It's been a while!
I have actually been rather busy, and also quite exhausted - the last few weeks before my long vacation are always hard, since my batteries are run down and psychologically I am already on hols, sleeping until 7 in the morning and generally leading a seedy, shiftless, life in La Bourboule.
Ah yes, La Bourboule. This time I am staying at home, actually. There is just too much going on, and I am needed at home. Also, I am still a bit angry with my doctor. Last year I came down with the most terrible cold I ever had, within an hour of him poking around with his investigating instrument in my sinuses. Which I would have forgiven, were it not for the fact that I was sick almost non-stop until Christmas (that's three months, boys and girls), when I finally cured myself (ish) by going on a five day water only fast. And I am still not back to normal, but appear to have hay-fever - not something I ever had before the nose-poking incident last September. I will probably go back to La Bourboule next year, but whether I'll risk The Cure again is still a moot point. I can't afford to be sick for three months a year.
So this year I am having a stay-cation. The house needs things doing to it, and I shall try to subdue my asthma with judicious water fasting. I am usually perfectly alright once I stop eating, the trouble is that I love cooking, so once I fill the freezer with all the meals I concoct while on a fast things get very very tricky - I can handle not eating, but not cooking is another matter altogether!
Anyway, I am going to a big dinner tomorrow night, and until then food is staying definitely on the menu! Sunday will be the start of another five day water fast, I suspect.
There has been all sorts of other news, of course, because life keeps on happening, but it would be a bit tedious catching up on it all, so I shall focus on the present. There will be posts on scarves, house repairs, cooking, and general musings on the way the world is going to hell on a hand cart, no doubt.
I managed to pass my first legal exam with a Merit, God knows how. The exam was the sort where a question gets the more difficult the more you know. One question, for example, asked about the powers of 'parliament', without specifying which parliament - the European one, the Scottish one, the one that resides in London? After worrying about this and similar mis-phrased questions for a few minutes, I just thought 'what the heck', dashed off my answers in 15 minutes flat with a devil-may-care attitude, and then sat around for another hour, expecting the worst, result-wise.
Not an approach I would usually recommend or employ, but I was in a foul mood by then - the organisation of the exam had been absolutely abysmal, and I just didn't care any more. First it started 30 minutes late. Then we were given the wrong instructions. Then we were told to refer to papers we had supposedly been sent a week before but actually never received - this was a mix-up with the instructions for a different exam. Then we were told we had 1.5 hours, rather than 1 hour, to complete the exam. Oh yes, and the directions we had been sent about the finer points of how to sit the exam contained the wrong location of where the exam would be held, and we were all re-directed by a resigned looking security guard of the next door building.
Worst of all, they insisted that we all leave all our bags, even handbags, outside in the corridor - where lots of people meandered about. Ie, they separated me from my emergency asthma medication, all my credit cards and money, my passport, my notebook with telephone numbers etc, and my house key - I shudder to think what could have happened if my bag had been stolen (including to the idiots who enforced this rule, I might add!). By this time the exam organisers had reduced everyone in the room to either a quivering, nervous wreck, or a totally demotivated exam-drop-out (this category included me).
By the time that pathetic excuse of an exam was over I had decided that I would make no attempt to re-sit it if I flunked, I was so angry. I have spent some time administering exams myself, and there was simply no excuse for the dilettantish way that exam was conducted.
But as I said, I managed to pass, meritoriously at that, so I don't even have the excuse of having barely scraped in, which could not be expected to happen again. No, I passed well, so there is nothing for it but to sign up for the next module, worse luck. Contract Law, here I come!
