BEDA #6 - The Elephant In The Room, The Hole In The Ceiling And The Boy Who Cried Asbestos

I am getting into a habit of posting these after midnight and calling it the BEDA of (technically) the day before. Oh well, it will be a quirk of my BEDA posts. One, I have no doubt, all my millions of readers have come to laugh at with affection most people reserve for elderly relatives.

I want to talk about the big elephant in the room (and by room I mean my life) but I want to start by ranting about my real life. For a change. Because, let's be honest, what's the point of a blog if not to occasionally get angry and feel like you're doing something constructive with it when, in reality, the only people who will read the post will be people who, due to friendship or familial commitments, are predisposed to agree with you?

Anyway, my bathroom ceiling has become a massive saga. We started with a leak coming through our bathroom light fitting, which spread across the ceiling and down the wall. We had one builder, who came in looking like an extra from Dawn of the Dead, and fiddled with the toilet upstairs. But nothing stopped. So someone came and bashed a massive hole in our bathroom ceiling and pointed at a leak. Thanks for that. The insurance company then got funny about doing the work and we've been waiting for days. Meanwhile an electrician has come and switched the fuse off so none of our ceiling lights work. Today, someone came and basically refused to touch anything because it the man upstairs' responsibility (despite the fact they are going to be billing his insurance company) and then, despite the fact it is the least urgent part of the job, offered to take our ceiling down. And then, when he saw some Artex we plastered over years ago, cried asbestos despite the fact no builder we have ever had has mentioned it before.

And now we're back to fiddle-with-the-toilet builder to come back tomorrow to fix the pipe. Thank God I'm going to be out all day at Summer In The City.

Right, elephant in the room before my laptop dies or my dad wakes up (having fallen asleep next to me watching Old Grey Whistle Test footage) from my tapping of keys. The Elephant in the Room is... well, Cambridge. Or it would be the elephant in the room if people abided by my rule of no talking about it which no one has. But anyway, it's there. I've been going over options and e-mailing them and generally getting swept up in the prospect of going there which I've been trying desperately hard not to do.

I know, I know. They wouldn't have given me an offer with the Spanish grade I had if they weren't at least maybe going to let me in without the perfect grades most other people going will undoubtedly have. And, let's be honest here, of all the people who applied to Cambridge, I wanted it the least at the time of sending UCAS off. I thought it silly to pin my hopes on, thought that there were plenty of great universities who had none of the pressure intrinsically connected to Oxbridge. Including Exeter where I would be more than happy to go. It's awesome.

But I have to be honest, with results day only a few weeks away, I am realising that I do want to go. A lot. And maybe my reluctance has less to do with the fact I might not get in (which people, despite your sweet protests to the contrary, is a possibility) and more to do with the fact I'm not sure if I'm enough for it.

I'm not going to be overly-humble now - I know I'm clever. I have a string of exam results to prove to me I'm not stupid and if I get in, a panel of people who look at some of the brightest brains in the world will have decided I am, in fact, good enough.

But there's lots of stuff I don't know that somehow I feel I *should* know. Maybe I'm overestimating Oxbridge undergraduates but a part of me thinks that, to get in, you should be able to spell 'include' without spellcheck (which I can never do) or know when the French Revolution was without looking it up, should know more about The Peasants Revolt and less about Old Grey Whistle Test footage and gay soaps from Germany.

I don't know. I think even if I get in I won't be convinced I am good enough until I graduate and even then I'll do that annoying thing where I talk about 'scraping my result'.

Maybe all this is just fear of going from a big fish in small pond to a small fish in a massive pond full of people who, by a lot of measures, probably know a lot more about my subject than me.

And despite all this, and all my doubts about the grades and the snobbery and antiquated nature of the system, really want to go. I want, essentially, an academic experience from a university before anything else. I want to be stretched beyond my imagination and I want to read until I want to burn every history book in the world.

I want to get in. And even if, on the day, I act nonchalant, I will be very disappointed if I don't.

PS: The title of this post - three of the worst titles for children's books ever?

Well...

I'm doing this now with the foresight to see a Christmas/New Year post might be more appealing. Besides, I've been watching more QaFUSA and I want to officially add it to the Gay Update (drum roll not inculded).

(Checking iCal to see what I have been doing...) Ah, yes. Been quite busy actually. So, I chaired a couple of debates between Hampstead and QPCS on the first Friday of December which was quite fun. Enjoyed being in authority (and we won two out of three as well, which is not bad). Then spent that night at Emma's having our belated-and-we're-not-even-American Thanksgiving dinner, which is essentially an excuse to eat a Roast dinner. And it was almost perfect (if a bit cold) and expect them to be up on my Flickr tonight. Very funny night, I even used the candle my teacher gave me...

Went to see Licotine the next day, and they were very good. The more I see them the more they start to look like a band: and I like how many times we've seen them. We can really see how they've matured. And we saw Charlie, which was lovely.

Then the next Thursday we went to Cambridge on a school trip which was AMAZING. Beautiful place to live and giving out the free Prospectus' really helped. It wa scary though, to think this time next year I will have applied to universities. Well, that's a lovely Christmas thought.

Stayed at Alex's for our kind of Christmas meal with Karimah, me, Charlotte, Ed and Charlie. Watched Peep Show and ate food for the first half, and the addition of Charlie did change our conversation slightly. Charlotte's Tweet perfectly described it: 'Gone from dicussing porn to Tesco to Post Offices to economics to Boris Johnson to America to Obama to religion, very interesting'. Lovely evening, even if I didn't get to sleep to 5!

Cerificate Evening on Tuesday was actually a really nice night. Got my GCSEs, which feels a lot less scary than I always imagined, and I did not trip even in my immense (!) heels. Nice to see everyone (Jim, Charlie again, Jack...) and the Year Book is hilarious! Wish more people from Y had been there though...

And, last but by no stretch of the imagination least, TWILIGHT! Well a packed cinema (literally) and a fight for seats later... it was not bad. I mean, some of it was. The skin shining, the scene on the bed and the ending felt a bit like it did in the book; anticlimatic. But some of it was very good: they had the humour, both family dynamics and the style sort of worked. So... better than I would have betted on.

GAY UPDATE: You know you've been waiting for it. And again, very little to say. Ollian has been even quieter and I get the impression it'll take more than Jo Weil's return to give them a storyline. And Hollyoaks is virtually out of the picture now (until the Ravi reveal *yawn*) unless Spike returns. BROTHERS AND SISTERSwas amazing... very sweet Kevin and Scotty scenes with dialouge and family connections that let it win! But I am not giving up on Nuke... and I have a feeling it'll win over this Christmas period (considering it is the only thing airing, it shouldn't be so hard). Very sweet scenes coming up, and Brian and Luke are being given the right scenes for the first time. And QaFUSA is amazing! I love it, despite the poor quality of the video. The scenes which are identical to QAF are hard to watch, because they are not as good, but the ones that are different are truly moving. Thinking about it, current spoilers of ATWT suggest it may win!

So, merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

xXx