A Confident Loner

Sophie couldn’t sleep.

A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on to her pillow.

The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours.

Sophie closed her eyes and lay quite still. She tried very hard to doze off.

It was no good. The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face.

The house was absolutely silent. No voices came up from downstairs. There were no footsteps on the floor above either.

The window behind the curtain was wide open, but nobody was walking on the pavement outside. No cars went by on the street. Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere. Sophie had never known such a silence.

Perhaps, she told herself, this is what they called the witching hour.

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.

As a child I used to be able to recite this story, The BFG, word for word for about twenty minutes. I had the cassette tape, and I always had a wonderful memory for things like that. (This now manifests itself in my ability to remember lyrics.) It's a stunning experience to re-read this as an almost-grownup. Even though I don't immediately recall the words of the story reading them now, it's as if I can faintly hear the echo of remembrance - and even stranger, I sense that this writing has influenced my thoughts and my own writing - without my even being aware of it.

Sophie Dahl, the inspiration for this character, is the granddaughter of the wonderful Roald Dahl, author of stories like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Witches and, of course, The BFG. She has a cooking show on Food Channel in which she cooks according to certain themes or "moods" each week, such as melancholy or self-indulgence. She is quite captivating to watch and I have fallen a little bit in love. My mum and I have observed that her face reminds us of our friend Mari Day crossed with that of Petra Bagust. It's strange when people can remind us so strongly of others and be utterly unrelated.

Last week, "the delicious Miss Dahl" talked about dining alone. She said she always admires people who are confident enough to eat alone at a restaurant or a café - that those things which are deemed in school to be "uncool" become infinitely cooler as you get older. So today I took a leaf out of Sophie's book, and I went to a café with a book (a biography of Sylvia Plath) and a notebook & pen, and passed a wonderful afternoon as a confident loner. My verdict is: I thoroughly recommend it. There is no pressure to talk or to leave before you're ready - and you can people-watch quite unashamedly, without having to divide attention between the fascinating action playing out around you and conversation with somebody else!

Tell me about one of your favourite stories from childhood.
And: what are your views on dining alone? Or even going to films alone? That's something I haven't done yet.

Poems Poems Poems

Stayed home today with a cold, because my parents took pity on me again. (They do this once in a while.) I had a bit of a weekend-type-day, you know, waking up early and mostly going on the internet. Maybe this will enable me to do more exam-related work in the weekend, which I really need to do!

Anyway I'm writing this blog entry because I need to ask you a favour. I've been looking through a lot of poetry competitions and online magazines and I've decided I'd like to submit some of my poems. However I need some help deciding which of the poems I've already written are your favourites. It's also just helpful to know which poems are the best communicators.

So go along to my gallery and pick your top five favourites. Then come back here and list them for me, or send them to: sneakyandzip@gmail.com

It would be much appreciated.

Time (The Revelator)

It's 74 days now or something ridiculous like that. How about it.

I got my learner's today, it was a half day due to the PPTA meeting. Dad picked me up and we did the grocery shopping, got Starbucks and L-plates.

Starting to teach year ten health classes next week. Mock exams are the week after next week. The weeks seem to be going unusually quickly, unfortunately weekends are too. On a roll with painting, after Helen and I spontaneously began dripping paint into the art room sink and pressing paper onto it, creating the best effects. Inspired.

Still got to get my university portfolio together by the 1st of October. Hoping to go down to Hawke's Bay to visit my grandparents the week after next when I have study leave.

Haven't shaken off my cold yet. Sore head whenever I cough, which is pretty miserable. But I'm okay. Comment and tell me one thing you're dreading, and one thing you're looking forward to.

No Callback

I think I'm still jobless.

Job Interview And Other Stories

Yesterday at lunchtime I was lying on a bench outside the common room in the sun talking to Eva, and suddenly my phone started to vibrate, and so I looked at it and didn't recognise the number, and just tried to think for a minute. Eva said "Answer it!" which is exactly what she wouldn't do, as she'd be too scared. So I did, thank goodness. It was a woman calling from New World offering me a job interview, yay! I know it's just a supermarket, but this is the first opportunity that has come my way in a long time. And it will definitely mean better treatment than I received at a well-known butcher's earlier this year...

Anyway! It's a new supermarket, too, so that speaks to me of cleanliness and fresh-polished floors and such. I'm probably going to pick a full day in the weekend. So my interview is at 4:45pm today after the media scholarship meeting.

I was going to talk about "Other Stories" but I don't actually have any. Tricked ya.

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This is definitely going to be an eventful week, which means it will probably fly past like last week, and before I know it I'll be posting another Sunday night entry about how chaotic life is.

Last week the official scholarship meetings started, so Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons will involve both media and English study sessions, respectively. In addition to that, Alex and I will be planning our short film entry into the Waikato University film competition.

During the weekend I got on a roll with my 3.3 art portfolio, so that will take up my lunchtimes, and hopefully will branch out into something fantastic and useable.

Thursday is Jono AND Leo's birthday, they're both turning 18 (and they still argue about who's the eldest), and then Friday night is Leo's party. The theme is "song names" so I have to come up with a good costume idea.

If I had a blue velvet dress I'd wear that, but... I don't.

Karina's Party And The Rest Of The Weekend

On Friday evening at 7pm, Karina's eighteenth birthday party commenced. She had put clever signs up everywhere saying things like "This Door Leads To Hell" and "If Shit Happens, Call My Mum On This Number." She had a massive vase filled with glowsticks for everyone to use. She had rented a black light and a mini strobe. It was quite exciting.

So at first it was just me and Karina and Eva, and we were actually quite content that way, but soon people started arriving. As tends to happen at parties. Thrills were had at the way white clothing lit up under the UV light. Leo wore his Ghostbusters jumpsuit. Nandita had fantastic fluorescent orange tights.

Fast forward a couple of hours. Alex, Jennecca and myself were celebrating the conclusion of our media ordeal in Karina's brother's bedroom. The door was closed, as we were having a "serious talk", while everyone else banged on the door and clamoured at the window on the other side of the room, and yelled about coming in, basically acting like a pack of zombies. That's when we realised that the door was mysteriously stuck... and that none of us could open it. I tried, and then the door handle came off. Alex was hysterical. She cried. (Let me just add that she wasn't in her usual frame of mind!) Then Leo came tumbling through the window, which was an incredible feat -- okay, I've climbed through that window before, but I was completely sober... so he staggered to his feet and despite our belief that he had come to help us, he was also shocked to learn that we were locked in. Which begs the question, why did he climb through the window? Did he feel left out?

So anyway, then Bridget climbed through the window. I don't think she knew we were locked in either, I reckon she just went to where the commotion was. I vaguely remember Jennecca shouting, "GET OUT, YOU'RE STEALING ALL OUR OXYGEN!" It truly was like a zombie invasion.

Apparently Renee or Carl came to the rescue by jiggling something in the hole where the handle used to be, and we poured out like prisoners being released. And that concludes the story of The Time We Got Stuck In A Room.

The rest of the party went really well, and when everyone had ditched and gone to Zac's or something, Karina and I ate all the leftover sausage rolls, brushed our teeth, and went to bed. The next morning we surfaced earlyish and began the cleanup/breakfast process. There was a slight problem with a lack of eggs -- due to an incident the night before in which Jono opened the fridge too vigorously and broke all of them -- so that was resolved by Renee, Laurielle and Alex going to Foodtown in their bedraggled morning-after states, complete with onesies and mugs of coffee. Oh, and there was also a mysterious stain on the ceiling, which caused Karina's mother much distress! We still don't know what it was.

So then at 12 I met Alex and Jennecca at BurgerFuel in town for a dissection of the night's events and an awesome lunch, and that's all that really happened on Saturday...

Sunday was my cousin Roy's 16th family birthday party so I helped out all day preparing for that. I made this double-layered dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, and set out the lollies and chips in the bowls, (I love doing that!), and basically acted as kitchen assistant to my folks. The food was a-ma-zing that night, including crème caramel made by my auntie Suzie, a pot roast made by my father, and of course my cake. A select few at school can testify to the tastiness of the latter!

Then as we were sitting around talking, the subject of careers came up, and the question came up, "if you could start over, what job would you want to do?" Obviously this was aimed at all the adults.

My uncle Chris said he would have been a musician. "Probably playing the keyboard, synth... back in the 70s, that prog rock scene..." It makes perfect sense as he's always been passionate about collecting and listening to music. He has hundreds of LPs, CDs and mp3s.

Julie only had one thing to say, "Not teaching!" Whereas my mum said she would have done just the same (bless her, I knew she would say that), though probably getting into specialist classroom teaching earlier.

Suzie said she would have been a vet. I'm not at all surprised. She has always been an animal lover. Currently they have two golden retrievers and two cats, and there have been many other animals before. She would have been an excellent vet.

My dad's answer was the one that surprised me and interested me the most. He said he would have liked to do something with his hands, like being a cabinetmaker or doing restoration or something. I never would have thought. It's such a far cry from teaching geography.

It really made me think about my own future. I realised that my ambitions are so huge but I must pursue them, because I don't want to go down a path that diverges so far from my original passions. I don't mean to say that I think my parents and aunties and uncle have wasted their lives or chosen the "wrong" careers, at all. I just don't want to reach that stage of my life and be able to say I wished I could have done something else. I suppose I mean I'd like to have the same feeling about my career as my mum does for hers. That would surely be an accomplishment.

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Today was great because:

- I woke up to my alarm which was set to the sound of "crickets" -- and didn't go back to sleep! That may have been partly due to the nightmare I'd just had about a burglar in my bedroom, but it's still probably the first time that has happened all year. So crickets are a winner, I think I'll try that again.

- I wrote a to-do list at the beginning of the day and managed to complete all three tasks on it.

- Two people from Elam art school (attached to Auckland University where I plan to go next year) came to our painting class and told us all about the courses, which sound amazing, and made me look forward to it immensely. The best thing about it is when you do your first year, you get to sample all different art forms, like sculpture, film, design, painting, photography... exactly the kinds of things I'd love to explore.

- I walked to the pet shop after school and asked about part-time work. It could be a possibility. Not that I'm really getting my hopes sky-high... you know what it's like. I've got this job jinx.

Anyway I must go. Tomorrow I shall update thoroughly on the events of the weekend. I am formulating a lengthy post in my head.