I just wanted to share this, it very nearly had me in tears. Hallelujah, by the singer of one of my favourite bands, Alter Bridge.

A while later, I asked Jon to call my mum and she came down and took me home. You’d think I would have learned from the last time this happened to not do it again; obviously not the case. But as of this morning, I have vowed never to drink alcohol at a party ever again. Yes, I’ll look like such a wet-blanket and a bore, but it’s for my own good and especially the well-being of my voice because at the moment, it doesn’t work too well.

Before all this trauma, however, I had been into school a few hours earlier to receive my AS-Level results. I’m really pleased. I came out with four A grades and a C grade. The C being in chemistry, but I was kind of expecting that to be fair. IT came top, followed by General Studies (which doesn’t really count), Maths, Psychology and then Chemistry at the bottom (obviously).

I go on holiday tomorrow with Jon and his family for a week. We’re going to Scotland! I just hope I can walk properly by that point.

The musical - yes, that’s right it was a musical - was being put on at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Of course, that meant a nice three hour train journey down to Kings Cross. But one of my friends, Katie, managed to get us free 1st class tickets! I was so excited about it, I’d never travelled 1st class before and it turned out to be so cushy. It was 1st class seats on the way back as well.

We did have a little mishap on the way there though. Our original train was cancelled, so we had to rush on to an earlier train otherwise we would have never gotten there in time. We weren’t impressed. It was a good thing that I insisted we arrive at the train station and hour earlier than the departure time.

I have to say, the staging was just…amazing! And that doesn’t even begin to describe it. Four of the boxes were unavailable because they were covered by the staging. The whole stage itself could rotate and on top of that, it was segmented so different parts of the stage would rise up to different levels. They did a great job with the huge spider and the Balrog too. Shame photography was banned really, but I understand the reasoning.

The acting itself was great too. I really admired the guy that played Gollum. He did it so well! I think Gollum is one of those characters where it’s either played successfully or it’s an epic failure. This guy was the former of the two options. The only thing that bugged me was how the elves were played. I felt there was too much with the flourishing arm movements. It didn’t ruin the experience though.

The only thing I would have to say though, is that if I hadn’t watched the films prior to seeing it on stage, I would have never understood what was going on because I haven’t actually read the books yet. I’ve started reading them though, but slowly.

After leaving the theatre on a high, I reached an all time low during my stay in London and that was caused by the Tube at rush hour. Oh it is absolutely awful! Everyone was pressed up against each other or the doors. I literally got out of the trains smelling like other people, and not the nice kind either like when you leave a heavy rock concert. It was hot and horribly humid, despite being under the ground. My other complaint is the price! It cost me £5.30 for a single zone ticket for the entire day - that’s about 3 times the amount I pay at home for a similar thing. To put it bluntly, I couldn’t ever experience that on a regular/daily basis and it’s just strengthened my resolve to never live and/or work in London.

Other than my experience with the Tube system, I had a wonderful time in London. A bit too dusty and fast-paced for my liking; I much prefer places like Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and even York! It’s a shame that the staging cost more to maintain than the money they were bringing in - they’re stopping the show at the end of July.

Tip: Don’t drink too much coffee folks, it’s bad for you x_x

I hope to get more involved with the goings on in my church at some point, hopefully soon. Some day, I’d like to help lead the worship. I know I can sing as people keep telling me so, and I’d like to use my talent to sing praise to God. That’s not to say that I don’t sing as it is now, I’d just like to help lead it. I suppose, it would kind of become more of a ‘proclamation’ experience, rather than a ‘joining in’ experience. If you know what I mean?

However, what I do know is that if I want to get more involved, I’m going to have to speak to Alan (the guy who runs the place).

I wanted to go up for prayer today. Not for any specific problem mind you; I just felt I needed a “top-up” of the Spirit. Unfortunately, I was unable to do so as I found myself on look-after-baby duty. Well, I say unfortunately, but it was rather pleasant actually - contrary to what I felt at the time, this is just looking back. The baby in question is the son of Rachel and Ty who also go to the church (obviously =p) and both of whom were busy. I ended up watching little Oscar for the majority of the service. He only stirred a few times, but went back to sleep after some frantic but gentle rocking of the baby-seat-thing. At the time, it was stressful. I was constantly reciting in my head, “please don’t cry, please don’t cry”. I’m so glad that he didn’t. I haven’t had to deal with a crying baby for at least 9/10 years, and I didn’t want to start today without someone immediately there for guidance. There was a feeling of great relief when Rachel came back to feed him - he was officially no longer my responsibility. But, I admit, if she asked me to do it again… I don’t think I would say no.

Another thing of note is my baptism. Which I’m so excited for. I’ve finally made the decision, and I’m going through with it; hopefully soon! I can’t wait!

The article tells how a woman had been declared clinically brain dead for 17 hours after a series of heart attacks. Even the doctors and medical specialists cannot explain this phenomena.

Mrs Thomas had no pulse, no heartbeat or brain activity after her admission to hospital

It truly is amazing. I’d like to echo Dr Eddleston when I say, it’s a miracle. I think God had something to to with this. 25 family members had prayed for this woman and God comes back and confirms for them to take her off the life support. At first this seems disheartening, but perhaps God required her to be off all the machinery for Him to do His work. God brought this woman back to her family - a woman who had been declared dead for 17 hours. That’s amazing stuff. The timing couldn’t have been better in my opinion: she awoke just before they took her organs but while there were medical professionals there to actually notice.

There are a fair few comments about the article saying this wasn’t God, this was no miracle. There are claims of medical blunders and the like. I find it hard to believe that something of this magnitude, especially with today’s technology, is a mistake by medical professionals.

I saw this article and had the overwhelming desire to blog about it. I didn’t think “hm, maybe I should blog about it”, a voice had shouted in my head “Blog about this, tell the world God was at work here”. And so I have. It’s things like this which show to me, and hopefully others, that God does exist. He is here and He has his own way of showing that. Thank God for what he did for this woman and her family.

Chemistry on the other hand - what a nightmare. Disregarding the fact that I was ridciulously nervous; I was almost in a panic as well. Our Implementation part of the paper was to carry out a titration. That in itself is easy as pie, but we can only do a maximum of 5 titres, I got to 4 and I still didn’t have any concordant results. I prayed my 5th and final titre would be a good one and it was! I nearly squealed with happiness and relief; my prayer had been answered.

Another thing what went wrong with that paper was the preparation section. I had hoped that it wouldn’t be based on calorimetry, but it was. I managed to bluff my way through 5 out of the 6 points to include, but when it came to the point about actually working out the enthalpy change from the results, my mind hit a brick wall. Literally. It was quite painful. So, I’ve definately lost marks because I had to miss it out completely.

I am not impressed.

Sure, for chemistry I can go over things like molarity calculations, and proceedure/results sheets I filled out for chemistry practicals I had done in lessons over the past year. But the thing is, I could get anything on this practical. At the very least, I vaguely know how the paper is going to be set out.

General Studies on the other hand, I don’t have a clue what to expect. It’s the written paper so we get a page full of ’sources’ to analyse and write essays on; quite like History in that sense, but I haven’t taken history for three years now. I can only pray that I’ll know what I’m doing the in exam.

Thankfully, I have no exams Tuesday or Wednesday so I have both of those days to revise. I’m going to need it because I then have another two full days of exams to sit: S1 (Statistics for Maths), more General Studies, IT Theory, and Psychology. I have two weeks off after that, which is a Godsend.

I’ve never liked exam time. It’s always in the summer when you can’t be bothered to do anything, and I always feel like a nervous and emotional wreck. I’m always fine once I’m actually sitting in the exam hall doing to the paper, it’s just the run up before hand. I hate the anticipation because it gives me a chance to think about the very real possibility of failing, regardless of the fact that the probability of me actually receiving a failing grade is next to nothing (says my friends and family - I don’t have that kind of faith in myself). Apparently, for me to fail miserably I’d have to just not turn up to the exam or take my mobile phone in: neither of which I would, or could, ever actually do.

Joy for having practically all morning to “revise” for chemistry this afternoon though. I say practically because I don’t have my General Studies until 11am. Why? There was a clash between the general studies and chemistry practical, so the chemistry people have to take general studies in the morning. The absolutely fantastic thing is, we all get to be locked in a room over lunch so we don’t tell other people what’s on the general studies exam. Not that I would tell them anyway - It’s not like I would’ve known what to expect upon entering the exam hall.

I’ve also added a subdomain for my World of Warcraft roleplay. It’s in the form of a diary written from the characters’ points of view. It’s not quite finished yet, and the roleplay isn’t quite progressing how I want it to (ie. not at all) so it’s pointless linking it.

Yet, what to do with the main domain. So far, it’s a blog with what is now a grand total of 3 posts and 3 unfinished pages (About, Domain, and Writing). I could just have this as my blog/collective and link other subdomains which have separate content. Or I could just keep most things on here (excluding the poems because a narrower layout is better for them).

I know that I can do more than just writing. I like to believe that my writing skills are pretty darn good and I should put them to better use. But what do you write an article on these days? It’s so difficult trying to come up with a unique and interesting topic to write about. I sing on a regular basis, and it’s easy enough to record myself, but what’s the point of putting it on here? Not many people would actually care how good or how bad my voice is. I’m not visually artistic, so amazing drawings/graphics are out of the question. I’m not fantastic with making layouts either, so I can’t provide those.

Maybe I’ll just have to stick with writing and hope I can manage to make my blog entries somewhat interesting. It’s something to keep thinking about.

Even though in the updates section over there I’ve said that it’s just temporary, in reality, it will probably be permanent. Solely for the fact that poems look better, in my opinion, on a thinner layout. I’ll keep my fiction on this site, and my poems over there for now.