Happy New Year!

Hello! Happy 2012!

I've been in various different places in France during the last week, and on our last night stayed at my parents' friend's house in a little town near Bolonge. We spent New Year's Eve attempting to light Thai lanterns on a stormy beach at midnight, and drinking champagne.

So here's a thing that's happening. I am going to try and write a blog every day in January.

You might remember that I attempted this last Febuary, and failed, but I'm giving myself the excuse that back then I had a few other things going on, and I've always thought January is a bit of a nothing month, at least for me. And it's not like I have anything important to do... no GCSE chemistry exams I'm completley unprepared for or stuff like that...

The other reason I *might* not fail is that I have A Plan this time. So I feel good about that, that each day I can check my notes when I have nothing to write about, except today just says "introduction and explain" and there's not a whole lot of context to that, it just seemed like it would be easy when I was rapidly scribbling down plans for this.

Anyway. I think that was sufficient enough to be a first post.

I'll see you tomorrow, but I should warn you that tomorrow's going to be the blog where I get soppy about New Year's resolutions. So if you want to miss out on that, the day after that. And that.

This is going to be horrible.

I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year's! Much love,

Lizzie x

PS
I edited left over camera footage that didn't fit anywhere else because it seemed a good time to clear some space. Contains: Immi at the Royal Albert Hall, London many times, a train ride, some of my other favourite musicians, my grandma's wedding and Poppy's friends and family in a park with ducks.

Milk Bottles and Artificial Flowers

We’re sorry what we’ve done to your dead.

We didn’t mean to let this happen,
And we’ll do something, we promise,
To fix;

The long, browning weeds, whose arms snake around sinking tombstones,
Though their limbs, too, hang weep and limp and without strength,
Like the rotting flesh and bones.

The bluebells, turned brownbells,

The traffic, breaking the hum of silence.

The headstones, eroded and grey.

But,
They’ll come, with knuts and bolts and hammers and nails,
Litter picks and plastic bin-bags,
And the preacher’s son will mow the grass,
Cut down the loose ends and the bedraggle,
And let it rise again, green and bright and full of life,

But for now we’re sorry
What we’ve done to your dead,
And we want you to remember that we apologized, and please tell them that we loved thy neighbour.

lizzie writes to you, then tries to make small talk...

"SECRET"

Quickly, you tore out a piece of paper from the back of your biology textbook,
You scribbled something, folded it in half, and labeled it, "secret".
And you looked at me with a question mark, and offered it in the palm of your hand.
Hesitantly, I clicked awake my biro, and I did the same,
Writing down all of my thoughts and all of the happenings in one nine letter word.
We swapped, quick and fast,
I flicked my eyes away from your judgement, and unfolded slowly a joke.
And I watched your eyes as you opened up my message, confusion twisting your expression, suddenly, and you looked at me,
like you were sorry.

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I'm writing a lot of things recently I feel sort of "eh" about. And then they end up here. Are Productivity Fridays going to be a thing? I won't say I'll stick to it, it'll only curse things.

I watched The Social Network tonight and I liked it a lot but I was disappointed, through no fault of the movie, I'd just waited a long time and my hopes were ridiculously high.
I was planning on saying something about The Social Network which was more intelligent or made more sense than that. I'm tired. Meh.

So I'm off school for a week now, except it should mostly be full of revision I can't motivate myself to do. This weekend I'm going camping with my friends for the bank holiday, so that's exciting.
Why does today feel like "you" and I are stood awkwardly trying to think of things to say to each other?

Anyway, I'll be home on Wednesday and I'll talk to you then.

- Lizzie

"Hair"

“HAIR”

It’s late and I’m lying in bed, trying to imagine a time when I’m in more pain than this.
I imagine you, running me a bath, the perfect temperature. You lower my wasted body carefully into the water, and I feel a slight sting as I make sudden contact with the heat. With one hand you raise the showerhead, whilst you rub shampoo and soap into my scalp, my skin, between my fingers; I’m too tired not to let you. Once it’s dry, curiously, you plait my hair, weaving all of my dead ends in and out of each other, like cloth.

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I found The Drabble Challenge today - to write something about a given theme, within a five word range of 100 words. But despite how much the idea of it inspired me, this is the best I could squeeze out, it's also vaguely based on a scene in Skins. I was sort of hesitant to put it here, of all places. But I never post writing here and I probably should, and I won't want to do this in the morning.
K... enjoy, I think.