*burns the most depressing day of the year*

I was just commenting on a mate's blog, when I realised something about yesterday. As I said in the post, yesterday wasn't the most depressing day of the year until GMTV said that it was. It was going quite well. Admittedly, it was only 8am but I was in a great mood, I'd had a good's night sleep and woken up bright and happy.

Then the TV told me it was going to be a bad day and, like a fool, I made up my mind to prove it wrong.

I immediately realised that my group's drama work (we cut up an entire play and stuck it back together to make a new play - hundreds of tiny numbered slips of paper in a plastic wallet) had disappeared. After some frantic and hysterical searching, I realised it must have been thrown out in our weekend's mad tidying. Oh bother, I said, in my usual impeccable language.

I missed the bus. Got a lift to college and, of course, the vending machine was out of Pepsi. No caffeine, no brainwaves. Trekked across the main building through seas (and I mean seas) of students, got some Pepsi, went upstairs and walked into the wrong lesson. This isn't my class, this is a first year class being taught my last year's teacher, who recognises me and makes a scathing comment. This is also the sociology class of that nice-looking first year boy who blushes whenever we talk to each other. Life's just like that, or at least it is on what is actually the most depressing day of the year.

I head to drama, my actual lesson (who can't remember her timetable?) and walk in 5 minutes late, meaning I have to explain in front of my entire class that I don't have my group's work. Funnily enough, the way I tell it (my parents chucked it out by accident) is misinterpreted by my teacher. It's true that we had an argument and they chucked out a load of my papers but I think I made it sound worse than it was because he was really sympathetic and now my whole group are tiptoeing round me. Huh. Only on the most depressing day of the year could I accidentally make my class think that I have domestic issues. Oh shit, parent's evening is gonna be awkward now...

Lunchtime. Writer's Club. Hardly anyone shows (they're all busy being depressed) so it doesn't go well. I send one girl into trauma by glancing at her notepad. I saw a heart and started to make a joke about her being soppily in love with her new boyfriend, a guy from my Film class. She thinks I've seen something else, the very personal thing she was also writing on the note pad and in a horrible misunderstanding, confesses something very private to me because she thought I already knew it. V. embarassing, Winter blues all-round.

Film Studies, and my embarassing obsession with Elijah Wood comes up again. Of all my regrets, confessing to my Film class that I know everything about the man from the kind of cigarettes he smokes (Indonesian clove, introduced to him by Josh Hartnett on the set of The Faculty) to his place of birth (Cedar Falls, Iowa) to his favourite music (The Smashing Pumkins but not their album Machina because he thought it was too poppy) was definitely the worst.
Jokes ensue. I'd look good with a restraining order, apparently.

I try to go home early, planning to visit a mate in Yateley. Because this is the most depressing day of the year, I don't have my phone or my keys, end up wandering around Yateley in the freezing cold and rain for over an hour, get lost (in Yateley? lost? am I stupid?) trying to find Robbie's house, realise I don't know which house he lives at, go to someone else's house to use the loo, find out where he lives but am told that he's at work, so I go to his work and he's there but he's busy and there's no payphone so I have to walk home in the dark and am very late and parents are mad. Domestic issues? Girl who cried wolf. Now I have them.

Then I cut myself whilst drying my hands on a towel (I can't figure it out either, but somehow it happened).
Then I went to rehearsal and forgot my costume. Then I forgot my lines.
Then I couldn't sleep.

When I did sleep, I dreamt that Nicole Kidman and this guy Ben from college had taken over the world (entirely feasible, I think. Most likely to be a secret serial killer? Nicole, Nicole, Nicole) and then everyone from my youth group were comparing scars on their wrists. That was upsetting and slightly close to home, I woke up this morning in what can only be described as a funk.

Today has been a brilliant day. My General Studies exam consisted of writing an essay on "The role and relevance of the Holy Book or Sacred Writings in a world religion of your choice." Yes! Bible basher and proud, coming at you with the most religiously biased essay your AQA moderating ass has ever read, booyah!

My General Studies challenges (set informally by the students to liven up the exam) went very well. Last year I had to put in the word 'banana' and the phrase' well, that's what I always say anyway'. I failed, sadly. This year I managed the following: 'haemorrhoids', 'Mrs. Goggins', 'that's not what it was designed to do' and 'super-added soul'.

Ladies and gentleman of the interweb:
"While some think that stories of grapevines and Samaritans are as useful as a wire-brush to your haemorrhoids..."
"The mass media itself is becoming more spiritual, just look at The Passion of the Christ. Even blockbusters are being made with super-added soul..."
"You can't simply open the Bible at any given page and expect to find the answers to your problems. The Bible doesn't offer quick fixes because that's not what it was designed to do."
And, my favourite...
"And that, as Mrs Goggins used to say, is the crux of the matter."

How I chuckled. I got home and had the nicest bacon sandwich in the world. If today wasn't Burn's night (try being the only person in a Scottish family who doesn't eat haggis. It's almost as bad as being the only to one to call them 'potatoes'. "They're tatties and if ye dinnae spik it properly ye winna git ony!") then I'd be ever so cheerful.

The good thing about that exam wasn't that I got to feel smug about completing all my challenges, but that it got me thinking about the Bible, the real point of it in my life. Feeling inspired.

Och aye.