Les Bonnes Resultats

Precisely a year (give or take a few days) after gaining my first two GCSEs in French and Mathematics at Grade A* (up yours, A-grade suckers), the time has finally come around again to take collect the results of the remaining 8 GCSE results, the exams of which I took this summer. To hear (see surely?) my report on the exams themselves, see Hell on Paper.

Unfortunately, gaining a qualification in French a year before most other would-be continentals, all traces of the French language have all but escaped me. It took me about 4 minutes to come up with the title of this post, and I still think it's spelled wrong.

My maths knowledge has still remained inside my hollow head. Doing an Additional Maths course over the past academic year has kept it fresh as a tender spring shoot, and obviously, due to the A-level style rigors of the Add Math course, it has been topped up and refined. Out with the indices, in with the binomials. Shit, I think you need the first to do the later.

Perhaps that would explain why I only got a B in Additional Maths. Whoop! Joy! General frolicking noises!

Our good old greasy-haired friend Robin was literally jumping for joy at his 'C' grade pass in History

Seriously! A grade 'B' in Add Maths is the best thing to me since inventing sliced bread. I was seriously thinking that I had failed and would be lucky to scrape a grade 'C' pass. If I managed to get this kind of grade from stumbling blindly through the paper and just hoping integration would suffice each time, everyone else must have just written fucking poetry on their papers!

As well as this subsidiary qualification, I also took Short Course Citizenship. Yeah, I know what you're doing, something along the lines of snorting hysterically into your left arm. If you are using your right, switch now please. Well, I managed to manage another A* in this as well. Wasn't really expecting anything less however; I secured full marks on the first draught of my coursework which was based on picking up other people's crap in a damp park each month.

And now we move to the serious stuff, the real deal, the foundations of my future success (failures?). In order of randomness, actually make that alphabetical, these are my results:

BIOLOGY: A* (a*)

BUSINESS STUDIES: A* (a*)

CHEMISTRY: A* (a*)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A* (a*)

ENGLISH LITERATURE: A* (a*)

GEOGRAPHY: A* (a*)

ICT: A* (a*)

PHYSICS: A* (a*)

Whoop! Joy! Specially elated frolicking noises! An 'effing clean sweep, royal flush, full monty, bag of bananas, 24 carat gold, whitewash, total obliteration, real McCoy, these are startin' not to make sense anymore! But I don't really care 'cos I'm damn bloody clevererer than a lot of wannabe smart ass kids these days. Breath.


So that concludes my compulsory education at the sorry establishment that is the place that I go to school at which I don't wish to reveal for security purposes. More diligent readers will probably be aware of all the details of my life that I have accidentally let slip over the past year of blogging. Good for you, I say.

And now, the next chapter of Adrian Torquer: the Frappuchino Years will chronicle my college education at, darn it, the same damn place I have been going to for the past five years. It may have the administrational and organisational abilities of a small blind rodent, but the A-level results are pretty darn decent.

Nottingham Part 3: Slack-Jawed Yokles

So here it is, Merry Christmas. Or so it would have been if it was actually Christmas and all had gone to plan. Which it didn't of course, as I am involved and I travelled on a train.

After spending the previous week drowning in fabric softener and trying to stop my grandmother from pointlessly ironing my underpants, I was glad to be heading back to a loving, caring, peaceful family back here in Liverpoolland. Unfortunately, I woke up to the truth after scoffing a large bowl of Weetabix. It was the size of a bucket but I still had my usual two biscuits.

Now, after having my fill of "100% whole grain wheat and absofuckinglutely nothing else OK", I headed off for the train station in Nottingham, following closely by my amiable grandfather. In actual fact he was beside me, but there you go.

Unsurprisingly however, the train did not go. Instead, after boarding a couple of minutes before launch, an announcement rang through the carriages:

"Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking. I am sorry to inform you that this train is unsuitable for travel as there are no working toilets on board. Please exit the train and wait for the replacement service that will depart shortly from platform 5B, directly behind this unit. I am also sorry to inform that I have just been sacked."

Central Trains trains are predominantly at a standstill, like this one which actually clearly isn't

Sighing with my indifference to the conductor's current employment status, but also with my anger at Central Trains for screwing up yet another bleedin' "Citylink" service, I de-boarded, if that is the correct expression, the first train and duly waited orderly for the next.

Unfortunately, a large family of slack-jawed yokels decided to allow their deranged and overweight children play 'tag' on the platform. This mainly involved trying to 'tag' each other hard enough so as to push the 'tagged' into the path of an approaching express train. One of the fatter ones almost became multiple portions of steak and kidney and brain pie, but his father somehow managed to drop his jaw in the way and the baby elephant was saved.

Now that I had boarded the second train of the day, we proceeded rather slowly along the Liverpool-Norwich line. After about fifteen minutes smooth running, the train came to a stop. A short five minutes wait later and we were on our way again. But then it happened again: ten minutes later we stopped again, this time for about 20 minutes. And so it continued. A short five minutes journey followed by an almost half-hour wait in the middle of no where.

To make matters worse, my iPod battery ran out of juice in the middle of 'Near Wild Heaven' by REM. Shit. This is gonna be one long hell of a journey.

After having apologetic announcement after apologetic announcement repeated at regular intervals, I started to wonder why the conductor was still bothering when no-one was actually paying him anymore.

Unfortunately this was not any of the six trains that I boarded that day

Finally, we arrived in Chesterfield: the cultural epicentre of Europe. Although I have never had the privilege of visiting Chesterfield (thank God!) I was relieved to get there, TWO HOURS LATE. And we had only reached the first station...

[OK fair enough, cramming seven hours into one post is downright impossible, especially given your attention span. To be continued sometime in the future]

Bryson's Beard

After becoming breathlessly bored with my pathetic web log over the past few weeks, I have to decided to end the drought of humourless literature and finish the four part trilogy quickly and painlessly by cramming the rest into the final installment. Unfortunately, I am no George Lucas or Peter Jackson and so expect this futile attempt of "post suicide" to be downright deplorable.

However, it is on the subject of national transport and this is where my talents lie. Jingo once compared me the great Bill Bryson, master of extracting humour and incident from the darkest corners of England. To use his exact words: "Torquer, get a bloody shave dammit! That nasty thing on the end of your chin is starting to remind me of Bill Bryson, only with the combined grease content of Robin's scalp and my oven!"


Despite walloping him in the beard and hairy legs contest, Jingo however still has a moustach like a yard brush.

So, after whittling on semi-pointlessly for the past however long it took you to read it, I end this post with a promise to bring you the final part of my epic seven hour train ordeal the following Monday. Until then, you can bloody wellread this. Don't forget to comment, strewth.