Thankfully, after all this there are little immature quarrels over who gets to use the bathroom first as my brother who is still studying leaves the house later than me, because of his career as a professional footballer (oh how I do envy him, as he is able to take his time in the morning and yet still gets to play football for a living.
Finally, I am ready to leave and the sacrifice made just for a lift to school involves a promise to do more chores or household tasks later in the day, yet I still end up being late due to the slowness of my mother and sister, whose life just seems to revolve around the “Tweenies!" (How I do envy her). In more peaceful moments I often contemplate whether the extra ten minutes lie-in compensates for the un-enjoyable rush I have to endure everyday, but that 10 minutes is an eternity to me. And comments from my mother like “you need to get more organised”, “your brother was never like this”, and the old favourite – “your father and I used to walk 10 miles just to get to school…and in our bare feet”, only seek to annoy me.
After the complex procedure of getting everybody in the car, the journey commences at about 8:15am and the complete journey involves my younger sister crying for “the cheeky girls” and me in the front arguing my right to either revise or select my choice of radio station, if not against my sister, then my mother. It is the usual battle of Galaxy fm v Radio 4.
As I arrive at school, my mother’s somewhat futile attempts to park the car and later assault me, by trying to kiss me on the cheek amuse my friends as they pass. Once at school I immediately drop my bags and proceed to the metro station, an unofficial youth club, to meet my friends. However this all seems rather tedious until the Central High girls arrive and the sight of a mini-skirt makes the wait completely worthwhile.
The day monotonously goes by, with each lesson inevitably uninteresting in its own way, until the joy of the long-awaited tuck-shop is appreciated, with its selection of fine sweets and hot, steaming succulent sandwiches, each as good as each other. As the lessons persist towards lunchtime, the hunger and tension draw near and the shiftiness and eagerness of the pupils become more apparent in the last five minutes of the lesson time and as the impatience and intolerance become more increase, people begin gradually and stealthily to shuffle books into their bags and look at their watches, too disgusted at the effrontery of the French teacher for keeping the class five minutes longer to discuss the application of the ultimately pointless past tense. Then, three loud rings signal lunch time and the class is promptly dispatched. At lunchtime, I usually enjoy a game of football, which ends up in me being late for lunch and lessons and becoming extremely sweaty. However, I believe in continually playing football in order to improve and become fitter, so that I can hopefully someday follow in my brother’s footsteps in becoming a professional footballer, as this is what I enjoy doing most of all. I do also enjoy school however as long as I am not behind in work (this usually stops me from playing football at lunchtimes as I continually have something on my mind). I enjoy economics and am fascinated by the world of business and media, thus possibly leading me to a future career in either of these. Yet as lunchtime dawns upon us, the sun is exposed and my day is suddenly all the better for it, compared to the dreary, depressing clouds and bleak weather in the morning as I am still waking up.
In the afternoon, once again the lessons slowly progress and once again the shuffling and shiftiness return towards the end of the day, all to save an extra five to ten minutes. At the end of the day, if I am not playing football, I head home and by around 5:30pm I can be started on my homework, so long as my mother nags at me enough. At home we have a very hectic household and I sometimes find it difficult to concentrate on just one thing, such as trying to attempt my maths homework when there is the constant ringing of the phone or my brother forever chatting to his girlfriend. There is also my sister wanting someone to play with her, the noise of the computer and the television. And, due to my other brother’s strange profession of being a busker, he is forever making absurd things for his show, for example hammering nails into a bed of nails. Even though it always seems that as soon as I get started, my mother or father is calling for dinnertime and lamenting the fact that the family never eats together enough and so I never get started. But I always try to complete my homework’s, even if it means staying up past midnight. However I do get to take my breaks, when my mother is busy, I sneak into the games room for a quick fifteen minutes on my play station, or sometimes just downstairs to watch television, with the repeated arguments every night over who gets to choose what programme to watch, with the forever ongoing debate or war over The Simpsons v The Discovery Channel.
At long last I reach bedtime. As I return to the bliss of my furry, comfortable and warm bed, like a baby crawling back to its womb. Exhausted from going to bed too late after playing on the play station for too long and planning to go to bed early tomorrow night, I drift off to sleep, but we all know it will never happen, don’t we?
