Given I’m unlikely to find any use for these things in the future, and that there’s a tiny chance they might help someone somewhere along the line, I thought I would post them here.  There’s work from English, Expressive Arts, Geography, German, Media Studies, and Physics at GCSE and Politics and Sociology at A-level.  I’ll put them up over time and add them to the ‘School Work‘ category.

While I can’t promise any of them are any good (bear in mind I was between 15 and 18 when they were written), I’m happy for people to use any information or ideas contained in them for non-commercial purposes so long as they credit this blog.  Therefore, I’ve chosen to release everything under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence (similar to the daily photo, but with the non-commercial clause).  Finally, while I hope it goes without saying I’ll say this anyway: don’t just submit my work as your own — it’s plagiarism, a breach of the licence terms, and will most likely mean you get no marks at all when you’re found out!

This was the view from my window at 7.35am on the 2nd of February 2009 following what they say was the heaviest snow fall in the UK for nearly 20 years.

I’m not sure that’s true though.  I’ve lived in the north for most of my life, and it’s not unknown to get pretty heavy snow up there.  I remember one winter not long after we had moved to Halifax there was a heavy snowfall.  It came on very quickly and people weren’t prepared.  The council opened the town hall up to look after people stranded in the town centre for the night and schools were closed.  But the council did their thing and next day everything was back to normal.

There were other times when I was at secondary school when we got sent home from school early because the snow set in. (In fact they sent people who came in on the school busses home early while the rest of us who lived off the beaten track and so couldn’t get home on the bus had to stay at school.  To this day I can’t make sense of that – why would you think it was a good idea to get those people who live on main routes home while stopping those who live on country side-roads from being able to leave in case they get stranded?)

Still, back then there wasn’t anywhere near as much fuss as this time around (from what I recall, although admittedly I’m an adult now which changes my perspective slightly).  Perhaps it’s just that the north is more set up to deal with these things (certainly the council up in Calderdale have themselves geared up to keeping the roads clear unlike, it seems, the council here in Rushmoor) and the people just take it in their stride.

Yes, it’s 8.44am and I’m on the train, just past Rugby, on my way to Lancaster.  The plan was always to get the 6.04 train from Aldershot into London and I did wonder if the early morning was worth it just to get in to Lancaster a bit earlier, but I think I made the right choice — I could hardly breathe in my flat with all the paint fumes around so wasn’t exactly sleeping well anyway.

Talking of paint, the decorators should be busily working by now, and I’ve had no phone calls from them so I guess they got into the flat alright.  That or they are giving today a miss.  I did ensure there was a suitable stone jammed in the main door as I left the building this morning, but I wasn’t sure it would last the course from half five through until eight.

We’ve just gone past a school with all the kids getting ready to start their day.  I was thinking about this yesterday: given my timing and sleeping habbits now, I really don’t know how I managed to make it up for school every day.  We used to all meet up at Ben’s house and do something (watch TV for a bit, play on the N64 or Playstation, etc) before wandering up the hill at about 8.30.  I suppose school days were only six and a half hours long with an hour for lunch, not the 8 hours I’m supposed to work every day now (though usually end up working more), and I did get into the habbit of napping when I got home from my paper round for an hour or so, and I do remeber almost falling asleep in English from time to time.  Maybe that’s how I managed it, maybe it’s not such a mystery.

I’m trying to get into the habbit of sleeping when I get in from work – I really like it, it makes me feel refreshed and then I can stay up that bit later when I have things to work on.  I guess my schedule is a little strange now, but I think I might struggle with going back to working and living ‘normal’ hours.

With all this talk of sleep I’m feeling even more tired.  Maybe I should try to get some sleep while I’m just sitting here, I don’t think I’m going to get much else done and there’s another hour and a half before we get to Lancaster (not to mention the 15 or so hours before I’ll end up getting any more real sleep).  If I get another hour now that’ll take me up to around 7 hours in the last 48 hours.  That’s 41 hours of being awake and what do I have to show for it?  A theatre programme and this blog entry.  Well done me for being so productive.

You know, now I’m hungry.  I guess it is just about breakfast time.