D E A R A P P R E N T I C E

There are two people I know, who I consider to be very good friends. In fact, I consider them brothers. But most of all, I consider myself unbelievably privileged to know them. Talking to them is a depressing thing, not because they are depressing people, but because they are hideously intelligent. You think you've got to grasps with a skill or subject, then you talk to them about it and find that actually, in comparison to them, you know next to nothing about it. They are my Stephen Fry's, they are my David Mitchell's. If I want confirmation on anything, I don't look in a book, online, or ask a teacher - I go to them. And not because I keep them on any kind of pedestal but because I have yet to hear them say something which isn't right.

(img: http://www.onelargeprawn.co.za/2009/10/07/dead-fly-art/)

A B E A U T I F U L P O E M , A B E A T I F I C S M I L E

I am no great fan of poetry. This is probably because of the years I spent at school having to analyse the damn things, never being allowed to sit and enjoy the beauty of the words or the carefully yet accidentally chosen rhythm. Or possibly because, for me, a poem is like a piece of theatre, it is meant to be performed rather than read. Either way, yesterday whilst watching Four Weddings and a Funeral (yes, I am behind here...) I saw a performance of W.H Auden's Stop all the clocks which made my heart skip a beat.

G U I L T Y P L E A S U R E

Box Codax are the band you know you shouldn't like. They are the so-called guilty pleasure.

And they definately don't deserve the title they often seem to be given; another one of Franz Ferdinand's side projects. From the moment you hear the opening line of Naked Smile, you know that Box Codax are probably about as close to insanity as you can be without actually being locked up. A far cry from the easily relatable lyrics of Alex Kapranos.

Still, your sandals are worth 1000 lilacs.

However, this only adds to their charm. They are almost Kraftwerk-esque with a deep, squelching synth acting as a bass, laid over the top of high pitched, almost tuneless lyrics and a heavy drumbeat. There is something about the way they pull together elements of different musical genres and just make them work that doesn't seem right.

Alexander Ragnew, Manuela Gernedel and Nick McCarthy know what they're doing. You might not have heard about them yet, but if Nick manages to get away from Franz Ferdinand for five minutes, i'm sure you will.

www.myspace.com/boxcodax

L O S T

I have spent the last two years fighting a seemingly insurmountable language barrier. Desperately trying to show my peers and my teachers that I am actually, despite appearances, fairly intelligent. It's been nothing short of a nightmare, yet finally it seems that I am succeeding. In my recent Conseil de Classe (a meeting where all the teachers get together and have a good bitch about how much the students are failing. . .) the 'negative' comment I came away with made me laugh; she will write a page or two of faultless french, then she will write two or three lines which are completely incomprehensible. I am actually quite proud of this, as I think it sums me up as a person, I quite often talk sense - then come out with complete gibberish.
But having said all this (and I am not the kind of person who sits down and thinks 'fuck me, what am I going to do now?') I feel completely and utterly lost. I've been waiting for school to end for years, barely able to contain my excitement about getting out into the real world and doing something and thoroughly enjoying it. And everything else life has to offer. I hate the constraints of school - getting up early, following a timetable, sitting through a certain lesson no matter what mood you're in. Don't get me wrong, I adore learning but I can't wait to be free.

I just don't know what I'm going to do when I finally am.

I T ' S U P T O M E A N D Y O U T O P R O V E I T

When I think of my future, I see a flat in Paris.
A friend and I, living together in a fabulous top floor apartment with a balcony. I see us getting up late, rolling onto the living room floor, putting on a vinyl and eating baked beans straight out of the tin for breakfast before throwing some clothes on and falling out the house to go shopping or to work.

Work would be nothing hugely challenging, but always thoroughly enjoyable. Djing in a club or gig venue, working in a shop like Shakespeare's or Noir Kennedy and the odd bit of freelance writing. Maybe even teaching English if we got our TEFL qualifications sorted out.

I don't think I could live like this forever, but I can certainly see myself living like this for a few years before I finally make up my mind about what to study at University, or have saved up enough money to go travelling. Life is extremely short and I don't see the point in doing anything for any longer than you're happy with it. This would probably bad advice to give an unbalanced induvidual, but personally, the moment I am bored I will pack my bags and move on.

I N S P I R A T I O N

PLEASURE IN THE JOB PUTS PERFECTION IN THE WORK -- Aristotle.

Today I had History.

Today I was completely uninspired.

. . . And completely horrified.

Today I watched a teacher choose to argue with a student for 20 minutes, instead of answer their question.

He said he had ultimate power in the classroom.

Today I saw otherwise.

R E M E M B R A N C E D A Y

When I think of Rememberence Day, I think of sitting in my Primary School assembly hall trying my best to imagine what it must of been like fighting in the war. It takes a long time and a lot of reflection to really understand what humanity loses in a war, especially what we lost in World War One. When I think of the First World War, I'm filled with sadness because it was, quite simply, mass slaughter.

In France, Remembrance Day is even bigger than in England. There is no 2 minute silence at 11 o'clock, instead it's a national holiday. So, whilst I was sitting at home watching the usual processions on TV and listening to the commentator saying that all soldiers from WW1 are now dead I began to wonder. . .

Why are there no German soldiers involved in the Remembrance ceremonies ?

When this question is considered carefully (and without bias), the only logical conclusion one can come to is that they should be there. The lower ranks in the German Army were not bad guys. They were following orders, just in the same way our men were. And I really do believe, that when someone is holding a gun to your head saying 'Kill or be killed', you'd pull the trigger of your own gun. You'd kill.

However, this isn't the only thing that got me, I realised something else and it hit home very hard. The Second World War was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And evidently it was not. As technology and ideologies have changed and developed war has become more frequent and more dangerous - one man could kill millions from pressing a button in his office. We, as a nation and as a world have become used to this fact and so are fairly blasé about the wars that have happened since the war which was to end all wars. And so we continue to celebrate the triumphs of our men without really acknowledging the warning Remembrance Day is supposed to give us. I can completely understand that in some cases, war is unavoidable but I do feel that we are forgetting why Remembrance Day is there, it's a lesson from ourselves to future generations, it's a message saying: War is bad. Avoid it if you can.

As I have grown up, Remembrance Day has taken on a new meaning to me, from the child that stood in the hall trying to imagine the mud, hunger, fear and disease I have become a young adult who reflects on how, from the beginning of time, men and women who should not have been fighting ended up in wars that should never have been allowed to happen. Remembrance Day has turned into a day where I ask myself, why.