5 years ago today

5 years ago today I was 18 years old in the final year of school, due to take my final A Level exams in June. By this point I'd been rejected by Oxford so my top two choices for University were Durham and St Andrews, and I knew I was more than capable of getting the grades to get into either. However, this point in my life probably marked the height of my complacency academically. I'd always been lucky to possess a strong innate ability to do well at school without doing much work outside the classroom. Most people have the tendency to doss around in the lower years and then knuckle down when it matters but I was the complete opposite. For some reason I let myself become supremely confident in my ability to get the grades I needed whilst putting in the absolute minimum of effort. In some lessons I barely paid attention in class. I wasn't disruptive or noisy, I just had real trouble keeping my mind focused on what was being taught. I had a bit of a wake-up call in maths when I scored 4% in one of the mock papers and basically had to teach myself the whole module from scratch in free periods. Come June I'd sorted it out though and got 75% in that one. In English, the reverse happened. We did a mock paper one morning and I got 98%. That is a crazy score to get in English, where it's nigh on impossible to get top marks for a written essay. Looking back, this is definitely the worst possible thing that could have happened to me in that subject. I still kind of hold it against my teacher for giving me that mark, because she could easily have just given me 80% which would still would have been an A. As soon as I saw the 98% result, I just thought 'right, no need to do any work in English for the rest of the year'. So I didn't. Going into the summer exams, the only possible way I could have not got an A grade in English was to get an E in the paper I'd scored 98% on. It couldn't have been scripted better - I got an E in the paper, so ended up with a B overall. At the time I didn't care too much, because I still got the grades to go to the uni I wanted. In retrospect I was a bloody idiot and I'll regret how I acted back then forever. Throughout school English had always been my strongest subject and to get a B in my final year in that manner completely and utterly sucked. It was genuinely shameful.

So what did I get up to outside school? I drank a lot for my age and went out with the boys at least two or three times a week. We'd have a double vodka to start and to finish on every big night - looking back on that we were crazy! Thinking back to then, a ton of great nights stick out. I'd probably call those days the time of my life. We were all so young, up for it, full of life and naive enough not to worry about the future at all (well I certainly didn't anyway).

Career-wise at that point I was planning to go get a bursary from the army whilst at uni and go to Sandhurst after graduating. Over the next few months I submitted all the paperwork, had my interview and was scheduled to do the physcial tests over the summer. This all went tits-up however after that fateful evening when Portugal knocked England out of Euro 2004 and I got ran over outside the chicken shop. Maybe I'll do a separate post on that incident!

Despite the drinking, I was very into sport and fitness. This is when I first started getting interested in working out, and Daz and I would bunk games every Wedensday and go to Highgrove to hit the iron instead. I was also really motivated on the tennis court, and I'd have regular hits with Alex. The two of us partnered each other in the doubles in the summer and should have won it. I may well never get as good an opportunity to win a Lowlands trophy again. We lost in three sets to Simon and Kieron in the quarters, having stuffed them in the first. Again, an example of how complacency has ruined my life! In the semis we would have faced Ian and Colin, and then Nev and Gary Farrant in the final - what a weak draw that was! I believe 100% that Alex and I would have won it if we'd only finished off Simon and Kieron in the second set that day.

This post was meant to refer just to February 2004, but it's drifted a bit more towards the summer now. That year was magical, as I already said I'd call it the time of my life. I've left such things as Bud Season and our first ever lads holiday unmentioned, maybe another time.

Thanks for reading.