An odd few days

This is going to be the last “personal” post for a while, but there are some thoughts running through my head at the moment I wanted to share with you.

The past few days have been very odd, both in good ways and bad ways. It started last Thursday and continued right up until yesterday (Bank Holiday Monday).

Obviously last Thursday was the biggest of changes, after (finally) passing my driving test. It sparks a whole wealth of new opportunities, new freedoms and new financial burdens I never had to face when paying £21 per hour for lessons! That and not having my driving licence with me when I went to buy a drink at the bar on Sunday night – the first time I had been asked for ID in almost five months!

Friday was my last day in education at Rainham Mark. Ever. I have eleven exams then results to go in and collect, but then that is that. Seven long years coming to an end. It was quite an emotional time, though it didn’t hit me until I got home and started looking through the videos I had taken, and reading through the many (unprintable) comments in my yearbook. It hit me that, no matter how much I may complain about that place, it’s been the place I have gone to almost every school day since September 2001 and I am going to miss it so much.

However, we must all move forward. New beginnings, and all that! Well with that spirit in mind, I went for a job interview at the Co-operative in Twydall on Saturday afternoon. The interview went well, I think, covering only a small percentage of the activities I have done over the past couple of years which make me suitable for the job, the interviewer was very nice and of course there’s not exactly a shortage of material on my CV.

I, of course, had to wait to hear back, so it was life as normal on Sunday morning with Church. Well, I say normal, I couldn’t go last Sunday, I can’t go next Sunday and I can’t go the Sunday two weeks after that - anybody would think I’m avoiding the place (which I’m not, obviously, I’ve just got a lot on at the moment!). The afternoon (and evening) was spent working – DJ’ing, by all accounts, for eight-and-a-half hours, an exhaustive, but enjoyable and worthwhile, mental exercise I am sure Cllr Maple can appreciate only too well!

I knew on Saturday that I wasn’t going to have to wait a long time to find out whether or not I had got the job at the Co-operative (after the impressive revamp giving the store an altogether more sofisticated and “up-market” feel, I feel compelled to use the full title) and, sure enough, I received the all-important phone call today informing me that I was being offered the job. Which, of course, I have accepted.

It’s tough being a teenage male these days. Car insurance companies will sting you for as much as they can (by the end of the year I will have paid over £1500 on car insurance), it is automatically assumed that you will have girls flocking round you (particularly when you are as energetic and good looking as I) and anyone aged 20 or over (or even younger) automatically assumes you are going to mug them as you go past, like some sort of common crook.

So, when you’ve had the sort of few days I’ve had (not including the two Physics exams last week which went surprisingly well, all things considered), you would have to have something seriously wrong with you to not go around with a smile etched permanently on your face. Unless you have had no sleep, of course.