Preparations

Usual drill regarding getting up today - not until the afternoon. Once I'd built up enough energy, we (my mum and I) began packing for going back to my AS-only specialist boarding school/collage.

I'm about to embark on a two-year BTEC course in Art & Design. It looks amazing, well rounded with stupendous resources, but it's five days a week and bloody hard work, with no mercy for deadlines. It equally excites and terrifies me. It will be very interesting to see how I react - whether I'll adapt and focus my life on to a single goal, or be unable to keep up, quit the course and do life skills sessions and counselling for the remaining two years.

Both these results have positive ramifications. One may be a step backwards in Connexions' eyes, but hey, they've got a job to do, and as an organisation they don't seem to believe that you can be a contributing member of society without having a job, so they can keep their snide assessment forms.

The René Magritte pictured (Ongoing Time Stabbed By A Dagger, or Time Transfixed, or La Durée Poignardée) is an old birthday card, dug up from the depths of a drawer.