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Heads.
The coin clatters on the pavement.
Let’s go, let’s go. We are late, and they are angry again. Crawling the streets, they rumble and
fume, break-lights blinking through the haze. Clouds churn and simmer in a concoction of
sleet and smog. Late, late, late. There are people to chase and work to do, things to see and
we’re waiting for you. High-pitched squeals and low, grumbling growls snap into handheld
phones. Heels clatter on the tarmac and briefcases swing by, gone in a moment.
Heads.
A teetering double-decker floats past. It reads:
Orbit: tangy goodness. Now sugar-free, for the better you.
And high up on the front, glowing discreetly, the bus number: 9, Hammersmith. I mourn the
better me, hidden somewhere on the supermarket shelves, skulking in the sugar-free gum or
the low-fat yoghurt.
Heads.
Anna Karenina: in cinemas 7 September
I catch a glimpse of smouldering black eyes on the movie release banner, but I do not recog-
nise them. She won’t care. She is immortalised, younger than she will ever be, in a meticu-
lously airbrushed photograph on the side of a Route 48 bus.
Heads.
Prevent hair loss with Dr Young’s clinically proven formula.
A blonde crown of hair bobs by, humming so ly. Lie-la-lie. A question moulds itself slowly; let-
ters fall into words, arranging themselves into coherence; it rests on the tip of my tongue, and
lingers.
Heads.
There is a time for everything. A time to flip coins and a time to take coffee. Time to meet and
time to greet, and time to ask them the question that rubs itself on the roof of my mouth,
tickles my lips.
Tails.
Ophé
lia: The new fragrance by Heeley.
The swing of a dress, a hint of Ophelia. And for a moment, I am reflected in a bus window:
wispy grey hair, white flannel trousers, well-worn tweed jacket. But I am not Prince Hamlet,
nor was I ever meant to be.
I should have been a mussel, clinging to the rocky shore. A pair of moth wings, swept under
the carpet. The Fool; desperate to please, easy to deceive, a laughingstock, a spectacle, wrig-
gling and pitiable.
But I am just old; and you are too, at heart. Their voices may sing to you now, their city may
whirr and clunk, their faces will smile and their lights will glow and you will wink and live and
be, but we are all old in the end, and when the tide turns and the sun sets the Fool and the
Prince are buried side by side.
Eleni Courea
, 7Y
Autumnal day
Gold, tangerine shades of light
reflecting and flashing the edges of my day
like the leaves in an autumnal day.
But, at such times, the deep shining ochres, blue
and crimson red, are not filtering any light
but like smoke…
Nothing to do with leaves,
no golden shades of baked earth.
The smoke is creeping in my day,
Reflecting on us.
Andrea Christodoulides, 7G
I made black and poured the gold.
I cra ed brown and carved in silk.
I blasted red and crushed grey,
Touched white and made it rain.
I breathed out gusts and spring began.
My music swam and walked and flew,
Then died and woke, died and grew.
All so great, so gentle, so so .
Heaven bloomed.
But I took dust and made it dirt,
And it dri ed and slaughtered and burned.
And it manipulated me. It gave me words.
And things died and never woke.
Rajiv Hurhangee, 7Y
Little Prince
I met a blood-haired prince
With translucent skin
And hollow eyes
He was pretty and sad
Like a child without its blanket
Like satan without a human race
Like an old virgin
He offered me a knuckle necklace
Earrings of his teeth and bracelets of
his nails
He served his head upon a plate
And nothing ever tasted sweeter
His tongue was made of love
And honey flowed inside his veins
Instead of blood
But he kept singing inside my belly
And the music came pouring out my
eyes
In crystal globes
Of liquefied notes
Sometimes he screams
Because he longs to dance
Headless in a silver autumn dream
Then steel birds fall crashing dead
And noses start to bleed red
Rebecca Pericleous, 7B
Prufrock’s
Pocketful
of Mumbles
An example of A2 English
Literature coursework.
Candidates write a creative re-
sponse to the studied texts:
The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by
T. S. Eliot and Stoppard’s
Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern are Dead
.
A critical commentary exploring
the connection between the stud-
ied texts and their own work is
also submitted (not included here)
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