Summer plans and the advantages of mocks

I am finally on half-term! Hallelujah. I've had three days of mock exams this week, and they have all been surprisingly easy. So I'm feeling pretty confident, although that's never a good thing to do when it comes to exams... oh well. But after half term I have all the hard ones, like maths and the sciences. Aargh!

At school everyone is massively looking forward to this summer, as a kind of light at the end of the tunnel after our GCSEs. Lots of people are going to Newquay (seaside surfer town about three hours away), which is where practically every teenager in the whole of the south west goes after their GCSEs. There are lots of parties, drugs, alcohol, etc. as you would expect with about 2000 teenagers all gathering together. It doesn't really appeal to me, though, and I'm not going.

I don't know what I'll be doing this summer though. I have an interview for the National Youth Theatre next Sunday, to do stage management, and if I get in (and I haven't the faintest idea what the chances are) I'll basically be spending the whole summer in London. Like, seven weeks. And if I don't get in I'll do the Bristol Old Vic Summer School again. EXCEPT that if I want to get a place at BOV I have to apply now, which means sending them £270 cheque for the course. Which I don't know whether I'll be able to do. Oh, it's all screwed up.

Anyway, this past week has actually been kind of fun. During our mocks we are allowed to come and go from school as we please, so when we don't have exams on my friends and I have taken to walking down to the nearest Starbucks and whiling away the hours having hot chocolate, smoothies and muffins, and revising while curled up in those nice big comfy sofas. It doesn't sound like much, but it is a big deal for us to be allowed out of school during the day, so we try to make the most of it.

We don't actually want to go to Starbucks, though. We would much prefer to go to some interesting little individual coffee shop, but none of them have sofas, and we need sofas! There's no point spending three hours sitting at a table on a wooden chair, is there? So we have to go to Starbucks, even though we don't really like supporting them.

Have a great half term, or, if you don't get a half term, have a great week!

Tallie xxx