I am a monster in other people's clothing.

"God made man in his own image, but what if that included his rage and his spite and his indifference and his cruelty? We're all his children, but God's a bit of a bastard."

- Toby Whithouse, Being Human, Episode 8.

Mitchell the Vampire I Fancy The Pants Off You.

What comes next has nothing to do with the delectable Mitchell/Aidan Turner. I feel it is important to declare my longing for him though. :)

I found this on Facebook and I rather liked it.
10 things you wish you could say to 10 different people right now:
1) I really quite fancy you, and I'd quite like you to reciprocate that.
2) I know it's not your fault he likes you and not me, and I'm sorry that when I see you I can't help but think 'BITCH' in my head.
3) I really want to be here for you now. And I think you're doing a lot better. And you're still one of my very faveourite people.
4) Blow your nose, please.
5) If I had to pick, you'd probably be my very faveourite. Thankyou for being so wondeful to me. I'm sorry I was horrible when we were 13. I don't know if I'll ever properly forgive myself.
6) I'm ever so sorry that I couldn't be there for you when I should have been.
7) I love you very much, but sometimes I have no idea how we can be related.
8) Sometimes I get scared you're slipping away from me, but then you hug me and I know that you're not. You give the best hugs.
9) You're not as pretty as you think you are.
10) I'm sorry I havn't spoken to you since you were diagnosed. I just don't know what to say to you. I'm really, really scared that by the time I grow up enough to phone, it will be too late.

I Knew Before The Invitation That There Was This Boy.

I twisted the Arctic Monkeys lyrics for that title.

There is this boy, you see.

I'd forgotten how nice it is just to fancy someone, and when you talk to them or smile at them your heart to do a pretty little trip over itself.

It's dead nice :)

I'll go for the polite werewolf.

“I do not understand this. Again, its bad boy syndrome isn’t it? It’s very depressing...Girls, stop going for the bad guy. Go for a nice man in the first place. It took me 35 years to learn that, but I am giving you that nugget free, right now, at the beginning of your love lives…”
- J.K. Rowling

Oh, JK.
I LOVE YOU.
(and I'm sorry if you think this is weird.)

New Decade? Pah. Gimme The Old One.

Happy New Year faithfull viewers.
I thought I'd start by examining my Top 10 Things of the last decade because... I feel safer looking back than looking forward. This was the first full-decade I've ever seen, so it was pretty important. I grew from a little girl into a (I hate this expression but it seems fitting) young woman. I guess. So: My Top 10 Things.
1. Harry Potter and JK Rowling.
Thankyou for giving me a role model, and an ambition. Thankyou for telling me the best story and giving me years of going to bed and pretending I was in a Hogwarts dormitory. Thankyou for giving me and endless game of 'lets pretend' where I could be magic. Thankyou.
2. The Summer of 2007.
This was the summer that I stopped trying to be someone I didn't know very well or like very much, and became the girl who wears shoes with stars on and sits cross-legged at dinner and gets inky fingers. This was the summer I realised that I was a wonderful person in my own right and that I could be that person.
3. Alice Arnold, Lauren Rowley, Amelia Caffrey.
It seems unfair to lump these girls together. They could each have pages in their own rights, but I don't have enough numbers. These girls are my best friends, and the first friends who I feel that love me because of my faults and not in spite of them. They are part of the reason that I am who I am at the start of this new year, and shaped who I have been.
4. Young Rogues and Vagabonds.
My theatre group. I had some of the best weeks of my life there, backstage at the Civic hall putting on shows. I fell in silly teenage love there, which felt like the most important thing in the world. I made best-freinds there, and lost them too. I learned (as an only-child) how to be with other people and love it.
5. Alcester High School.
My secondary school, where I grew up more than anywhere and where I discovered that history was important and that I could write and that I could pass maths. The three best teachers that I will ever have in my life taught me there. I made friends and enimies and I cried and I laughed. Sometimes I hated the place and sometimes I cursed it. That school was amazing.
6. Writing.
Pretty self-explanatary. If you write, you know. I guess it gave me another language. And another way to play lets-pretend.
7. David Tennant.
Because he's my only MAJOR 'celebrity' crush, in that cliched teengae girl way of posters on the bedroom wall. Becuase I spent one whole, hot summer hanging around my hometown, struck down by the luck he was there too, and trying to catch a glimpse. Because when I did meet him it was the single most exhillerating feeling in my life. And because his Hamlet cemented completely my love of...
8. Shakespeare and The RSC.
I love The Courtyard Theatre and I love the actors and I love the words and I love the way that he changed the course of literature forever. I love the way that he captures real humanity.
9. America.
It opened my eyes to travel. The people and the places and the variety and the sheer wonder of a country not many people take the chance to explore like we (my mum, my dad and I) do.
10. Reading everything and anything and my Dad reading everything and anything to me.
Proabably the most important thing on this list, as if one thing has made me into the person I am is reading.

A Good Day to Die.

What constitiutes a good death?
It's not a one-size-fits-all, prescriptive answer like many people think.
My RE class (who are studying euthanasia at the moment - the inspiration for this post) have conflicting ideas.
Most of them think dying in your sleep would be 'a good death.' But in Medieval times people used to pray not to die when they were asleep because they thought Satan would take their soul.
The Angry Atheist thinks it would be nice to die 'when you were high. Like a Jamaican.' Despite the shocking racial stereotype there, I don't think I agree.
Alice Arnold says she's going to die from Consumption like a Dickensian heroine, or go mad with love and fall into a river. I like it - but I doubt she's being completely serious.
I know a girl who thinks that it would be nice to die in place of someone you love. Stupid. In the words of Jeremy Bentham (Act Utilitarianist), don't think that a man will ever lift their finger without the prospect of a reward for themselves.
And what do I think?
Well, when they got to me, I wasn't really sure. I only know a few things:
1) The quote "Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light," made me cry when I first heard it. That whole poem, a man urging his Father to not slip acceptingly into death really changed my views about the definition of making a good end.
2) There is a passage in The Book Thief where Max Vandenberg watches his dying Uncle lie and wait for death, and he decides that "Death will feel my fist in his face when he captures me." I like that.

That's all I could really say. I think that I want to die brilliantly. I don't want to die acceptingly, I don't want to wait for death, I don't want to give up until I have to.

So maybe I don't want to die in my sleep. I don't think that's a very good death.