I guess that's because I've been busy. No shit, you might say. I've recently started writing for the online music magazine www.muteprint.com and have had the grand privilege of my first article for them becoming the most viewed piece that week the night after it was posted.
It is not exactly the most academic of publications, especially since the clientele prefers bass to books.
In the face of furthering my career-to-be in journalism my academia has taken what I might affectionately refer to as a nosedive. The prospect of exams that will determine my future sends me into a gibbering, hyperventilating wreck, only to be roused again by the lure of Cadbury's dairy milk and Coca-cola- the real stuff, no diet or fake pepsi.
Being seventeen is one of the most monumental challenges of life. I find it surprising that so many people make it to eighteen, the previous year being the struggle that it is.
You are not an adult, and yet certainly not a child either. You are expected to express political views, and yet you cannot vote. You have fully emerged from puberty's greasy embrace, and yet the traces of hormonal acne remain.
My dress sense has taken a turn too, by which I mean I have some. Before, when pulling on some too-loose jeans and an old T-shirt was considered smart-casual, I have floral dresses, beneath a tailored black coat, with which I wear brown suede pixie boots. And when I do wear jeans they are fitted and only accentuate my figure.
It makes me cringe to recall the tatty denim overalls which were my holiday uniform for my adolescent years, out of which I have not quite emerged, I'll admit.
I will credit my newfound love of, not fashion but beautiful clothing, to the sudden interest of more mature men in my life. It all began with the French-Italian post-graduate mathematician, Hadrien, then Michael, the ex-military construction worker. Both men were and are highly intelligent and attractive but they were both, sadly, also edging a decade my senior.
But they could never hold a flame to my current infatuation: The ginger-bearded music assistant at school. His eyes are gorgeously blue and flick to mine to exchange glances during orchestral rehearsal, he armed with his clarinet, I, my violin. It is a constant battle, throughout chamber choir, lessons, and while I am waiting for my private tutoring, he is always there.
I know his desires are a figment of my imagination, as he is employed by the school so dangerously out of reach, but his attentions are all the more potent for their lack of existence.
Examinations have been interesting, particularly in that my new glasses mean I can no longer see without them. It is most peculiar that I went to the opticians to have my sight improved and came away with a throbbing headache and blurry vision whenever I can't wear my glasses.
Such a disaster had the misfortune to occur before my English Literature exam, just a few weeks ago. I had left my glasses on my bedroom table and was nursing a pain which was not unlike a blunt knitting needle probing though one temple and out the other. Needless to say, it was horrific.
On the verge of a panic attack, my friend, Grace, made the mistake of insisting that I breathe into a plastic bag. While it's close relative, the paper bag, is exceedingly useful in preventing hyperventilation, the plastic bag is not useful at all, especially when the victim, in their state of panic, inhales a section of the plastic bag.
But then again, Grace is not known for her brilliant ideas. She once decided it would be an excellent idea to balance a small ball of blue-tack on the rim of her left nostril. Attempting to remove the blue-tack, I hit her on the back, causing her to snort the offending piece of malleable plastic up her nose.
After a trip to the health centre and an unfortunate episode with a pair of tweezers, it was removed, but my faith in her ideas was lost forever.
Farewell my subjects.
Until next time.
Emily Winters
xx
