Vicki-Rose

Finally getting back into reading…

…shame it’s when I should be revising!

I had already decided that during the summer I would finally get round to reading all of the unread books that are currently sitting on my bookshelf in pristine condition (if not a bit dusty), so I thought I should probably start as I now have more time in the evenings due to not needing to get up quite so early as before.

I’ve read a couple of Celia Rees books before (namely Witch Child and Sorceress) so I thought it’d be a good place to start with my foray back into reading! Like the rest of her books, you cannot fault the historical accuracy at all; I now know far more about the French Revolution than I did before (aside from an episode of Horrible Histories and the fact that lots of people met Mme. Guillotine I had no idea about it at all) and it also gave an insight into the tensions on this side of the Channel during that period of time as well.

The only problem I had with the book was Sovay’s relationship with Léon, a French soldier, there just didn’t seem much of a buildup and their relationship just seemed a bit filmy and weak, I mean at one point they simply start kissing each other out of the blue and it’s the first mention of any kind of “more than friends feelings” towards each other. I think that’s where being my age falls down, I feel stuck between the Young Adult and normal adult literature, the younger stuff tends to look far more interesting but it’s just not quite as substantial and I still haven’t got my head round that I am actually an adult now and will enjoy books with complex and mature topics! (hence why I’m still hoarding a lot of my books from years past - Princess Diaries anyone?)

Anyway, must get back to some form of revision, FP3 is looming and I’m still not sure what dihedral isomorphism means…

And so begins four months of summer…

Hello pretty summer dresses for when I go to France…

Yes, college has finally finished, so aside for the seven exams I have left over the next few weeks, that’s it education-wise until the end of September! Seems quite weird thinking that fourteen years of full-time education has suddenly ended, I think I will miss college though despite moaning about the volumes of homework and whatnot, I’ve met some really good people and have found it much easier to be myself than at high school. Still, it will be nice to start a new “chapter” so to speak, though it seems a little daunting that in four months time I’ll be moving to the other side of the country. I think it’ll take a bit of getting used to with living on my own and not just being able to pop home when I feel like it (7 hours each way and £60 ish prevent me from doing this!) but I’m sure it will be a great experience once I get there and get stuck in.

Now just need to find something to do for the next four months, anyone fancy hiring me? =P

My Fyberspates Royal Wedding Yarn cardigan, a little tedious with the masses of stocking stitch and constant increasing, but it’s very pretty!

Long time, no… tumble? Will try and make an effort to post something substantial at some point, but for now - Molly!

This is as far as I’ve gotten so far, halfway through the bookwork but still haven’t written the summary of “Un duel”, I think the fact that my retake in French pretty much decides which unis I go to makes me really not bothered to do this homework, you would have thought it’d do the opposite?

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

asslime:

lebalconfleuri:

musks:

tryphena:

aliform:

snapes:

michelinamarie:

theroadsnottaken / bankruptbluesky- / titanics / lovelywings

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

               — B. Shaw

OH, THIS IS REALLY COOL. I tripped up on a couple!

I had trouble with this only because there were words I’ve never heard of; what is Melpomene? IS SWARD EVEN A REAL WORD??

I knew every word and therefore am amazing.

 this is FANTASTIC. also, i’m a genius. woo wooooo

Well this negates my last post…

…just got 57/60 on a past M2 paper; I have done it before but still…

This is me procrastinating from M2 revision…

Yes, I should be revising but I have spent from about 1pm doing FP1 revision; got 66/72 on a past paper so I’m fairly confident that the exam on Friday will go well, now just to worry about the pile of horribleness that is Mechanics 2… I managed 91 UMS on M1, somehow I feel that won’t be repeated this time…

Anyways, this is my last week of semi-freedom before I become rushed off my feet again; Sunday is two services at church as usual, then Monday I go back to college to start A2 and have to hope that they’ll let me drop Photography straight away as there is NO way I am carrying that on and starting a new piece of coursework, primarily due to the fact that I have un peu d’argent, and that is -not- being spent on a new sketchbook… Then that evening it’s off to St Nick’s for the ChoralSoc rehearsal, so no Glee for me that evening (and it’s the finale!), Tuesday I can relax a bit (well, not too much as I will have two impending exams), Wednesday it’s off to St Nick’s again, then Friday I meet my idea of maths hell with both S1 and M2 on the same afternoon; neither exam is particularly nice so putting them at the same time when the rest of my exams have been nicely spread out is a tad ennueyeux… then more singing in the evening, ChoralSoc concert on the Saturday evening followed by after-party thing, then Sunday it’s morning service at church, then off to Norwich Cathedral for 2.45 for the big lots-of-choirs-singing service that evening… I’m very glad I’m going away on the Wednesday after!

Now, I must return to working out the velocities of A and B…

This is today’s new distraction… I love this game =P

This is how I’m spending my study leave, although I have FINALLY done some FP1 revision today =D

“Now we’re going to pray for healing, for his face.”

Just listening to Mike Pilavachi’s talks from Newday last year (AWESOME man!) with him talking about being fully immersed in the Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 47 methinks) and it reminded me of a dream I had a month or so ago. Basically me and my friend Connie were being baptised in the sea somewhere and I just remember that I couldn’t bring myself to go completely under the water, which I think speaks volumes considering how I’ve felt recently about my strength of faith, or lack of it it seems. I really want to be fully into things and to, so to speak, let myself go under, but I’m just finding it really hard at the moment to find that I want to do it. It’s part of me that I don’t like being able to not have control over things, however letting everything go is just all about trust and not being in control; I hope Newday will be good for me this year in that aspect as last year it scared the crap out of me with the screaming, the convulsing, the rolling on the floor laughing and speaking in tongues (yes I’m talking about you George =P) but the second night, I’m not sure whether I was just upset because of the situation of the whole thing or for other reasons but I found that I just couldn’t stop crying for a while and I have absolutely NO idea why. And then all of a sudden I felt fine and was singing along with Simon Brading and all the other thousands of people as if I hadn’t been crying for the last fifteen minutes; was this the Holy Spirit working its way in? I really have no idea…

Laziness…

Really don’t feel like doing much today, I was out until 11 ish singing/nattering/eating KFC in the car with a friend and am now feeling a bit naff, going to bed fifteen minutes after chips isn’t the best idea! I really need to make a start on revising for my last three exams but I figure I can have one more free day?

Mmm… painty…

I told myself yesterday I would do C2 revision, I don’t think that is going to happen however… Grey’s Anatomy is far more interesting than logarithms…

Just trying to fill up the page…