Thursday 17th August 2006.. the day that my A-Level results come out.. so of course the first thing I did in the morning was go and get a whole lot of my hair chopped off, I mean what else does a boy do. I thought that I would treat you readers with the results of this hair surgery. It is a bit shorter than I had been expecting if I am honest but nevertheless I do like it.

After the hair cut I made my way to the school to pick up my results at about 11. At this point I was still not even nervous about it. I went in and picked up my envelope but I refused to open it until someone else I knew got there. Soon enough Matt Tate and Dave came in. We all opened together and BAM!! i had completely messed up, I got a B in politics when I had almost certified an A after 4 modules. I got a C in history which I was expecting really and finally an E in Physics after I had effectively failed the whole second year. But still I was upbeat. Tate was the only one of my mates who appeared to have done at least as well as he was hoping, unfortunately he was pretty much the only one who knew he wasnt going to university this year. All feeling a little bad we left for home quite quickly, most to try and get a universtiy place through the clearing system.

Walking around Wimbledon with Blondie and Matt Bond I was still relatively happy, it wasnt until I had to endure my own company that it really kicked in quite what had happened and how I didnt really know what I would be doing with myself. I got home, told my mum and thus got a bit of a speach of it might not be what you wanted but it is still quite good, well not in physics (little joke to lighten the somber mood). At this point I was quite miserable. As I didnt want to tell anyone mum got the delightful job of ringing round the good news.

My godmother who most of you now will know is the MP gave me a little motivational speech too, but this one wasnt sympathetic. The jist of it was basically you have to get off your arse and start thinking about what you are going to do. She told me to phone up the universities to make sure I couldnt get in and then if I didnt I should start looking for a job straight away even if not a permanent one. Of course after this I went straight back to sitting on the sofa and doing fuck all - excuse my language. But then soon she phoned back and gave me a number that I had to call for Essex and she said that she asked them and that they would let me in with the grades I got. So I called them not really expecting anything.

I talked to a man on the other end, an American, he asked me what I wanted to know and I explained that I hadnt done as well as I had hoped and I was wondering if I could still get a place. Now my biggest surprise came with his reply. "It says down here that you have been given unconditional offers by both Essex and Surrey (my insurance choice). My reaction was.. "really?" and he just replied yes. It was very confusing. After the phone call I went up to the computer and checked the UCAS website and it gave the same information as he did. I had been given unconditional offers.. I had been accepted.

 Unfortunately I havnt just accepted that and gone along with it. I still want my gap year, so I have to make my final decision on what I am doing in the next week or so.

The night that followed was not as big as we had been planning. No big dancy thing in Oceana but a little excursion down to Lloyds in Wimbledon. It was a nice way to end the day I thought. Most of my friends have got into a University through clearing if that is what they wanted and so we all celebrated with a few drinks. From what I saw no one got particularly drunk and we all went home at 12:30ish when it closed. THE END

The next blog will be a tearful and heartfelt goodbye to Ross who is leaving to spend a year in America tomorrow. Although sad it will include the partying before his departure which if I have not told you about already is something quite impressive!!

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

The day didnt have the most exciting start of all as I had the first of my summer exams, The physics practical which to all extents seemed to go quite well despite my revision really being limited to about 5-10 minutes but that test is as much about common sense as it is about physics so that was ok.

After the exam me and 'da physics crew' as I have decided to call us all went down to wimbledon for a nice little meal at pizza hut express which was pretty tastey and then as I was going to put my rubbish in the bin I managed to chuck it onto a nearby customer which I must say was a tad embarrasing. I then quickly ran out of the area. We then trundled down to HMV where I bought the Boy Kill Boy album and also the Little Man Tate single on a special edition yellow vinyl. Leander and Ian romantically went to see mission impossible 3 together and me and matt went our seperate ways home, knowing that seeing the movie first would make it hard to get ready in time for gig.

So the original ticket holders for the gig were me, dave, shane, mike, matt bond, blondie and rossy but unfortunately both mike and rossy had to pull out so I had to quickly get in some replacements and they were in the form of Tony and John(PNB if any of you old readers still care). John didnt join us 'till later as he was shopping in sainsburys or something. Anyway we got to the 100 club pretty much bang on time and on my way in I saw the lead singer of Little Man Tate and did a friendly nod in his direction and he said "alright mate" in his strong sheffield accent which was nice. 7:30 turned out to be too early really as the 1st band didnt get on until about 8:15 but by then i was already into my second drink so it wasn't too much of a downer.

I have absolutely no idea what the name of the 1st band was and so I will merely describe in the best way possible, a bunch of middle aged men with very little talent. Saying that though they werent boring as the lead guy enjoyed his crowd involvement jumping off the stage on numerous occasions once pointing and singing at me and another sitting next to Matt and singing into his eyes, Matt didnt seem to enjoy it unfortunately giving the man the dirtiest look youve ever seen. During the set whilst I went to get another drink I managed to pull of another embarrasing feat, this time whilst trying to step over a chair, knocking it over, stamping on it and making a louder noise than the actual band, but this time i had nowhere to run so i just sat down quickly and looked sheepish. John arrived shortly after the band finished their set and so he bought me another drink cos he didnt have to pay for a ticket as such.

The second band were a damn sight more talented than the 1st but again I missed the name which is actually quite annoying cos I wouldnt mind finding some of their tunes. The lead singer of this band was clearly gay, wearing his tight pink top, tight jeans and pointy shoes. John being John went up to him after their set and actually asked him if he was which was interesting as he said he wasnt but I am pretty sure he was lying. Their bass player thought he was Flea from the red hot chili peppers as well and apparently looked like some actor or something according to Dave. But as I said they were pretty good. During this set, Matt managed to out embarras me by spilling over some strangers pint and thus having to buy him a new one.

So finally on to Little Man Tate and what can I say they were great, they really got the crowd going from the openers 'Man I hate Your Band' and 'Court report' you could see that the majority of the crowd knew the words and were singing along. Again I managed to take up the place behind the pillar but this time I didnt stand for it and moved round to get myself a better position even if it meant pushing through.  By the middle of the set the crowd was getting nice and lively and me and John had managed to get quite close to the front. The odd crowd surfing incident started to happen which didnt please the security people too much. I was getting in the crowd and jumping and singing all over the shop, it was fantastic, probably the most energetic of my limited gig going career. The climax of the set was 'Down on Marie' which was clearly a crowd pleaser and the whole place went mental, crowd surfers being chucked around everywhere and jumping and pushing (no random beatings so i refuse to call it moshing). And that was it the gig was over and it left me wanting more and so as I did at the last gig I went straight off to buy a t-shirt and also one for tate who unfortunately couldnt be there. If you ignore the startled look upon my noggin you should be able to see the magnificent t-shirt. It also has Little Man Tate written on the back. It is most beautiful.

I also fancied the poster off the wall and so with the help of Shane it was mine and as you can see from my scanned image it is great, I think I might put it up on my wall, but then I would have to get more posters so then again I might not.

And that was the end of the night for Dave, Shane, Matt and Tony but stupidly me and Blondie trusted John to take us to some place afterwards that he said would be great. Of course he didnt actually know where it was and by the time we got there it had just closed so that was a complete waste of time. We ended up walking around central London for about an hour before I gave in and just said I wanted to go home as it was about 12:30. And the worst bit is, it means John still owes me another drink.

I got home at about 1-1:30 and watched a bit of big brother, played the single once more and then nodded off to sleep and so the end of another great adventure. Until next time goodbye