Two Down

To fail your driving test once may be regarded as a misfortune, to fail twice looks like carelessness.. Well that’s all wrong. I would have to have my driving test on possibly the wettest day since Noah said to his wife “I think the worst of it’s over, dear”. I challenge anyone to do an emergency stop on what is effectively an ice rink and come to a graceful and considered halt in a neat, straight line. It is a physical impossibility and yet there was the big black mark on the score sheet and there was the bad end to my second driving test. A different man (marginally), the same test centre. Everything else had gone so swimmingly. I am bloody furious. I was so speechless I didn’t have the capacity to complain about the result before the bespectacled geek left the car. How am I ever going to live this down?? I confessed my news to Ralph when I got back just now. He couldn’t suppress a smile even though he’d promised to be wholly understanding. Bastard.

On the plus side I still haven’t had a phone call from home which means (God willing) that there has been no engagement to announce. That said I haven’t been in the boarding house since first thing this morning. I need a bloody good drink to be honest. I shall definitely be down the JCR tonight. Ralph has promised me his second pint so at least I can get vaguely squiffy to help me cope with the galling disappointment. When is my life going to start going right?!

Oh there is one good thing. Zoe said she might be having a party at her folks' house at the beginning of the Christmas hols. She went quite coy when she was talking to me about it. I can only take that as a good thing. To be honest it’s never happened before..

Pub Disaster

I haven’t been able to bring myself to ring home today. I thought I might have had a call from them, following on from Sal and Ian going there for lunch but so far there has been nothing. Talk about no news is good news.. Long may it continue.

Very boring day here. I’d finished the Mail on Sunday by 1 o’clock and headed over to the dining hall with Henry and John Simms for a roast. Absolute pig feed. I think it was supposed to be beef but it was essentially gristle and tube accompanied by potatoes that weren’t so much roasted as lightly suntanned and carrots that had been so ferociously boiled there wasn’t a scrap of flavour, texture or presumably nutrient left in them. I really wonder what poor old Dad is paying for sometimes.

Worse still Ralph and I pretended to go for a cross country run this afternoon. He’d never been out on a Sunday and it seemed madness as it was the perfect opportunity to sink a few pints. We got dressed in the appropriate gear but obviously didn’t break a sweat on our way out there. We were just about to head through the door when I heard the not so dulcet tones of Mr Jeeves guffawing from within. Thank Christ I was able to stop Ralph pushing the door open or we’d have been mincemeat had he seen us. Bloody gutted that we’ve discovered he frequents the place as it means it’s going to make our trips there a hell of lot more nerve-wracking than we’d previously thought they might be.

Psyching myself up for driving test number two now. Fortunately I don’t have to re-sit the ridiculously banal theory exam. To be frank they really could do with making that bit a damn sight harder. Then there might not be so many ghastly twits on the road. Fat chance..

Snog Tactics

Dad phoned after morning lessons. He wanted to know why the school have billed him for a second driving test so I had to spill the beans about the disastrous events of the other week. He seemed to understand and totally took my side of course. Smashing chap, Dad.. I asked to speak to mother but he rather nervously informed me that she wasn't around. Not sure why but I found his silence rather disconcerting. The more I think about it the more buggered up things seem to be at home. Really is rather a concern. Frankly I'm glad to be here. Oh and he also let slip that Sal AND Ian are heading over for lunch with Dad and mother tomorrow. He reckons Ian might do the whole "could I have your daughter's hand in marriage" nonsense. Bloody ghastly. I hope he does the decent thing and forbids the whole damn shenanigans. To be honest I'm surprised Sal is giving marriage to Ian more than a second thought. With her spending habits she needs to end up with someone with bucket loads of inheritance on the horizon. Not someone who's parents have only got one car (and a Vauxhall Cavalier at that) and who live semi-detached.

Nothing dramatic occured with Zoe last night. But the charm offensive appears to be doing the trick. She definitely touched my hand for at least four seconds last night when we were walking back to her boarding house. I reckon two or three more evenings in the JCR and we'll be at full snoggage capacity. Result!

Sanghita Masgeev farted in English this morning. At least Ralph and I are fairly sure it was her as it smelt like curry. She's allowed to go out and get her own Indian dinner whenever she feels like it, apparently due to religious beliefs. What a load of bollocks.

Smelly Socks

Got back from assembly this morning to find that matron was in my study with a bag of dirty socks and an angry look on her face. Apparently I’ve been “hoarding” my clothes and not sending them to the laundry. I tried to point out that every time I did send my socks to the school laundry they never came back, despite mother spending a large chunk of her lifetime sewing in name tags to each one. Matron evidently thought I was making up lies and said that if I didn’t use the school facilities then I would incur a 50p fine for every dirty sock the cleaners continued to find under my bed. Bloody ridiculous. If I want to keep my socks in my study and wash them in the sink under my own steam then why the Hell shouldn’t I be able to?? Bloody farce, it really is.

So the plan is to go to the JCR again this evening and spend as much time in Zoe’s company as possible. I’m hideously nervous about it to be honest but Ralph’s told me I’ve got to take the bull by the horns and make a move (preferably a vaguely sober one) or I’ll spend the rest of my life a lonely virgin. I think he might be exaggerating slightly, but I can see where he’s coming from. Urgh, I feel quite sick about it I really do. What if she spurns me in a really public way? Girls are so tricksy. She might give me the come-on for a joke and then when I go in for the lunge she’ll just pull away and laugh. I can see it now. Oh God, I’m going to die alone. I just know it. Hopefully I’ll feel a little more confident with a couple of Newquay Browns inside me..

Stale Biscuits

Went to visit an old lady this afternoon with Julia Wilson. You know, to add to my list of good deeds when I go for uni interviews. It was weird. Julia's really good with talking to old people so she kind of led the conversation, such as it was. I just sort of sat there. The woman was called Elspeth. I was glad that she didn't ask to be called Elsie. It's so working class war heroine. I was expecting her to be living in one of those God awful pre-fab places on the outskirts of town but in fact she has quite a picturesque little cottage near Falpham. Roses round the door and all that gubbins. In spite of all that her Ginger nuts were stale and the living room had a distinctly pissy odour but I guess some things about old age are set in stone and you can't change them no matter how well off you are.. She asked what I was studying for A-levels and where I was hoping to go to uni. I wasn't about to tell her Roehampton. She wouldn't have heard of it and I don't really want Julia Wilson telling everyone I'm not an Oxbridge candidate. So I said that I was going to see some London colleges and she seemed impressed enough with that. She did bang on a bit about how things were so much better in her day but she wasn't a complete bore so visiting her on a weekly basis might not actually be such a ghastly chore as a I thought it would.

Everything went rather swimmingly in the JCR last night. Zoe was there, as hoped, and she seemed suitably impressed that I had gone out of my way to organise a sympathy card for Colin. I reckon Ralph might just be a bit of a genius. She asked if I was planning another supper leave and she seemed genuinely gutted when I told her I was banned til the new year. Need to figure out how to stage a snog next...

Sticky Fingers

Spoke to Ralph about the Zoe situation this afternoon. He thinks I'm playing it far too cool and taking the whole thing far too slow. He reckons I should start the process as soon as possible. He's probably right. Ralph's quite good at the whole girl business. Whenever he sets his mind to someone he's usually got his hand down their knickers inside of 48 hours. It's a gift for some people I suppose. I certainly haven't got it. I feel so jumpy when it looks like sex might be on the horizon I think I put them off. In fact long before sex. I shoot myself in the foot from the off sometimes. Once I wrote to a family friend. She was called Sara (no 'h') and she was great. Funny, pretty, just a bit younger than me. I wrote her this letter about three years ago asking if she would be my girfriend. Letters are great. No confrontation.

Anyway, she wrote back about a week later and said that sounded fun and yes she would be my girlfriend. Brilliant. I told everyone at school. I bragged that after half term I was probably going to be a pro at the whole copulation game. It didn't work out like that. She called on the Sunday afternoon. Dad answered and said Sara was on the phone. I panicked and made him tell her I was in bed, ill. I don't suppose she bought it but I never saw again. I wrote her another letter telling her I'd met someone else. Sounds ridiculous now. But she just wasn't the right one. Not like Zoe. She'll do just nicely but I need to get my arse in gear sharpish. I'm going to take Colin's sympathy card to the JCR after prep and get loads of people to sign it. Starting with Zoe herself..

Sympathy Card

Colin Weston's mum went into hospital last night. Hargreaves got us into his flat and told us that she had taken a fall at home. Lost consciousness at the top of the stairs and broken her pelvis in the tumble. Actually felt quite sorry for Colin this time. His uncle arrived and took him off. Not sure what that means for his A-levels. He'll definitely get special consideration now though. Anyway, Hargreaves wants me to pack some of his things together and then get everyone to sign a card. Why does he pick me to do these things? Just because I'm not in the first XV rugby team or something he thinks I've got
time on my hands. I guess it's not so bad. It'll make me look like a good guy in Zoe Hall's eyes.

I've decided she's going to be the one I make a go of it with. There's definitely something there. I was looking at her in economics and she's really not too shabby at all. Long golden hair, good skin. She's not one of those ghastly brassy types like Polly Ravenscoft who wears far too much slap. Terribly cheap in my book. Okay so she's got a few extra rolls here and there but you need something to grab hold of don't you..

If only there was a way we could be out drinking together but with no supper leaves for me this term that looks less than likely. There MUST be something I can do. Will get Ralph's advice on the situation when we have another cross country adventure. Right, I'm going to do this uni application today if it bloody kills me. There's so much to fill out. The most galling thing is the knowledge that everyone else my age is doing it - even common people. It's all wrong...