GCSE choices – argh!

So it’s been ages since I’ve been on here – I hope you haven’t missed me too much?!

I’ve been well busy at school – we have to decide our GCSE options pretty soon and I just can’t make up my mind. It’s a shame there isn’t a GCSE in time travel! Maybe SHARP could take me forward in time so I could meet my future self – he’d probably know which GCSEs I should choose.

I tried googling it, and that’s even worse! They keep going on a bout uni and careers and which subjects you need for which career. Career?! I don’t even know what I want to do next week, let alone for the rest of my life! So then I started thinking about careers and what I want to do when I grow up.

So I’ve worked out a few things – I’d quite like to do something sporty or active, like a footballer (yeah right!), but maybe a PE teacher would be cool, a referee, or maybe one of those physios that run on in matches. So I should probably do biology right? But that’s not helpful cos we already have to do that anyway. Our school only does PE/Sports Science at A level, so I can’t pick that either; and the only other subject relevant to sporty careers is food and nutrition. I totally suck at cooking, and anyway, I’ll be the only boy in the class and I’d never hear the end of it!

My dad really wants me to do history, cos he’s a historian and that, but it’s soooooooooo boring! And I get to learn about loads of history stuff when I time travel. But the maybe time travel would make it easier? Hmmmm.

Mum reckons I should do Spanish, cos so many different countries speak Spanish – but we already have to do French and I find that hard enough.

So then I thought, why don’t I just find out what my friends are doing and then go with them, at least then I have friends to go to class with. But you’ll never guess what Mark is doing —– rap. Yeah, you can do a GCSE in rap! And cos he goes to America with his family and thinks he’s all street and that, he thinks he can rap. I think it’s going to be a lot harder than he thinks, plus he’s going to have to learn all about the history of rap and HipHop music, going back to the time of slavery in America.

Griff’s going to do design tech – he’s even decided what he’s going to make for his end of year project. A rocking chair! mental – I wouldn’t even know where to start!

So here’s my shortlist:

Food technology
Design technology
Rap (ahem, no!)
Spanish
History

I wish I was good at something specific, you know, like music or art – at least then I’d have an easy choice. Music technology might be pretty cool as well. I can;t play anything, but I reckon it’d be pretty awesome to learn all about mics and amps and recording studios and stuff. Maybe I’ll add that to the list as well.

What shall I do? Future Danny, are you out there??

What a year!

OMG! I can’t believe it’s 2013 already, what a mental year 2012 was! I’ve just been looking back and all the stuff I’ve done and thinking about New Year’s resolutions for 2013.

I’ve been so lucky this last year – I got to go to the Olympics and on a sort-of holiday to Edinburgh, not to mention all the crazy time travel missions I’ve been on.

My first mission nearly turned into a massive disaster – I ended up in some weird competition with a nasty little boy called Edward. But I let my competitiveness get the better of me and not only did I nearly make him drown himself in a lake, but I didn’t answer my phone in time and got stuck in 1588!

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/stuck-in-1588-now-what/

When I eventually returned, Kaz had some really bad news: SHARP were having real trouble in the future with a rogue organization called STRAP and I finally found out why they needed time travellers and what the point of all these missions were, but not before SHARP hauled me back to the dark ages in the middle of a frost and I got hypothermia!

I wrote all about it in February:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/02/

My little brush with hypothermia turned out to work in my favour and I was visited by some really important people from the future – they told me all about the real purpose of SHARP about a mysterious thing that had happened called the Dark Chaos

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/the-real-purpose-of-sharp/

And then, can you believe it, STRAP (the bad guys) tried to contact me and recruit me as a time traveller. I was really confused, but Kaz helped reassure me that I was on the good guys’ team and confided in me that STRAP was trying to recruit other kids to travel back in time to really dangerous places.

That was when I first heard about Alex…

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/who-on-earth-is-alex/

Alex was a time traveller who was working for STRAP, but I needed to find him and warn him about how much danger he was really in, I mean, STRAP had already sent him on one dangerous mission where he ended up climbing up a cliff face without any safety ropes!

But I was too late and by the time I’d got anywhere close to locating him, STRAP had sent him on a disastrous mission; STRAP’s communication lines had gone down and he was stuck in a medieval Scottish prison!

So SHARP sent me to save him…

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/rescueing-alex-mclean/

But even though I’d rescued him, we hardly had any time to talk. I was so busy trying to save him that I didn’t get chance to chat or even get his number. So then I had to start all over again trying to find him. At last, I’d found somebody else who time travels!

It turned out Alex lived in Edinburgh, so after a few failed attempts, I somehow managed to get Mark and Griff to agree to come to Edinburgh with me and it was really lucky, cos Griff’s aunt lived there, so we had a sort-of reason to go.

And then, literally on the way to Edinburgh, I got an awesome mission from SHARP and I went back in time to Scotland during the Great Cause. Which was when one of Scotland’s kings died (Alexander somebody I think) there was no one to succeed him. So the bishops (who were dead powerful at that time for some weird reason) asked King Edward I of England to help them choose – which was always going to be a bad idea! Edward had to chose between John Balliol and Robert de Brus (Robert the Bruce’s grandfather). He chose Balliol and de Brus’ supporters lost all their land and stuff. But then Edward wanted Balliol to fight against the French, but instead, Balliol sided with the French and Edward got really mad and invaded Scotland. He was heading to Berwick-on-Tweed and was going to kill everyone there. So I went back to warn them all…

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/time-travelling-on-a-train/

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/the-english-are-coming/

We had to go to a climbing wall place to find Alex, cos he’s well into climbing – which was awesome. We met Alex and he was really cool and SHARP even sent us on a mission together:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/double-agents/

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-real-pirates-of-the-caribbean/

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/rescuing-the-pirates-of-the-caribbean/

And then it was the Olympics – having the Olympics in Britain was so cool! We watched loads of it in Edinburgh, and when we got home. I was gutted I couldn’t see all of the Paralympics cos I had to go back to school for the last bits of it. But we did manage to get tickets to see BMX racing – I ended up writing loads of stuff about the Olympics:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/category/olympics/

That summer was the best ever! But then things started getting weird again: There was another STRAP time traveller, Sarah. STRAP had found someone way too young to time travel, cos it messes up your bone growth if you’re under 12 or 13 or something, and they’d put her in loads of danger too.

So I went on another mission to find another time traveller who was in danger! This all happened around November time:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/11/

December was much quieter, I was learning some awesome stuff at school and thinking about entering a competition for next year:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/theres-no-way-mum-and-dad-will-let-me-do-this-is-there/

Plus SHARP were starting to use my blog as a way to contact other time travellers – there’s loads of people reading my blog, all over the word – I’ve had about 2,500 hits in total – I wonder If any of those readers are time travellers too?

Then to top the year off, SHARP gave me an awesome Christmas present, I went back to the first ever football match, which was on boxing day in 1860. It was a bit weird really, but still dead interesting.

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/first-ever-football-match-boxing-day-1860/

What’s crazy though is I get loads of hits on the one they sent me on last year, the Christmas Truce match in 1914 during World War I.  That was unbelievable!

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/christmas-truce-1915-i-was-there/

So all that happened in just one year!

I wonder what 2013 will bring. Oh, and my New Year’s resolution? To find more time travellers and go on loads of awesome missions – bring it on!!!!

There’s Another Time Traveller Out There! Another One!

All the time travelling in Edinburgh over the summer was starting to catch up with me. Kaz said they don’t normally send travelers on missions close together cos it can get too addictive and cos it doesn’t give you chance to recover. So I guess this is the come down from it all. Blurgh!

I’ve never had Time Slip this bad before. It’s like you feel sick and dizzy and it’s really hard to think clearly. If there’s too much light, or sound, or movement, then it’s like your brain gets really overwhelmed. That’s why I’d spent most of the this half-term week lurking in my room. I wanted to shake it off before my Mum, or even worse – Jenny – knew I wasn’t feeling well.

I couldn’t stop thinking about STRAP and how much danger they’d put Alex in, I can’t believe they sent him back in time knowing he’d have to climb a mountain without any safety equipment, what a good job he’s really skilled! He could have died.

I opened up my laptop to see if Alex had emailed or sent a facebook message when the screen went totally white. I started to panic for a moment and then realized it was just SHARP making contact: A message from Kaz flashed onto the screen.

Standing by for a message from the future. Standard.

<A ten-year-old girl from your area is to be sent back to the 19^th century by STRAP without proper precautions. Stand by.>

More text flooded the screen but the dizzy feeling was back and the letters just danced around my vision. I tried hard to focus but it was no good.  I got up and wandered over to the window and did a gnome count. It didn’t take long to notice the two gnomes playing cricket had moved to the front of the lawn and the penguin gnome was now sat under their front windowsill. And if you’re wondering what I’m going on about, here’s the full story about the gnomes:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/gnomes/

Even though it’s totally freezing outside now, I opened the window for a bit of fresh air. All that gnome counting had cleared my head and when I returned to the computer the screen was illuminated with a new message from Kaz:

<We have detected a lot  of STRAP activity in your area. At first we thought they might be trying to get to you, but we got a very clear message today that the target was a ten-year-old girl called Sarah. We didn’t get the rest of her name though it might have begun with an ‘L’.>

I don’t understand SHARP’s technology but all I have to do is type back and although I can’t see what I’m writing – they pick it up. I don’t like that I can’t check what I’ve written before I’ve sent it – what if I spell something wrong? They might think I’m really stupid, or a clumsy typer.

Anyway, we communicated this way for a while. I couldn’t believe that STRAP were using kids as young a ten. Kaz said that it’s really dangerous and could mess up her bone growth and also her physiology. He started talking about serotonin and brain synapses and I got totally lost for a while.

He said it was really important I try to find her before they send her on a mission. But the only clues I have to go on are that she’s called Sarah, lives within 10 miles of me, her last name begins with an  L and she might be involved with a local leisure centre – possibly to do with swimming.

To be honest I wasn’t hopfeul – at all! There were about 5 girls named Sarah just in my year at school. I did some quick maths and worked out that that would mean that there’s about 35 people named Sarah at my school, there’s 16 schools within a 10 mile radius of my house – that’s 560 potential Sarahs. And there’s 7 leisure centres. And Kaz wasn’t even sure about the 10 mile thing.

Thinking about the possible amount of people called Sarah in my area boggled my mind and the Time Slip dizziness started creeping back in. I lay down for a while until Jenny shouting up the stairs pierced the calm.

“Tea’s ready, Danny!”
“Down in a sec,” I shouted and stood up as slowly as possible and went down quickly so they wouldn’t suspect anything was up.

But I needn’t have bothered. When I got downstairs the three of them were huddled around the TV waiting for a news report about the discovery of a Viking helmet or something. There was no way Dad was going to miss this, his university was hoping to take possession of it for analysis. But first they had to wait for all the other local news  – a post-office robbery, an award-winning restaurant, a scandal at a care home and then something made me sit up to attention, like I’d been jabbed in the side with a pin.

A girl with short, blonde hair was standing inside a leisure centre talking to the camera about swimming and at the end the interviewer said:

“Well thank you Sarah Lacey for answering our questions about the Swim For Life course.”

Could it be the same Sarah SHARP needed me to find. But I couldn’t tell which pool in particular it was.

I ate as fast as I could and made out I had loads of science homework to do and needed to research on my laptop. Jenny was giving Mum and Dad a blow-by-blow account of every lesson she had at school and who were the best people to sit next to, so they didn’t really notice me leave.

When I got upstairs I messaged Kaz straight away and said I thought I’d seen the Sarah they were after on the telly. I’d done a bit of digging and found out that this course was only on at three possible leisure centres. I text Mark and got him to help me out on my secret mission to the 3 different leisure centres next Saturday morning – it was easy really – I just told him there was a girl I fancied. I didn’t tell him we’d have to pretend to go on three different swimming courses and cycle to each them all in one morning. I hope he’s feeling fit!