The first day of the rest of my life...

Here are some photos from the fireworks in London last night.

I didn't take them myself. My photos were rubbish, and I haven't got them off the camera yet...


It was really crowded, but we managed to get quite a good spot. We were on the road right in front of the houses of parliament. So we were standing at the foot of Big Ben, with a good view of the London Eye on the other side of the river.

I don't know where The Feeling were playing...it would have been nice to have been able to watch them live, but there were big screens put up in the road, so we watched them playing there. A surprisingly small number of people were singing along. (I probably don't even need to specify that i was one of the people singing, but I'll say it anyway! =D )


This is the first year that I've been to Westminster for the fireworks, but I think I'll probably go along next year. It was really good fun. But I think next year I will take public transport. On the way back, the traffic was really bad, and it took us ages to get out of the centre. (It also took us ages to find a parking space to begin with... and we were there at 10:30. So everyone else must have arrived really early...).

Today I decided to get some work done, but I knew that the odds of me staying focussed at home were not good at all... so I decided to go to Costa, because it's not too far, and I thought it would be nice and quiet since it's new year. I had assumed that most people would be sleeping off their hang overs. I got up at about 11:30 (not bad...! I've been very disciplined so far this year.) so I was there by about 12:30. It wasn't too busy when I got there, so I sat down at the back and started writing notes on The Miller's Tale. It wasn't as boring as I thought it would be. I have a growing appreciation for Chaucer. To begin with I thought he was a semi-illiterate idiot trying to be funny. Now that I have got my head around his weird spelling and (imo) made up words, I actually think he was quite good.

I'm sure that a modern equivalent of what he did with the Canterbury Tales, or even just what he did with the Miller's Tale - a kind of parody of a popular plot, would be a best seller now.


Anyway - thats going to be one of my New Years Resolutions (I've decided to make lots of them, because then it's more likely that I will stick to at least one of them...). I'm going to read more.
I've actually started doing that already. A few weeks ago I went out and got some books that I've been wanting to read for ages, but never bothered to get hold of them.
I'm a few chapters into The Da Vinci Code, but I don't know whether I'll finish it. I read Digital Fortress (also by Dan Brown) a few months ago, and it was really good, but all his books are really fat, and I don't know if I have the stamina and determination to get through a fat book at the moment. I have a lot of stuff I need to read (and do) for school, so a fat book will only get in the way of that.

I'm about a third of the way through reading 'A Walk to Remember' by Nicholas Sharp (It cost 1p from Amazon! That didn't include the postage, but I still think thats pretty good!).
The film (same title) was based on the book, and it's one of my favourite films! Except, I don't watch it very much coz it makes my eyes hurt from crying so much... But anyway, the book is really good so far. It's different from the film, but it's not a 'bad different'. I don't think it's necessarily a 'good different' though. So far, it's just a 'different different'.

I've also read the first chapter of a book called 'The Alliance' which I got for Christmas. I'm not totally sure what it's about yet, but it seems pretty good.

I got a book of poetry out of the library, called 'The Nation's Favourite Love Poems' or something like that, and there were several poems by Wendy Cope. I hadn't heard of her before, but when I was out getting The Da Vinci Code, I saw a book of poems by her, so I got that as well. She's really good.

And (don't worry, this is the last one now), I'm also reading Four Quartets by T S Eliot. Actually, it's more like attempting to read at the moment. I only got it coz I thought it would be good for me... Kinda like eating vegetables. It's not that fun at the time, but you reap the benefits later. And in some cases, you even start to enjoy eating the vegetables.
It's good writing, but you have to concentrate really hard when you read it, and since I'm on holiday, I've put him on hold for the moment.
I understood him enough to realise that one of Wendy Cope's poems is a parody of his Four Quartets.

Oh.....I also bought a copy of The Times on Saturday night. I wanted to read about Saddam Hussein's execution... (my motives weren't as morbid as they sound....I promise.).
The Times is quite good actually, it's not as boring as everyone says, so I think I might read it more often. It's probably easier with a dictionary on hand, but I don't really use them because I'm rubbish at getting my alphabet in the right order, so it takes ages.

So, I might not end the year fit and healthy, or with a livelier blog, but at least I'll end it well versed and up to date with current affairs (hopefully...).