So sorry I have been gone, here's a new chapter...

Sorry I haven’t written in this blog for so long but as people say actions are louder than words and it made sense to go out and do what I planned for this year and then write about it.


After my last blog post I had quite a good reaction from my first part of ‘Butterflies In The Breeze’ (if you don't know what I am on about see my last post) one of the things that I found most awesome was that a friend from Australia who I hadn’t been in contact with for abut eight years emailed me about it, that was awesome. And thanks to all the other people who commented on it too I was glad that you all at least claim to have enjoyed it!


So okay, since I know a few people want to read some more…


Chapter 2


The music block was quite a tidy building; it was very flash compared to the rest of the school. Downstairs was a computer room, there was also a practice room and a music staffroom. Upstairs there was an enormous theory room with jazzed up posters of Coldplay and other modern bands on the wall. And two more rehearsal rooms all full of instruments and amps. Sarah liked the music block, as it was much nicer than her previous colleges, and considerable amounts of money must have been put into making the block.



Sarah’s first class was with Miss Thomson in the down stairs computer room; she’d arrived five minutes earlier than everyone else. The rest of the class were evidently in no rush to get to work, so Sarah chatted to Miss Thomson. She was very interested in what she had done at her previous school. She tried unceasingly getting Sarah involved in the jazz band and the School production of ‘Fame’. Sarah was quite happy to get involved but she avoided volunteering herself for anything yet since she knew she could easily end up selling her soul to the music department.



Finally people began to arrive, the first of which was a red haired girl who came in with a cello and sat in the corner of the room. She seemed quite reserved as she sat there playing a mellow classical version of the Muse song ‘Muscle Museum’ on her cello. Sarah was quite impressed by her evident talent.



A few more people entered the class with about a fifty-fifty gender split. No one had sat next to Sarah yet; she was sat at the far left of the room virtually invisible from the other side near Mrs Thomson’s computer. Finally a blond haired girl noticed her and came and set next to her. She had straight bleached blond hair making her look like Marylyn Monroe, but without the curls. She had pink stiletto heels which Sarah guessed must have cost at least £200, and only a polo shirt which revealed her pink bra. She made no attempt to hide it however, since it was slipped out of the side near her right shoulder.


“You new here then?” the girl said. Sarah nodded she would have introduced herself however the girl gave her no time to. “I’m Zoe by the way, so what do you think of it here? I really like your shoes by the way” she said sweetly.


Sarah thought that the speed Zoe spoke at was what you got when a recording of Jo Whiley met the fast-forward button.


“Yeah thanks, well it’s um, yeah nice here, I like it.” Sarah nervously replied.


Zoe nodded and smiled. Then Zoe continued still talking at the same stupidly fast pace, “Yeah it’s all right here, I mean it’s not fantastic here or anything. Where ‘bouts have you come from?” Zoe asked. As she continued, it began to dawn on Sarah that she would an annoying but good chat show host.


“I came from Heaton near Newcastle.” Sarah said, before Zoe instantly began talking, again. “Oh my god, isn’t that where Cheryl Cole comes from?” she exclaimed.


“Yeah, I think so; a few people at my old college had met her.” Sarah replied, trying to sidetrack Zoe into being quiet for more than a minute.


“Wow they must be so lucky! What’s she like, is she just like she is when she is on T.V?”


Sarah thought for a second and then said “One of my mates met her and she said that she was a complete bitch! She refused to sign an autograph for her when she asked politely, I don’t particularly like her, I don’t like her music and can’t stand reality T.V either. I don’t really know that much about her anyway, she’s a lesbian isn’t she?” Sarah asked, hoping that the string of lies would shut Zoe up while also hoping it just hadn’t made it all worse. She didn’t dislike Zoe it was just the over enthusiastic chat pissed her off, Sarah wished Zoe hadn’t sat there since if she had maybe met her another day they may have got along quite well, but as things stood it looked like they weren’t going to.

Before Zoe could answer however, Miss Thomson shouted over them “Ok class, quiet please, everyone knows what they should be doing, don’t you?” A few people nodded, good I want to see Liam, Joe and…” as Miss Thomson was saying this, Sarah lost her focus on what was being said as Zoe(lent in towards her and said “You’re a lying bitch aren’t you?” Sarah didn’t exactly want to start a feud on her first day of college so she ignored her, and began listening to what Miss Thomson was saying, which had suddenly got a lot more interesting. Sarah flushed red as Miss Thomson turned to speak to her.


“Okay then oh, and Sarah I know it has been quite a hectic day for you, but you don’t mind doing a test today do you?” Normally Sarah would have avoided doing this by making some excuse but didn’t bother today, since this would mean getting away from Naomi. “Yeah, that’s fine miss” she replied.

“Great” said Miss Thomson smiling “It’s the test everyone did last week, you should find it easy enough.” A smallish boy shouted out from the other side of the room “Answer seven is Baroque.” “Shut up, Niall” Miss Thomson said, smiling through gritted teeth. “Sarah if you go out of here, on the right there is a practice room you can do it in there, good luck” she said. Sarah walked quickly but still managed to gracefully avoid Naomi’s leg outstretched ready to trip her up.



***


Georgie exited the school grounds at a sluggish pace; as usual he took a short cut home walking across the school cricket pitch. He pulled out his old, battered blue Ipod nano and put The Red Hot Chilli Peppers on full blast. He looked around and couldn’t see anybody so pulled out a cigarette that he had been gagging for. He lit the cigarette in one smooth stroke and slowly inhaled the smoke, as he lifted the cigarette for a second drag a firm hand grabbed his shoulder.

“And what do you think you are doing out of lessons son?” It was Mr Green the old caretaker, he liked nothing more than to catch kids smoking, as it seemed to give him a purpose in life. Georgie nearly jumped out of his skin, he looked around before shouting, “What the fuck do you think you are doing you wanking old creep? You nearly scared me shitless!”


The old caretaker snarled at him like an angry bear, “And what do you think you are smoking on School property? And out of lessons as well, truant!” “I m a fucking six-former” replied Georgie quickly, “An’ it ain’t school property, its Marsh Wood council property, isn’t it?”



This stopped Mr Green in his tracks, he thought for a second, scratching his ever balding head. “You lit it on School property, didn’t you though; also it is a criminal offence to smoke on council property and a £200 fine!” Georgie was praying that the caretaker would have just let him go because it was council property but it sounded like he had heard that one before. Georgie decided the only thing to do was to make a run for it. His sudden acceleration took the old caretaker by surprise but he grabbed the back of Georgie’s school bag, which dragged Georgie back. Mr Green grabbed his arm. “You’re coming with me son! And you won’t pull a fast one on me!” The elderly caretaker with a grip like a vice pulled Georgie back towards the school. He tried to resist but the old man was strong despite his old age, and eventually he gave in to the inevitable. He was going to get bollocked.



***


Sarah sat down at the test paper. She had done tons of AS papers and she knew what to expect. To her satisfaction she opened the paper to notice that it seemed very familiar she had done this paper only a week ago, and she had got the answers back too. Sarah felt like her luck was changing, this was her chance to impress Miss Thomson and also it meant she had to do minimal effort when she was expecting to have to gruel through an hour of music theory.


Fifteen minutes later Sarah had finished the paper, she had put in a few wrong answers so as to not arouse any suspicions. She realized that she would have to sit another fifteen minutes not to make it obvious, also the later she went back in the less time she would have to spend near Zoe. Out of boredom she decided to look out of the window and was quite surprised to see an elderly man dressed in overalls pulling a six former by his coat who seemed to be putting up a rather feeble resistance.


On closer inspection Sarah recognized the student as the person who called her “gorgeous” earlier. Sarah giggled quietly to herself. She had taken an instant dislike to the boy; She hated any boy who instantly thought he could flirt with her. “Karma” she whispered to herself and then giggled for another few seconds. She then sat back and closed her eyes, realizing how tired she was with all the moving, and her parent’s arguments. She hadn’t been sleeping well.


She closed her eyes thinking to herself, how messed up the world was, and wondering how, when her life seemed to be almost perfect, something she would never have dreamt of happening, happened. And she was living the consequences for somebody else’s selfishness. It had cost her everything: her boyfriend, her friends and her freedom. She thought of the town, it was like a prison, holding her, not letting her escape. Why did life have to be so unfair? A mixture of anger and sadness began to fill her brain. She could feel tears forming in her eyes. She took a deep breath and stared out of the window, focusing on a hill in the distance which was just visible over all the urban sprawl.



Hope you enjoyed it, my email is octopusox@gmail.com please email me if you enjoyed it or comment on my facebook or however you like to tell me things.


See you all later.



Chris :)

P.S Also thanks to my editor Danny you are awesome, if there are any spelling mistakes blame him not me! :P

My Novel: Butterflies In The Breeze; Chapter 1

Okay sorry for the delay but here it is the draft of Chapter 1 of my novel! I am quite exited baring in mind only two people have ever seen this so far, I really want to know what people think. So if you are reading this please leave me a comment or somehow give me feedback, anything at all about it (even if you thought it was complete shite I don’t mind! I want to know!). Please tell me! Pretty please!

I just thought I would say this before you read it: none of these people that I write about are based on solely one person, they are a mixture of many people I have met, have heard about and will no doubt meet in the future. The setting isn’t real! St Peter’s is once again a mixture of many high schools with a six form college; I would never describe my college like this at all. Infact for the record Hutton Grammar School is an amazing place to be and unlike some of my characters, I am very happy with my college and I feel at home there.

One last point the title of the novel, is currently only a working title but I think it is good because it reflects freedom and consequences quite well which are two main themes throughout the storyline.

So yeah, I hope you enjoy it…

Butterfly’s In The Breeze

“A bicycle shop at the end of the road
A Chinese chippy to ease the load
The lights are low, and life's not fair
What I have is yours to share.”

Liam Fray

Chapter 1

St Peter’s School and Six Form collage was a complete dump. Year Sevens ran all over the severely waterlogged front field while others slid on the ice that inhabited the square shaped plot of playground which everybody referred to as the quad. Older kids stood in groups huddled together wishing they could go inside, but the prefects stood by the doors and refused to let anybody in.


Sam Jones watched all this from the English room window. Abruptly an angry voice screamed at him across the other side of the practically empty classroom, “Sam Jones! What are you doing? Less looking out of the window and more revising, otherwise you will fail, again!” The voice came from Mrs Hatchet; she was the elderly English teacher who made Sam’s English Literature lessons as appealing as having a nail hammered in to your private area. Sam stared at his battered copy of ‘The Kite Runner’ which lay in front of him, “What is the bloody point?” he muttered to himself. He opened the book up at a random page and began to read.


After what felt like a millennium it was half one and the re-sit class which consisted of Sam and his best friend George Day who everybody called ‘Georgie’ exited the classroom. “Oh, I wish I had passed first time so I we didn’t have to have these shit lessons” Georgie moaned in his nasal sounding voice. Sam didn’t bother answering; he had too much experience of Georgie’s moaning rants so he replied in a slightly more optimistic tone. “Where are we going now, Chippy?” “Don’t have any money do I?” replied Georgie. “Bloody hell, you already owe me thirty quid, don’t you” Sam replied in annoyance at his friend’s ability to never have any money. “Come on just a fiver man” replied Georgie in a begging tone. “Fiver and two fags” replied Sam allowing himself to smile as his best friend tried to think of a better way to avoid losing his prized possessions. Georgie snarled and then handed over the two cigarettes to Sam after checking there was nobody in sight.


Sam and Georgie continued their walk down the road towards the chip shop. They passed out of the back gate in-between the plush new Six Form block and the slightly older performing arts block and approached the Motson Avenue shops. The shops consisted of: a bicycle shop, a carpet and furniture store, a funeral directors and then finally the ‘Lucky Star’ chip shop. Sam and Georgie got their lunch and then continued back towards the school virtually in silence. Being Six Formers meant that the privilege of been allowed to leave school when they wanted to. However both boys failed English Literature in their October mock exams so had to spend there Monday lunch breaks revising for the re-sit with Mrs Hatchet. Sam had got a D where as Georgie had failed with a more shoddily F.


The common room was virtually empty as Georgie and Sam entered, most of the six formers had lessons but there was an odd few who sat around flicking through a text book or texting a friend on their mobile phone. Georgie and Sam slalomed through the scattered chairs and piles of litter to where they usually sat to eat the few remaining chips and scoop the remaining gravy out of the bottom of the yellow disposable trays the chippy gave the boys before wiping the grease on to their suit trousers.



Both Sam and Georgie were meant to have General Studies but they never turned up, not that the aging teacher Mr Kirkby minded. He had already put up with enough of Sam and Georgie’s attempts to cause havoc in the previous two years in his lower school Citizenship classes. Sam and Georgie never got punished for missing the classes since it was too much effort for Mr Kirkby to fill in the red slip which told the head of year who had missed the lessons.


In one corner of the room was a slim girl with washed-out blond hair sat at one of the few desks in the downstairs part of the common room filling in some forms. Sam peered round to get a good look at the girl; she didn’t seem to notice him ogling her. Sam then violently nudged Georgie in the ribs sending him momentarily in to a spasm. “What would you rate that chick in the corner?” he asked Georgie. Sam watched Georgie searching the room, it was a matter of seconds before he noticed her, “Nice arse, nice hair”; he peered around the side of the vending machine that obscured the view of her. “Definitely shag-able, a nine, maybe a ten” he said smugly.


Sam nodded conceitedly, “She’s deffo a nine, any day of the week. Never seen her before though she must be new; I am goin’ over to introduce myself.” “Yeah, I’m coming too.” Georgie said quickly. Sam glared at him, “She’s mine! I saw her first, so you should keep your distance.” Sam said in a voice of authority which appeared to have a huge effect over Georgie who now wore a sulky expression.


Sam swaggered over to her, he expected her to turn her head and notice him, but her the blasting sound of ‘The Libertines’ on her ipod shut every sound in the common room out. “Hey” Sam said machoisticly, the girl didn’t look up, she carried on writing on the green form which lay on the desk along with at least three other forms. Sam took a step closer, “Hey” he said again slightly louder this time. His body casted a shadow over the girl’s form and then she noticed him. She swiftly ripped the white ear phones from her ears and turned around slowly.


“Ermm hi”, the girl said nervously looking anywhere but at Sam, she spoke with a smooth Geordie accent and her body language suggested that she didn’t particularly want to be acknowledged. “Hi, you new here?” Sam asked confidently. “No I am just filling all these forms in, because I come here every day.” Sam wasn’t expecting this blow of sarcasm and it hit him like a hammer. “Wow, jeez simmer down.” he replied with slightly less confidence this time. “Well you were the one who asked a question you already new, so what do you expect.” The girl said aggressively. “Sorry, I only came to say hello, I just thought I world just…” Sam‘s words fizzled out like a match that had just been dipped in a bucket of water.


There was awkward silence for a few seconds in which they both stared at each other. Neither of them noticed Georgie arrive. “Alright gorgeous” he said in the most self-assured tone that was known to man kind. The girl glared at him, Georgie grinned back. “Oh, just piss off” the girl said in an incredibly annoyed voice and put her ear-phones back in and turned her back on both of the boys. “Looks like it is someone’s time of the month.” Georgie said in a voice which resembled both laughter and disappointment at the same time. Both boys looked at each other and drifted back over to where they were sitting before.


“Why did you have to come over?” Sam said angrily, “I was just getting in there with her as well!” Georgie snorted like a pig with a blocked nose, “Yeah right, she had a little paddy and there was silence for a few seconds.” Georgie said trying to rub salt in to Sam’s wounds. “It’s called passion you moron.” Sam replied irritably, he was annoyed that Georgie had read the situation and knew that their brief conversation hadn’t gone well. “I bet you don’t even know her name.” Georgie said trying to degrade Sam even more. “Actually I do.” Sam said glad he had looked at the girl’s papers that she was filling in and noticed her name. “It’s Sarah.” he said sensing his victory over Georgie.


Sam glanced at his watch and said “It’s nearly twenty past I am going to head off, I have Miss Black next, she always skits out whenever anyone’s late.” Georgie nodded appearing to display no emotion, “yeah I am going for a slash then I am going to head home, I just have frees now.” Georgie then smirked rubbing in the fact that Sam had to go to lessons. “Lucky for some.” Sam grumbled as he headed out of the Six From building and strolled towards the main block.

***

“Hey, Kentaro”. A voice came across the ICT suite. A girl was spinning around on an office chair making a come over here gesture at Kentaro. The girl had a short mini skirt a short white shirt on which revealed a pink bra underneath and stiletto shoes. You could tell from one glance at her that she was the sort of girl that every boy dreamed of dating and every girl thought was a slut. Kentaro wandered over hoping that this wasn’t going to take up much of his time. “What now, Zoe?” he asked with an unenthusiastic tone. “How do I like, get up the code for this?” she said pointing at the screen clueless at what she was meant to be doing. Kentaro grabbed the mouse and quickly clicked a few times and then muttered under his breath.



After a few minutes he wiped the sweat of his fore head and said “You had changed the mode to view so you couldn’t get the FTP file” he said before he was quickly interrupted by Zoe “Cheers hun, see you later then…” she said and flicked itunes back to her screen so she could change the music track. “And what a lot of thanks I get” Kentaro muttered to himself as he walked back to his seat on the other side of the classroom.

***

Sarah Pederson was new to the school so did not have a clue where room ‘C86’ was so she wandered around the corridors in hope that she would find the school admin. She eventually found the reception desk and an overweight lady with spectacles gave her directions, “Second left and first room up the stairs” she said in a bored tone. Sarah walked quite quickly knowing that it didn’t matter that she was late to General Studies; being new meant she had an excuse to get her out of trouble for the first few weeks.


The class room was small and about fifteen six formers sat desks pretending to do their work while texting their friends in another classroom or chatting to the class mates around them. Mr Kirkby was quite an old man; he sat at the desk scribbling away at a crossword. You could tell from his face that he was in his sixties and his fashion sense was another give-away. He had a mop of chestnut brown hair which gave him a sort of Paul McCartney look. When Sarah opened the door he took no notice and it was only when Sarah was less than a meter away from his desk that it looked and with a frown said “What are you doin’ ‘ere?” Sarah then quickly replied “I am new sir, I am in this class.” “Well ok then go an’ get a sheet from over there” he said pointing at a small sheet of piles on a desk a few meters away. “The work sheet is on the global village, you should ‘ave done it done before in Year Ten” he said gradually losing interest. He then put his head down and muttered to himself about how difficult the crossword was and reached for a thesaurus from the shelf behind him .


Sarah sat at an empty desk and began doing her work. She wanted to make a good impression to start with and she took an immediate dislike to her general studies class who appeared to be acting very childishly. A few of the bored boys at the back kept wolf whistling at her trying to get her attention. She wasn’t really in the mood for their attention. She wished that she could just fade in to the background and slowly forget the reason why she was in this shit-hole. And how she had spent the whole morning filling in an application form for a college she was already at. What a pointless day she thought to herself.


Two minutes later she had finished the worksheet. In her five minutes work she had done more than the whole class put together, she couldn’t be bothered putting her hand up and asking for the extension work, Sarah didn’t want to be labelled a swot, she didn’t really want to labelled anything, just yet. She looked at her timetable, last thing music. At least it was something she was reasonably good at. So far she hated this six form college it felt more like a secondary school than a college but she realised she had no choice since her mother had given her no choice about where to go and now she was trapped, she would have to get through her A levels, then she could go to university and live life her way. The sound of the dull bell ringing interrupted her daydreaming.



Hope you enjoyed it, my email is octopusox@gmail.com or you can just comment on wherever I posted it be it below, on facebook, on the HB forum or wheverever I have left it for you to find!


Oh and sorry for the bent formaing there is nothing I can do at present to solve this, but I am on to it I promise! The damn website makes it impossible to format properly :/

A "Quickish" Summary of My First Blogging Month...

Hi anyone who reads this, sorry I haven’t written anything in this blog in a while. But today is the one month anniversary of my blog so I thought I might as well do a blog, (well my first one took me two days to write so I doing it the day I started…) So here is some of the things that have happened this month…

Well, in October half term I went to Venice. I am not sure how much I actually enjoyed it since when I left Venice I came home quite disappointed with my overall experience. Before I went I hyped myself up watching DVDs and reading books which claimed how awesome Venice is. I spent the first day enjoying the novelty on travelling around on the water buses and walking through all the bendy alleys and I enjoyed it because it was different. Also I visited the church which is on Assassins Creed Two; this was remarkable since we found it by accident when we got a bit lost.

The next day we went to St Mark’s square, I thought the Dodge’s palace was spectacular and was well worth the visit. Just a shame all the front was boarded up. Then we visited the Cathedral which was a beautiful place but now it is a complete tourist trap with everyone ignoring the signs and making noise when a service is on and taking photos which you are meant to. This really pissed me off! Surely when there is locals partaking in their religion it is common decency to be respectful by not making noise and taking pictures that sends a flash around the whole Cathedral.

After this we visited many art galleries and museums, all I learn from this was “I hate cherubs!” Every art gallery was full of these stupid naked babies with weapons; I really don’t get the satisfaction that some people get from viewing them, since once you have seen one you have seen them all. The only other sort of painting you get in Venice is religious art most of which is crossed with erotic art. (Not that I found it particularly arousing…) Another random observation that I made was the paintings which were painted of Jesus always show him when he was at “his most human” such as when he was being born or when he was dying, it never shows any miracles or anything that made him distinct from any other of the human race ever, I found this quite interesting but I can’t find answer for it.

Basically after the palace Venice got a bit boring and very repetitive. Everywhere nice was overcrowded, the waterbus novelty became a norm, at night there was rats everywhere (so much for the Persian cats) and there was beggars on many streets. It was nice to see a small snippet of what life may have been like many years ago but the new mixed in with the old really wasn’t my thing. Yeah I guessed I enjoyed the trip because of the people I was with but overall I think Venice is well overrated, just my personal view, if anyone who has reading it who has been then please tell me what you thought since I am quite interested to know if it is just me who wasn’t a massive Venice fan.

The next thing that has happened that I feel inclined to blog about is my last blog post about Halloween. A few people didn’t really see the point of that blog post and with hindsight it was pretty bad. But some people’s plans for that night did make me very angry. Basically they decided that it would be a good idea to go and disturb an elderly vicar who refused to open his door on Halloween. I sent a link to the two people who posted on facebook about this. One of them didn’t reply to the message I sent him with the link but surprisingly one did. He told me he didn’t do it and that his friend told him to post it. Maybe my blog did have a positive effect since he was quite apologetic about it. But then again I don’t think he took much notice and considering he is in my brother’s year at school it wasn’t exactly a major success getting him to back down. But still I can always hope.

Apart from my trip to Venice I have had very little to write about since my life lately has been slightly mundane with lots of College work. For anyone who doesn’t know (and is interested) I am currently in my first year of College studying: History, Religion within Philosophy and Ethics, Psychology and ICT. And if you want to know anything else I do than ask me or chances are it may be in the first blog post.

Another thing which has been occupying much of my time is preparing for a Swedish night which I am holding (along with the 5 other merry people from the South Ribble WSJ Jamboree contingent) on this Saturday (the 20^th) so I have been busy preparing for that. The Swedish night is basically a unique event and I can’t wait for it, it will feature live music (played by me and the other Jamboree member), dancing (we are doing a dance which I am really, really nervous about), quizzes, food, plenty of drink and whatever else happens on the night. The great thing about it is that all six of us with a small bit of help from our parents have put the night together and we have put hours of work in to it so I can’t wait for it. I think being part of this experience has been the best thing I have been part of in my life so far and knowing the best is to yet to come with this event, never ceases to make me happy. Oh yes and there is still tickets available for the night if you live in the Preston area and fancy it, it’s going to be held at Longton Primary School if you are interested, just send me an email and I will sort you out if you want one my email address is octopusox@gmail.com.

Sadly I haven’t had enough time to get many of my 17 objectives ticked off yet but it may interest you to know I have found time to get some more work on my novel done. Thanks to those of you have asked me about it especially Julie, Gemma and Carl (you will be pleased I didn’t  put Karl this time!) As I have promised you I will put a chapter up very soon (By next week I promise) I just want to have another edit of it and then it is yours to read! Also thanks to everyone for the comments, emails and facebook replies I have received about the previous blog. Despite having only four followers at current I know more people are reading this which is great, so thank you for reading and I hope my blogs entertain you.

So yeah that’s what has basically happened this month (as well as stuff that I wrote about in the other blogs) hopefully the next months summary will be better than this one. Hope you all have had a good month too!

Chris :)

Halloween

“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“The Devil got landed with a shitty job, he has to deal with assholes everyday, he's probably bored as hell.” Gerard Way

“If you know your history, then you would know where you’re coming from.” Bob Marley

Halloween is something that I really do have mixed views about. As a country we are losing many of our old English traditions, whether this is good or bad is another debate entirely so I won’t go there. However Halloween seems to be quite an exception to this. I think the reason why Halloween is an exception is since it has adapted over time. Originally Halloween was called ‘All Hallows Eve’ (All Hallows Day is now called All Saints Day and this is used to celebrate the life of every saint and is on November the 1^st.)

Many years ago Halloween was a time for witch hunting and for getting rid of evil spirits possessing homes in your community. Halloween was traditionally a day of getting rid of evil and was supported by the church? Yes, this was a long time ago but I believe that this is still important. For this reason I put the Bob Marley quote at the top of the blog. I think that the origins are still important and it will explain why later in the blog. So as I just said Halloween was originally started by the church! So all you people who are using Halloween as an opportunity to take action against the Church because you believe they are trying to condemn Halloween you are completely wrong, you have completely got the wrong end of the stick. And every priest or vicar who is actually trying to condemn Halloween are much bigger fools than the people who believe this view.

The reason why I decided to write this is last year a couple of idiots decided to “egg” (if you don’t egging is where you throw egg’s at something and it makes a huge mess, maybe these are the people Gerard Way is referring to in the quote above …) my local vicar’s home because the previous year he refused to open the door to trick or treaters. There reason why he didn’t open the door firstly he didn’t believe that it would be good for people to view of him celebrating Halloween. I can sympathise with him here, it only takes one person to say that this is unholy to celebrate Halloween and blow the whole thing out of proportion and pretty soon he would loose everybody’s respect, surely it is common sense for him to protect his role in society by not joining in with this one festivity.

There is no rule saying you have to open your door to complete strangers, infact in modern society it is heavily advised that you don’t open your door to complete strangers. So why should people be taking action and doing vandalism to those who don’t take part in the festivities? I know for a fact that the vicar who had his home egged by a couple of ignorant teenagers was very upset. Also many elderly people are too scared to even have a light on in their house because they are scared of the young people who go around trick or treating and not because of their costumes. Having spoken to some people who feel this way they believe that many people who go to door to door are not taking part in the traditions and are doing it just to get sweets from people. An example of this is an experience of my Grandma’s a few years ago when she offered some sweets to some youngsters (about nine) instead of taking one which would be polite they grabbed half the bag and ran! And they weren’t even in costume! (Well if you count a black coat done up above their mouth, a black hat covering their head and black tracksuit bottoms a costume then you can consider about a quarter of Penwortham in costume all year round!) Considering this is a mild example of some which I have been told about I can fully understand why people don’t open the door to trick or treaters.

Another thing I don’t understand about Trick or Treaters is how their parents can let a five year old out alone in the dark to go around to knock on strangers doors! What if one house they knock on belongs to a paedophile? Do they not have a conscience or care for their children? And I am not using an extreme example I have witnessed this myself twice last year! Also is Trick or Treating what Halloween was originally made to be about? Does fit in with the original ideas even? I would say no, I believe that this is the part of Halloween that turns the festival often in to a mass event of human greed rather than a celebration.

And recently young people have Britain have got bored of Trick or Treating and created “mischief night”. This is something that actually makes me angry. The idea of pulling pranks on your friends is fine, if it is in good humour. However when young people are going around letting peoples car tyres down, setting peoples bins on fire, posting dead animals through peoples letter boxes, egging peoples houses and other such acts, then I am sorry this is not mischief. It is vandalism! Clearly there will be a point where you get too old for trick or treating since when someone comes to your door about 6ft tall you are not going to give them sweets are you? There are alternatives to Trick or Treating such as Halloween parties, here you still get the fun of dressing up and whatever people do for Halloween (plus a party which would be awesome) and you don’t upset or cause criminal damage (unless you hold a bad party which could involve this…) surely in most cases this is a win win! I am pleased to say that teenagers appear to have common sense since I know many people who have spent the weekend at Halloween parties as described above (apart from with lots of alcohol…) so there will only be a few going out tonight Trick or Treating which is a good thing.

Another good thing about Halloween is people are using their imagination and creating some great costumes. I have seen quite a few awesome pictures on Facebook and other places of people dressing up which I think is great since it brings out a Carnival like atmosphere which is great. Which is why I put the Arthur Conan Doyle quote up above since after all people using there imagination is always a great thing. Also the entertainment industry have been very imaginative this year with some great Halloween games such as the zombie story feature for Red Dead Redemption which my brother has been playing all weekend. I can’t decide if this completely kills the whole idea of Red Dead Redemption or is infact awesome but needless to say it looks like quite a fun game! (Oops the gamer inside me just escaped!) Also other games also zombie themed have appeared this year especially and really has impacted on Halloween this year, I don’t know how zombie’s fit in to Halloween origins which are slowly disappearing which is sad in a way since we do need remember old folklore such as witches since it is part of the history of our nation but still change makes history and if change didn’t happened we would be living in the backward ages. I would like to see in the future traditional Halloween ideas like Ghosts and witches mixed in with modern day Halloween creatures like zombies and vampires (not Twilight ones though, they just suck…)

You may be wondering what I am doing for Halloween, well I suppose the answer is this blog and hoping someone comes to the door who asks for a trick or a treat, since I have quite a good trick in mind! To be honest I quite like Halloween but I think in recent years many problems which have occurred have spoiled the whole celebration. And I imagine this year will be the same with articles which will be written for the newspapers and actions that some stupid people will probably be out committing tonight.

On this slightly depressing thought I wish you a happy Halloween and hope you have a good evening doing whatever you are doing.

Chris :)

My War Against The Anchor

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Winston Churchill

On Thursday I began a bit of a war. Actually that isn’t true they started it! The Anchor pub in Hutton previously have never given me any hassle. I was under the general impression that they were reasonable people who were happy enough to let people park up on their car park for five minutes while they pick up their kids from school. However today they decided to try and stop people, but I have no problem with this since after all they have to the right to since it is their property and they can stop people parking there if they want.

However they also decided to cross the line slightly and have a go at people who were not parking on their pub car park. Once again as long as they have a genuine reason to express their anger then feel free to but someone who is stood one meter in to their car park chatting to somebody is not affecting them at all is it? However once again it is their right to not allow people to stand on their land. However surely a shop keeper wouldn’t ask someone to leave a shop just because they are not buying something, surely they would take the opportunity to try and make a sale by advertising their products to the potential customer. However the pub evidently like their customers as much as Bernard Black and decide to scare them off, if that’s the way they like to run their business then fair play, but really one meter if that on to their land from the pavement, that’s a bit pedantic don’t you think and I think the pub’s security runt got what he deserved when he challenged me.

I can’t remember every word of what this bearded full said exactly but I remember he started the conversation with “Are you lost?” which I think is a really stupid thing to say especially when I am stood next to someone chatting to them. I don’t have a problem with people asking stupid questions, some people are to put this bluntly stupid, as a result of this when they ask question it will be a stupid one. However when someone asks me a stupid question in a rude and patronising manner this does annoy me. I think I ignored him the first time he asked but then the second time I think answered with a “no” and then did that thing with my face when somebody says something quite awkward. It is sort of like a muscle spasm of the face but I don’t suppose it is particularly relevant!

He then began shouting at me despite being about two meters away, mentioning something about me standing on private property. It was a complete rant and if he was any closer my face would have been barricaded with his spit. After he had shut up I replied in a calm tone, “And is this hurting anybody?” he turned red like a tomato and I was half expecting another rant from him. But instead he came out with a very profound question, “How would you like it if I was stood in your garden?”, really is that relevant I am stood on his car park (infact it isn’t even his, he is just some moron the owners have employed!) away from all the cars so people can get passed on the pavement. Also not to mention he completely ignored the question I asked him, however out of politeness I decided to answer his question. So I said “As long you weren’t stood on the vegetable patch then I wouldn’t be too fussed if you were.”

Unfortunately this answer seemed to only upset the guy even more! He then began trying to explain to me how metaphorically this car park was his “vegetable patch”. I couldn’t see his point at all and I think I may upset him when I spoke mid-drift of his “Philosophical explanation” by asking how is tarmac was growing! A rendition of the following nursery time may well have been well timed at this moment:

Mary, Mary quite contrary,

How does your car park grow?

With lots of cars and smoked cigars.

And parking lines all in a row.”

Sadly I wasn’t fast enough to come up with this on the spot and if I had said this to him I imagine his fist would have soon been heading towards my face since I was beginning to make him pretty mad. However the situation didn’t result in violence (I reckon I could have had the guy in a fight anyway…) since the manager had noticed there was some trouble and she had come to see what was going down. She came over and asked (slightly more calmly than the security numpty) what was the problem was and I tranquilly explained that I was only standing here for convince sake so as not to get in the way of any pedestrians.

I was quite unsure who’s side she would take, I knew I had put over a better argument than my new best friend but I guessed she would support her staff especially since legally speaking I was in the wrong, which she immediately pointed out. However I did have a reasonable knowledge of the law and pointed out that until she showed me a legal document showing she owned the land ie a deed then I didn’t have to move. She seemed quite unwilling to show the deed saying that it wasn’t necessary to show me the deed which I countered with that therefore it wasn’t necessary for me to move.

There was a moment silence in which I thought of another good point to put across. I asked her if she realised that by asking people to leave her car park (which would be empty if they weren’t there) was impacting negatively on their view on the pub. She just shrugged. So I continued by saying that since the car park was virtually empty instead of sending these people away she should be treating them as potential customers and maybe promoting the pub to them possibly by handing leaflets to them. Clearly she didn’t like to be told how to do her job, since she snapped at me saying: “You have a lot to learn son, and you clearly think you are it, but let me tell you aren’t you just aren’t.” I stood there until she finished and then said the thing she was least expecting to hear, “I completely agree with you.” She flinched like I was about to hit her. I noticed that my lift had arrived at the other side of the road so with the final words I said, “It was very nice meeting you but I am afraid I have to leave now. Good luck with your car park clearing mission!” I said politely and then smiled and walked off.

As I left I heard the woman comment saying: “He clearly has a lot to say for himself” (her fellow staff member applied with a low pitched grunt, which I think sums the guy up to a T) I completely agree with this woman, I do have a lot to say for myself and I think this a good thing. Take for instance every person who is considered to be great who has every lived they have old expressed their opinion. For example Jesus (and no I am not trying to compare myself to Jesus before anyone asks, since would be very arrogant of me since I am neither perfect nor a miracle performer.) He expressed his views and people gathered to listen to him. If he hadn’t had a lot to say then he probably would have been a carpenter just like his farther and the world we live in today would be such a different place since I doubt Christianity would have ever occurred without him being born, anyway whether he lived or not is another question for another blog!

Also take for example John Lennon, if he hadn’t expressed himself through his music and had a lot to say about the state of the world then the world would never have been touched by his music and his views then I doubt the music industry would be the same. See my point? Every person who is considered to be great has expressed themselves some how be it through speech, art, music or any other thing they can. If you can think of any great person who didn’t express themselves please tell me in the comments since I would be quite interested to know if there are any! What I am trying to say is that for the youth of today to be successful then we need to have voices! We need to tell people want we think, we need to stand up and be heard whether our opinion be right or wrong if we don’t have a voice and make mistakes then we will never become great. Do we want to remembered for the generation that did wouldn’t voice it’s self?

I urge anyone reading this who feels they can make change little or small to voice their opinions since young people really need to be heard and not be intimidated by people who think they are bigger and better than them, this last week has really opened my eyes and so many people are just being pushed around by adults who think they are better than the youth of today. I am not trying to lead an uprising and course anarchy or anything like that I am just trying to say just because some one is older than you, that doesn’t mean they are older or better than you. If they think they can walk all over you show them wrong stand up to them and challenge their views.

However I also urge you not to do this against people who are trying to help you such as teachers since they do tend to be right which I have learnt from experience. Furthermore screaming and shouting doesn’t get your point across it just makes you look like a tit. If you are going to argue keep calm and you will find that people actually listen to you when you speak in a composed tone.

 I discovered this Friday morning when walking to school when a parent parked their car up and approached me and told me that she had heard my argument with the Anchor Pub. She told me she agreed with everything I had said and that “I was a credit to my generation” and that more people should express their views and that what I said was said in a very professional way. This is what made me right this blog post. Her praise makes me believe that I am on course to reach one of my goals for this year (see my previous blog post), I believe the fact that what I said influenced the woman enough to stop her car and speak to me is evidence that I am changing the view of the youth of today already.

 However to quote R.L. Stevenson: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” I realise that with my views may have also hurt people such as The Anchor staff by reacting to their challenge in the first place but I take comfort in the Winston Churchill quote at the top and I agree with the quote you are always going to make enemies there are oppositions to everything you or I will do. As a result of this I am not going to back down and if they want a war they can have one and I am very sure that our first battle was a victory to me. I was hoping I could email them a link to this blog since I believe any company should receive feedback so they can learn how to improve. Sadly it appears they don’t have a website but the first thing I found when googling “The Anchor Hutton” was quite interesting it appears I am not the only person who have had trouble with these people.  

Anyway, thanks for reading and please tell me what you thought of this blog post by either commenting below or emailing me, my email is octopusox@gmail.com hope you enjoyed reading it.

Chris :)

17 Things I Wish To Achieve While I am 17!

 18/10/2010

I have been toying with the idea of writing a blog for too long now but last night I realised I really want to write one. It was my birthday yesterday and I had an absolutely awesome time (I will do another blog post about that later…). But one moment that really stood out for me on this birthday was speaking to a friend who I really don’t see enough off; he really, really inspired me. He told me to pretend that I will die on my eighteenth birthday and live this year like I would if that was the case.

Yes that may seem corny and clichéd but there is more! He also said to set myself some goals to achieve over the year and to tell people about them so people would ask me about them and would repeatedly inspire me. I wrote down last night all the things I really wish to achieve and there turned out to be 17 goals, hence the title “17 things I want to do while I am 17.” I decided to act on the 17 goals today at college and half way through my first lesson (R.S) people were already noticing the change in my attitude. It seemed to be working although I think the effect loosened off over the day but still it’s a start, a good start too.

Also I have a lot of stuff I need to get across and if I do die this year at least I will have got some of these things across in this blog. Which is some thing I really want to do and is one of the “17 things I want to while I am 17” So yeah, enough rambling so  here in no particular here is what I hope to achieve in the next year…

1)      Write a blog. Yes this is the blog but I would also like to keep it going throughout the year and beyond. Hopefully somebody will read it and if you are reading it leave me a comment otherwise I won’t have a clue if you are reading this blog or if nobody is! So I have sort of done this one now, but I want to continue it for a while longer before I can tick it off my “magic list”.

2)      Learn to drive. What do you think of when you think about turning 17? I imagine you think about learning to drive. Over the year I want to learn to drive. I was going to try and have my first lesson this week, but it was just too short notice so I have booked my first one for November 13^th, this seems ages away but it would have been sooner if I wasn’t going to Venice… So yeah hopefully over the next year I can learn and then past my test. Most people I have talked to about learning to drive (Oliver) claim that I will be rubbish and crash all the time, so no pressure!

3)      Make the most of the WSJ Jamboree. This summer I am going to Sweden on the World Scout Jamboree and I want to make the most of this, I spent the last weekend with the people I will spending a lot of time with this summer and they are all awesome! I can’t wait for it; I will post a blog solely about this in the next few days since I have a lot to tell you about it! So this year I want to make the most of the Jamboree since undoubtedly this will probably be the greatest trip of my life!

4)      Write a novel. Yes that is write I want to write a novel or should I say finish writing one! I started a few months ago writing it after planning out what I want to say in it. That is all I am going to say for the time being but I do need somebody to proof read some of what I have written for me so if you would like to help and get an early read of it please email me at: octopusox@gmail.com thank you! Also keep you eyes peeled since I want to post a few sample chapters on here in the coming weeks.

5)      Learn to play acoustic guitar better. Well I already can play guitar but over the last few years my acoustic guitar skills have vanished and I played an acoustic for the first time in a while this weekend at the campfire and I have realised how much I miss it so I am going to relearn it all I hope and get better over the coming year. And this one sort of links with the next goal I am setting…

6)      Record some of the songs I have written. Over the last years I have been writing a lot of songs but despite encouragement from loads of people I have never got round to recording them, so this year I will record them and when I do I will post the recording on here some how…

7)      Do well in my exams. I am now at college studying: History, ICT, Psychology and Religious Studies (Philosophy and Ethics). I have exams in January and in the Summer sometime and I hope to do well in them, my ALPS are B, B, C but I hope to get quite a bit better than that, so this year I want to do well in my AS’s and basically study hard but not let it hinder all my other goals.

8)      Get a girlfriend? This is one thing my friend who I spoke to last night suggested I set as a goal; he described me not having a girlfriend as “Being the missing piece to my puzzle.” Personally I am not to sure about this but I suppose it is something I have been putting off for too long, so I will put some serious thought in to this one before trying to get it ticked of my list I think I will have to take some time and not rush in and think about what I do very carefully especially since this one particularly involves somebody else’s feelings. This may be the hardest goal on my list, by a very large margin… But it will definitely be interesting!

9)      Do a random act of kindness everyday. For the whole year I am going to try and do a very random act of kindness everyday and keep a record of what I have done to look back on at the end of the year. I may post some on here but I am not certain yet. Today’s random act of kindness was dropping my study period to go and search for my friends lost cat. Despite my hatred towards cats (I am allergic to them!) I really wanted to help him find it since I could tell that this lost cat was bothering him. Anyway after the walk to his house we soon found the cat was sat there waiting for him in his garden so despite the fact I did very little searching I still think it should count as today’s! So everyday I hope to do a random act like that for the rest of the year and hopefully this will slowly make the world a better place!

10)  Become a Scout Leader. I have been a beaver leader for three years now and I think I need a change so this year I hope to become a scout leader (once my brother has moved to explorers, it would be havoc with him there still!) and once there I hope to have a great time and create many great experiences for the people involved just like the leaders made many great experiences for me when I was in Scouts.

11)   Stay true to myself job-wise. Basically I believe that I shouldn’t do a job unless I would be happy to do it for free (very communist like I know…). This is why I want to become a teacher once I have finished my education since I would happily do this for free! So this year I don’t want to be pushed in to getting a job I don’t want to do. I don’t think I have explained this particularly well but I will try and explain it better in another blog post since I have quite a bit more to say about this…

12)  Embark on a sea bound sailing voyage! No I don’t want to become a pirate but I do want to sail on a big boat on the sea. This summer my parents and brother are going away to the Mediterranean again but I have decided not to come this year I am hoping that in this time I can sort out doing some sailing on the sea which is something I have wanted to for ages. So hopefully I can spend a week or so out at sea, I have seen an opportunity already so hopefully I can involved with this voyage which is from Amsterdam to Ipswich. I will keep you posted about how applying for this goes…

13)  Have many more great days out hiking. This last year I have spent some great days out doing the three peaks of Yorkshire challenge and also climbing Mt Snowdon plus many others. This year I hope to climb more mountains and have many more great days out in the awesome countryside.

14)  Make more progress towards becoming a Sailing instructor. This past year I have become an assistant sailing instructor however in the coming year I want to make some progress being actually doing an instructor course or just being an instant instructor on courses. Teaching people to sail is something which I really enjoy and hopefully I can make further progress this year.

15)  Change peoples view of “The Youth of Today”. Young people really do get some really bad coverage in the media however this year I want to spread the news of all the good news that young people are doing and try and persuade people that young people aren’t just hooligans as suggested by the media. I hope to challenge the media directly on this problem and work with them to promote all the good things that young people are doing. The first step for this will be to contact my local paper “The Lancashire Evening Post” so starting from there, lets see what happens. I will try and keep you all informed with what I am doing since this is quite a hard task I think.

16)  Randomly help a homeless person directly. This is something I want to do, quite selfishly to prove to myself that I can through small impacts change the world even if it is for one person by buying them food so they can eat. I suppose this could come under “My Random Acts of Kindness” but I think that this is different since it isn’t a random act it is a planned act where as the random ones aren’t planed they are just impulsive acts. I would be hoping to spend £10 on the person I choose to help which may not seem a lot but considering how broke I am it is quite a lot for me! This one should be quite easy but it is something I really want to do.

17)  Live to the age of 18. I want to live to the age of eighteen since I think if I die in this year it will mean I won’t get to help many people who I plan to help and also believe it a lot selfishly I quite like living. But I guess if my numbers up there is not a lot I can do. I suppose it would be quite nice to have lived to that age at least....

So these are the seventeen things I wish to achieve, if you think you can help me please email me at: octopusox@gmail.com Also please give me feedback about what I have written on this blog, be it in person, by email or commenting on this blog, I guess I would like to know if someone has read it and what they think since this has taken me a long time to write! So yes once again and thanks and I hope you are all part of everything positive I achieve in my life as a 17 year old!

 Thanks for reading.

 Chris :)