today i

*watched a documentary on youtube about africa called alkebulan
*read pages and pages of the malcolm x autobiography
*reluctantly did my chores: hoovering, taking the bin out, washing up, ironing
*did not make my bed lol
*cried out of frustration at my dad
*talked to my mum on the phone (she's in uganda)
*saw natasha
*revised some science and math
*brainstormed about where i think ideas of love can come from
*read a few rookie articles
*drank hot chocolate
*came up with a really really great idea omg
*did a hell of a lot of learning and thinking

grandkids

there is not one person on this planet that i love more than my nana. i've always known one grandparent only and i feel quite privileged that i was her first granddaughter. :-) i've started to spend lots of time with her or, or at least i always want to. two weekends ago i went to nana's house after school. it took 3 buses and about 2 hours. i enjoyed the journey there. if i wasn't sewing my textiles stuff and being a potential danger to the world, i was looking outside the window or eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers. i remember i heard one woman talking on the phone to someone about their friend who had overdosed the night before. i didn't look behind me because i don't like to blatantly impose on people's privacy (even if my ears are perked up like a dog's) but the man sat next to me did then the lady went to sit upstairs not long after that. i didn't see what she looked like.
when i got to nana's she was so happy to see me and we spent the weekend drinking tea and talking and i think we watched some news, probably bbc and al jazeera. on sunday i left her house early and went to my aunty's church in central london by underground. i love my nana so so much and her company is the easiest to have. maybe that's due to a lifetime of learning. we talked about her mum never teaching her to cook and how she'd go out clubbing from friday to sunday when she lived in uganda and she told me that two of her uncles fought in world war 2 and were really proud of it. she was born in the year it ended. before this year i didn't even know black people had fought in the world wars - i find it crazy that so many did!
i can't remember the exact words now, but nana told me something about how your children will never love you like/as much as your grandkids will because they're always trying to break away from you and be independent. the difference is that your grandkids only know you as a grandparent and so they're more curious. nana has 5 grandchildren now and i think she's proud of us all. we love her so much. the youngest, my nearly 2 year old cousin lauren, really reminds me of nana. i want to have lots of children and lots of grandchildren some day. it must be so beautiful to have a source of happiness that grew inside of and directly comes from you.

eye of the beholder

i think it's so crazy how people's ideas of beauty are so specific. i was listening to my friend the other day talk to someone on omegle about how it's 'disgusting' for a girl to be over 5'5" and i was really shocked. we're both over that height and so are most of the females i know. and girls i know so love to dream of having tall strong boyfriends to cuddle with in winter or something soppy like that. i'm reading malcom x's autobiography and it is so beyond perfect i can't breath. his proposal to his wife made me laugh so much omg, it was so blunt, and his sort of explanation was "i wasn't about to say any of that romance stuff that hollywood and television had filled people's heads with". i'm pretty sure mister x would be very disappointed with today's worldwide state and society in general. hmph.
anyway this is my first blog post as a 15 year old lol. cool.

real men

prison

i listened to a podcast from a bbc radio 4 series called all in the mind, and a psychiatrist called lucia valmaggia was talking about psychosis in prison. the programme she works with has the primary goal to improve prisoners' mental health rather than trying to prevent them from reoffending and i think that's really commendable. anyway i learnt that depending on the prison, prisoners are only allowed out of their cells for 2-6 hours a day! i think that's a bit outrageous. what's the point of prison if nobody is going to communicate with the prisoners and try to educate, understand or even rehabilitate them, if it's needed? i don't think it's effective to lock people up in a drab, frightening environment and let their brains literally waste away, then expect them to eventually rejoin society and 'conform' or cooperate. if the reading age of a prisoner is 11 there should be something going on to raise their literacy - not because everybody should read novels or whatever, but because i think being able to read well increases your understanding of the world and makes you more observant and therefore more aware, and that is not always a bad thing. of course there are good things that come out of prisons, for example in the case of malcolm x. and some time ago i read a newspaper article about a woman who ran weekly writing workshops in an american men's prison. but these little occurrences don't outweigh the negative things that go on in prisons and i wonder what's being done about it.
i don't know much about the prison system but i would like to. i want to understand why it's only okay to lock people up in the name of the law. i have probably over simplified the whole thing and i view it more negatively than most people do, i think. i'm going through this phase where i'm questioning loads and loads of things. the world and humans are incredibly intriguing and complex. i'm curious about it all.

today

sometimes i find it a bit pointless to go to school because nearly every lesson is me sitting on a weird plastic chair with my elbows on the hard table, sometimes zoning out or trying to understand even though i feel like crying. like maths today. that was a really frustrating lesson because my teacher just sat at the front checking people's homework after 'explaining' what we were doing for like 2 minutes, if that. it was much harder than she said it would be - according to literally everybody - and the last two maths teachers i've had seem to forget that my little 14 year old brain isn't so capable of understanding complex things like their adult brains can, even if i've always been in top set. i still struggle. french is such an annoying lesson and i literally give up with it. i want to do well in my gcses but that want is already eating up at my passion for some subjects and it's really sad sad sad. i was rubbing my eyes in french today and my teacher noticed. i told her my head was hurting but really it was my eyes because i sit at the front and the interactive white board screen is so bright and always on and so huge in front of my face. i seriously hate it and i really would rather learn a language orally or just from a textbook.
in english today we spent the whole lesson doing the starter task *insert angry fuming exploding face* and i'm developing a strong dislike for my teacher (who is also my year head so it's hard to complain to her about her), which is in danger of spreading to a disinterest in the subject. :-( i really miss my old teacher, like so much it hurts, and she's in AUSTRALIA and i miss just seeing her SMILE at me in the corridor and LIKING and APPRECIATING me/my work. teachers like that are rare and i regret that i sort of took advantage of that in the two years i had her, but this is in hindsight and when is that ever useful? oh gosh, look how i've rambled. i meant to say that my starter task today was really well written from an unconventional perspective, but when i read it out my teacher only pointed out the negatives she saw (she did the same with everyone else), like how it was 'unrealistic', even though the task said 'IMAGINE'. *insert angry fuming exploding face* i really felt like saying something about how she wasn't being very nice to people when they'd produced quite lovely work but it's really scary because i don't know what the consequences will be and my voice is likely to falter and i'm just scared of being a bit brave. *internally sighs* it's crazy how she just talks about what seems irrelevant and doesn't notice how many people dig under their nails or scratch their heads or rest against walls with their eyes closed. i just don't think she's very good for a teacher of a creative subject, considering that she literally said today 'i need to understand that you know what you should be writing' as if it makes sense to cap the creativity of children.
i want to keep writing and ranting but i really cannot be bothered. the screen is quite white and bright and  i have homework to get out of the way. i'm 15 in a few weeks and i've come to realise life won't suddenly get any less boring just because i've been alive a year longer. my mum is really intent on me celebrating it but i just want to do nothing. except maybe go to ikea and buy a cactus.

monday moodboard

HUMAN SKIN IS SO BEAUTIFUL OH MY GOD