards, but that was going by the clock in my bedroom which is slightly fast so by rights I probably did see in 1:20, lol.

I woke up at about six and then again at about seven, when Dad woke me up and so, of course, I got up. Then I went down for breakfast, but that was only about half seven and my grandparents wouldn’t be up for another half an hour, so I busied myself with the showbiz news on Sky and with the Winnie the Pooh ornament I got the day before. It’s a calendar thing which you have blocks to turn over to show the day and month, so it never goes out of date.

When Nanny and Grampy came downstairs I was handed two boxes. The biggest was from Will and it contained my laptop bag, not the regular satchel style laptop bag, or shoulder bag type thing, but a back pack, which means that I can use it for school books and the like, carrying it on my back saves my back from getting pulled over to one side by a shoulder bag, also when I’m away at Uni it’s harder to pinch a back pack than a bag being carried in someone’s hand. It’s black and blue and has three pockets, with various built in bits for pens, cards and the laptop. It also came with a built in CD holder which holds about 24 CDs and is already proving useful.

Then came the fun bit. The second and smaller parcel contained the laptop, which I only had a few minutes to play with, I played about half a game of Spider Solitaire, then I had to go to school. The laptop got stuck in its carry bag and put into the car and I took my school bag to school with me. The laptop went down the shop.

Dad gave me a lift to school, I decided against wearing uniform and instead settled for black trousers, a loose white summer top with three-quarter length sleeves and the bright pink Sketchers trainers Dad had got me the day before at TK Max for £19.99. It wasn’t until I got up to the door and saw a sign saying that ‘Rothesay Acadmey welcomed HMIe for [their] inspection’ (which couldn’t have been further from the truth) that I realised that perhaps I wasn’t dressed in the most appropriate manner. Needless to say nobody minded, in fact plenty of people thought my trainers were pretty cool.

I had a double free period first thing which I spent working on my gum wrapper chain. It’s now much longer than me, lol. I didn’t have anything better to do seeing as I’d left my notepad at home and couldn’t be bothered with doing homework on my birthday. So I sat there folding, wetting, tearing and folding Wrigleys gum wrappers. Then after that I should have gone to double Business Management, more so because I hadn’t been since the previous Wednesday for a Unit Test, I hadn’t even been back for the results from it. Instead I went to this thing with the poet Tom Leonard. That was literally indescribable. I don’t want to say that it was bad, because it wasn’t all that bad, just irritating. I get the feeling that I could have liked it, but for numerous reasons I didn’t.

Firstly, I’m not a big fan of Tom Leonard’s poetry, as far as I’m concerned a poem is something which either rhymes or has some form of rhythm or structure. Tom Leonard’s works tend to be rambling streams of thought or a long sentence. It also didn’t help the way that he read them, he paused at the end of every line, even if there was no need for a pause. That just meant that he was breaking up and drawing out an already pretty broken up poem.

Also, when he spoke I think that he must have actually finished about one in ten sentences. He’d sort of go “I was feeling very angry when I wrote this poem and I think… Anyway…” and then he’d go on to read a poem. The problem with this is you never actually got the point he was trying to make, and also, it took you a couple of moments to get whether or not he was reading the poem, or whether he was still rambling.

Unfortunately for me Cave Troll sat beside me, and kept on turning round telling me to ask him a question. For a brief moment I entertained the idea of asking him if he ever did any proper poetry, but I let that one go, I mean he was nice enough, if a little sweaty, and everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, even about poetry.

After that I went on down to the shop and played on the laptop. There was a card there for me from Brian, Dad’s friend who comes into the shop, and a card and present from Mark and Maria, who own the Tartan shop, three doors down from ours. The present was one of these Winnie the Pooh wall plate things, Dad had bought me one in there a little while back, and so now I have two. Which reminds me, tomorrow I have to go in there and say thanks to them for it, I mean those things cost about £20!

Lisa brought me a little gift bag in, one of those gold shiny things, inside was a Tatty Teddy card and a Tatty Teddy bear with 18 on it. On the way down to town I’d picked her up a box of chocolates, and two candles (one pink, one purple), her birthday is exactly two weeks before mine, although I’d overlooked it while we’d been on holiday and forgotten to get her a present. Then it was a brief trek to the card shop, wrapping paper, card and gift bag. Then I wrapped them up after she’d left ready to take round to her after school.

I had to go back up to the school for ten to three, Geography, she made us do real work, which annoyed me a little, lol. But we did stop a little early and everyone in the class chatted about birthdays and the like. She never lets us go early, so we had to wait until the bell went, everyone else in the class is in this Young Enterprise thing, out of seven people in the class I’m the only one who isn’t, so most of the talk was about this presentation thing on Thursday/Friday.

Then it was back to the shop and laptop where I was stuck until just after six. Then onwards home to phone Robyn, although she was a little annoyed that her parcel hadn’t arrived yet. We chatted about birthdays, our stories, and school. Then right before we hung up we had the following exchange:
Robyn: You know you’re closer to thirty than I am?
Me: Don’t push it Robyn.
Robyn: No. You’re the one pushing it!
LOL, interesting anyway.

I didn’t spend my 18th birthday getting drunk or out with my friends. I pretty much crashed on the sofa and relaxed, watching CSI with Dad. It’s the way I wanted to spend my birthday. I don’t know what it is but I’ve gone off parties as such, sitting around drinking in a social setting is fine when you’re with sensible people, but most of the people that I know like to take it as an opportunity to just get silly.

After that I went to bed and was asleep so quickly it was amazing. I think I was out of it before my head touched the pillow. All in all it was a pretty good birthday, and I got this cool laptop and everything. Plus the whole event was kind of drawn out over three days, what with shopping on the 26th, the birthday on the 27th and then Robyn’s presents arriving today (along with my laptop light which Dad ordered for me). I’m not complaining, people can go on sending me presents for as long as they like.

Now I think that The Jazz Singer is drawing to a close, Neil Diamond is singing ‘We’re Coming to America’ which seeing as it was the song playing at the beginning is probably showing that it’s almost at an end. So I should probably wrap things up too. I’ve got a double free first thing tomorrow I should be able to cover what I did then, when we went shopping in Clydebank and Greenock. But for now I think I shall go ahead and save all two and a bit pages of this journal entry and head off to bed.