And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying fr- aww, fuck.

My favourite subject at sixth form is probably film studies. We watch films, analyse and compare them, write for a little while and then make our own films and that's more or less the whole course. The exam is just a couple of essays and there's only one exam which is great because exams make me ill (I get really bad colds when I'm stressed... I don't know either).

However, my favourite subject at school was English. I still do English but it's so wildly different that I'm no longer good at it, which makes me feel bad. (Can I get an 'awwwww...' please?)

Whilst the work's kinda crappy (bar the fact that I get to do tons of creative writing which I love) I still have insane amounts of fun in the lesson with my class.

Take today... We're studying Dubliners by James Joyce which is an insanely boring book (though the writing is pretty awesome) and we've all be been doing presentations on the short stories in them. A few months back, Evan, henceforth to be known as Smelly, put our names down to do a presentation on the last story: The Dead.

All the other stories in Dubliners are about three or four pages long, but this?

64 pages of utter boredom.

StupidbloodySmellyandhisbigmouthgonnagetmekilleditissoboring...

There wasn't a snowballs chance in hell I'd be reading the whole story.

And so after being given a date to do the presentation on, I forgot about it for a few months...

Fast forward to last night. I had a presentation to do on a text I hadn't read and I'd be telling the whole class about this story. Which I haven't read. At all.

Doooooooooooom...

The day went by fast enough, even with a psychology test and an essay to write, English came along sooner than expected. I sat around in the classroom waiting for people to filter in when someone said "I haven't actually read the story."

"Oh, no worries. Me neither." I said, hoping the teacher wasn't within earshot.

"But.. uhh... isn't it your presentation?"

"Well... yeah."

My morbid, evil-awesome friend Simon chips in. "Haha, you're fucked. Royally."

"Oh no, Simon. You're about to witness the biggest and best blag-act in the history of the known universe."

Smelly wonders in. "Hello, have you done those essays?" I ask, knowing the answer already.

"No."

"Have you done something for the presentation then?"

"THAT WAS TODAY?!"

"I TOLD YOU LAST NIGHT!"

"Yeah... last night... great timing."

The teacher walked in to see me whacking Smelly over the head with someone's notebook yelling "You're such a pain in the arse!"

At this point half of the class think that we haven't got a presentation and the news reaches the teacher's ears... She comes over to my desk and picks through my notes.

"Why are people saying you don't have a presentation?"

LieLieLieLieLie... "Oh.. uh, Evan's just despairing."

Smelly pipes up "We've got one, it's just not very good because she said-"

"NOT VERY GOOD? Don't say that. I wrote it you bell-end."

Teacher goes apeshit, yelling at Smelly for not doing his work AGAIN, and I get off lightly with a "Sorry Nicole. I know you've done the work."

She walks away and Smelly grumbles "It's like you're an angel or something."

"Dude, I am an angel as far as these people are concerned."

After a little while I'm left to do this presentation solo ("Hit it, Queenie!") because Smelly is evil. I pick my way though my notes, carefully copied and pasted from Enotes and I get a reasonable round of applause afterwards.

Teacher picks up afterwards and starts talking about epiphany and stuff and says "The only things certain in life are taxes and death."

Smelly says "Unless you live in Monacco."

Then Max Power - LEGEND - completely deadpan, says:

"You mean... people don't die in Monacco?"

Well done Max. Well done.