Whilst Yours Truly still has another 446 or so days before hitting 50 (not that I’m counting or anything...), HunterGatherer reached this impressive milestone a whole two months ago. Of course, any UK residents who make it to the ripe old age of 100 can look forward to the arrival of a keepsake card (not that you’re probably going to keep it for long!) from HM the Queen. Reaching a mere half-century, on the other hand, brings with it memorable mail of a rather less salubrious nature. Indeed HG’s postal “birthday surprise” from the medical powers that be can only be described as a “pooper-scooper”: a sophisticated little set of cardboard components which will – if you follow the instructions correctly – transform into a set of “spatulas” and a cardboard (yes, cardboard... perhaps just a tad too biodegradable?) box in which to encase ‘the specimen’.
The ridiculous thing is that whilst any fool knows it is far better to discover asap if you have any unpleasant free radicals roaming around your slowly degenerating middle-aged body, for weeks HG has been prevaricating, procrastinating and postponing his compliance with the instructions enclosed in his bowel cancer screening birthday envelope. So far, I have hinted/nagged/cajoled and pleaded - but all to no avail. The little cardboard set sits defiantly on the kitchen table, where I have strategically positioned it in full view, and is mutinously ignored by HunterGatherer every time he goes by. Perhaps if I move it through to the bathroom, accompanied by the recently arrived “ever-so-friendly” reminder from the NHS, he’ll finally get the message...
Meanwhile, down south at HockeySchool, Son&Heir has begun the dreaded AS exams. His “leave-it-all-to-the-night-before” approach to the art of exam preparation just about worked for the GCSEs last year – though it was a wing and a prayer process, it has to be said. However, he’s discovered that – contrary to reports in the paper – A levels do actually require quite a lot of activity by what HG’s favourite fictional detective calls “ze leetle grey cells”. And, of course, this level of application is required continuously - over the entire academic year...
So it was that after devouring the entire works of Yeats on Monday and Tuesday for Wednesday’s English Lit., he then proceeded to mug up on as many Greek statues for Classics as he could physically force details of into his brain: Marathon Boy, the Disc Thrower and the Tyrannicides were jostling for cerebral space. Safe to say that by Thursday night an excess of limestone and marble was beginning to clog his frantically cogitating little cells. There was no way he could physically cover all the statues required in the time that remained, so Friday morning was a tense time...
However, Mr Last-minute-revision.com seems to have had the full force of every Roman and Greek god onside, because (unbelievably/unfairly/ luckily – delete as appropriate) the statues he had studied in at least some depth miraculously deigned to grace the exam paper with their presence. Of course, it’ll be late August before we discover whether the ancient deities really did come to his rescue. But in the meantime, Ibsen’s Doll’s House is currently being madly crammed (I hope!) in a lonely garret in deepest Englandshire, so that nothing is left to chance for the Theatre Studies essay-writing marathon next week!
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