Random Pieces Of Writing That Pop Out Of Nowhere

A Sunday In Wales

For the annual school Eisteddfod last year, our teacher handed us the title 'A Sunday In Wales' and let us have at it.

At one-oh-three in the morning of a thundery Sunday you finally bring yourself the shut the lid of your laptop, dry eyes blinking owlishly at the sudden darkness. You've been sitting there, huddled in your partially lit room, surrounded by pillows and a thick charcoal quilt, for over four hours with very few bathroom and water-fetching breaks. Having returned from your friend's house a scant five hours previous – where you and five of your other cohorts had a homemade Mexican dinner (you still cringe at the mention of the 'refried beans') – you're unbearably tired, despite not having done much of anything on Saturday. Despite your lethargy, you continued to battle through a blurry skype call with your two friends, slurring most of your words and giggling at nothing. But that was Saturday, and this is Sunday, and you can hear the rain pelting itself against your window. It's shaping up to be a rather regular Sunday for you, it seems.

Having finally dragged yourself even further beneath your blankets, you carefully – but apparently not carefully enough – scrape the contact lenses from your now watering eyes, before curling up and revelling in the relief of actual pitch darkness. After a few more minutes of your brain spinning on overdrive and creating countless overly-complicated and ultimately impossible scenarios, you slip into blissful oblivion.

Unfortunately for you, at eight-forty-two the next morning you wake up before your alarm. A true tragedy. You roll over and away from where your orange cased iPod lies on the bedside table, scowling slightly. Just like last Sunday then. As it is, you roll over after what seems like enough time has passed, only to find that it's only eight-fifty-one. With a despondent sigh of someone whose fate is sealed a single pale hand pushes its way out from the recesses of your quilt and into the chilly air. For some strange reason, unlike the rest of your house, your room descends to near-sub-zero levels in the morning when you're alone.

Your thumb lazily slides its way across screen as you blearily make your may to the kindle app, the small device held as far from you face as you can bear before it becomes blurry. Settling into the book you were reading last night you wile away the next fifty minutes, and by nine-forty you're eternally thankful to past-you, who thought it a good idea to shower last night and not this morning. Rolling – it's more of a slithering motion, really - your way from beneath the covers and down the side of the bed you almost land on your laptop, placed hazardously on the floor by your bed by drowsy-you early this morning. What an idiot.

Somehow you manage to dress yourself into something presentable – some darkly coloured Doctor Who t-shirt with an equally dark Green Day hoodie over the top, navy jeans and the rattiest, most loved pair of Converse in your collection – before you make your way around the room, stumbling over the piles of organised chaos that becomes of your floor after attempting to sort through your school work and catching both thigh and hip against bed frames and desk corners. You tug open crème curtains, roll up the snowy black-out blind, and flip the normal-shaped, black-out window blinds open, before finally opening your window on a latch. You daren't open it more, knowing that October, and the long lasting summer you've had, brings with it large, home-invading spiders. Your bed, coated in a grey-scale depiction of the New York skyline, is made in record time and as pin-perfect and crease-less as your mum likes it.

At ten on the dot you hear your two sheep-like dogs barking and you know that your dad's here. Stumbling down the stairs, a bag bounces against your thigh, filled with all the schoolwork you know perfectly well you won't do. One trek through the wonderful Welsh weather and you find yourself damp and the way to Caernarfon with your dad, exchanging pleasantries and sarcastic remarks.

After a drive through the downpour, filled with relaxed conversation where you fill your father in on the week you've had as well as giving him as many of the random and useless facts you've learnt since you've last seen him as you can recall, pausing every now and then when a song on the radio – classical, for this journey – catches your attention, you reach your dad's terraced house. Another dip in the sky-pool outside and you're making your way indoors, tripping over that general clutter that clogs the hallway.

The rest of the morning is spent in a similar fashion to the journey here, only this time it moves from you sitting on the kitchens steps while he prepares the bacon sandwiches you always have for Sunday brunch, a cup of sweet tea cradled in your hands as you talk about your friends and family and all the new books you've read, to the living-room, where you commandeer the beat-up old sofa and dad takes refuge on the floor with a pile of pillows, as you both eat breakfast and you talk to him about your lessons and all the new things you've learnt in tandem with flipping between wonderful, mind-numbing cartoons to the beautiful medley of science and explosions of Mythbusters.

Once you're done eating he takes away the plates and puts whatever meat you're having for dinner tonight – though you usually eat in the afternoon – in that new Halogen oven he's bought, and you delve back into your book – this time on your precious laptop.

Your father returns with fresh mugs of tea and you settle into comfortable silence. Often time's he would suggest a walk of some sort, as usually you'd go down to the local Wetherspoons for breakfast due to the oven breaking down a few weeks ago. Today, however, is not that sort of day. Despite this you'd usually decline; Sundays, in your opinion, are made for lazing about and enjoying yourself. Sundays are Dad Days. You also don't want to weave through the frightening amount of old people that amass on Sundays at the crumbling church at the top of the hill. No, after that one time you wore a pair of, granted, very threatening boots – with buckles and leather and practically screaming 'teenage delinquent' – and went down to Farmfoods for some milk and bread, and got a multitude of disapproving stares, you don't really like going outside on Sundays.

As unfortunate as it, five o'clock rolled around earlier than you'd like and, having had dinner already – lots of pork today, seasoned with sage, as well as mashed potatoes and thick gravy – you're all fit to go home. The ride home is quieter than the rest of the day, as it always is, and once you roll back into your little suburbia – for once free of the children that usually crawl the roads, crowding like ants, standing in the middle of the road and simply staring blankly at the cars that roll towards them as if playing a game of one-sided Chicken. Idiots. Your father's almost hit a few himself; as has every other driver that ventures into this obstacle course of a road.

You wave at your father from the door, squinting through the rain. Entering your house you're accosted by the duo you left this morning, and are forced to wade your way through what feels like a small sea of jumping dogs to make it to the stairs. Once up there you settle into your afternoon-nightly routine: throw bag in corner –carefully– before removing most outer layers; make way across dark landing to the bathroom; sit for half an hour and read; take an actual shower; go back and get changed while trying not to be unnerved by the staring posters on the wall; sort through the homework meant in by tomorrow and lay it on the bed before ignoring it; waste several hours on the laptop while also having a Skype call with your merry band of misfits.

By this point it's around nine and your mother's home from her shift at the hospital. You greet her before the threat of her wrath pushes you into actually doing your work. An hour or two later and you return to your laptop, if only to bid your friends good-bye and reassure you thunder-fearing friend that they'll be fine – even when you yourself are a little concerned over the thunder that caused your house to physically shake. Another half hour of reading is done before you finally succumb to the lethargy and curl deeper under your blanket, dreading the next day as you know perfectly well that you'll be sleep deprived and yawning. Ah well, for you it's really just another Sunday in Wales.