Isn't Life Just Gr18?

-My first night out since the big 18. Tears, a lost phone, a very drunk friend and 30 pounds blown

It seems from the age of about fourteen, my entire existence has been spent waiting to be eighteen years old. I foolishly spent many a birthday praying for a remote so I could slice off a few years of the waiting game. There were sneaky uses of others’ Ids, even an attempt to order decent fake ones off the internet, and of course the brave trying your luck at the corner shop method, but usually laughed away by the shop owner. The novelty of having my ID checked and verified by a cashier wore off pretty quickly, especially as it has lead me to discover that many people these days don’t actually know what year it is, or indeed can’t do a simple sum and have to count pain-stakingly slowly from 1993 to 2011. Also the fact that I look like a fucking angry corpse or something doesn’t do much for my confidence in ID checking situations, I’m not about to march right in there and say ‘well hello there young vender sir, could I have a bottle of your cheapest martini’, and wack out the old provisional licence when I look like my face is melting in the photo which is supposed to represent my face.

Being eighteen has been a little disappointing. I’m not sure if I expected a some fairy godmother to pop up out the ground and give me a money-free makeover, a driver, loads of energy and tons of friends who are always up for doing anything the second I turned eighteen. The fact of the matter is I’m still sat in my house, Snooki slippers on, on Wednesday night with no offers to hit the town and approximately 2p to finance me even if I wanted to.

Even if I do go out on the rampage, I’m so used to having to sneak a five pound bottle of vodka out of the house, or downing someone’s mum’s wine, or just asking for a little sippy of whatever everyone at the party is drinking that I don’t even know what to ask for when I’m out. Beer is too manly and boat-y, wine just makes me want to puke/sleep and shots usually rinse my purse and really aren’t exactly a whale of a time. Even Jägerbombs, the only nice, cheap and tipsy-making drink I can think of, are a mystery to me. For those of you who live under a rock or something, Jägerbombs are supposed to be a shot of Jägermister, bobbing around in a glass of red bull. You’re basically supposed to drink both the shot and the red bull at the same time by tipping both into your mouth at once, but queen of the dumbasses over here can’t manage that, so I pretty much just tip the shot in the glass most of the time. Often this is met with remarks of ‘CLAIRE YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG’. Cool story bro. I really don’t care.

So on the month’s anniversary of my eighteenth birthday, I’m kind of disappointed to be sat in a sleeping bag staring at my computer, just like I have spent every other evening for the last four years. No fairy godmother here. Hopefully I’ll enjoy my new eighteen-year-old status more on Friday, when I finally stop being a hermit and brave the world again.

Black Swan: Worth a watch, but not for the faint-hearted.

Starring Natalie Portman, who spends the vast majority of the film looking constipated, having people creep up on her and having very painful-looking and blood producing accidents, Black Swan is not for those with a weak stomach. The film follows the story of a young and dedicated dancer, Nina Sayers (Portman) in New York, who is finally gets her big break when her creepy ballet teacher Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) gives her the role of both the Black and White swan in Swan Lake. Nina has, thus far in her dancing career, been poised and exact, so Thomas urges her to get in touch with her ‘dark side’ and become more of a black swan, as she is pitched against her alternate, Lily (Mila Kunis), who coincidentally keeps popping up in Nina’s dreams. Through her attempts to become more in touch with her own ‘Black Swan’, Nina becomes more and more shrouded in mental illness and her perception becomes increasingly unhinged from reality.



The majority of Black Swan should be watched through one’s fingers. There are some truly cringeworthily gruesome moments and this film is not for the squeamish, nor is it for young budding ballerinas or homophobes. It has its perks – the film cleverly follows the plot of the actual Swan Lake, in which the White Swan’s prince falls in love with her twin, and there’s this whole ‘oh my gosh that makes sense now’ moment where Lily and Nina go to a bar and a guy asks if they’re sisters. But overall, the film was just too nightmarishly odd for me, and it’s hard to know when there will be a nice bit of ballet or whether someone will suddenly fork out their eyeball or something. Not for the squeamish or weak-hearted, and a definite no-go for family viewing, unless your parents are cool about racy lesbian sex. If not, it’ll make a very awkward watch.