Goal!!!

The exam wasn't great, but heck, I wasn't expecting greatness. The questions were wordy and required equally wordy responses; this meant I could always slap down some kind of answer, but I was far too wishy-washy and kept repeating myself. Often a question would be split into four or five parts and I would write much the same thing for part "e" as I did for "b" and "c" and "d". I'm not holding out much hope for results day (which is still seven weeks away) but the most important aspect of the exam is that it's over and I can now get on with sorting my life out.

My life would be much more sorted if I could just have a bit more meaningful human contact. Hell, some days I could benefit from any contact, human or otherwise. To help achieve this I'm hoping to buy a house and get a flatmate, so on Sunday I went with Julie - my real estate guru - to look at three places in Birkenhead. I love the bush of Birkenhead - it's so quiet and peaceful there - but I have to make sure I don't end up in a cold, dark, dank hole. Two of the houses were non-starters for this very reason, but the other place was wonderful if just a tad too big for me (it's got four bedrooms and two bathrooms and sits on a quarter-acre). It's up for auction this Sunday - the chances are it'll go for something well above my price range but I'll pop along anyway; my only hope is that it doesn't go at all. It's funny how being a bit of a loner has almost worked to my advantage in trying to enter the property market. I never piss my money away on a night with my mates, nor devour it at über-cool restaurants in the city. And I can put my exam passes - each one of which generates a pay rise - down to single-mindedness rather than intelligence or enthusiasm for the subject. I'm hardly coining it in my job, and it does drive me up the wall, but I have managed to squirrel away a significant deposit in the last five years.

Last night I went to the men's group, only it wasn't much of a group - just three of us were there: Andy, Brendan and myself. We ended up watching Youtube videos including one of Dylan Moran who is a brilliant comedian. He'll be performing in Auckland on Friday - alas the tickets are sold out; I never find out about theses things until it's too late.

I miss being in the UK at this time of year, mainly because of the amount of sporting drama the likes of which you just don't get over here. Both my favourite football teams - Birmingham City and Peterborough United - have just won promotion by finishing second in their respective divisions. Though football has become bastardised in recent years, the system of promotion and relegation never ceases to produce edge-of-the-seat excitement. In 1999 the Carlisle goalkeeper - Jimmy Glass if my memory serves me correctly - scored a 95th-minute winner to keep his side in the Football League, sparking a mass pitch invasion. No amount of rugby or league comes close to that for my money.
And then there's the snooker, which might not even be a sport at all. My grandmother has been filling me in on the latest action from the Crucible (which has just finished), making me homesick. Many a time I'd be glued to the telly till late at night watching coloured balls being struck into holes, or even long drawn-out but utterly captivating safety exchanges. Matches would last hours, even days, and would regularly go to the deciding frame. And when I try to explain any of this to Kiwis, they don't seem to get it at all.

If anyone cares (I doubt it), I spent three years of my four-year degree in Birmingham (the third year was spent in Lyon, France). Part of me wishes I'd stayed there after graduating in 2002. That final year was the only sustained period of time when I've felt good about myself, so Birmingham always brings back happy memories for me. I then had to find one of them job thingies so I shifted back to Mum and Dad's and promptly got depressed again. I finally moved to Peterborough where I got a job making maps - it didn't seem a great job at the time, mostly because the pay was so low, but it sure seems a lot better now. As regards the football, well Birmingham has two professional clubs, Birmingham City (aka Blues) and Aston Villa. I plumped for Blues because they were less fashionable and less successful. Peterborough (nicknamed the Posh - heaven knows why) had always been one of my local clubs growing up anyway. Football was hardly in my blood so I felt I could support whoever I wanted, even multiple teams. I should point out that I never ever enjoyed playing the game. At school I was always last picked, and I used to stand there in defence, talking to two other hopeless players (but not quite as bad as me) about the previous night's episode of Red Dwarf, while my nuts froze. Man was it cold. To be honest I never really "got" team sports, full stop.

I've been writing this post at work; it was the most constructive thing I could think of doing before my lunch break. I haven't been silly enough to post it at work; I'll leave that till I get home. In the meantime I'll have to listen to two of my younger colleagues rabbiting on about the incompetence of some of the people in our customer services team. They don't seem to realise that the customer services people are poorly paid and are probably only here because they need the money to feed their kids, not because they're planning on pursuing a career in the industry. I've also got a meeting with my boss - these encounters are no longer daily - but apart from that I'll be counting down the four hours and seven minutes until I can go home.