I just realised it isn't Friday.

However, I wanted to do Fill in the Blank Friday so let's pretend it is.

BUT BEFORE WE DO THAT, I want to say a big hi to some new followers I have...I'm not sure exactly how many I've gained because I can't remember numbers and I don't check that often, but HI ANYWAY if you're relatively new.

So now I will proceed to fill in the blanks, as always, courtesy of Lauren @ The Little Things We Do

1.   The last thing I ate was: um...a Chinese takeaway. HEALTHY I KNOW, BRING ON THAT BIKINI BEACH BOD. Mmmm, there's nothing better than a decent chinese after a long shift at work. Nom.

2.  The next thing I'd like to eat is: quiche quiche quiche. I love quiche. Quiche Lorraine. I can't get over how fabulous it tastes.

3.  The best things : are the best. What? I need more words to understand this question.

4.  Something that makes me supremely and utterly happy is: realising bang in the middle of something that you're living a memory that you'll remember for the rest of your life.

5.  Sports are:  lolsports. No thankyou :) I can't see the point, either in watching or playing. Although 50% of my famalam are avid Blues fans so it's unavoidable at some points of the year.

Three fifths if you count my dog...

6.  I miss: SCHOOL. SO MUCH. I miss structured sessions and frees (unexpected or otherwise) and miscellaneous lunchtime activities and female solidarity and avoiding doing work and the impending (but somehow ever so distant) threat of exams and the smell of the canteen and arguing with Mr Clear and never doing History coursework and complaining about the length of the drive and the bus being shit and eeeeeeeeeverything.

7.  Right now I am: feeling nostalgic, clearly. Also wondering if my feet will ever stop aching and contemplating whether or not to go get another coke.

MMMMMM.
BYE EVERYONE.
TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WEEKENDS OKAY? COOL THANKS.

Takes Romione and turns it into a rant.

Let me start off this post by saying I ship Ron and Hermione as much as the next person. MORE IN FACT, I worship the ground Romione walks on; it was probably my first ever OTP...and it still is my OTP. So there ya go. I don't want anybody to hate me for what I say next.

One of my favourite pieces of fanart ever. I lost the credit some time ago though :(

Don't you think it's a little bit...sad, that the part of the Deathly Hallows people are most excited about is the Romione kiss?

No, okay, that's fine. I'm okay with that. It's more that people don't want the Romione kiss spoiled for them, and I mean really don't want it spoiled. In the trailers, we saw Harry being killed, that heart-wrenching scene with the resurrection stone, Fred dead; essentially all the most important parts of the book for me, but no-one particularly kicks up a fuss, whereas if WB dared to reveal even a hint of "The Kiss" there would be UPROAR. Riots in the street. Organised book burnings. Sacrifices to the devil. Probably (and stop me if I'm exaggerating) the downright end of the world.

Fangirls gone wild.

Let me clarify, I truly have no beef with people anticipating The Kiss. I can't wait for it. I just think it's very sad that in a series of complex, intricate, well-written, action-filled novels that feature plotlines that are nearly entirely unrelated to romance, the thing we care about the most is a kiss.

A kiss.

Maybe it's a comment on society that, at the end of the day, what we're interested in the most is the romance, the love. You see it in the vast swathes of fandoms on the internet - they're all concerned mostly with ships. I know that's over-simplifying, but I do think it's true. Whilst we appreciate beautiful writing and fabulous characters, it's the relationships between characters that is the most...not interesting, exactly; maybe intriguing. The most intriguing for us. A good ship is what reels us in. Let's make that even more abstract: what kind of primeval instinct does romance...or even anti-romance (Dramione shippers, I'm looking at you) appeal to? Is it just the internal need to love and be loved?

Okay cool, that's far too deep and I sound like an extra from Moulin Rouge so I leave you with this profound thought: DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 IS RELEASED IN APPROX 3 WEEKS DEPENDING ON YOUR EXACT LOCATION WOOOOOP :D

(Also, I'm really sorry if you aren't a Harry Potter fan and you're following me. At the moment, it's all you're getting. The hype is too great for me to ignore I'm afraid :P)

HI GUYS :D

I'm back!
And when I say back...well technically I was back last Friday, but I've been busy working and turning 18 and whatnot..also I'm very lazy, and if you don't know this by now then you probably never will.

So what has changed in my absence?

For me personally: well, I'm an adult now if nothing else! My birthday was yesterday...and that's that. I've also done a fuck-ton of exams (okay...three...) and watched a lot, a LOT of TV...I got into Game of Thrones, which is absolutely fabulous, and Sanctuary, which is trashy and therefore perfect, and of course there was the new series of Doctor Who (flaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!!sdafghjdskfdlg! Opinions in the comment box please!)

As you can tell, I got lots of revision done.

I actually did but that's not an interesting subject at all.

Anyway, can I have a secondary flail for all the Deathly Hallows hype?! A REALLY BIG FLAIL!? Between the final trailer (which I watched and regretted, SO MANY SPOILERS!) and the TV spots (which I didn't watch but I've been unable to avoid seeing caps of) and the whole Pottermore thing (my single incentive for getting up before midday tomorrow), SO MUCH HYPE. I am so painfully excited for this film; it represents the culmination of a very long journey for me (and uh, most of the world too) , it's such a big deal and it makes my heart go just to think about how much I bloody love the Potter universe, and its fandom, and its millions of tiny details. Bleurgh, my heart is full again.

So yeah, now that I'm done being a recluse, my life can finally begin again! My prom is on Tuesday and after that I'm jetting off to Greece for a week with my friends which will be super fab...argh, in general my life is now looking up, here's to the summer!

Going here. Flailylail.

Cool. I'll try and get some more quality posts up in the week, but for now, update me! How have your lives been during my lengthy absence? Are you going away this year? 

Putting my studies first I guess :(

HI EVERYBODY! I have sad news :( I'm leaving the blogosphere for a while...not just updating this blog but I'm changing the password to my google reader account so I can't even read or comment on everyone's blogs D: There is a very good reason for this: its name is A LEVELS and it wants to kill me. I spent last weekend in France with no internet and, even though I was on holiday, I still got LOADS more done than usual.

So I'm giving up the internet! Which is mental. But there you have it. My exams end on

JUNE 17th

Which, if all goes to plan, is when I'm coming back.

See ya later, alligators! Miss me!

Emma x

Irrelevant picture is irrelevant. Except that it's a beagle. Wearing an alligator costume. I'm sorry but what's not to love?!

Je n'ai rien a dire,

HELLO FOLKS, long time no speaky!!

The reason why? Well, to be blatantly honest with you, there's not *that* much going on in my life. The usual: lot's of schoolwork, friends, family, walk dog, sleep, eat...blah.

Oh, except they released this:

Which is a) good because I love me a bit of Blaise, b) exciting because hey, it's only like, 80-odd days to go! and c) oddly homo-erotic, dontcha think?

Er...my oddly-coloured hair cravings are back!! Someone at school dyed her hair sort of turquoise and it looks EPIC. Here is a cropped picture because I don't know her that well:

Makes me wish I had the balls to do the same really :/ that and the fact certain people would "defriendify" me. And yes, I am aware that that's not a real word.

I do sort of want to go dark-dark green though. Sort of like Katy Perry's green but darker.

Nom.

Well, there's your occasional ramble from me. Hope everyone is enjoying their Easter holidays...or Spring Break...or whatever :):)

Lost: one jacket.

My jacket and I in happier times :(

So today I lost my favouritest jacket :( one moment it was there, and the next...gone!

This is not blog-worthy material. BUT it seemed quite significant because it's my dance jacket...and this weekend, I did my last dance exam. Which means technically I don't even need to go to dance any more.  I still do, because I'll be fat and bored otherwise but NEVERTHELESS everything is ending!

And our year got approached to join the Old Girls Association yesterday, which is like a club for people who've left my school.

What. The. Hell. WHEN DID I GET SO OLD?!

Why literature matters.

I was reading an article...I've lost it now, but it was about why literature matters. So, in a semi-boring and mildly interesting post, I'm going to explain not why literature, is important in the big scheme of things but why it matters to ME.

I should warn you this post is wordy and there aren't many pictures. But I like to think it's worth the read :)

This exciting picture by me.

The thing is, literature fires the imagination. It's no coincidence that nearly all writers were readers first - the more you read, the more you think and the more you think, the more you create. I had a lot of imaginary friends as a young child, and it was only when I started writing them down that the floodgates really opened.

Know what else? Literature teaches you to appreciate more than one viewpoint. You rarely see good fiction in which the villain doesn't have some kind of back-story, some kind of reason for acting the way they do. Remember reading Noughts and Crosses when you were little? Remember how Jude was evil...but we cared about him? That kind of grey area between good and evil helps us appreciate in real life that not everything is black and white. I know it's taught me to look at situations from different angles.

Actually, that semi-brings me on to another issue - literature educates. Read a Jane Austen novel? Begin to understand society in the early 1800s. I can tell you now, I knew nothing about Belgian rule in the Congo until I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. And you know what else? It educates us in such a way that it doesn't really feel like education at all: because we're learning everything from the flipside, the little people at the bottom, all the historical detail kind of filters in and suddenly we're knowledgeable. And that insight into other people's lives is so important: history isn't copy and pasted directly into an index we can use in the future, it fades unevenly and sometimes it gets lost. When a book captures one scenario, it shows us a bunch of thing about the time it was written that are absolutely invaluable.

Image courtesy of the BBC

It helps us communicate better, too. Here's a fun fact: in primary school, I used to get nicknamed "The Dictionary" because...well, because I knew how to spell words, basically. Except rhinoceros, never can get that one right. Anyway, when you're continually taking in proof-read, constructed prose you learn, instinctively, how to write well and construct a decent sentence. Which, coincidentally, leads to a well-written CV/personal statement...which is a ticket to a successful life. Note how that's not even an abstract "save literature becoz it's good" reason. That is an actual, bona-fide way that reading lots enriches your life.

That pretty much sums up why I believe reading, especially in children, is incredibly, crucially important.
(Warning: politics upcoming.)
Which is why the issues facing Britain's libraries at the moment are so tragic. Are the cuts necessary? I'm not an economist, and I can't tell. I wish they weren't though.

Truly. Libraries are my childhood. And I've spent a fair proportion of my teenagerdom there as well.

/end post.