Lowewood - In Which Jemima Behaves?

Hi Frannie,

How's life back at the old dump?! Sorry I haven't written for ages. Things have been so busy. I'm home for the weekend so I thought I'd take some time to catch up, and tell you how things are going at school. One of these days I suppose I'll be able to come home on exeat and tell the grandparents that I've had successful few weeks and behaved impeccably and all that. Not this time. I don't even know how I manage it to be honest. It's not like I *try* to misbehave. It just seems to happen. I suppose a good illustration would be one day this week. Did I tell you that at Lowewood they rotate the Head Girl position? Well this term I'm head girl. Which is not as good as it sounds. It's an honour that everyone tries to avoid to be honest. Especially because if you get punished as Head Girl, you get double!

So, the day in question looked quite promising. We had Stats, Logic, English, Physics, History, Etiquette, General Knowledge, Latin and Games. I love most of them, so surely I could behave?

Well, the day started off with Assembly and uniform inspection. Miss Cavendish knocked off five points at the start for my tie being messy... EVERY time, seriously?! I HATE ties. Hate them.
Stats was great, we learnt about something called Ishikawa diagrams, which was really interesting, and then Logic. Now logic was really good, except for the fact that my logic problem at the end didn't work, and I told Reverend Jenkins (he's also my housemaster) that it wasn't working and he WOULDN'T believe me. Turns out I was right in the end though, as he came up to me at lunch and told me that the puzzle had printed out wrong and we were missing a clue. Hah! Stupid teachers. Bet it's because he doesn't even know how to operate a printer.
We had English and Physics before lunch. In English we were talking about rhetoric, which to me just sounded like another word for all the rubbish that politicians say. In Physics we were studying heat and motion, and got to play with mini steam boats in baths of water in the physics lab! My team, which was me, Sylvie and Caoilfhionn who I've told you about, and then a new girl Holly, went first and got extra house points!

Up until the end of Physics, I'd been doing pretty well. I'd had my phone confiscated a couple of times, and lost a few points, but I'd also earned loads. And then we hit lunch. Like at total idiot, I sat opposite both Rev J (actually, we call him Unstable Abel behind his back) and Miss Cavendish. Now Miss Cavendish is normally really nice, but for some reason she was being REALLY strict yesterday. I chucked a tomato at Caoilfhionn because she asked for one, and Miss C took off 5 house points. Well, a bit later on I did it again, and this time she took off 10! Seriously! Later on Beth asked for a bread roll, so I threw one at her as well. And Miss C took off -15 and said she would keep on doing the same thing if I didn't learn to behave. So I told her she was mean. To be honest, I really should have called her a mean cow, because that was the truth! Anyway, Unstable Abel heard me and took off -20 as he was being "Gallant to Miss Cavendish". Whatever! So between the two of them, I lost -50 house points in one hour! I couldn't let that continue, could I? So during the afternoon I added enough point to my book that I had an extra +30. Ha!

History was hard - I'm never very good at writing stuff in lessons, but it was quite interesting: all about some girls who rioted in a training school in the 1920s! Sounds like their teachers we're really awful, so they totally had the right idea. Bet we wouldn't get away with doing something like that though, more's the pity. I made up for history in general knowledge though! I came second top, and as we marked each other's tests, I even got away with the rude answers!

You won't believe this is me saying this, Frannie, but I was quite looking forward to Latin...! I know, right?! What's happening to me?! Anyway, that meant I was even more upset than normal when I got dragged out of Latin to go to Miss Cavendish for private detention. I didn't even know what I'd *done* this time, but it turns out they'd found those facebook photos of that last party I threw when Grandmama and Grandpapa were away... whoops!! Anyway, she gave me this really long booooorrring lecture about "appropriate choice of guests" (that's you out then!), all the time smacking away. I know you've never been whacked, but believe me, it really hurts! And this was just her hand. I hoped I might just get away with a spanking, coz it wasn't as if she was going lightly on me, but I think I really annoyed her, because, well, I'd decided to put on four pairs of knickers that morning! I had a really skimpy blue lace pair, then a frilly turquoise satin pair, then a Little Miss Fun pair, but, covering them all were a MASSIVE great big regulation black pair, so you couldn't see the rest! We all thought it was a scream, but Miss C didn't seem to think so, and ended up giving me six with the cane and telling me to get out of her sight, but not before docking me another ten points for the knickers! SOOO mean.

I wasn't doing Games that day as I had a cold, and I was actually quite gutted, as the girls were doing creative dance and it was really good fun. Trouble was, the batteries in the CD player died halfway through the first group performing, and no one had an extension cable long enough to reach outside. And they I had a brainwave and remembered I'd read in some book that you get more life out of a battery by warming it up. So I distributed the batteries among the girls and told them to hold them in their hands under their armpits, and damn me, but it worked! I was REALLY impressed. Go me, right?!

After the girls had got changed from games, it was time for final Assembly. Amazingly, most people ended up with plus house points. For once, I ended up with 0, but that was only because I faked 28 and the teachers didn't notice. Must be their age, can't read and all that. Anyway, I would have been on -28 if they'd counted properly. Turns out I was apparently still in detention. F*** knows why. Seriously, I could NOT remember being put in detention, and that made Unstable Abel even more unimpressed. I got a huge long lecture about conduct unbecoming the head girl, and how shocking it was that I couldn't even remember being placed in detention and blah blah blah. And then he strapped me with a MASSIVE great big strap and not only that but landed all twelve strokes in the same place. That probably doesn't mean much to you, but believe me it hurts like hell. He gave me double because I was head girl and said if I was ever lucky enough to be head girl again and end up in such a position again he'd give me even worse... sigh. Seriously, Frannie, you don't know how lucky you are to be still at Wingfield. The teachers were *nice* there. They breed this lot in some sort of evil farm. Oh well, at least the girls are great!

Well, I'd better go do something useful before someone else decides I'm in trouble! Miss you loads, sweets, and hopefully we can meet up again soon! Maybe for another one of my legendary parties in the summer?! And this time I *won't* put the photos on facebook ;-)

Luv ya forever,

Jems
xxx