Y

Last night, I cycled over to Hook to meet up with some friends and go out for a meal. We call ourselves the "Mini-Gang", or so one person calls us this, they even created a Facebook Group, of which only 3/4 people joined.
I find that there's an issue with this, as ocassionally we're talking about a particular subject, and there's a detail which I may not want to add because although I fully trust one of the other people, the other two, especially one are a bit iffy. I have my doubts with trusting them. However, when I hesitate one would always say "Hey Ben, you're in the mini-gang, you call tell us anything." and this is the sort of 'artifical trust' that they try to form within said group which I have an issue with. Person W in the group I've known for long enough and become good enough friends with to trust with almost anything. Person H in the group I've known since Year 7, but we've always had our differences, and it's always seemed to me that he's taken every possibility to hurt me, emotionally or physically. Finally, Person R I've known for a few years, and we get along nicely, although we would sometimes argue about a particular common subject at school.
And this is where the problem lies, I know who I trust, and I know who I don't. Yet, in this group, I'm pressured into believing that I trust them all, because we all have this "group" status in common. But it doesn't work like that, that's not how true friendship works, and definately not how trust works.
Fast forward to last night. For an hour and a half, Persons H and R 'bitched', as usual, about someone who they don't particulary like, for no real reason, who happens to be someone that I am good friends with. They seem to completely ignore the fact that I care about them, yet they still go on and on, being totally uncivil towards them. Eventually, they came to a "conclusion" that he is gay, based on the ratio of his friends who are girls and guys. Which he's not I might add. After they finished that, they turned to me.
We'd just watched a film called "Knowing", which is basically about the end of the world, and it's rated a 12. There were quite a few scenes which would be classed as "spooky horror" or whatever, at night in a forest in fog, panning through the undergrowth looking for some mysterious characters etc. Now, it's a long story why, but I hate horror films. Anything remotely spooky, CGI characters made to look like zombies, alien sci-fi, halloween films, fantasy creatures, murder films, anything classed as horror, I simply do not watch. It's the result of childhood experiences why, but I'll explain this another time why. But if I do find myself watching something horror-orientated, I'll close my eyes and plug my ears, sometimes I'll put a cushion between me and the screen so that I can't still see the brightness changing or whatever. I just don't watch horror.
Now, I would expect alot of other guys to watch horror without a problem, getting excited when the suspense is built up before some hissing bloody alien jumps out at you, and predicatbly, Person H last night wouldn't stop going on about how I am a 'sissy' for not watching these particular scenes in films. He didn't justify this statement either, he just stated that I'm a sissy.
So after an hour and a half of firstly having my friends abused, I then get the abuse turned to me directly. After another half hour of being persistantly called a sissy, I told Person H directly what I was thinking about him. As soon as I did this, he then made several accusations about me having friends who are girls. He was really trying to drum it into me that having friends who are girls is something which automatically makes you completely gay, and in my case, unworthy to be respectful too.
I found this all so hurtful that I've now made the decision to leave this group which he calls us the "mini-gang", and go back to how we were a couple of months ago, before he placed this cage around us all.
And in addition, it's reminded me just how much of a total ****** he can be, and how much I value my friendship with all the people he abused, and his efforts to satisfy his own peculiar grudges have only resulted in me feeling just a little bit closer to the friends who I love and will always.

Great Year, Great Fun, Great Love

There's a saying, that "time flies when you're having fun", which subsequently developed a sub-saying, "time flies". Now, you might think, judging by a majority of my other posts in the past, that this is going to be about flying again. But no, this is all about making the most of now.
Time flies, it really does. We live in a moment, an x-amount of time that I can't be bothered to explain now.
One year ago this month, I went overseas to visit a place that shall always be engraved in the history books, in the nightmares and memories of millions of people and on the face of a Polish landscape. In this past year, so much has happened. To me, I look at what has happened since this said visit, and looking at the overall big picture you just realise just how wonderful life can be. I must have been to Odiham hundreds of times. I must have spent a total of days in lessons, learning various topics. Thing is, I don't remember all of it. I don't remember the hours of intense boredom, listening to some old teacher droning on about a governmentally-made-compulsory subject that only a small percentage of students have an interest in. This is where I made paper-aeroplanes. But no, we're not deviating to flying here.
So what actually happened between October 08 and 09? The personal things will remain personal, and it's the personal stuff that's what I live for, but the key points include New Year 2009 (personal reasons, but I'm not going there publically), GCSEs, GCSE results, leaving 14 years of schooling behind, sadly with many great faces, some of which were 14 years in my memory, others just the one. Making the transition from Pre-Solo to Post Solo, earning my Wings and most recently, starting college life.
I could write for hours about the personal things that made it all so great, but that's best left between who it was shared with. So how does this relate to how time flies? Well it all went so quickly, and so much has happened since, that we should really make the most of now. Now, all I'm going to do is, as of October 26th 09, spend a little bit of time with a my close friends who shared the Poland experience, and look forward to the time between then and October 26th 10, when a whole load more great things and days spent with them are gonna continue making life for living.

Managing Time...

Don't you just love it when for day after day you have nothing to do, you play silly online games and make (ultimately) complete wastes of days. Then that one day, the most minor, littlest thing, such as starting college...

..AND SUDDENLY YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO DO! You thought you had the organisation cracked, but then you get given loose sheets which need filing, and you hadn't thought of that bit...

Jump! Jump!

We seemed to jump straight from the Summer, although we question whether we had a summer this year, the total temperatures set for June, July and August seemed to be concentrated into a single one-week heatwave back at the beginning of July, and now we've entered September the theory of Autumn has only been adopted by the trees, everything and everyone else says bollocks, roll on the Winter.

Anyway, this is the last post of the 'Summer', although officially we don't enter the autumn until something like the 19th or 18th September, it's been so bloody cold we may aswell plant a tree in the house, throw some white lights around a bush, find some port and setup the anti-fatman-dressed-in-red-in-the-chimney mechanism. Called a log fire. Tommorow is the first day for me at College, so today is the last day of the holidays, hence this blog being at smidgin premature of the actual date.

So, what's new? Well, it's taken exactly 3 weeks to use up another whole page in my logbook, courtesy of the now "Post-Solo" status =D, 590 miles and reflective tape on the bike, new music in the iTunes library, a damn tidy desk, one completed Fire Flash and a new light bulb.

Over the past few weeks I've been wombling around getting the old crankshaft in my head unseized prior to starting the following two years at Alton. This was going nicely until the the college dumped a nice pile of pre-course work for each of my subjects, with the exception of Phsyics. Mathematics gave us a 16-page booklet with Brackets, Factorising, Equations, Simultaneous Equations, Changing the Subject (of a Formula), Indices and Trigonometry. Pyschology gave us eight questions in relation to 'Obedience to Authority', based upon Milgram's research into Auschwitz and the Holocaust. Geography gave us a project to do, based upon a question of our choice, but Physics were nice, they only gave us a short and easy online start of course quiz.

Oh and Moodle. Moodle's pretty cool.

What's next? Well, right now I could be getting on with any number of things, including finishing off my Geography and getting things together ready for tommorow. Our new day is 0850-1630, which has the Farnborough's smug as their day is only 0900-1615. And they don't have pre-course work. But they don't have Moodle so that justifies going to Alton!

Anyway, I shall post again soon (provisional... *angel*) reporting on first impressions of Alton, and college life. =)

Cia