All entries for Sunday 12 June 2005

Why you should never, ever trust me with anything

Dear blog,

Remember when I posted that piece about spontanious post exam intellectual imposion syndrome? Well, I didn't mention that when my brain turned to mush that day after coming out of my last exam I must have had a series of mental blackouts for I cycled to my laundrette for no reason before leaving my debit card in an ATM after checking my bank balance. Then when I got home I forgot to chain my bike to the railing outside my residence. Of course, living as I do in a rather safe neighbourhood normally everything would probably have been fine, except it just so happened that early the next morning the rag-and-bone-man who comes round every once in a while collecting broken down washing machines and delapidated furniture and so forth did one of his rounds. Now I admit my bike was 7 years old and rather the worse for wear…

I would like you to think that I am only scatterbrained on very rare occasions. This is sadly very much not the case. Notable moranic examples from recent history include when I returned to Lille, France (where I've been studying this past year) in January after the Christmas break, walked from the train station to my residence carrying all my heavy luggage, stopped at my front door and fumbled around for my keys only to realise I had left them in England! I ended up kipping out on the floor of my colleague's house for three days while I waited for the keys to arrive by registered post. Luckily for me my colleague is an exceedingly good-tempered fellow, for we were both due to sit exams in four days' time.

That incident, I have to say is not quite as funny (or tragic, depending on how you look at it) as something that occured last summer. I was again on my way to Lille, France, though for the first time: to find accomodation for my year abroad. In any case, I had just boarded the coach at Pool Meadow coach station in Coventry, which had started to pull out out when it dawned on me that I'd forgotten to take my passport. I immediately ran down the aisle and asked the surprisingly understanding woman coach driver to stop, before explaining my predicament. God knows what everyone else thought… The new dilemma facing me was that I booked my Eurostar ticket to France for that afternoon and I had less than four hours to get down to London. So I shoved all my luggage into a locker at Pool Meadow, cycled as fast as I could back to Canley, where my student house was, picked up my passport, caught a bus back to town, picked up my luggage from Pool Meadow, sprinted uphill to the train station with my heavy rutsack and caught the first train to London. By some miracle managed to get there with some time to spare. [I suppose this is a good reason why I should support the introduction of ID cards in the UK.]

Then there was that time I muddled up two of my exam dates in my first year and only realised that I was going to be sitting my Property law exam instead of my Criminal law exam less than one hour beforehand…

Maybe I should have been on that show, you know the one with Hermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

: 12 Jun 2005 20:13 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem