You broke another mirror, you're turning into something you are not.

"Mum, not being funny or anything, but Darren Gough has just done a dance where he spins a tiny Russian woman around his head. I'm not going anywhere."

"Steve, we have dinner reservations."

"Look, I can't vote forty times if we're eating out, can I? Chinese takeaway, anyone?"

- As it turned out, we voted a meagre sixteen times between the lots of us. "Nooooo! You can't vote for The sodding X Factor! Stop being selfish! Vote for Dazza!" yelped Steve, vaulting over his prawn toast to wrestle the telephone out of his sister's hands. Luckily for him, mum was very much on his side: "Yeah, Simon Cowell doesn't need any more money!"

Manchester was much the same as ever, except everyone was much taller than I remembered. Even Steve, who should be banned from growing any taller, seemed like a giant. I'm sure he's grown a foot since I last saw him, though, that being just a few months ago, it's unlikely. He's 17, after all, not 12.

. . . . .

Last night I was lounging around reading my horoscope. Which, for the record, has never ever been right in all my sixteen years. But it was unusually astute, telling me to "make the first move to resolve underlying power struggles". And so, rather grudgingly, I sent a text to Simon, which resulted in a vague I'll-write-it-in-a-card apology. Not much, but after all that's gone on it's a relief to be halfway there.

"Hmmm," said Kat upon hearing this, "it's funny, I could've sworn my horoscope said 'slap the fucker'.".

I do love that girl.

. . . . .

I'm so glad there's only half a day of school left, that and tomorrow will be our annual present-giving. Christmas presents are excellent, excellent things. Sophie presented me with an incence pyramid this morning; it took me until lunchtime to work out how to open it, and that was even with Ben's intervention. I feel kind of like Santa, there's a lot of giving to be done tomorrow.

And I'm filled suddenly with Christmas spirit. No idea where it's come from, mind you. But it's there, and I'm looking forward to celebrating, and having a few lie-ins. The revision, though, will be less fun. But it's a necessary evil.

The cheeriness could be down to the results of the first part of my maths mock. After psyching myself up to scrape a C, I managed a high B, which is great. Especially when you take into account my complete inability to work a calculator. There's usually a great chasm between my abilities in calculator (poor) and non-calculator (better). On the last test, a chasm of 20%, in fact.

"Wow, that is quite a big gap, isn't it?" Noted Ben.

Yes it is. And one day, I'll get down to some revision, and I might even get good. But it's doubtful.

. . . . .

You do it to yourself, you do.

And that's what really hurts.