Back from London! It was Kat's birthday present - for her and a friend to go for three days, sightseeing and a theatre visit included. It was a really enjoyable visit (with the added bonus of getting me a break from my family, who are slowly driving me nuts)!

 

We didn't leave 'til about midday on Monday - partly because we got cheaper train tickets if we travelled after 11 o'clock, but mainly 'cos Kat and I both had jobs to do beforehand and, well, we both still needed to pack.. Only once we got on the train did we actually work out what we'd put in our bags. I'd overpacked, bringing a heavy CD player, a couple more tops than I needed (and none of the right kind for the weather), and my fleecy pyjamas which weigh a ton; Kat had underpacked, not bringing a jumper, a camera, more than one change of any kind of top, or indeed any lunch. But hey, a combination of shops and rather expensive baggage storage came to our rescue, leaving us to enjoy our time relatively unencumbered by problems like having too much/too little stuff!

 

What did we do with our time? Well... after dealing with routine stuff like purchasing 3-day tube tickets (and discovering that Kat's argued with all the barriers! Neh-neh, mine worked!), we caught a train to Harrods to mingle with the stinking rich and not-so-famous! I think it's the sort of place that you have to go to once, just to prove that it actually exists, though all we could afford to buy was some rather tasty fudge from a deli counter in the food hall! You could just tell who was there as a curious tourist and who was actually there to do their shopping - but when it came down to it, I decided that I wouldn't want to shop there. 75p for a little bit of jam with your £3.50 scone? I don't think so! And walking through the clothes section, they may have been designer garments but quite frankly I wouldn't be seen dead wearing any of 'em. For the most part, they were 'orrible!

 

The rest of the day was spent wandering - round Hyde Park mostly, where we stumbled upon the memorial fountain for Diana; then through into Kensington Gardens, up to the nearest tube station, and around Oxford Street. Normal shops! Though obviously the more expensive end of normal shops - the LaSenza sale had finished and the top in Monsoon for £7.50 didn't fit.. *sighs* Then back on the tube to pick up our bags and make our way over to Kat's aunt's house in Staines, where we were staying. (Notes on this part of the trip: nice house, really lovely family, shower fit for Lilliputians, towels fit for Lucy-length people :) )

 

Tuesday. After a leisurely start, first on the agenda was the Imperial War Museum. It's the first time I've been there - I think Kat had been once before - so we decided that it would be best to concentrate on a small section and do it properly, rather than try to see everything and do none of it properly. We spent our time learning about the Second World War - the machinery, the Home Front, and the effect the war had on children, as well as the (*American accent time*) 'Blitz Experience'. It was very interesting, but somehow.. well. I always feel slightly uneasy in that sort of museum. People need to know about what happened. For anyone caught up in war, past or present, civilian or soldier, there is a tale that needs to be told, not least so that we can learn from it and try to prevent more suffering from happening. There is a wealth of social history, technological history and geographical history involved in any war that is as valuable as from any other time period, potentially moreso. Sometimes I can't help feeling, though, that the whole thing becomes a bit, well, commercial. I don't mean that in that people try to make money out of it as the Imperial War Museum is in fact free. I just mean that it becomes a bit of a tourist attraction for people like us to visit, gawp at, take a few photos then move on to the next thing. (Hmm. I don't feel like I'm expressing myself very coherently. I know what I mean...) That said, I did enjoy our time there, and would like to return to see some of the other exhibitions at some point in the future.

 

It was here that Cat joined us, having travelled down to come with us to the theatre in the evening. After a quick venture into WW1 territory and the 'Trench Experience', we decided that we'd had enough of war for the time being, and made our way back to the tube. Next stop, Camden - and we were impressed! We'd heard of the market, obviously, but we hadn't realised what a treasure the area could be for clothes shopping! There was a gorgeous skirt on a market stall which I nearly bought, except that there was nowhere to try it on and on closer inspection there was some loose stitching around the waist.. and a gorgeous top which I did try on (in a shop), except that it wasn't quite, ahem, accommodating enough in certain places.. and gorgeous dresses which I could never have justified buying, even though they weren't unfairly priced.. You get the idea! Kat did buy a t-shirt to solve her clothes crisis, and then we wandered around for a bit window-shopping, until it was time to find food and to make our way over to Shaftesbury Avenue (dahling!) for our treat of the visit - 'Les Misérables'!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 Been a lil busy over the past couple of days, to put it mildly. Not on anything useful like contacting the Student Loans Company or going to the bank, mind you. Other, more interesting stuff :D *the ostrich approach always works*

 

Friday was kinda bad, at least to start with. After spending the first part of the day mooching around in pyjamas and revelling in it, I had my driving test early afternoon. I failed. Annoyingly, the major fault came just two minutes from the end, at my *favourite* roundabout in Kings Heath. I'd seen the car in question - I'd judged it safe to go, the examiner evidently hadn't. End of story. To be fair to the examiner, he couldn't not fail me for it, but I really could have done with it being on a different day.. I don't mean that I would have reacted any differently at that particular roundabout, I just wouldn't have burst into tears when telling Ron the news if I hadn't been feeling quite so crap already. What is so incredibly annoying is that the next available slot at Kings Heath is mid-October, by which time I will have gone up North, so I've got to wait 'til Christmas at the earliest before I can try again - the risk, of course, when I had to have the test postponed in the first place. I know in theory I could check another centre, but I wouldn't know any of the roads and.. well, I'd still rather do Kings Heath. Ah well.

 

It was in this frame of mind that I went out to Kat's for her birthday. Having already decided to hang being teetotal for the immediate future, I had one bottle of Peach Archers Aqua (? I think.. about 5%?) down before we set out for town. And I'd been shown how to use the bottle opener! :) 'Twas a good night! Dividing our time between Cat's bar and then a local nightclub (*feels big and grown up*), much alcohol was consumed (well, for me, anyway) and much dancing and gossip was to be had! Getting back home at quarter past three in the morning, while not actually that pleasant the next day, felt suitably decadent for celebrating an 18th birthday in the middle of the holidays! I do have a few photos, but I will probably send them to Kat to use as she sees fit *looks enquiringly in the direction of Northfield*. I look awful in most of them - I have a nasty feeling that I may have gained rather a lot of weight recently...

 

Then a rather unpleasant wake-up call at eleven o'clock yesterday morning was necessary, as we needed to get to a village somewhere in the Cotswolds for Richard Jones' 60th birthday celebrations. I had 45 minutes in which to wake up, down a large amount of water, and transform myself from 'Brummie gal just got back from night on the town' to 'family friend, suitably attired and mannered to converse with Granny from Cheltenham'. Let's just say that I was still doing my make-up in the car when we arrived there.

 

The event itself - meal in hotel restaurant, bell ringing followed by tea in church hall, walk to village three-and-a-half miles away (ending in torrential downpour), and supper at a local inn - was sufficiently pleasant/quaint/traditional/obligatory to not be too taxing, which is just as well. Despite the fact that I'm not used to drinking alcohol, the four (or so!) drinks from the night before didn't leave me with a hangover as such, thankfully - but I was still living off adrenalin and my throat still felt/feels raw. I spent much of the day with Elisabeth, a Swiss girl of my age who has been staying with the Joneses, and is really really lovely! Her English puts my French to shame - not that it mattered in this instance, as coming from the outskirts of Zurich, her main language is Schweiz-Deutsche anyway. But it was particularly nice to have someone 'normal' to talk to - obviously Alice and Henry were having to 'mingle', as it were, and apart from a young Ecuadorian family, the party was basically all adults. I think that Richard had given people a quick, annotated resumé of who was going to be there; all these old biddies kept coming up to congratulate me on the fine achievement of studying Maths at Cambridge. Feeling rather more cheerful about affairs by this point, it gave me enormous pleasure to inform them that I had in fact been rejected two days ago, and to watch them squirm as they tried to dig themselves out of the hole that they had just created for themselves! Not that I'm sadistic or anything..!

 

 

On a not unrelated subject, have you ever felt like telling the government to grow up?

 

Just give the universities the bloody UMS scores..!

 

 

Not that I've got my mind on results at all.. that's reserved for the nightmares. :(

Anyhow!

 

French AS - B

 

Maths - A

 

Classics - A

 

 

Further Maths - A - hopefully!

 

STEP II - high 2 or low 1

 

 

 

 

What the...?!

 

 

*isn't liking the new shade of the background*

*or, particularly, the font*

*where's text formatting disappeared to?*

 

Hmm!