In which I am self-indulgently reminiscent. Again.

It's A-level results week.  I still find it hard to think back to the day I got my A-level results (first attempt) with anything other than a chilly twinge of embarrassment.

I also find it hard to come to terms with the fact that I took my A-levels almost 30 years ago.  Lord above, how did I get to be this old, eh?  In my head I'm still a sprightly youngster, not a grouchy middle-aged woman with a knackered back and bifocals.

But results.

Back when I was a youngster, you had to go into the school to collect them.  The headmistress sat in her office, and handed them to you to read whilst she sat and watched your reaction.  She, of course, had already seen them.

I imagine it was a satisfying and cheering job for her, at least when she was dealing with the girlie swots who had got their predicted brilliant results and thus secured a place at the top University of their choice.

My school was not one of the ones which regularly sent girls to Oxbridge, but they did have a small group who were expected to get places at Exeter and Durham and Cardiff and other such second tier universities. They were the girls who took Latin and Italian as additional subjects while the rest of us were sent to the art class to learn to weave terrible pictures out of bits of string and nails hammered into fibreboard.

I remember that coterie of girls as being very short (but to be fair, most of the other girls at school seemed very short, as I was - and still am - significantly taller than the average female) with pale, earnest faces, neatly-pressed school uniforms, glasses and overly expensive shoes. One of them wore a pair of boots which, it was whispered in class, her mother had paid £150 for.  Bear in mind this was back in 1983, and the majority of her peers were wearing Clarks desert boots or sandals to school.

Also, they all used to sit at the front in class.  Every lesson.  Every classroom.  We kept the same configuration of who sat where almost without modification for the entire 7 years I was at that school.  Multiple changes of classroom, teacher, classmates, subject, and we still all retained the same positions relative to one another.

There were several girls in my class - for all those years - that I don't think I ever spoke to.  I didn't sit near them in lessons, we didn't spend time together at lunch or break-time, and as I was appalling at all manner of sports and games I was hardly ever on a sports team with them.  I can't imagine that now.  Spending so many hours a day with the same group of people in a small room, yet failing to interact with an entire chunk of the group.

Were all schools like that?

Looking back now, if I had spent more time sitting at the front in class, paying attention, and less time sitting at the left hand side at the back, idly staring out of the window, I might have passed more exams.

Some classes were allowed to put posters on the walls.  I used to hate sitting in certain lessons with dozens of tatty pictures of The Police and Adam and the Ants, torn from Smash Hits and Jackie magazine, plastered all over the walls around the blackboard.

I know it's probably wrong of me to try and shift some of the blame for my own idleness, but I also feel that if some of the teachers had been less keen on fostering up the nascent talent of the "good" girls at the front, the rest of us might have done a bit better.

Maths, for example.  I can't remember how many times my maths teacher shook her head sadly at me, saying "But you're top of the class in English.  Why are you doing so badly in MY class?"  When I shrugged in embarrassment and annoyance, she'd hand back my maths book, covered in reproachful comments in red pen, and return to the front of the class to continue encouraging her little gaggle of star pupils, leaving  the rest of us to carry on staring out of the windows, drawing pictures on our rough books and exchanging hilarious notes with one another.

God, we must have been tiresome.

Anyhoo.  Getting back to the results.  I can still remember the exasperated tone with which the headmistress said "No-one else in the ENTIRE SCHOOL has had results like you, Lucy."  She did not mean it as a compliment.

Turns out you can't just walk into an exam room, pick a selection of questions more or less at random, write for three hours about whatever occurs to you based on a few key words, and get a decent grade.  Who knew?

I passed two exams with flying colours, well, with A grades - we didn't have the fancy A* thing they have nowadays, pah, kids, they don't know they're born etc etc etc - and failed the other two horribly.  I mean really horribly.  One grade up from the "didn't bother to turn up to sit the exam" horribly.

It was a bit of a shock.  I had genuinely imagined that it would all be alright in the end, and that my native wit, charm, delightful smile and good teeth would ensure I passed with the grades I needed to get a place at any University I fancied, and that a few short weeks after being given my exam results (and possibly some sort of medal) I'd be on my way to a new life as a Student.

Finding out that not only was I NOT going to University like all my friends, but that I was also going to have to go and resit those two subjects after an extra year at the local technology college was like the proverbial cold shower.

Not that it taught me much except that getting a nasty shock is, well, nasty.


So, a year or so of attending the local college, along with working at a local tea shop as a waitress, as I wasn't doing enough hours at college to be eligible for any kind of Government benefits, and THEN I got good enough results to get a place in tertiary education.

Mind you, having taken two attempts to pass my A levels meant that once again I received a slew of rejection letters from all the Universities I had applied to, and was left to the future horrors of Clearing. Lord, that was stressful enough the first time round.  I think the only offer I got was from the University of Ulster, to study politics.  I declined, having already enrolled to resit the A levels.

This time, however, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and went to talk to the Citizens Advice Bureau.  The young lady in there was attentive and kind, and when I had finished my (probably) rambling and anxious explanation - I was too lazy and careless to pass my exams first time round! I've passed them now, but I'm no longer a good bet for a University!  What do I do? - she said:

"Ok.  Well, I went to King Alfred's College in Winchester.  They were great, I'll give them a ring and see if they have any places left."

And she did.

And they did.

And two days later, a kind mate took me to Winchester on the back of his motorbike for my interview, where I was offered a place on one of their non-teacher training degree courses.  And three days after that I left home to go to college.

Talk about cutting it fine.

I'd like to say the whole experience made me a better person, but I don't think it did. It did make me take deadlines rather more seriously though, and I never assumed I'd automatically pass anything, or qualify for anything, or be selected for anything again.

Is there a moral to the story?  No.  But I am comforted by the thought that there is always something else that can be done; there is no need to consider one set of dodgy exam results as the End of Everything.  I mean, just look at me.

Actually, maybe best not.

Dedicated follower of fashion

Went to see my lovely Mum today, and she is much, much better. Hurrah!

Mr WithaY and I went into town for a wander about and to pick up a few things, as it was such a beautiful day.

There were loads of buskers out, including a lad with a truly fine singing voice, albeit rather quiet, a man playing a harp, and a chap playing some mean slide guitar. We watched the slide guitarist for a bit, and I said "I wish I could do that."

Mr WithaY, instead of riposting with "Give him a biscuit and he might let you," instead opined that I ought to buy a slide* and thus improve my picking no end.

"Why would having a slide improve my guitar picking?" I asked him, interested.

"Well, it just would," he replied, in his 'I can't believe you're questioning me when I am so obviously correct' voice.

When pressed, he had no logical reason for this position, but instead reverted to his fallback argument of "Well, it would just make you funkier." Which, frankly, he uses far too much, and I have no answer to.

We walked down to the motorcycle shop and he drooled over a huge Kawasaki tourer, only five grand, ooh, let's get three.

We wandered into the teeny arcade opposite the bike shop and saw a disturbing slideshow in the window of the nail bar place. All the hands and feet in it looked horribly deformed, like an advert for arthritis relief medication or hammer toe surgery. They all had gorgeous painted nails, though.

We had a damn fine lunch in the Chinese. £6.50 each for three courses. Bargain.

We saw two old women with pushchairs, each containing a big fat dog, cushions and an assortment of toys. Small expensive dogs in elegant handbags I can sort of understand. Huge scabby-looking tongue-lolling dogs laying in dilapidated pushchairs I can't.

Mind you, when every chic fashionista has one, boy will I feel stupid.

I bought a huge jar of giant chocolate buttons from Montezuma's. Marvellous. We sat and ate some whilst watching "Live at the Apollo", in which Jack Dee was entertaining and the other comedians weren't.

On the way home we stopped off in Salisbury and went to have supper in ASK. I had butterfly king prawns as a starter, probably the nicest I have ever had. Very simple, very tasty.

A small group of teenagers came and sat at the table next to us. One of the girls was celebrating her sixteenth birthday so they were all dressed up to the nines. The boys were plastered in hair gel and Lynx, draped in huge cheap bling, the girls were all giggly and pretty in their best going-out clothes.

It was sweet, but boy did it make me feel old.

Over dinner we** made plans for re-landscaping the front garden, and discussed which European cities were likely to get a visit from us for a long weekend this summer.

All good, positive, life-affirming things. Hurrah.




*for my guitar, not to play on in the back garden. That sounds more fun, frankly.

**Me and Mr WithaY. I wasn't interested in the teenagers' opinions.

Mrs Fixit

Oh great.

My car is in a reasonably low tax bracket, I get about 40mpg and it is a low emissions vehicle (according to the garage which MoT'd it). Yet it still gets lumped into the "evil gas guzzling Chelsea Tractor" bracket by people.

Gah.

So anyway. Teenagers. They sleep a lot, don't they? And they don't say much, do they?

When I think back (a long, long way back) to when I was 14, I remember being cheerful and outgoing, chatty and sociable, sunny in nature and willing, if not eager, to help out around the house. The rest of my family might remember me differently, but they're all wrong.

Eldest Niece and Mr WithaY went to Bournemouth yesterday to check out the Aquarium*. Apparently it was a bit disappointing, but there was plenty of wildlife on the beach, by all accounts. And they had a nice lunch in an Italian restaurant, so it wasn't a wasted trip.

Eldest Niece came home with a temporary tattoo, a present from her doting uncle.

I had to go to work, which entailed a 70 mile round trip in the car to the office for a morning meeting, driving back past the house, then an hour train ride in the opposite direction to the Bristol office for another meeting in the afternoon. I was exhausted when I got home.

Still, off work today and Monday, so a nice long weekend. If the weather picks up a bit we might have a barbecue or something.

My plans for today involve trying to replace a fuse in the plug of my clothes dryer thingy. Not a tumble dryer, one of those clothes rail things that gets warm so you can hang stuff on it when it's too wet to put outside on the line.

We've only had it 12 years. Tch. Already broken.

The mole is still there, incidentally. He keeps going quiet so we think he's gone, but then the next day we see loads of fresh tunnels all over the lawn.

Bastard.

Our next door neighbours had a mole in their back garden, so I asked them how they got rid of it.

They tried poison (no luck), smoke grenades(unsuccessful), traps (failed) and the sonic repeller (disappointing). I asked how they finally got rid of the little blighter.

Apparently, they waited very quietly by a molehill till they saw movement and then dispatched it with a garden fork.

So, maybe Mr WithaY's low-tech longbow arrow might be the best solution after all.



*Like I said, she's having the time of her life with us.