Dear Sinister, Today I wrote 'Internet Love Gone Awry' on a desk in school. Such things appeal to my sense of humour, though I doubt anyone else gets it – I remember at the end of last year, the school organised this 2 day business course for us all, the premise being that various business type people came into school and told us all about marketing and designing and management and so on and then we used the skills they had taught us in a mini project of our own. Our project was making a mug, and my own design (rather ironically) stated ‘I *heart* Ayia Napa’, my friend saw it and fell about laughing, not at my rapier wit and cool sense of irony, but because he thought someone had seriously designed a mug like that because they loved Ayia Napa. I wonder what it’d be like to be an indie kid in Ayia Napa; terrible I imagine – but there must be some. Anyway, I’m digressing. I wrote ‘Internet Love Gone Awry’ with a similar sense of irony obvious only to myself, I’m getting quite addicted to scrawling odd things on school desks, I do it in pencil so it can be gotten rid of easily enough, or replaced – and I live in hope of the day when some lovely band title their lovely album after a piece of my own pencilled graffiti. I know one internet couple, they met on the internet and live a fair distance apart, but I don’t think they’re right for eachother at all. They are meeting in person soon and I fear the worst, but perhaps they’ll prove me wrong and live happily ever after. Stranger things have happened, and sometimes being proven wrong is the best thing that can happen for everyone, not very often though. It’s boring when people you only vaguely know talk about relationships between people that they only vaguely know isn’t it? I’ll shut up about it now. The school I go to is unfortunately located in a rather violent area of town. If you are a fan of football then you’ll be pleased to know it’s within walking distance of the Aston Villa ground, snappily called ‘Villa Park’ and if you are a fan of HP sauce you’ll be happy to know it’s within walking distance of the HP sauce factory – in fact you can smell the sauce when you get off the bus if the wind is blowing in the right direction. An idyllic scene you may think. Well not really, because earlier on in the year there had been quite a lot of muggings on one particular route to school (not the route I normally use happily, the only time I’ve ever heard of anyone being threatened there was my friend Naz, in the first year who had his wellies stolen – but that was ages ago, and a funny rather than scary story). However, after over zealous parents coupled with a dictatorial headmaster and a police force concerned with figures and the aesthetics of policing rather than actually catching criminals, disaster ensued! “Not disaster!” I hear you cry, well yes, disaster I’m afraid. The police and the headmaster agreed that people should no longer use the routes where there had been muggings, and a ‘Safe Route’ was planned. This safe route would then be patrolled by smiling bobbies before school and in the evenings, and nobody would get mugged. “But didn’t you say disaster ensued?” I heard you cry again “This doesn’t look like much of a disaster to me!” well let me temper your haste and explain a bit more. The thing with this ‘Safe Route’ is that firstly it isn’t safe. The police seem to think that just saying that they will patrol it makes it safe. It doesn’t. And now the would-be muggers know where to find everyone. So there have been two muggings in the two weeks the safe route has been operational on the safe route. That’s more, statistically speaking (and I’m no mathematician) than there ever was before. Also, the route is longer than any other route to school, since the subways which go under the Aston expressway are out of bounds – this bit is the only part of the route the police patrol, they guard the subway entrance. This seems silly to me for a couple of reasons – firstly, since we’re not allowed to use the subways; we now have to cross the expressway somewhere else. Far more people die as a result of road accidents every year than do of muggings (incidentally – have you ever seen someone being hit by a car, I have; it was quite traumatic actually, I had nightmares for weeks. Luckily the kid that I saw being hit escaped relatively unscathed). So because you have to go around the subways and then cross the road further down, the route is much longer; wouldn’t it make sense to choose the shortest possible route to the school, because then it would take less policing? Well evidently not. The reason I mention it (it’s not just because I’m in the mood for a rant) is that I used this ‘Safe Route’ today; this was because I came through town to school. Why did I come through town? Well, if you are an upper sixth former at the school I go to, one of the things you have to do is prefect duty, which more or less entails standing in a doorway in the cold pretending to make sure nobody goes inside - that’s how I do it anyway. Unfortunately this years prefect rota has me doing a duty before school on a Monday morning, which isn’t very pleasant at all, especially in the cold weather like now. If I travel to school through town I can get to school pretty much just as the bell is ringing (a little after actually, because of the stupid safe route), and avoid the duty. So that’s why. If you come through town to school you have to use the safe route now, so I did. Nothing happened, but I fully experienced the silliness that happens when police and headmasters combine. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Do you know what happens if the police catch you taking on of the quicker, alternative routes to school? They take your name and report you to the headmaster, who puts you in detention. It all seems rather unfair doesn’t it? It is. The other day my friend and I went to town during school time (which in itself is against the rules), to buy strokes tickets (I’m not much of a fan to be honest, but anyone who is anyone will be there so it should be a good night out). After we bought the tickets, my friend stayed in town (he had frees for the rest of the day), but I had to get back for double English. Not only was I unnecessarily nervous walking back from the bus stop to school on my own, because of the culture of fear created by this police intervention in our travelling to and from school, but it also occurred to me that I’d rather be stopped by a mugger than by the police at that time – other than the strokes ticket which was hidden in my French book I only had about £1 on me. If I was stopped by a mugger I’d have to give them the pound, but I could then move on. If it was the police then not only would I be reported for being out of school during school time, but if I was caught using the subway (as I did) then they’d report me for not using the ‘safe route’ as well. Oh the tribulations of school life. But still, it’ll all be over in under a years time. I realise this lengthy diatribe wont be of much interest to anyone except myself, but it’s catharsis you know? Letting it all out. If you email me and ask nicely I’ll send you a token reimbursing however much time you have wasted reading all that. If I had something of interest to say about belle and sebastian then I would, believe me. But my numerous attempts to woo friends with the bands multitudinous charms have yielded little. Most disappointing. Peace and love - Kieran _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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