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I bought a dress today, a dress that deserves a "the", a dress with its own soundtrack (The Boy With the Arab Strap, by Belle and Sebastian, I was thinking), a dress that changes the entire way you think about clothes. It was twenty pounds, and from H&M, both things that are odd for me. If you care, it's very 1950s, red with white dots, and button-down. It's brilliant.

For one reason or another, it reminds me of a day in a summer, maybe two years ago, maybe not even that, when OtherRobert (ur, SWP member, friend of the family. Nineteen, I think) was doing some gardening for my dad in exchange for our old armchair, and I was sitting on the new one, reading Female Chauvinist Pigs for the first time, while August and Everything After played on the ancient stereo. Life makes its own soundtrack, and there is a song for everything.

My father is the "shalalala" at the beggining of Mr. Jones; my mother Out Of Time (by Blur).

Everyone has a song.

And I always listen to The Good, The Bad and The Queen when I blog.

(This is the most musical blog you will ever get from me. I accept that at least half of you will hate at least half of the sons mentioned. This is because I only listen with half my brain, according to John Baker, who I must e-mail.)

So today was the debates against the Jew's Free School (name recently changed from Jewish Free School, for obvious reasons.) The title is the results. Yay!

The year eights lost, but by barely anything. The motion was "This house would enforce the use of DNA as proof of identification". We had some good points, but so did they, sadly. What was really really odd in this debate was when they linked a DNA database with the discrimination and scapegoating of Jews during and before WW2. Ignoring that this is nonsense because one's religion is not in one's DNA at all, I was, and still am, amazed by the extent to which they sort of played up to the stereotype. It was odd, that's all, really.

My team- I was first speaker, Eli second, and Alice summarised- won our debate, on "This house would abolish anti-social behaviour orders".

The last debate was undoubtedly the best, and was won, by Giggy on first speaker, Pritesh on second, and Sarah summarising, by eighteen points. Let me say that again- eighteen points. Those guys rock, right?

Here's A Fact:
Every single one of the JFSers started their arguments with the same two sentences: "Good afternoon, Ladies, Gentlemen, Timekeeper, Madam Chairman, and learned opponents." This may be the Proper Way, but Christ.

Another thing:

Why all the emphasis on structure? The JFSers got tons of points for it, but all it is is "I am going to talk about A, B, and C. AAAA, BBBB, CCCC. I have now spoken about A, B, and C." And then the summarisers say "Today we have heard about A, B, and of course C." Why? I don't like it, personally. Neither does Eli or Alex. I mean, if it's done well, great. But it often really isn't, and then it really doesn't flow. It just doesn't sound good! It wastes time! Whatever happened to moving speeches? Why is it all structure, structure, structure? Is it really effective, or do people only get extra marks for it because all the pieces of paper have it written down? What do you people think?