Flotsam and Jetsam.

One thing I really love about round here is all the beaches that surround the area. There are long, sprawling stretches of sand; small pebbly ones, rocky ones, seaweed-covered ones, wave battered ones... but by far my favourite has to be the ones on the western side. Due to the amount of ships and boats that pass between Ireland and our coast, the amount of debris that is washed up is great. Labrax -situated here- is the best example of this and one of my family's favourite beaches for walks. Flotsam and Jetsam [on occasions] make really good looking photos, the following are all from a walk last Sunday - they look better if you click on them. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great -no sun, grey skies, chilly wind - but it was still lovely.










And yes, that is vertabrae of some sort.

Decisions, decisions.

We've been back to school for a week now and its just hit me this is the beginning of the end. This will be my last year at school and as if that prospect wasn't scary enough; I'm not even sure what I want to do once I go.

At the moment the whole future thing seems really daunting. Is it just me or is this super big, life-dictating decision fairly difficult to make when you're a 16 year old who enjoys nothing more than obsessing over Thomas The Tank Engine, strawberry tarts and Wall-E?

Course it is. Everyone around me appears to have their idea or their plan or their career that they've always wanted ever since they were 5. Whereas I simply don't. At 5 I'm pretty sure I wanted to be a turtle and my career ideas have changed from week to week ever since. They're still changing right now.

At the start of this blog I wanted to be an Art teacher, I no longer have this inkling.
English teacher? That’s faded.
Journalist? I'd like that but probably not.
Paramedic? Good feelings gone.

I don’t specifically want to *be* anything, and I know that probably sounds odd of me but I cant help it, I am odd and making decisions has never been my thing- especially when its big important ones such as this. Though I am hoping that all this confusion and thinking will be worth it and that one day I’ll wake up and say, “OH THAT’S IT! I’M GOING TO BE A ______”

Pfft, who am I kidding.

Does anyone know how long it takes to become a professional turtle?

Late Wordless Wednesday

We decided to make Strawberry Tarts today.
I am in love with the sauce.

Wordless Wednesday.

(It is wednesday, right?)

"Arboreal imagery? I thought they were just poles.."

As I type, the first week of the summer holidays is coming to an end - quite a scary thought that there's only 5 weeks left until we're all back at school. Though when we go back to school I think its going to be looking rather different. The roof of "the Street" as its known to pupils (the main building of the three) is being taken down and replaced - in fact, they're probably removing panes of glass right now.

I think we've always rather liked the roof, in all its greenhouse-like glory. Despite the fact that it made the school easily confused with a shopping mall, was incredibly cold in winter and incredible warm in summer, it was pretty unique in the area and certainly stood out. As Stephen will tell you, it also looked great empty at night.

I'm not sure what it's being replaced with... Perhaps they payed attention to me after all?

24 Hours and Counting..

I learned on Monday of this week that every school in Scotland was officially off for their summer holidays, bar us and Fife. How lucky are we, Fife?! It sounds quite unfair and if I'm honest the school work we're doing now doesn't really validate going to school - we might as well be on holiday as for the past four weeks we've done barely any work. Hannah, James and I practically live in the Library where Free Periods are used to catch up with gossip, hunt for proxies, and eat cakes.

Come next year however, remind me how I wasted my free periods in the run up to summer. I'll appreciate it, especially when I leave my Advanced Higher Art Portfolio until the last week before the deadline, like I did at Higher. The portfolio this time being 18 A1 sheets - the equivalent of 72 A4 sheets of paper...

Doomed, much.

Though not much is happening in school, things are quite busy outside the Akademy. Though I didn't get an award this year (hahaha) I went to my younger brother's Award Ceremony on Tuesday; James and Shaun were there also cheering on their siblings and it was actually a fun night.

Shaun and I admired the fake-but-real plants outside the hall, we 'raved' to the music playing, James got chatted up by a policeman, we cheered the Bush-Baby, we cheered the Bush Foetus AKA Christopher, after it had finished Christopher's mum said we could keep him and his 2 little brothers! (I was keen, James not so much..), my family completely left without me - or disowned me as observed by James's mum, James's dad made me roffle with his story about James... and the list goes on.

Note that I'm now calling Glen my "younger brother" rather than my "little brother" as he is now 6 foot tall, making me the smallest of the family at a lowly 5 foot 8.

But things are looking up. Tomorrow is finally the last day of the longest term in history, and I've made a truck load of cakes alongside the army of marshmallow tophats in the picture.

Happy Holidays all!

Summer?

Orange Lily, originally uploaded by jemma.dornan.

I'm just testing out my new Flickr account with this post, I've been using Picassa Albums and they're great but I thought I'd join the Flickr band wagon for a wee while.

I took this photo tonight whilst there was a power cut (yes, okay, it takes a power cut to get my out into the garden sometimes...) and despite there being a bitterly cold wind bustling about, mum's flowers still managed to reaffirm my hopes that summer is in fact on its way.

You gotta love lilies.