My mom got a letter through the door a couple of months ago about the Autosport Show. We hadn't actually heard of this show before, and we had just been to Top Gear Live a couple of weeks previously. It seemed to be fairly similar to that, having a load of traders, lots of cars, a Live Action show, celebrities, so it looked pretty good. Of course price is always an issue. Top Gear Live Platinum tickets (which is what we got) are £105. That's a lot, and because they seemed like similar events we were a bit cautious about the price of this. It was £37 per ticket, and a 3 for 2 offer. Hell, that's good value. So we bought tickets!

And now here I am, 3 hours after leaving the NEC. Completely shattered, but still on a complete high.

As we neared the NEC we could tell which cars were headed for the same destination: the cars were full of men. We got to the car park, not a woman in sight. No, wait, there was one. But she had clearly been dragged there by her husband. Fortunately, we got into the hall and did see a handful of other women.

The show is huge. No. It's COLOSSAL.. We immediately got lost, but who cares if you don't know your coordinates when you're surrounded by incredible machines! The first thing we did was go to the Live Action Arena (even though it took us an hour to get there) which introduces you to so many different kinds of motorsport, I have a desperate urge to try them all out. Particularly Formula Jedi (might just be the name though...). Jason Plato was a great host, even though he destroyed the gearbox of a car,
again, 5 minutes in. I won't spoil anything else because I think you should all find out what happens yourself by buying tickets next year!

The rest of the show is jam packed with traders from all different aspects of motorsport. Being a Formula 1 fan quite a lot of the stalls went over my head. But then there was the F1 stage which had interviews with Jake Humphrey, David Coulthard, Christian Horner, Allan McNish, Darren Turner, and loads of other people. There is even the chance to meet the stars and get their autographs. However (now this is my only criticism) the slots are 15 minutes each, and when Jake Humphrey and David Coulthard are doing a signing after their interview you end up with 200+ people queuing, including myself. It is not physically possible to get that many people through. I was devastated when I saw security lead them away before I got a chance to get their autographs. But DC went in my direction and I saw a mob of people following him throwing autograph slips infront of his pen. I hesitiated, thinking I'd lose my place in the queue for Paul Di Resta who was on an hour later, but then I went for it. It was then or never. So I joined the mob, that was starting to dissipate, also throwing my autograph slip into his pen, and just as he was about to leave the hall I managed to get him to sign it.
My. Day. Was. Made.
I also managed to get really close to the front of the queue for Paul's autograph, and after 45 minutes of waiting, I met him. And touched his finger (to a fan, it's the tiny details that mean everything). 

There was also a lot to actually do. There were dodgems, go-karting, and a Caterham Experience. The Caterham Experience was incredible. So exhilirating. And very good value for only £10 (...considering at Top Gear Live some people try to charge you that to sit in their car and have a picture taken that isn't even by them).
You can see my experience on YouTube (my face looks weird though. I'm just trying to hold myself in the car. Throws you about like a bloody rollercoaster!) -> http://www.youtube.com/user/SarahwDW?feature=mhee

By 5 o'clock we were shattered. Completely and utterly shattered. But that is the sign of a brilliant day out. So we had a look at some supercars and went home for a chinese.

Overall, it was a brilliant day. And actually completely different to Top Gear Live, but not at all in a bad way.

I will be going again.

I had a range of education growing up. I'm a 'military brat' so I moved house every 2 years up until the age of 12/13 when my parents divorced. This obviously meant changing schools every 2 years. Being part of a military family means we got special bursaries for private boarding schools. So, whilst living in Germany, I was shipped off to a school called S.Anselms in Bakewell at the age of 7.
7?! You say. Yeah, I was young. Very young. Too young, maybe? I don't know. All I know is that when I went on my taster day I cried on the way home because I wanted to stay there. I spent 4 happy years there, seeing my parents every half term, maybe more frequently. I then spent 2 more years at another private school called Abbotsholme near Uttoxeter.
People who have never been to a private school have a certain perception of them. They're 'posh', 'snobby', and a range of other adjectives that have the same meaning. Some are posh, yes. But not every private school is Eton.
When I moved back to Tamworth and went to a state school I got teased for being 'posh'. I had eloquence so people assumed I was posh. (I don't mean I had elocution e. I just didn't speak with a local accent. I went to school in Derbyshire. They speak properly over there.) But I'm not posh, never have been. I'm poorer than most of my friends. It's not like we even paid the whole fee for boarding school. From several thousand a term (each - me and my sister) down to a few hundred.
And what's wrong with being posh anyway? Why would it matter if I was posh?
So I had a good education. No. A bloody good education. You get what you pay for. At my equivalent of primary school I played in competitive sports matches from the age of 8. I learnt French from the age of 7, doing GCSE level French by year 6. In year 6 when I was 10/11 I did 13+ exams. I did Latin for 2 years. The naughtiest kid there was the equivalent to your average kid in any other school. It wasn't that all the kids were super clever and super boring so didn't act out. It was just a bloody good school. We didn't sing any of those fun hymns that people talk about - I don't know any of them. Never did them. We sung from the Songs of Praises hymn book. We did 8 hours of P.E. a week.
You get what you pay for.
However, the only issue with that school is that the high level of education is difficult to be upheld after you leave at 13 (I left at 11 though) because other schools tend to stick to the national curriculum. However, at the end of the day private schools are businesses so they can do what they want in terms of what they teach you, so they can teach to reach children's potential.

But, back to my initial point, going to a private school doesn't make you posh. Just means you're fortunate to be able to afford a better education. The only logical explanation of why one would think poorly of public schools is that they are simply jealous they never had the opportunity to go to one.
And people who do talk badly of them have never been to one, never spent a day there, never realised that it's just a school. They are completely ignorant making their opinion completely irrelevant. But usually better than you're average state school.

Having said that, I have nothing against state schools. I enjoy the school I go to at the moment. There's nothing wrong with it. The education is good, people are nice etc.

Also, people assume that because people who go to private schools are posh, they're stuck up and are good, law-abiding citizens. No, no. There are more drugs at private school, more alcohol, more extravagant parties. . .there's more scandal at private school in one year than in 5 years at state school.

I was watching 2012 today. The apocolyptic film where the sun flares stuff and stuff happens to make the tectonic plates move freely, Silverstone erupts, world is pretty much destroyed. Good film. Apart from the whole giant-boat-spaceship-thing. That was kinda weird.
But everyone knows about the Mayan 'belief' that the world will end on the winter solstace of this year. Peopl think the Mayans knew this because that is the date their calendar ended.
I don't know much about the Mayans, but I know they're an ancient tribe and they aren't really around much today. Because they're dead.
So if they're long dead, surely their calendar had to end at the latest when they all died.
And HOW would they know that 21st December is when the world will end. HOW?!?! Did their God come to them in a vision? Who knows. 'God' has come to many people and said the end of the world is nigh. And we're all still here. They were probably all on the wacky backy. Actually no. That stuff is tame compared to what they probably too. . . anyway.

It's bullshit. End of.

And if it were to follow what happens in '2012' then we would have noticed the effects 2 years ago.

This is partially linked to my previous point...

I have The God Delusion on my Kindle and I was talking about philosophy and religion with a friend who is studying it for A Level so I started reading it.
You may know the book, if not, you'll probably know the author, Richard Dawkins. Infamous for his blunt, maybe arrogant, atheist views.
I had someone tell me today that he's just 'as arrogant as religious preachers'. Yeah, it may be true, but why's that a relevant point? Atheism is, in a kind of way, a religion. A religion is after all a set of beliefs. Atheism is a set of beliefs that are based on fact, who cares if he's arrogant? If you read the book you'll see he's got a bloody good reason to be!
So I started reading it. I read the Preface, which was just explaining the book and the point of the book. And I was hooked. Everything he says is logical. He has clearly done a HELL of a lot of research, and everything he says is completely logical and it just makes simple sense.
It is as if Dawkins has gone inside my mind and articulated everything I couldn't put into words into words.
I might be slightly bias in that I was an atheist before I started reading it, but I believe that atheists are more open minded in terms of faith than any religious person. Someone who believes in God will look at nothing else. They can't be convinced into anything else.
But the book is just so bloody brilliant. Dawkins makes so excellent points, but each time he uses a real life example to prove his point, and therefore showing the advantages of atheism.

Its so brilliant. Read it. Believe in God or not, read it. Whether you believe in God or not, it will provoke so many thoughts in your mind, bring to light so many other religions, perspectives, other people's views on things you had never ever thought of.
It delves into the meaning of religion, and of God. I mean, I could say I was an atheist just as much as I could say I believed in the Pantheist religion. People never equalise religion and atheism, but Dawkins presents them on the same level, but also on different levels.

I cannot go into how brilliant this book is. Dawkins brings up so many points, that so many people don't think of.

I should also add that I have only read the Preface and Chapter 1.


Buy it.
Read it.
LOVE it.

My ONLY reservation about it is that I hate it when people shove their beliefs down other people's throats. Fine, believe in God, have faith, just keep it to yourself. I accept that if you pick the book up to read you're allowing yourself to be bombarded by atheism, but Dawkins says in the Preface that he hopes when you finish the book you will be an atheist. I don't think changing someone's religion is a very good, or particularly admirable thing. If someone believes, that's their choice. I may not agree with what they believe, but as long as they don't make me believe what they believe I don't care. A better way around that I think could have been saying that he hoped some people would realise he has relevant points and would consider atheism as a positive thing, rather than bluntly saying You will become an atheist if you read this. That'll put people off. Don't be put off though. It's brilliant.


I would also recommend a Kindle to anyone too :) great gadgets. So handy. Never thought I'd want one - I love holding a book, turning the pages, in the same way I prefer CDs to downloads. But I love my Kindle.

So school starts again for me on Wednesday. I must say that I've been good and pretty much all my work is done. But the past couple days have just been so depressing. I have some lovely friends at school who I adore and most people in the year are genuinely lovely, but there is so much bitching. There are less than 50 people in the whole 6th form (we have no year 12) which made me think that the year would become close and happy and everyone would get on.
However. This is not the case. What has happened is that all the bitching and conflict has just become more concentrated. And it's made school a place that I just don't want to be. There are people there that I know don't like me and can't be mature about it. And there are people that haven't realised they're adults and act worse than the year 7s.

All I have to say is that I can't wait for these next 6 months to be over and done with and I only have to talk to the people that I actually want to and don't have to see anyone I don't want to ever again.

Doctor Who has had me quite riled for a while now. I would like to say though, before I get started, that I think Matt Smith is a great Doctor. He's put his own little clumsy spin on it which I think works for what they've done with the show, and Amy Pond is a character that has gradually grown on me, but never had anything agaisnt Karen herself, she seems lovely.
Anyway, getting to the nitty-gritty stuff. Think back to the days of series 1 of Doctor Who. The Eccleston days. Remember the episode Dalek? When we discovered they could levitate? Were you scared? Yes. Yes you were. Everyone was. Were you gripped by how gripping it was? Yes. We all were.
Now think a few episodes forward to The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances. You know, the shit-your-pants-creepy-one-with-the-creepy-child? Yeah, that one.
Now jump forward to series 3. Blink. With the Weeping Angels and Sally Sparrow. Yeah, the one where everyone who watched it was terrified to blink for days and you stared at every statue because you were scared it was going to kill you or something.
Those episodes stand out to me as being properly good, slightly scary, utterly gripping episodes.
Now, for the point of this rant, name an episode that comes close to the terror and brilliance of any of those. Stuck, aren't you. And don't go saying the episodes where they brought the Weeping Angels back in series 5. That was awful. THEY CAN'T MOVE. And don't even get me started with the whole Pandorica thing. That was a sham.
Now, I'm not saying there haven't been good episodes, James Corden was great in his 2 episodes and Neil Gaiman wrote a brilliant episode that I adored the concept of (The Doctor's Wife). And that episode introduced me to the works of the brilliant writer and I'm currently reading American Gods, which is bizarre but brilliant. But again, none of those episodes were scary, none had you on the edge of your seat.
I think the parting of RTD definately had something to do with it. Series 5 was, in my opinion, god-awful. I think it must have had something to do with people taking on new roles and getting comfortable without RTD (still, not a great excuse). And then series 6 came and it was much, much, much better. And so people raved. And so did I.
But then I watched series 1 and 2. And I realised that series 6 only seems so brilliant is because it was so much better than series 5. But that still puts it below series 1-4. I'm not complaining about the new series' for the sake of it; I'm upset that they're not as good, I'm longing for a terrifying storyline that puts the Doctor's life properly in danger to the point you think he is going to die. (I get that there's the ongoing storyline of the Doctor dying because of the astronaut, yadda yadda yadda.) But it's just not the same. And it makes me sad.

It would be interesting to know if anyone shared the same opinion, or think that I'm talking utter tosh. Comment below :)

2012. Big year for lots of us.
For me, I finish my A Levels which shall be a bloody big relief - I know they warn you before you start about how difficult they'll be, even more difficult than a degree they say, but what they don't tell you is how BLOODY EXHAUSTING education becomes. I am utterly sick of sitting in a classroom that smells of sweaty little children and learning about things I honestly really don't care about. Ok, well that only relates to History. I just don't care about the Tudors any more. I really couldn't give a monkeys about the Golden Age of Spain. WHO DOES?!
I do enjoy English, but whether I enjoy my English lessons is another matter, considering about 75% of the lessons have been taught by us, the students. Great teaching - So class, go into groups and for the next 10 lessons you are all going to plan and deliver a lesson on this poem/story/scene/whatever. So then we waste 2 lessons coming up with 'We'll make them find a quote an analyse it for an hour'. No thanks. I'd rather be taught by the person who is being PAID to do it.

Anyway, getting back to my initial point, A Levels will be over. You may be wondering why I am overjoyed by that because I'll just be going straight back into education, which is where you are wrong. One big thing my school did do for me was introduce me to Project Trust who are a gap year organisation. So in August I shall be heading off to Africa!! There, I shall be (hopefully, its slightly complicated for the next few months) writing a newspaper called the Buchter News.
It's so bizarre to think that THIS year I am going away. For a whole year. Still hasn't sunk in. Can't wait though. For months it's seemed distant, I've always said "Next year I'm going to Africa", and now I have to say "This year. In a few months time."
In a few months. Bloody hell. Still got loads of fundraising to do for it too. Wanna be lovely and donate a fiver??? Go there -> http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SarahWilliamsonPT 

New Years Eve though. That was interesting. Didn't go to a party or anything. Never do (sucks, I know). But it was spent with my younger sister out of the house because she's decided she's going to live with my grandad now (not even going to bother explaining that one) and my best friend came round and we all played Scattergories and ate gummy bears. Which, personally, was very pleasant. However, in the night it got unbelievably hot so I couldn't sleep and then one of my cats decided she would climb over everything so I had to throw her out my room twice. And then I have this digital Stig alarm clock that I was given last Christmas which I've never used as an alarm clock because it confuses me and I haven't touched in months which decided to go off (it plays the Top Gear theme tune. Really loud.) in the middle of the night (6am). I thought I had turned it off, but as I said its confusing, and it went off another 2 times, even after I tried changing when the alarm would go off. So at 6.30am I was sick of it and stormed downstairs with it and unscrewed the bitch and emptied of its batteries thinking, If it goes off now it's a job for the Ghostbuster.

Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely New Years, and best of luck in 2012. Hope it's a good'n :)

So I'm a newbie to blogging, and I have no idea who the hell is going to read it, but what the hell; I want somewhere to write and this seems to be ticking the boxes. Don't even know if it matters if someone reads it. Didn't fancy Tumblr; I find it a bit confusing, and its too mainstream; I don't want somewhere where people from school or people I know but don't necessarily like
can easily look me up. I figure with a site like this I can give the web address to someone if I really want to. And if they are worthy of it. 
Might be a little odd trying to avoid people I know, friends
included, but its so restricting in what you can write when people you see on a regular basis can see it. And then judge you. To your face. And then tell other people about something you put and....to be honest I just wanted somewhere private where I can write about anything I want, whether it be a rant (which I'm sure it often will). That's the other thing; I love to write, I want to write for a living, but I find it's such a personal thing. I hate sharing it because I feel that writing can express emotions that are difficult to express, and maybe I'm threatened by the vulnerability that that creates... I don't know.
But, hey, here I am. Can't stop people if they read it...emphasis on the if. But if you are reading this, I hope you enjoy it. Although I don't exactly know if it's something to be enjoyed...is it? I don't  know; like I said, I'm new to this blogging and I'm mainly using this as an outlet.