You're a teenager not Nelson Mandela.

Essays and miracles are what I feel are expected of me on a daily basis as a student and a teenager. Making a mess of my bedroom? I'm flawless. Tweeting about how emotional Sherlock was? I could be a professional.
From the moment you start GCSEs, grenades are thrown at you with the pin out. You have to collect every single opportunity and find a way in or out before the whole thing blows up in your face. On top of all that we're expected to go to that amazing party, revise for everything, make time for family, tidy our rooms, exercise, learn the flute and tie ourselves in knots just to please everyone else. The media tell us we're reckless, drunken, socialites who spend our lives smoking weed, doing neknominations and getting pregnant. This Buzzfeed article gives a list of why, in actual fact, our generation is way more boring than ever before. Our parents were probably on far more drugs than we are and rebelled far more than we do.

The best trick performed at my secondary school was creating a collective hum whilst the whole school photo was being taken. I nearly got suspended for walking to the local sweet shop during school hours.When rebelling against the new headmaster we taped passport sized photos of the previous headmaster to various places around the school, including a poster of Mohammed Ali. No harm was done, no consequences, no success.
My parents have far better stories from their teen years than I ever will. I don't have time to run riot, drinking on hill tops, sleeping over in abandoned buildings or climbing on different roof tops. My to do list grows longer with every coursework assignment I must write, classic book I should read. The worst thing I'll do on a Tuesday night is eat cake in front of the first season of Game of Thrones.

If you're a parent reading this right now, go on twitter. If you read any teenager's twitter I guarantee you will find at least one tweet that complains about the sheer amount of miracles we're required to perform every day. Turn water into wine? Turn three books into a three thousand word essay whilst riding a bike up Mount Everest and reciting Hamlet cover to cover.
As the title says, you're a teenager, not Nelson Mandela.

Strangers on a Bus: A Study.

Buses are unreliable, smelly, full of germs and bloody inconvenient at times. We're all strangers on a bus but it occasionally leads to a rare occurrence. In England, with our stiff upper lip and our public introversy, we rarely meet and greet people on public transport apart from tutting at some miscreant youth who pushed into a queue. Yet, on one particular wet and nasty evening ride, I felt an almost collective annoyance on the crowded vehicle. The queues out of Guildford were building, the bus was half an hour late, floods further perilled our journey and it was stormy. I suddenly felt like I had a connection with these strangers on the bus. It is rare that we open our eyes and notice that strangers in the street or on public transport have lives as complex and varied as our own.
At the front of the bus sits a middle aged man in a suit with a briefcase. His hair is silver. I assign little details. I imagine the life he has. He is a banker with a wife and a son who has just left home. He has just started a job at a new branch. He is taking the bus because the parking is a nightmare. Usually his wife would pick him up from town but she is on a girls holiday in Venice.
Sitting behind me is a boy of about sixteen, sitting on his own. He has just met up with a girl he really likes in town. He is wondering whether to text her or not. He is the oldest sibling and has two little sisters. His dad is a famous actor but he doesn't like to tell people because he doesn't like the attention.
An elderly woman sits to my right clutching a hand bag. She's been to see her daughter for coffee. She lives on her own in a flat with two cats called Molly and Socks. She likes to watch Downton Abbey, drink Earl Grey and complain about the weather.
I wonder if any strangers on the bus look at me and wonder what my life is like. Do they think I'm rich, poor, middle class? Do they wonder about what house I live in? Or what jobs my parents have? Or my habits and my hobbies? My family and my friends? But when I think of all the facts about my life, how complex they are, I don't think I could ever get any facts right about others. There are infinite possibilities of what anyone's life could be like. I try to look for clues, like their clothes and their age, their possessions or their facial expressions . But the truth is, you can never truly judge someone merely from their appearance. That's what truly fascinates me. It means that you could be sitting next to the long lost relative of Henry VIII and you'd have absolutely no clue.

Stories from my childhood reality

The world created through my father's imagination always struck a chord in me. These were the stories that the mind of a child could reach out and touch without any element of disbelief cracking the glass of their little reality. These were the stories that I will always remember because they were utterly ridiculous but they were absolutely nothing compared to any childhood programme. These were the stories that could not be touched by a cartoonist because the imagination of such a young child could never be put onto paper. These were the stories of dreams. The type that you know in your head but find it so difficult to convey the true experience of such fantasies. But, still I will attempt to recall the wonders.

The first story I remember was the story of four kittens called Eenie, Meenie, Miney, and Mo - like the rhyme. These four kittens lived in a large house next to a forest where many grizzly bears lived, one of which was their ultimate enemy. I fail to remember the name of the bear but in my imagination I picture him looking like Baloo from the Jungle Book. In every story the bear would attempt to get into the house and every time he tried, the four kittens would set a booby trap for the bear, like filling a bucket of something ghastly and placing it on top of a door, setting it ajar so that on being opened the contents would spill out all over anyone who tried to come in.

The second was about an animal called 'Aga the Panthus'. I always imagined this character as looking like the pink panther. The unusual thing about 'Aga the Panthus' was that whatever he ate, he would turn the colour of what he was eating, which was of course, terribly inconvenient. Anyhow, every time he changed colour I would roll over in absolute hysterics at the thought of turning orange whenever I ate a carrot or yellow when I ate a banana.

And third, and the one I remember best, was a story about a creature called Coattle, who I imagined as a mix between a tortoise and a lizard, who lived with his friend Jaguar in 'Ooold Mexico'. Coattle was a calm and small creature, Jaguar was hypnotically hyper and spoke very very fast. Together the two friends would lie on a rock and bask in the heat of the sun with Sid the snake and they'd get up to lots of different adventures together. And every time my father would sit down to tell me the story, I would choose what the story would be about. I remember, there was once a story about jumping beans that lived in the sand underneath the rock and a story about a Llama. But, what hypnotized me was the story where Jaguar, Coattle and Sid were lying on the rock at night and then the stars started to go out, one by one. The three characters discovered that what they watched every night were not stars but fireflies. This was the closest I came to existential wonderment before I even knew what stars really were.

The Beginning

This blog is hopefully going to be the beginning of some interesting and thoughtful writing from myself, minus the relentless rambling my previous blogs consisted of. This year will see my launch into adulthood and my daunting journey into university student life so I'm determined to start anew. As a student of English Literature, History and Philosophy I've had plenty of experience in writing, but if I want to become a journalist, perhaps some writing of a different style should ensue. Experience is key.

As this is my first post on this blog, i'll introduce myself. Hello, My name is Alice. Not to be confused with Alice in Chains, Alice Cooper or Alice in Wonderland. I'm an introvert with the personality of an extrovert. I am the complete opposite of a minimalist and keep my life like an organised mess. I'm an actress, an ardent reader of poetry, classics and Oh Comely magazine. I am also an avid worrier.

I mostly listen to The Smiths, Lana Del Rey, The 1975 and Arctic Monkeys. My guilty pleasure is Disney songs. I used to be a singer for a band but gave up to work on my A Levels.
My desire to become a Journalist came directly from my dad - my biggest influence. My dad works freelance for the BBC and was previously the African foreign correspondent. He also studied Classics and History at Cambridge. In comparison my goal is to study at Bristol University (if I get there), to travel the world and to work in either Law or Journalism afterwards. I'd love to study History which is unremarkable considering that my house is over five-hundred years old and my family are deeply interested in our ancestry.
Procrastination would be one of my defining characteristics. I tend to excuse myself from work due to 'dire levels of stress' and spend a lot of my time trying to find different ways to relax.
"Alice, Why don't you get on with that Philosophy revision?"
"Nope, got Yoga"
"How about History Coursework?"
"I can't, baths to have, films to watch, Lana Del Rey to listen to. I NEED to bake a cake"

So round up what you should expect from my posts, I'll say this. I'm unpredictable, mysterious, it could be anything. But it'll probably be musings about elements of life, reviews of films and music and opinions on current affairs. I'll try to be funny but don't count on it making you laugh. The most you'll get is that odd throat noise you make when you're mildly amused. However,  I anticipate that my future posts will be thought provoking, funny and interesting.

Thank you for reading my first post.

Lots of love

Alice x