Maybe starting the blog again was not the best of ideas, after only a few posts I am back in the habbit of not writing up about events as soon as they happen and thus this blog is going to be long and will cover the events of friday, saturday and Christmas day.. with a little forward look at the end. So that's warning you before you start reading and get bored. Maybe I should do seperate headings so that people can hone in on the exact bit they want to read. I think I will.

Friday

On friday I went first into Wimbledon to do some Christmas shopping, as you do a couple of days before the big day and I bought my sister a lovely little art set along with some completely useless no smoking stickers (one of the few advantages of writing a late blog I can write about the presents without fear of the surprise being ruined). I then met up with Phoebe and we went on to take a bus into sheen where I was to see where she was now living. The street leading up to her house looked well dodgy but the house itself was nice enough, looked very studenty, more so even than my house up in Essex, locks on all the bedroom doors, random posters all over the walls, a stolen street sign in the bathroom and what appeared to be blankets hanging over the windows instead of curtains. Her room though was quite large - at this point we had varied discussions with vegetarianism possibly the most in depth, and also consuming small amounts of alcohol. Soon enough it was late and we had decided to meet up with John.. well that was the plan until Phoebe decided to fall asleep, says a lot for my company, so I left and went to meet John - getting on the bus i was greeted with a lack of money on my oyster card so I had to get off again.. boo. SO I decided to walk, bad plan.. it was long and cold.. after much complaining John came and picked me up.

We first went to a pub called the Cocoanut, which was very odd, dark and dingy but we stayed and had a couple of beers, whilst John conversed with the locals who were having a party. In the early stages it was ok, 3 of them, 2 of us and there was a nice little conversation. But when the rest of the party folk turned up it was soon quite clear that we were not wanted there, the epitomy of which was John being called an obvious paedophile who should go away.. strangely enough John didn't think this a bad thing and still wanted to stay but I convinced him we should leave. We then went to another pub called the Cricketers which was a much nicer pub in my opinion, again we had a couple of pints but we realised that this was never going to be a big party night so we decided to call it a night at that point.. very dissapointing. Luckily Saturday was to be much more enjoyable.

Saturday

Saturday night was to be the second reunion, as Matt Bond was back, back from Surrey. I brought my good friend Ross along too and it was to be a great night. We headed down to berties bar. Again I had been drinking before I had left the house but not as much as the last time but still I feel I had a bit of a head start. There were very few seats in Berties so we all had to stand at first and proceeded to poach chairs and tables where we could. Eventually we all managed to sit down  together, by which time we had had a number of pints and also a few shots. The general conversations took part and then the idea of going out clubbing floated into the air.. although tempting, we decided time and money matters meant that it was probably not for us, so all apart from Dom stayed. Unfortunately for him, it was soon after that that we chose to interrogate Matt about his new girlfriend. Despite the genius plans to almost make him cry though tough interrogationI feel we were generally quite nice about it. Obviously the odd obsenity thrown in by Tate but you really expect nothing less. The only exciting thing really was that we decided on a date for the wedding which will be heald on Saturday 7th September 2008 according to my phone which in a slightly drunken manner I added it into. It is unknown yet who will get the best man job, he was talking about his brother but I think really it will be me. We drank more, even playing a drinking game which lasted not very long at all before being told it was time to leave and so we did.

This though was not to be the end of the night oh no, as you do when slightly intoxicated, you look for a way to extend the night and so we went on towards O'Neils - as I have said previously a good place to end a night. Me, Ross, Dan and Tate walked in no problems but Dave and Matt weren't allowed in. We toyed with the idea of being gentlemanly and using a sense of commaradery and leaving when our friends didn't get in. BUT we were drunk so we stayed. Sorry Guys. But anyway we started drinking some more.. again beers and shots and before you knew it we were all sitting in our corner singing and swaying to the folk band who were playing on the stage. It was a beautiful scene as I am sure you can imagine. Whilst in the pub we also met up with Dan's sister Laura, who was looking lovely as ever, obviously we made a few jokes about her after that and then of course it moved onto my sister and Tate's sister as is usually the way. Ross luckily gets away with that, due to people not knowing him as well. But soon enough it was time to leave there too and so we walked out, chatting to a few old faces on the way. Wimbledon pubs are always a good place for seeing old chums. We stood outside for a bit, Tate then walked off without saying goodbye with a guy that we could only assume was his brother and then we all went home. On the way me and Ross had a deep political discussion which was very interesting but very alcohol fueled. And so that was Saturday.

Christmas Day

Not really any more exciting than any other Christmas day but I thought, why not give it a blog anyway. I woke up early at around 9ish ate some breakfast and then got to opening my presents highlights of which included a few CDs, DVDs and some lovely items of clothing.. time passed. We had a very tasty Christmas dinner prepared by my mother which I ate far too much of and felt incredibly sick and then despite this I ate two servings of ice cream to follow it up. Luckily I wasn't sick but I was feeling incredibly tired at this point and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Then the annual board games came out, which is always a laugh and before we knew it, it was 1 o'clock. I went up to bed, watched one of my new DVDs and then fell asleep.

Sorry that last bit is a bit slap-dash but I am getting bored of writing. On Friday I shall be going to see Kid Harpoon at KOKO and I'm sure a blog/review will coincide with that and then I shall be doing a bout of travelling, first to Essex for New Years and then up to Newcastle from the 3rd to 7th of January. See you all soon

END

Not a manouver that I have been practicising whilst driving, but now that you ask the lessons are going very well thankyou, my lovely kossovan instructor called Nigel says I am making good progress and I have done all sorts of pointless acts of road hogging such as parallel parking in huge gaping holes and reversing round corners. But my progress is unlikely to continue at such a rate due to the reason I am actually writing this blog.

I have completely changed my mind on my decision to take a gap year. I will admit now that my thinking for taking a gap year was largely due to the knowledge that I had infact messed up all my exams but I did have a list of fairly valid reasons for taking a year off. But since the mad decision for the university to offer me the place despite my clearly quite poor grades I have had to think quite hard about my decision.

Before I made my decision I went through the process of looking for a job, this started with going to the local branch of Connexions to ask their advice - they told me to either go to uni or get a decent job which would give me some valuable experience. So from that I went to a job agency thing who said that they could get me a job working for the home office out in Kingston but that the security clearing would take 2 or 3 months. SO I would get experience but the amount of cash I would raise would be limited, travelling to and from croydon would mean that my time would be nearly all taken up by the job and so realistically my other activities such as learning the guitar would have suffered.

So now I am going to University, I have sorted out applying for my loan (about 3 months late) and my accomodation which should be sorted properly by the time I get to Uni in early October. Am I ready?.. no, not in the slightest - I have no experience of living away from home, of catering for myself, of washing my own things of budgeting properly. I am not afraid to say my mum did all of this for me and thus the prospect of doing it all for myself is a bit daunting.

On the other hand I am quite excited about it all, getting pissed with new people, living on my own.. All will be a great experience for me. Oh and Dr. Karl Kennedy (Neighbours) is scheduled to come to perform sometime in mid November which is amazing, I am looking forward to that one.

On that note I end this blog, tarrah

Yes it is finally here, the end of exams and not only that, the finish of my school life!!!!

The exams in the end rushed upon me and then rushed passed again. Some went well and some not so well, namely the physics paper 5 where I ended up writing something in French because I didnt have a clue where to start, also in that paper i believe I wrote a nursery rhyme, told the examiner not to bother marking it because I knew it would be a U, wrote AMPS several times in capital letters and drew an unhappy face.. so I think it is unlikely I will get top marks on that particular paper. On the whole the other exams were ok, history and Politics went by with few drastic errors despite me choosing the questions that nobody else did in the politics exam which is always a worrying sign.

Now for the big and surprising news for some readers, whereas it will probably be quite boring dreary news for the most of my 'fan base'. I have decided that I want to take a gap year. Yes, despite having sent off all the applications, taken trips to various universities and having horrible interviews I want to take the year off.

I came to this decision on the night before my first History exam, having realised that I had not done enough revision and that I would probbaly not get the grades I wanted to go to Essex anyway. The thought occured that did I want to do another 3 years of work straight away knowing that I couldnt be bothered to revise properly for these ones? I concluded to myself that the answer was a simple no. Also whilst thinking this over I thought of many other reasons why University this year is a bad idea, namely that I dont have more than £5 to my name and so a year off would give me time to earn a bit ready for next year. Other reasons  I came up with are as follows:

I want to learn how to play guitar and that wont happen at uni

I want to learn how to drive before I go

I want to improve my inevitably average to poor exam results

I want to learn sign language (for those who dont know, I have a disabled brother and although he cant do sign language I have been around a lot of people who do and it is quite interesting)

I want to get a bit fitter, to entice all the ladies once i get to uni ;)

And finally I want to go and visit my mate Ross in America (where he is doing a year of university) and it will be easier to do so if I dont have to miss any lectures, also with the old money situation.

Yep so that is that, although I havnt yet told my parents of this, it will probably come as a bit of a surprise to them when I eventually get round to telling them, which will probably be the day before im set to go off to uni or something.

I will finish this blog with 2 p.s. comments:

1st of all I am proud to say that I live only two minutes away from what BBC viewers voted the most hated building in London and to anyone who questions my pride of this you are just jealous that no building near you have won any prizes recently

 If I have done it correctly, you should be able to get to the article by clicking on the picture

P.S. number 2 is that I, Anthony Draper will be taking part in the sport relief mile on Saturday the 15th of July 2006 and if any of you fine people wish to sponsor me all for the good of charity it would be most welcome. Obviously I realise that you can only really do this if you live reasonably close to me which is quite a large percentage of my reach. But if ANYONE wants to sponsor me Im sure we can find a way for you to do so.

Tarrah