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

So it was another lazy Saturday morning in bed when John called me up asking if I wanted to go to the comedy store up in London. Despite vowing never to trust John again after he made me walk around central London last time, I agreed and so I went.

I met with John and a number of others at wimbledon station at approximately 5:30 and trained it up towards central London, Piccadilly to be more precise and to the comedy store. It wasnt long though before my reasons for not trusting John were again realised as of course the comedy store only had 100 non booked tickets to sell and we were about 103 in the queue. But no we did not give up, we carried on as John knew of another comedy place.

We didnt go straight there though as it didnt start 'till half 8ish and it was only about half 6. So when a nice Eastern European lass tells us that we should go to a bar and get cheap drinks we naturally obliged even if there was slight hesitation from Dave and Tate at first. We got the 'Buzz' Bar and were delighted to find the drinks were indeed very cheap. On the otherside I again trusted John and he bough a round of very horrible drinks which were a mixture of ginger beer and whiskey. Horrible it was. We then played no less than 4 games of table football which the team of me, tate and dave won 3-1, each victory was greeted with the Crouchy Robot as that is the celebration to do at the moment. Despite it being cheap it was quite boring so we soon left the establishment.

Our next stop was the Queens Head pub which has a comedy club upstairs, we only breefly popped in to get us some tickets and then popped back out again. A few of us were feeling a bit peckish so we went to a posh chip shop which I forget the name of right now. I was disgusted to find that the prices were extortionate and so i just got a few chips which wernt particularly special. I was not impressed by the posh chip shop at all.

We still had time to kill so where else do you go in picadilly but the trocadero games arcade, of course we were the oldest of the 'children' there with the average age of the clientell being about 10-12 but it didnt matter we still ran straight for the bumper cars and before you knew it we were all driving into each other like nobodys business. Why are bumper cars so much fun? purposely driving around and crashing, often causing slight pain.. doesnt make much sense but it was fun. Tate wanted another go on the bumper cars but we all declined and instead went for the shooting thing which I have never been very good at. Out of 20 shots I managed to hit 2 targets which was poor but I beat Tate who didnt get 1, yes his gun wernt working properly but that is beside the point, I beat him. Dave got about 12, but will seem to get about 18 or so, was quite impressive. In total we won about 60 or so tickets, then big ginger dan won loads from soewhere, then some guy gave us his and before we knew it we had over 300 tickets. Enough to buy a 'blinging' ring which I believe John kept, a slinky which I managed to sneak off with and precisely 42 penny sweets.

We were already a bit late for the scheduled start of the comedy act so we went back to the Queens Head. Luckily it hadnt started, we got in a couple drinks and then took our seats which unfortunately happened to be right at the front.

The first guy to come on stage was a man with dreadlocks who was merely introducing acts but was still quite funny, over the course of the night he called me a drunkard and a typical student just because he said who wants his phone and i honestly said yes. There is nothing wrong with wanting free merchandise. He also gave me the job of starting the round of applause before each act for which I was very proud.

The first act was a middle aged man who was clearly very nervous and unfortunately to my standards not very funny, I think I may have laughed once during his whole ten minute set.

The Second act is where it got started an Irish guy by the name Rob Broderick. From the minute he got on and spilled water all over the electrical equipment you could tell he was going to be a good laugh. At one stage he compared me to Mikey, the current big brother housemate which I found amusing/flattering i think. But the best part of his act for me was when he 1st asked a woman what she wanted to be when she was little, she said olympic athlete, then she asked Will and he just said to be rich.. really now, so i shouted in porn star, as you do. I was then invited up on to stage where I had to perform a little role play as i taught the woman how to be an athlete and then she threw up (not really) and I thought that would be good in a porn film and then I had to tell my mum I wanted to be a porn star (see title) and then I became a rich porn lord or something. Now im sure peopple reading this will be thinking that is the least funny thing ive ever heard. I guess it is probably one of those you have to be there things.

the third act was a camp (probably gay) man with an attempted handle bar moustache and little tufty beard. He was reasonably funny in parts but not enough for me to remember any of his act afterwards.

the fourth act was again reasonably funny, a few good jokes including 'its the best time to go to Israel now because i saw the paper the other day and it said suicide bomber strikes' if you dont get it the first time read it again and think about it.

the fith was an Australian who was quite good, best joke was about how he goes up to Scotland to do a gig and just says 'so the english.. arent they a bunch of c**ts' which i found quite amusing. He was probably my second favourite after the Irishman.

During the interval between the 5th and 6th comedians I went down to the toilet and came across Neil Morrisey (not when I was in toilet, at the bar) John asked him why he was there 'cos John does that kind of thing and he explained it was because he was doing a guys and dolls production down the road. Unfortunately no picture, but another name for Anthony's celeb spotting list.

the sixth act was pretty poor, about having sex with dead grandparents and such which i dont think was really needed.

and to the last act who was supposed to be the star of the show but I didnt think he was particularly funny, he had his moments but nothing special. The highlight of his set for me was being told that I looked like I should be in the Verve.

Straight after that finished we went straight back to Wimbledon, had some chips from the local chip shop, then Dave gave me a lift home so that I could give Tate his Little Man Tate T-shirt which Ive had since last weeks gig. And there we have it, my fisrt visit to a comedy gig and overall I would give the night a thumbs up despite it not going as the original plan had been stated.

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