Still not done any sewing on Thursday

 That's right - I still haven't done any sewing. We were working on an Autumn badge this time, and I had to teach Eloise how to do origami.
 Next week, I'm going to aim to do sewing on Friday.

 On a different note, here is a picture that I did across several lunch breaks and science lessons.

   Again, you can't really see it, and is just the preliminary sketch. I like making little graphics for songs so I designed this using all my favourite lines from Drops of Jupiter (apart from "Love, pride, deep-fried chicken" because that would be weird). I am going to make a proper version and I'll put that on when it's finished, but I just wanted to show you my first sketch.

I've done the promised drawing of Grey - on the back of my French project. It was supposed to be just a rough draft but I liked it so much I kept it. However, I haven't scanned him in yet so that'll have to wait. 

   I also had a horrible experience today which involved singing in public, but I won't write about that because I have to tell you about MY REVELATION IN FIRST PERIOD MATHS. I was thinking about how I've got so many projects which I need to do and then I had a revelation:

                                  Why not finish a project before starting a new one?

 My life will never be the same again... so which one shall I finish first?

 

   One more thing I need to tell you: my English teacher likes my style of writing. Yay!!!!! No-one else seems to like any of my stories... OK, that's probably enough stuff. I hope you enjoy reading my ramblings. Alimonsoon over and out.

 

 Random fish fact: In one species of fish, the jawfish, the male carries his eggs around inside his mouth. He also uses his mouth to dig burrows to live in.

 

 

 

 

 

Wondering if I'll do any sewing THIS Thursday

  I got my lovely blue and white bike for my birthday last year, and having a bike has made me realise how much I HATE walking home from school. At 3pm every day I don't want to be walking; I want to be at home watching cartoons with my little brother and sister. A stretch of road which, on a bike, would take me thirty seconds to go down can waste as much as four minutes on foot. It's like flying as a butterfly and then going back inside your pupa again.

  Tonight I have Guides again and we're going to be sewing again. I'm getting my needle-and-scissor-rent shop all set up. It costs extra to thread the needle for you. I wonder if I'll manage to actually sew on some badges of my own this time?

  Random lichen fact: lichen is not a single organism, it's two interdependent species of fungus and algae. The lichen gives the algae a home and support and the algae breaks down nutrients that the fungus can't digest on its own. (I am a random fact generator.)    
 

Owlwolf and caribou

What sounds more awesome: 'Owlwolf and caribou' or 'Caribou and owlwolf'?

 Caribou colonise tundra and subpolar forest in northern Canada, Russia and Europe, although in Europe and Asia they're known as reindeer. (I use the word 'caribou' because it sounds more sophisticated and less like a little kid at Christmas.) They enjoy the long Arctic summer and, in winter, migrate as many as 600km southwards to the pine forests. Although they live here for half a year, they don't actually eat pine needles (except maybe young and tender ones) because they can't digest them, so they feed on bark and fungus on the pine trees.

 Grey wolves hunt caribou and in fact they normally have quite a good chance of catching them, despite their comparative sizes, because their paws are adapted to run across the top of a snowdrift while a heavy caribou would sink in and be slowed down. Grey wolves are the largest of wolves because being larger makes it easier to conserve heat, which is why polar bears are so huge as well. Like all wolves they are quite intelligent, effective hunters and with complex family life.

 Great grey owls have excellent hearing and can hear the minute sounds that a lemming makes in its burrows under the snow. You would have a hard time seeing a lemming which is why wolves rely on smell and owls on hearing. A great grey owl has a face shaped like a satellite dish with stiff feathers on the outside, directing all the sound towards its ears. It turns its head to ascertain the location of the lemming before swooping down and pouncing.



  There! A load of facts that you really needed to know about Arctic animals. My new story will be about those animals and the tribes of Northern people who rely on them. There is a boy whose name is Grey. I'm quite excited about his character and will post a drawing of him when I've done one.

  I'm very sorry: this post was utterly pointless.

The dilemma

  I did start to type up my novel, but then the laptop crashed. :/
 
  Last night at about 10pm, when I was trying to get to sleep, I suddenly had an idea for another short story. This idea has been haunting me all day. One half of me is saying 'No! You never stick to anything! Finish your Greek story first!' and the other half is saying 'But it's such a cool idea...' I started doing some background research just now and my brain started sparking off more ideas for the story so fast that my brain almost imploded, so I quickly stopped.

  Finish old Greek story, or begin awesome new story?

  I say again: :/

Here, it's another post

Hello there, people who I don't know. I'm going to throw some more words out into cyberspace.

1. This blog has officially been going on for ONE MONTH!
2. Yesterday it rained a lot. It rained for a while, but mostly it rained. I made a dessert again: we had summer berry crumble. Wishful thinking!
3. Please read my post called 'Why I didn't do any sewing on Thursday'. Nobody's read it yet.
4. I am finally beginning to put at least one of my novels into sensible, chronological order, rather than just words floating around my head. The story is called 'Little Brass Town'.
5. I would like to post some chapters on one of those young writer websites, but the problem is that I'm hopeless at taking criticism. I used to use this particular website to share my short stories, and whenever someone criticised one I would force myself to read the whole thing and end up cold and shaking and better at literary skills... I know it helps me improve in the long run, but I get ridiculously upset.
6. Note that I  say 'used to'. Another problem of mine is that I can't stick to anything. I start off one story and then get a fantastic idea for another. You're lucky I've kept up this blog for a whole month, whoever you actually are out there.
7. Here is a link to what is, at the moment, my favourite video on YouTube, or maybe my second favourite.

                                                                         Drops of Jupiter

          There you go. You can listen to 'Drops of Jupiter' while I go and start writing up my novel.

Zoning out

 The thing about being a writer is all the words in my head - I occasionally zone out thinking about writing, whether it's a concept, a plot, a character or an individual scene. I zoned out quite a lot today. I did it while having an animated conversation with Marmalade. I did it in front of my mum, and then at the dinner table. However, I successfully finished writing a long scene from one story - I haven't managed to re-read it yet, though, because this laptop is old and slightly broken and it keeps crashing.
  Between the my last post and now, I built the world's greatest marble run with my brother and did a drawing of a fairy, but the bad news is that nobody's read my blog for ages. If no-one will read it then I will only do a short post.

Why I didn't do any sewing on Thursday

   I went to Guides last night - I must be an excellent diplomat now, because I spent the evening listening to small people who think that they are clever/funny. You can read some very detailed information about Guiding in my post which is called, incidentally, Guiding.

  The idea of the meeting that week was to sew some Guide badges on our blankets, teach people to sew if they can't, work on some Unit blankets, etc (at Guides, you blanket is where you record your achievements, not just to keep you warm). I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to catch up because I had six badges to sew on. It was an hour-and-a-half session and guess how many badges I sewed? Half of one.
 
   Here is a list of reasons why I didn't do any sewing.

•  For the first twenty minutes or so, we were doing a different activity which I'd forgotten about.
• Then our Guide leader Heather talked at us for another half an hour about how we could lay out our badges and what she put on her blanket and the different options we had and... I was thinking, you know, I'd actually like to get on with it now? All the small people are finding this fascinating, but... 
• I was doing so many good deeds. I lent out so many needles, scissors and thread - and advice and help - that I could have set up a shop. That's what comes of being organised! At least I have a few favours I can call in now.
• There was a break for hot chocolate and biscuits. :D
• The younger leader, Olive, asked us to do a design task. My brain jumped up and said ooh! Art! When I popped back to look for my lost shoe (which I never did find), no one noticed me because everyone was crowding round something going 'Whose design is this? I think it's Alimonsoon's. It's really good!' :) I'm glad I heard that.

And that is why I only had one-half of one badge sewn on by the end of the ninety-minute session.

My biggest challenge

 My biggest challenge today was getting to school in the morning. I was having a disturbing dream about something or other and woke up really late when someone bashed on my door. Again, I thought it was my mum telling me to get up, but then the door opened Small Person No#2 pottered in saying 'You've got to see my igloo!' I assured him that I'd look at it once I'd got dressed and sheepdogged him out of the room. Got dressed, ate food, did my hair and wanted to use the bathroom but Marmalade was in there, burning a small hole in the ozone layer with her hairspray.

  When she was done I went into the bathroom only to find that my darling sister Marmalade had used up all the TOOTHPASTE, so I went to find the emergency toothpaste tube, only I couldn't get it out of the packaging, so I had to find my dad, who was changing out of his wet clothes after walking the dog in the rain, to open it using sheer brute force. By the time I was ready for school it was too late to cycle so I got a lift with my dad and Marmalade. The aforementioned darling sister didn't want to go because she was reading her teen romance novel, which probably had vampires in it.

  Once we were in the car we got stuck in traffic, then rounded a corner and got stuck in more traffic. It probably would have been faster to walk.

  Escape the traffic, park close to the school, end up with three minutes to walk the ten-minute journey the rest of the way, try to move fast through three inches of mud, join the blob of mildly late students migrating down the school drive, avoid the puddles on the way to your tutor room, take the side stairs because the main stairs are entirely congested ... and you've made it! At least it's too wet too film your drama pieces outside like the teacher threatened to.

 May I add that Small Person No#1 has just started playing her trumpet again. I can hear my brain cells vibrating already.

Mine turtle

My small friend Matt likes to design cartoons. His imagination is amazing: he occasionally just turns around and says 'Wouldn't it be funny if...' or, when he has his drawing book out, 'Oh, I've got an idea...' and then scribbles for a few minutes before showing me yet another cartoon.
 Today I spent so long on my computer drawing program that my eyes went square, and it was all so I could make a cartoon for Matt for his birthday. It centres around the 'mine turtle' created by TomSka, who is a cartoon producer and Matt's hero. You can google 'asdfmovie 5 mine turtle' unless, unlike Matt, your idea of humour does not mainly feature explosions. I did, indeed, include an explosion at the end of my cartoon, so I hope he likes it.

Elvyn

This is my completed drawing.  You cannot see it at all, which is a shame because it's quite good. But today I scanned it in and spent about three hours refining it, so:

 

And there you go. The shading is really bad but it's hard to do on a computer program.

 

His name, as you can see, is Elvyn and he is a character from my fantasy story. That drawing is the first one I have ever done of him so he isn't doing anything interesting because I'm just establishing what he looks like. He is from an elite group of travelling traders called the roamers, and is very good at everything because he's been doing it all since age two: woodwork, needlework, storytelling, poetry, dancing. Like all roamers, he likes money a lot, and basically if something will get him money he will do it. He's smooth-talking and cunning and he has a lot of pockets because he keeps absolutely everything in pockets, like his money and a spare hat. (He has some huge pockets). He's no good in close combat but that's what the massive longbow is for. You can just about see that he has a handicap: the last two fingers of his hand are curled over and he can't use them. I like to give my characters handicaps because it avoids creating perfect characters, which makes it more realistic because NOBODY'S PERFECT.

 

Apart from the drawing, the other thing I did today was go to the LIBRARY. Yay! And I found a couple of books that I've been looking for for a while...

 

One other thing I want to say: not one person has actually viewed my post from a few days ago called 'Ramblings of a Nerd'. Can you click on it now, just to make me happy? It's in the menu just up there and to the right. ^^^^ 

My autistic brother

  I have a younger brother; he is six years old, he's very sweet and he has Asperger's Syndrome. When my mother found out this last fact, she bought at least five books about the syndrome, and I'd like to say that that's an exaggeration, but it's not. She is the sort of person who learns about things from books. All the books had different words for "a thing which autistic children are very good at" - you know, like some are good at computers and some are good at maths. Some call it a "specialist subject", etc, but I think that there is one term which is most accurate - "obsession".
 
  My little brother's obsession is Lego. He invents things, takes them apart, reassembles them, adds extra features, leaves his bricks scattered around the house, shows his models to everyone who doesn't actually run away and talks about them non-stop. Although they are little works of genius, he doesn't understand that people don't always want to talk about his Lego. Once I was getting out my bike keys ready to go to school and he talked to me about Lego as I went out of the door.

   This morning was another prime example: I always sleep in on Saturdays (Sundays are fine, just leave my Saturday lie-ins alone) so today I was in bed reading my lovely book about natural history and evolution when someone knocked on my door. I yelled hello, expecting it to be my mum telling me to get up, but it was Small Person No#2.

   'I made a climbing wall,' he told me, showing me his little model.
   'Oh. That's great.'
  
   About half an hour later I completed my lie-in and went down for breakfast. I went into the kitchen and SmP#2 called out to me again.
 
   Him: Do you want to see my new training course?
   Me: Not now, I want to get my breakfast.
   Him: It's got the new climbing wall in it.
   Me: Yes, but I want to get my breakfast.

  He's so funny.
  So that is Small Person Number 2. Small Person Number 1 is my little sister, the most annoying of my siblings - today more so than usual, because she was practising her trumpet. I won't tell you about her skills on the trumpet; I'll just say that whenever she plays it, my eyes water, my eardrums melt and trickle away and my brain tries to pulverise itself from the inside out.
  I also have an older sister called Marmalade (not her real name, of course) and she also has her fair share of weird pastimes, not least her strange obsession with buttons.
  So that's us: Marmalade, Alimonsoon, Small Person No#1 and Small Person No#2. And my mother who learns things from books and my dad who designs computer software - in his spare time. That is all for my Ramblings of a Nerd today.

Children in Need

Today was Children in Need - in school we had this show on at lunch break which cost a pound to see, and people wandering round with donation buckets, and you pay a pound to come in in non-uniform too. Nooooooo! The only people who like non-uniform days are the ones who can afford Hollister, and use it as a chance to show off. I came in wearing a top from Oxfam and a blazer from a jumble sale, but no-one needs to know that.

  Anyway, I did a lot of good deeds today and donated a lot of money, and right now they're showing the official Children in Need night on TV, only I missed it because I was trying to get this blooming laptop to load.

Ramblings of a Nerd

 Those who have visited this blog before will see that it has a lovely new look! Woo!
 Those people will also know that I ran someone over on my bike yesterday - well, what goes around comes around and today I almost got run over myself. This time it wasn't my fault - I was on the road, it was my right of way, and this huge van suddenly turns and cuts across me. But, once again, I braked just in time. Thank goodness for brakes.
 My Somme Assembly #2 went well but the audience weren't very rewarding. They were the younger people and didn't do such a good job of hiding the fact that they didn't want to be there; they were shuffling with their bags and staring into space. However, the headmistress wants to reward us for our performances. =0. I should be very afraid.

Fascinating things

Fascinating things that happened to me today

1. I was almost late to perform my first Somme assembly, but I dashed in and got to my place just in time. It went pretty well. Two more performances to go.
2. Next period, the guy I sit next to in science made a complete mockery of the assembly by performing a military funeral for his pen. He's weird like that.
3. In my science lesson and through break, I did some shading on my drawing
4. I then survived through my dance and ICT lessons
5. I sat next to a boy in English who kept muttering to me 'Twelve minutes to go!' counting down the time until the end of school.
6. While cycling home, I ran someone over! It was partly my fault - I shouldn't have been on the pavement, but I was avoiding some roadworks. There was a builder guy walking along in front of me, and suddenly he turned and walked right into my path and we collided. I slammed on the brakes so hard I almost went over the handlebars.
7. I was home alone with the dog until my grandpa arrived to pick up my little brother and sister. He was late.

I think that's about all.

 More info on the Somme Assembly: it's mostly about Remembrance Day, which was last Sunday, but also about a trip that I went on (described in my very first posts) with some other people, including my old friend Sabaa, my new friend Abi, my small friend Matt, a tall acquaintance called Matt (yep, same name, different heights) and some other people who don't matter :D.
  Oh, about the new site I mentioned in my last post? There was a catch. I won't be using that one.
  My short story set in ancient Greece is coming along very well.

How to multitask

  The most fascinating thing that happened in my life today was that some ink cartridges that I ordered for my favourite pen arrived! Yeaaaaaah! I used it to write a passage from my story set in ancient Greece.
  
   I have a lot of projects going on at the moment... I have a project on:

• Natural history
• Human history
• Family history
• A short story set in ancient Greece
• A short story set in ancient Japan
• A short story about an unorthodox assassin
• A lot of long stories
• Only one drawing at the moment, because that's the only area I have any self-control in
• Operation Get My Baden-Powell Award Started (see my previous entry if you haven't yet)

   That is how a nerd can multitask.

   This morning I was telling some younger girls a few of my favourite insect facts from my natural history project, like the one about how a caterpillar really gets into its cocoon stage, and how their wings are formed, and that some wasps sometimes lay their eggs in beetle grubs so that, when they hatch, the wasp grub will eat the live beetle grub. This is mother Nature, everyone! Also, I have a new website which I have great hopes for in terms of my family history project, but there's always a catch, so I will treat that one with caution until I know for sure what it is.

   Thank you for, once again, putting up with my obscure ramblings. Alimonsoon over and out.
 
 

Guiding

    For want of anything better to write about, this is the history of my time at Girl Guides.

    For the first two years that I was there we had a leader who called herself Kingfisher. She was a pretty good leader, I suppose, but she never knew what trips she should take us on or what to do with us because "Guiding had changed a lot since her day". She moved on to work with the Senior Section, leaving her two assistants to look after us lesser mortals. I view that period of time as a shambles. We didn't really achieve anything; I found it annoying because they were getting us to do things to fill in time rather than because they were useful, and by that time a lot of people had left, leaving me as the oldest Guide among a bunch of small kids.
  
   Then we got a new leader, and she is really old fashioned and calls herself Heather (she studies fungi at college. Fungi? Each to their own). I found her annoying too because she was patronising, and although she was definitely a good leader, every time I started to warm to her she did something which reminded me of how annoying I actually found her. At least she remembered to give me my third-year badge, though.
 
   I was SERIOUSLY annoyed when the Guide unit voted for Patrol Leaders (that means you get to be in charge of about six kids). I had been keeping the kids under control for months now; I was the oldest; I was the most experienced; I was pretty good at it. And I like it when people do what I say, hahahaha. Guess who got the most votes? I did. But they couldn't give the job to me, because they didn't know if I actually wanted it or not, because I was in France. So they let another girl be the patrol leader.
   Whenever she's faced with a decision though, she looks to me.
  
   When I came back from France, the activity we were doing at Guides was to fill a shoebox with five things that say something about you and then talk about them to the other Guides. In my shoebox, I had:

• A thimble, because I collect them
• My bike keys, because I like cycling
• A fineliner pen which was one of the first things I actually went into a shop and bought, which is a big thing because I'm terrified of talking to people who I don't know - and I use it for my drawings
• A drawing I did which all the girls thought was great, although I don't think it's that good myself
• A makeshift notebook in which I write my stories, because writing is the most important thing in my life.

 The presentation was actually on the same day as the practise for my speaking&listening GCSE. So I thought, I've already done the big scary GCSE, let's just get this one over with. And I did.
  Also, I asked Heather about doing my Baden-Powell challenge which is the biggest award in Guiding, and the one that I actually joined up to do. So that is good progress that I am talking about doing it now. While I was talking to Heather about that, she said that I'd been the most confident one when doing my shoebox presentation, so would I like to become a Young Leader?
  My reaction was something like this.

       O_O


I've told you that I was annoyed that I couldn't be the Patrol Leader. Now here's my chance. I hope we get that sorted out pretty soon.
 

  Finally, sorry for this long and rather boring post, but like I say, I love to write.

The houses of my ancestors

50 pageviews! I never thought I'd get that high!
Just now I have been finding the addresses of some of my great-grandparents, whose information I got from the 1911 census records (because I'm a bit sad like that). My great-great-great grandfather, called William, lived here:

He was the 61-year-old head of a comfortable 4-room house. Meanwhile, his son, who was also called William, lived somewhere round here:

 



 



 

He was 23 but had got a job at a printing press; however, he couldn't afford his own house yet and was living as a boarder. He didn't know that one day he would marry the girl who lived here-ish:

 



 

Her name was Mary, she was 26 and had her own little shop which was converted from her house.

 

Personally I find that very interesting, because I'm a bit of a nerd really. I wrote another short story this morning, it's called 'Guilt', I don't know if you want to see it.

 

 

 

 

 

Candyfloss and fireworks

I've never understood Fireworks Night. Well, when I was six it made perfect sense, but not any more. Everyone knows that that bloke called Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords with the King in it, but he was caught and tortured horribly until he gave away the names of his associates, and then killed in the slowest and most horrificly painful way possible .... so we celebrate it! Yay!
 However, it's not so much about Guy Fawkes himself any more. Every year most of the people I know go to the fireworks at Rivermead, where there's lots of little kids running around with glow sticks and things, and a wonderful smell of barbequed food, and music (they always play Firework by Katy Perry, and this year they played Gangnam Style and eveyone jumped around doing the official Gangnam Style dance and some people started a conga line). When the fireworks are about to start they do a countdown; little kids are lifted onto shoulders; people push their way to the front of the crowd....
 And then the fireworks start. The sparks swirl around like fishes but shine brighter than the stars. The field is soon full of smoke, which is lit up pink and green and gold. The noise comes from the sky and up through your feet. When you close your eyes you can still see their trails as though they're etched into the front of your brain. The crowd of us all staring up and going 'OOOOOH!' would have been a runner for the record of Most People All with Cricks In Their Necks. I was standing in the middle of the crowd with my sister, putting candyfloss in my mouth, with my eyes lit up like a little kid.
 If you ever have to do an essay on why you like 5th November celebrations, you can quote me.
 Now I'm off to help my sister work the television so we can curl up in armchairs and stare at the screen. =)

Late

 An orthodontist appointment this morning. Today was a school day so that involved a lot of faff: you have to get a pass out to have permission to leave school, and you have to inform the teacher, and you have to go to the main reception to sign out. Once you're in the car you're safe until you get into town because there are never any parking spaces. But once you manage to get inside the surgery you sign in... and then wait. My normal orthodontist, a tiny Polish woman called Dr Rocha, is very efficient and always runs on time - but today I had Dr Harper, who is so late that the word "appointment" is just a reference point.
 It was a short appointment and she told me that I'd be able to have my braces off in three months or so (celebrations! I've already had them on for eighteen months!). Then I went back to school, having missed half of my maths lesson and all of French.
 I have been invited to another thing which may have the potential to be an amazing thing: it's a trip specifically for Gifted and Talented people (that's me, obviously!) to a place called Tirabad in Wales where you do awesome stuff like caving and jumping off waterfalls. There's also a lot of team-building and "personal development" stuff, which I hate, but I will attempt to get into the trip anyway because I think it would stupid to miss it. Once-in-a-lifetime, etc.
 There was a meeting about the trip today after school, but running with the theme of "late", I was so late that I didn't turn up at all. I got the days mixed up because the next meeting about the Somme assembly is on Friday, so I had meeting on Friday lodged in my head and forgot about the meeting on Thursday. I've emailed the organiser of the trip so hopefully it isn't too late.

The Somme Assembly

 Sorry for no post yesterday. Do you ever get those days when absolutely nothing at all of interest happens?
 Well, today after school, I was asked to go to a meeting, and at the meeting I was asked to take part in an assembly about our trip to the Somme. We'll have to present it three times: once for the year sevens, year eights and year nines (my year). It'll be fine performing to the 7s and 8s: to them, we'll be very grown-up and mature, apart from my crazy year 7 and 8 friends who will probably laugh at me. It's the just the last one that will be embarassing because I don't like performing in front of people I know.

Ice skates

 Today my swelled-up foot had deflated enough to fit into an ice skate - so we went ice skating.
 At the John Nike Centre, most things are made of plastic. You queue up to get the (normally young and skinny) girl to swap your shoes for skates, and if you're lucky you get the comfortable red and grey skates rather than the stiff blue ones. Today we weren't lucky. Then you sit on the low black plastic lockers and put them on before walking through the seating area with yellow and blue plastic seats, past the cafe also with yellow plastic seats, and onto the ice rink itself.
 There's music pounding out. There are some little kids stumbling around trying to find their feet on the ice, and some other annoying kids who zoom around and go backwards on their head and things like that, because they're the ones who have been taught to skate since they could walk. There are always some boys who love to do sharp turns at high speed to kick up as much spray as they can - kshhhhh. It goes dark and there are coloured spotlights; the kind that give you three shadows, all different colours. Once you've remembered your technique, you start to go round. Occasionally you go straight through a spotlight, and it's like you've been singled out on the rink; only you.
 As you can see, I quite like ice skating.
 Incidentally, this made me think of a story that I've sadly neglected - there's a subplot based on ice skating in there which I had completely forgotten about. While I was zooming around the ice, all the time I was working on a scene from this story. When I wasn't doing that, I was thinking about a scene from a different story. Really, I don't stop thinking about stories for more than ten minutes at a time.
 When we got home, we had a Sunday roast and I made the dessert. When I cook, there's always something that I do stupidly wrong. Once I accidentally boiled margarine. Once I left a sponge cake in the microwave until it went flat and soggy. Today, I forgot to put an egg in. =0. I did add an egg at the last minute.
 By the way, this is my blog's 1-week anniversary. Thanks to the mystery person in the USA who's stuck with me.

Zoomer Frost

Here's a lovely memory for me: today I fell down the stairs and busted my foot. It swelled up. Since I couldn't really walk anywhere, I had plenty of opportunity to finish this drawing of Zoomer Frost on the bridge:

Sorry, it's not very good, but it's hard to draw cobblestones... I should have said that the imaginary city in my story had paving slabs. If you haven't read my story yet it's down there in yesterday's post.

"Catch me"

My old story, which I have just improved and revamped, is called ''Catch me" and it's five pages long. This is going to be my longest post ever. Sorry. It only took me four minutes and thirty-six seconds to read through it. Can you give it four minutes of your life?

 

Catch me

 

 Zoomer reached into her pocket and closed her hand around a small plastic packet. It was one of her own creations.

 She dashed across the bridge in the dark, her brown leather coat flapping and the gun that was hidden beneath it slapping against her thigh. Crouching down beside the wall of the building, she pulled back her long, wavy blonde hair – she didn’t want to get her hair stuck in this – and peeled off the back of the packet, slapping it against the wall. The sticky solution squelched as it acquainted itself with the ancient brickwork. It had taken her a long time to find out where this house was, by tracking various small, discreet purchases of a certain poison: anyone going to this amount of trouble to conceal the fact that they were buying those certain substances obviously didn’t want anyone to find out why. Zoomer wasn’t going to find out what he was going to use the poisons for; she was going to stop him. Now all she had to do was rip off the other side of the packet and –

  ‘Miss Frost.’

  Zoomer Frost looked up. It was one of Spider’s cronies, looming over her.     ‘Miss Frost, what you are attempting to do is illegal.’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ Zoomer smiled at him. ‘Fancy that.’ She ripped the back off the packet and shoulder-slammed the man, shoving right past him and charging back up the bridge.

  It wasn’t a good idea to be too close to the contents of that packet when it was exposed to the air.

  She saw the orange mushroom of fire lighting up the night and heard the blast. ‘Catch me!’ she yelled at the flames where the man had been standing, though she could hardly hear her own voice. ‘Go on. Catch me now!’

  She ran. There would be more of them, there were always more of them, and now they’d found out where she was...

  Her motorbike was just the other side of the bridge. It gleamed at her. Nothing could catch her when she was on that; with all the special features and little modifications she’d made, she had once outrun a train, and then destroyed the track to stop it from following her. But she saw one of them looming out of the darkness, between her and the motorbike! Of course! They’d known she would head for the bike. She swerved around and headed in the other direction, still sprinting. The uninviting liquid blackness of the river flowed beside her on one side, and on the other were the shadows of alleyways between the darkened buildings. She could have gone down any of the alleyways, but she knew the Spider. He’d have men down every one of them. But she knew she could escape them.

  They couldn’t catch her.

  Running through the silent streets, the heels of her brown leather boots struck the cobbles irritatingly loudly. Long ago, she’d found that black clothes didn’t work so well: wearing black, you could disguise yourself as a shadow, and moving patches of shadow aroused suspicion. Dark brown was much better.

 Damn! There were the Spider’s men, crowding the road ahead of her. A black, tattered sign was hanging from an iron post on the wall of one of the buildings to her left, creaking gently as it swung in the dark. As she ran she reached up both hands, and when she reached the sign she jumped in the air and clasped the iron bar with both hands, hoisting herself onto the top of it. From there, she managed to clamber onto the building’s roof. Why take the roads? She chuckled to herself. Let them try and catch her on the rooftops.

  ‘Hello, Miss Frost.’

  Zoomer stopped abruptly. He was there. Right in front of her. On the roof.

  He had caught her.

  Her adrenaline drained away and she sagged, giving a tired smile. ‘Hello, Spider. You caught me again.’

  ‘Yes, it would appear that I have.’ Her old enemy had to tip his head back to look in her eyes. The name Spider suited him perfectly. He was small and weak himself, but his web reached everywhere, and you never saw it until it was too late.

  ‘You are unable to zoom out of my clutches this time, then, Zoomer?’

   Zoomer just sighed. She was still smiling wearily, even when she felt one of the men gently take her hands and cuff them behind her. They had caught her. ‘That’s right. You know me too well. You knew I wouldn’t go down the alleyways in case your men were there, right? So you didn’t put any men there, instead you put them around my motorbike and at the end of the road, right? I could have jumped in the river, but that wouldn’t be clever, because the contents of my pockets don’t tend to react very well with water, do they? So I had to go up on the rooftops. You knew I’d choose this one because I could use the signpost to climb up. Naturally there are men on the rooftops on all sides in case I decided to be absent from this particular rooftop. If I get my gun out or even make a movement that looks like I’m reaching for a weapon, I will have more bullets in me than Julius Ceasar had knives in him, because I realise that all of them have their guns out already. Well done, poisonous, vile creature. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.’

  ‘Praise indeed,’ said the Spider mildly. ‘Since you have worked out my plan in so much detail, perhaps you could tell me what I’m going to do next?’

  ‘You’ll signal to your helicopter, which is hovering just far enough away so I can’t see or hear it, and take me to meet my punishment.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said the Spider, smiling. ‘One other thing first.’

  Zoomer immediately braced herself. It was a good thing too. One of the men had silently come up behind her, and punched her in the back of the head.

  Spider watched his enemy crumple to the ground, and smiled.

 

  ‘Hanging,’ smirked Zoomer Frost. ‘A little outdated, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not for criminals like you,’ said the Spider pleasantly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you with these two, because I must go down and tell the common people that you are dead. Oh, and to see what your dead body looks like when it’s hanging limply from the execution tower.’ He left.

 The execution tower was silhouetted against the dawn sky, looking like what it was: the world’s biggest gallows. Appropriate, because Spider seemed to think that she was the world’s biggest criminal. But I’m not, because I only kill the people who need to die. Flanked by two guards and with her hands still cuffed (she was rather insulted that Spider thought she only needed two men to guard her) they walked up the million steps to the top of the tower. They were called the Last Million Steps, because they were the last steps for many people. The butts of myriads of last cigarettes littered the floor. Ravens circled, their grating cries sounding like an axe being sharpened.

  One of the men Spider had left with her held a coil of rope in his hands. The other had a gun, in case she resisted the noose being placed around her neck.

  Zoomer stepped forward slowly. The guard was wary because there were a lot of stories about this one, but the assassin didn’t seem to be resisting at all. Now that she had finally lost, she seemed perfectly calm.

 The cold wind swept her hair back from her face. She was chilly without her coat, but with all its secret pockets and little tricks, there was no way that Spider was going to let her keep it. This view, with the city spread out magnificently below her, and the river twisting through it like liquid silver, was indeed a view that many people had died for.

  The hangman stepped forward and placed the noose around her neck.

  That was when Zoomer Frost swung round and butted the hangman in the stomach with all her strength. He stumbled into the guard, who fired his gun instinctively, and the hangman gasped as the bullet shot through his lung. Zoomer stepped forward to where the guard, pinned down by the weight of his dead companion, fumbled to aim his gun at her. Before he could, she stamped on the wrist of his gun hand and there was a crunch.

  Zoomer tipped her head upside-down to let the noose slide off. Stamping the heel of her other boot as well, she kicked off both boots and without hesitation leapt off the top of the execution tower.

 She fell for a long time. Cold air in her face. Hair streaming upwards. The roar in her ears sounding like the engine of her motorbike. Below her the city rushed up to meet her.

 Boom...

 She didn’t need to look round to imagine the orange petals of the explosion slowly uncurling. Sorry, boys, she thought when she remembered the two guards on top of the tower, but it was their own fault really. Spider had removed her coat, but – sloppy! – They hadn’t discovered the large amounts of explosives stored in the heel of each shoe.

 The shockwave from the explosion rolled over her like a tidal wave, blasting her sideways so that she was sailing almost horizontally towards the river. She hit the surface and actually skipped like a stone a few times before going under.

 The rubble of the execution tower burned brightly.

 

 ‘Damn her!’ said Spider as soon as he heard the explosion. He quickly turned around to see that the entire top of the execution tower was engulfed in flames. He allowed himself two seconds to stare open-mouthed, and then turned to the nearest man and snapped ‘Find her!’

 ‘But an explosion that size – perhaps she decided she’d rather take her own life than...?’ The unfortunate man’s voice dried up in the heat of Spider’s glare.

 ‘She’s ZOOMER FROST! Find her!’ the small man yelled. ‘And catch her!’

 

 A long way further downriver, a very wet woman with no coat and no shoes staggered over a bridge towards a motorbike. They’d left it there! How clumsy – Spider must be getting old. The woman looked around to see that the shop in front of her was being re-painted, and the men had left the pots of paint out overnight: black, white and red, like the remains of the execution tower. Red paint! How could she resist that?

 She swiped the pot and one of the thick brushes and began to work on something on the pavement. When it was finished, she leapt onto the motorbike, smiled lovingly, flicked one of the controls and zoomed away. The sound of the motorbike’s engines shattered the silence ad drew the men running towards the bridge. All they found were black curves of burnt rubber and a message written in huge red letters on the cobblestones.

 

                                      

 

                       

I don't know if any of the stunts or 'little inventions' are actually possible, but I haven't met anyone yet who could prove me wrong. Please leave comments and tell me if you think my story is OK.

My old stories

 I love big cities. London is the best, of course, with no offence meant to people who live in NYC or Paris or all these other awesome cities that I haven't visited yet. My family are more quiet-cottage-in-the-countryside type people, but I love seeing the clashing cultures and the buskers and the different people, shops and buildings, and I can find a story in anything. There was a tall black girl elegant enough to be a ballet dancer or gymnast; a Chinese man with his three-year-old son; two young boys out on their own for the first time. We went to London last weekend but unfortunately not today; we went to our nearest big-ish town. Here's a picture I took in London of a sideways Big Ben.
 By the way, if you want to get some food from Macdonalds at twelve o'clock... don't. It's SO crowded.

 Yesterday I rediscovered a story that I started writing when I was maybe 11. At first I was alternately frowning and cringing the whole time as I read it, thinking I'll have to change that... oh, that's awful... I shouldn't have done that... but as it progressed, the younger version of me obviously gained more skills, the writing got a bit more meaningful and profound, and by the time I got to the end I was thinking this is amazing. I don't want to change anything at all. But it doesn't seem like I'm complimenting myself - it's as though some other girl wrote that story, who happens to have the same memories as me.
 I will improve the story, of course, but I want to keep the essence and the spirit of it. Normally when I write nowadays I get wrapped up in trying to make it technically perfect. I will now try to get more emotion and fun and awesomeness in my writing.
 I found another story that I wrote even longer ago, just a short one, for the sheer heck of it. I just suddenly had and idea, and I wrote it! That needs some improving too, but when I've finished, I'll put it on here if you like. It's an OK idea, even if the plot's not up to much.