Great Day Watching England vs USA

The other day I said I would inform you about the epic time I had on Saturday. Here it is.

I arrived at about 5 at A’s house and had a beer, and soon J turned up as well. We had a few beers before the match, settling down to watch Total Wipeout. Finally the match started at 7:30pm. A then took out some Apple Sourz (15%, one of the strongest drinks I’ve drunk, I don’t get out much) and we decided that we’d each drink some every time Heskey made a mistake. So as a result it was half gone by the end of the disappointing first half. We then went out into the garden to do a keepy-up game, which I wasn’t good at. We went back and settled down to the second half, which proved to be just as disappointing as the first. We’d finished the Apple Sourz about 10 minutes before the end, along with the 4 beers we’d each drunk, but somehow we were remarkably sober. I was especially surprised at my sobriety, since usually after 4 beers alone I’m already well on my way to being drunk.

Then, as the sun was setting (as it was nearly 9pm by this time) we decided to head over to the local park for some football. After a while we could hardly see as it was getting so dark, so we headed back. When we got back we decided to stay the night. So first we watched HIGNFY and then at about 11pm we settled in to watch Die Hard 2. After that had finished, at 1:30am, we decided not to go to bed, but instead to break out Rollercoater Tycoon. That is still such a fun and addictive game, and we played it until about 3:30am, at which point we decided to get to sleep – just as the ‘dawn chorus’ was starting.

We woke up at 10am the next morning (we’d set the alarm on my phone for 10) and decided immediately after breakfast to go play some more football down the park. We played one-on-one against each other, with the other person being the goalie, taking it in turns. Then we decided to play a penalty shoot-0ut game, which I turned out to be fantastic at (shooting, not saving; I was awful at that) and I had by far the best ratio of goals. I always shot one way, but always managed to make the keeper think I was going the other way. Then we went back for lunch, as it was about 1pm by this time. After that we all went our separate ways (that is to say, we went back home lol) and decided that for each England match we would go to each other’s house to watch them. The next one is Friday at J’s, I can’t wait.

Looking Forward To Summer

Well, my first exam starts tomorrow and my last exam is on 4th June. It sounds like a long time, but it’s only 3 exams, 1 each week, so it’s pretty good. But I am – as you can probably tell from the title – more looking forward to the summer. 3 months and 2 weeks I have off. 3 months and 2 weeks!!! Either it is going to be great, or it is going to be very boring. I’m going to try my hardest to make it exciting.

I’ll try and make sure me and my friends are doing something cool at least once a week, be it having a party or doing something a little more restrained but still fun. What I’d really like to do is see a lot more of A, E, J and M, since they all live pretty close – within bike-riding distance – to me. The only trouble is that I don’t want to impose on them. I’ll have to talk to them and see what I can come up with. Wish me luck!

The End of an Era

Tomorrow marks the end of an era. One of my primary school teachers is finally leaving the school (retiring). He was one of my favourite teachers. I particularly liked him because of the phase he used when things went wrong – he used to say “oh, eccles cakes”. He was well liked by everyone, although A said he used to pick on him a lot, which I never realised. I once wet myself in his class, actually – not a particularly good memory, that (lol). One of my schoolmates who’s mum is friends with my mum is apparently going in tomorrow to see him. I would, but don’t want to go in on my own and wouldn’t really know what to say to him. He probably wouldn’t remember me anyway – he’s been there so long he couldn’t possibly remember me. Such a sad day. He was a legend. He will be sorely missed by me and everyone he taught.

What A Fantastic Day!

Yesterday was one of the best days in a long time, because of two gatherings that occurred.

The first one was when I met A and J at the Common for a kick-about (i.e played football (soccer)) for an hour or so. It was funny because we weren’t very good at passing to each other, often missing wildly. That, coupled with the fact it was raining and the ground was muddy made it a great laugh. Both A and J slipped up several times, it was fantastic. Then we went to J’s house. On the way we saw this suicidal mouse climb down a drain. We tried to save it using two sticks like chopsticks, but it went down another pipe instead. Who knows what happened to it. Anyway, when we got to J’s house and played MW2 and FIFA10. I beat them at MW2 epically but lost pretty badly at FIFA10.

Then I rushed home at 6:30 because a bunch of us were meeting at a local pub. We (well, I) got very drunk and we all had a great time reminiscing about (sixth form college, college in the UK sense) college and my, J and A’s adventures earlier, as well as other stuff. It was a great day, I hope then during the summer break we can have great days like that as well. I can’t wait. But now I need to start writing an essay for when I go back to uni in two weeks time, so no more adventures for me.

The Bullying, Annoying W****r

This is another post in a series about my secondary school experiences. The one is about this very annoying person who kept taunting me about my friendship with one of my female friends.

I am a Roman Catholic, as you probably guess by my introductory post about this series. As such, when I reached 14 I did my confirmation. Both E and A did confirmation with me (it was where me and him fell out) and along with them, several of my schoolmates. One of these ‘schoolmates’ was somebody that didn’t like me and always annoyed the hell out of me.

One time, during one of the sessions, I was sitting next to E and put my arm around her in order to tap her on her opposite shoulder, in order to turn the wrong way to find out who did it, as children do. This guy saw me doing this, although I obviously didn’t realise that at the time, and didn’t think it mattered anyway.

Well, it turns out it did matter, to him. He decided that he’d seen me put my arm around her, decided that I liked her, and decided to taunt me about it in school. So he did – for a few weeks or so. Every time I saw him, he’d go “[My name] likes E (well, he’d say her name obviously)”. It was the most annoying thing I’d ever experienced.

One day though, I snapped. I’d had enough. I hit him, several times. He tried to fight back, so I began to furiously kick and punch him. Even though I’m not strong, my punches and kicks couldn’t have been that hard, it was a furious attack. I was very, very angry. After a while he managed to escape my reach, and ran off.

Unsurprisingly, he never bothered me again. Who said violence never achieves anything?

I Just Don’t Know Any More/Delusions Of Best-Friend-ship

If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know that I consider E one of my best friends, and the only one I’ve gotten closer to over the last 3 years, compared to everyone else who I’ve drifted apart from (except for perhaps Jb).

But this isn’t really the case at all. I’ve always known it wasn’t, but I liked to fool myself into thinking she was one of my best friends. It was comforting to think that way. In reality, although I do consider her one of my best friends, and have told her as much, I think she can only just about tolerate me. I know this because I feel I can never talk to her, unlike many of my other friends. I always think I’m bothering her when I try to talk to her on MSN, and doubly so if I want to talk about emotions and stuff with her. I mean, it’s in her nature to not be very communicative with people, but I really do get the feeling that she really doesn’t like me.

Take the other day, for example. We went to a gig, I got a bit drunk and she was mostly sober. When we were coming back on the train I hugged her, as I do, saying sorry about it as I was doing it, as drunks would do. I thought that this apology would do. But when I talked to her yesterday, she sorta mentioned it and I felt like I had to apologise again – she made me feel like she thought I was some sort of diseased monster that we couldn’t bear to touch.

I dunno, maybe I’m overreacting. But the more I think about it, the more I realise that I don’t have any close friends, really, not with the people I’ve mentioned as ‘best friends’ especially. Perhaps it’s my fault. It probably is.

I hate feeling alone.

Memories of My Best Friend

When I was in primary school, A was my best friend (he’s the one I fell out with but then made up years later – see this post also). It was the perfect friendship. I used to go round his house so often it was like a second home to me. We would spend ages playing with his train set, or building Lego ships and vehicles to battle with each other. We would enjoy watching films and playing computer games. Sometimes would we have sleepovers, where we would stay up until early morning, usually making an elaborate Lego design of some sort.

In school we would always play cops and robbers and stuff together, even in the first year of primary school when we didn’t have many other proper friends (although we were obviously friendly with everyone else in the year/class, it was and is a small school) we used to pretend we were policemen – I would often pretend I had a police motorcycle, riding it in the style of The Hair Bear Bunch in my head. We also had a game where we pretended to be Power-Ranger-style heroes from a different planet, although I can’t for the life of me remember what the planet was called (I keep thinking it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I then lose it).

The most epic thing we ever did, that I remember, was during one summer when we spent days upon days walking around the field during lunchtime (we were only allowed on the field for lunchtime/breaktime in summer you see) to discuss this new strategy game one of his friends had got from Japan where apparently (I say that because looking back I doubt such a game ever existed) you could do whatever you like, design your own tanks e.t.c to use for your army. We spent so long discussing it that we’d basically created a game of our own in our heads by the end of the week, it was a fantastic experience, just the endless possibilities that this (supposed) game could open up for us if we had it.

Those times were fantastic. I’m so gutted that due to my stupidity I threw it all away for 5 years and lost all the potential good times we could have had in that time. But I still have the memories to cheer up. And hopefully, this summer, when we’re off uni, I can rekindle this old friendship properly, go back to being the sorta mates we used to be before. (Silly me, I’m starting to well up a bit now.) Summer cannot come soon enough.

Pessimism and Idealism

If you read my blog you’d think I’m a pessimist. I am. But at the same time I’m also an idealist. I suppose that’s not to difficult to imagine, really. I mean, pessimism doesn’t necessarily imply realism, right? Ok, perhaps it does, but I don’t think it always follows.

Take my attitude towards my friends, for example. My feelings towards them is of love and affection, of perfect friendships that work very well and are a lot of fun. However, my model of friendship is outdated and therefore makes our friendships seem not so perfect.

To me, friends regularly invite each other round to have fun, yet it’s been many years since any of my friends did that, even before uni. I fairly regularly invite people round but since their invites had dried up, I stopped too. But I miss it – I miss it a lot and it makes me wonder if my friendships are as strong at they seem in the model in my head.

It’s like with my ‘best friends’, A, J and E. I say they are my best friends, but really, we’re not. A and me have only fairly recently hade up, as you may know, so we don’t really know each other any more, and J has his girlfriend now, and even before that we weren’t really best friends. The only person who’s really stayed my actual best friend is E, as much as it pains me to say it.

I know, partly it’s my fault for not trying once they’d seemed to have given up, or for falling out with A in the first place over a silly misunderstanding, but more importantly, perhaps, for having an idea of friendship that is clearly above what is expected of people our age now. I suppose my vision of friendship is still very much based on the one children have, and that is not what people do at our age, around 18 and over.

It’s not their fault that they aren’t interested in my version of friendship – it’s a long-outdated model. It’s my fault for expecting so much of them. I really have to learn not to expect anything from anyone just because I’ve known them a long time. I have to earn their interest and their friendship, all the time. Otherwise, I’ll only be disappointed.

Wow, that kinda want a bit off topic from what I started talking about…

Friendship Speech

Well my special primary school best friends are coming over today. I’m definatly going make that speech this time. This is what I plan to say:

“I would just like to say that if I ever hurt our friendships, I’m really sorry. I would never intentionally hurt our friendship, because you guys are my best friends. You’ve always been there for me, no matter what, and I hasvn’t always done the same. I just want to say that you’re like brothers and sisters to me, I love you guys. I just thought I’d say it, because I felt it something I need to say. I’d hate to lose you guys, I’d be completely lost without you.”

I’m crying about it just writing it. I don’t know why it gives me such a strong response. All I can say is that I mean every word of it.

My ‘Best Friends’

This is a slightly expanded version of this post basically, becuase I’ve been thinking about it again.

There are these three people I have known since I was about 4. I’ll call them J, A and E so as to keep with the ‘anonymous’ nature of this blog.

J is a brilliant friend but I feel we’ve drifted apart, but I don’t know how to reverse this. In primary school we were great friends because we didn’t have that many other strong friends there, apart from these other two people. In secondary school there was a lot more people so we kind of drifted apart. It was my fault becuse I started becoming better friends with other people, that were his friends as well but we kind of stayed apart. When we got into college I thought it would change because people stick together in a group in college, but this hasn’t really materialised as he got a girlfriend after a short time and she takes up most of his attention. I totally understand this, but I still feel that we should be better friends.

A is also a brilliant friend but I fell out with him 5 years ago, I had blocked it out but I had a moment of clarity and apologised for what I did. We’re friends again now, and when we all had a get together one day, J, A and E, it was like we’d never been apart. However, I haven’t seen him since then so I can’t say we’re actually friends again. He hasn’t changed a bit though, since I was last friends with him in primary school.

E is a brilliant friend also but I endangered this by something I said during a confusing period of my adolesence . I’m pretty sure she has come to terms with it now. She’s the only one of these three that I can still legitimatly call a best friend.

I feel that I value their friendships higher then they value mine, but I think this is because my relationship with them is stuck in 2001.  I still see them as my best friends, because we knew each other inside and out. I’ve just realised though, this isn’t the case anymore, so they don’t see me in that way. I think it’s becuase I assume that as we’ve been friends practically forever, then I don’t have to make the effort to stay good friends with them. I will always love them though, no matter what happens. I will be forever in their debt, for always being by my side.

I regret that in the get-together I mentioned earlier in the post, I planned to say something but didn’t, and I really regret it now. I wanted to say:

I know I haven’t always shown it, but I love you guys. You’ve always been there for me and although I haven’t always been there for you, I do and will try to.

But I chickened out, and I’ll always regret it, because I really mean it and want my friends to know how much I appreciate them.

I think what I need to do is to have another get-together, and make more of an effort generally towards them, if I want to bring it back to how it was in 2001, the last year of primary school. No more complacency, only effort will bring my best friends back to really being my best friends.