The Philpot Spot

My former desk buddies Suzy and Chloe reliably inform me that you’ve taken to reading this chronicle of a few months in the life of an overly cynical A-level student. I hope you didn’t find anything too bad amongst its pages; most of my posts are much like their author in that you need to take them with a large pinch of salt, though I think that comes across anyway on the whole. Thank you for your part in making for a year that I do secretly harbour good memories of (me falling arse over tit one lesson, perchance?) and my having a very respectable grade in a subject by which I sometimes felt baffled. That is testament to a job well done.

P.S. Please give Chloe and Suzy loads of work to do, because they both smell.

As Darth Vader would put it, “nooooo!” After a streak of 169 days of managing to remember to maintain a daily update schedule for The Philpot Spot, I went to bed last night having completely forgotten that I had neglected to post to my blog! July the 1^st held plenty to ponder - my own Sunday was truly fantastic for reasons I ain’t going into here, but even just a quick “big up the smoking ban!” would have seen my streak continue forth and prosper.

Bugger! I feel so dirty!

Ah well - the project for which this blog was established has been and gone, and posts lately have been written more and more impatiently as I forced myself to update, so maybe relaxing the pressure of having to update you all daily was a good thing. I want to give this website a revamp in due course and make a little more ‘professional’ and representative of my skills rather than my lack thereof, but for the meantime I’ll try to remember to keep you up-to-date… just a couple of times a week, rather than every single day!

I was looking forward to a really productive Saturday and yet seem to have achieved little of what I had wanted to. Emails have been sent, a letter has been posted, and for reasons which I can’t entirely understand walls have been attacked with Polyfilla, but tomorrow will have to see more be done for the long term - the summer is approaching and with my UCAS application to write soon after it ceases I am in dire need of things to write about. So let’s hope something interesting can happen before then!

Beyond me filling more holes in the walls.

Fridays are invariably enjoyable as a transition into the half-arsed world of the weekend, and today was no exception. Everything is going well for me at the moment - crikey, I don’t get to write that too often - and today went smoothly with just two lessons to clutter up my day. Computing saw us doing yet more PHP work, so fingers crossed these skills transfer across into sorting out the Student Exec site. After a kebab and a hefty gap I saw out the week with a Maths lesson about numerical integration.

Ripping stuff.

But then this evening saw a return to the good stuff as I travelled on that old steed the number 31 bus to Newick, alongside Jo who played hostess for a pleasant evening. Time flies when you’re having fun, but in spite of a relatively short time to spend together we crammed in rather a lot: a shoe-soaking walk down to the lake; a delicious dinner of bangers ‘n’ mash - the presence of broccoli offered a unique opportunity to see Jo eat something healthy; card tricks galore from Eddie, who I swear will become a con artist when he is older; and a game of Scrabble that descended into chaos as we grew tired of playing by the rules and instead made up words using the array of tiles.

According to this haphazard activity, Eddie is actually Will Flesher. What can I say? The tiles have spoken!

Whilst sat in Emily’s car on the drive home this evening I relieved any boredom by playing with the toy monkey residing in the back with me. During this process I used the monkey’s suction cup to stick him to my forehead, which upon removal left a small red mark. I jokingly remarked, “when I come to write to my blog this evening, this monkey will be the most interesting thing that I have to talk about”. Embarrassingly enough, I was spot on.

First lesson today was Computing, spent meandering through the challenges posed by PHP syntax. An all but four hour gap then ensued, during which I was the subject of Media photos, a Film… erm, film, and general ridicule from anyone who has ever come across me. Maths followed, carrying on the riveting topic of inverse functions, and then Media saw us look over the various photographs taken over the last few days, as well as a short lighting exercise.

The highlight? Me making a point of shouting “light on!” at the top of my voice, only to flick the switch and, much to my embarrassment, find that the power to the redhead wasn’t on at the wall. I just get worse - but I’m loving it!

With the exception of those doing extra-curricular activities, everyone at our college finishes early on a Wednesday afternoon.  In spite of this, the shortest day of my week has been frankly packed with a multitude of different tasks jostling for position. Lesson-wise creativity has been the order of the day: Media saw us experimenting with digital photography in order to produce the best magazine covers that we can… I am rather cheesed off at myself for picking such a tricky style of gossip mag for this planning exercise with photographs galore, so you might say that I’ve learnt something invaluable already. Maths was similarly creative, finishing off posters about iterative methods on graphs… or something like that, I left the Maths to Brennan and just made a bloody poster.

Then, after a couple of extra hours spent on the magazine task, I went off with Jo for a ‘male bonding session’ - her words, not mine - which we spent in the Bay Tree, where her brother Eddie is doing his work experience. I had waited all day for another Bay Tree milkshake but was let down badly by the excessively icy drink which was served. It was comparable to gritty sludge - I was distinctly unimpressed.

Still, this was all made better by seeing Will Flesher in disguise as an old man. (He would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for us meddling kids.) G’night!

I am sat here once again feeling far too tired to write much about my day, and yet I feel somehow obliged to do so - if only to keep up my impressive streak. Well today was extremely pleasant - a little busy, admittedly, with a tedious Maths lesson, infuriating trawl through InDesign on the clockwork college computers for Media, and a careers interview which, whilst useful and encouraging, came at a time when frankly I’ve heard quite enough about unis, courses, applications and whatnot to last me until well beyond my UCAS application deadline. But still, there were some good moments in this day and my streak of doing well at this whole life thing continues.

Today has been a day for rain - once again, the weather didn’t look at its calendar closely enough this morning and hence failed to realise that we are approaching July. Another day of unseasonable downpours hence ensued, dampening spirits on an otherwise very tolerable Monday. Well after being soaked yesterday in an escapade that I shalln’t go into on this public forum it became clear that if I am to successfully battle against the wrath of the elements I would need a new jacket.

So I went shopping. And bought two. Well, Dad bought one - the more expensive of the two of course, which I will hold back for occasions when I am aiming to look a little smarter, and I bought a nice dark green number for every day wear. I’ll be wearing the latter to college a fair bit, for sure, so keep your eyes peeled for a new, slightly fashionable-ish Philpot!

You might just recall that Jo and I have been working together on a collaborative fairy tale - well here, this evening, is the concluding chapter.

Smiling at their easy triumph, they returned with good spirits to Prince Lawrence. The prince was delighted by their good deed and happily gave them his very shiniest monochrome sword. Bo was in awe of the beautiful sword, and despite its hefty weight, carried it proudly home to the castle. They hastily put all the ingredients in a pot, which incidently did involve a dead vole this time, so they used one they found dead in a lake on the way back to the castle. They stirred the mixture until it started to bubble and turn green, before dipping the blade of the slender sword deep into the pot. The sword shone brightly and with that the spell was complete. Before they could take Princess Jenna to freedom, they had to get Bo and Philip back - in spite of them having been there earlier… oh, and also kill evil Marian - just for kicks. Despite her attempt at being fashionable, they could not forgive her previous nastiness.

They didn’t have to wait long - the three soon came into sight over the brow of a woody hill, Marian’s eyesight restricted by a pile of clothes in her crossed arms. Using the electic whisk from earlier with some new spikier additions, Sissy speared her. This task done with considerable style, the gang proceeded to start cutting back the dense trees of the forest. Although the sword enabled this task, it was still quite tiring and so the animals and Jenni took it in turns. “What we need is a strong ‘Prince Charming’ like character to do this faster than we could,” said Kathie. Then suddenly from behind a tree, a prince wandered out in a slightly drunken manner.

“Prince Bill Fletcher! Of course!” shouted the assembled cast in unison. He gave the group one look before walking into a tree and knocking himself out. Upon coming back round, the animals and Bella had all but carved a pathway out of the forest - but Prince Bill still picked up the sword for the final swipe and hence took all the credit. Princess Jenna was easily impressed and hence immediately fell in love with the handsome prince and his questionable attire. “We should get married and have loads of kids!” said Jenna.

“Ah, there might be a problem…” muttered Bill.

THE END

You might recall, dear reader, that yesterday’s post to The Philpot Spot which was written through blurry eyes as tiredness caused my much valued vision to dramatically deteriorate.  You’d have thought that I would have learnt my lesson but no, here I am once again at ten o’clock on Saturday evening, straining to write about my day as my body cries “go to bed, you great oaf”! But still, I will fill you in on the day that I ventured to Bournemouth.

Briefly. Basically, I was very disheartened by the fact that the Television Production course sees eleven unsuccessful applicants for everyone who gets to see through the very enjoyable looking syllabus. Thereafter I lost patience in the system and buggered off home. Here I sit, safe in the knowledge that - short of me developing lots of relevant experience and a high quality showreel before November - my plans to go to uni for a course of this nature are totally scuppered.

Which is a bit of a bugger, really.