"And God said, 'Let there be light'... sponsored by Powergen..."

I went to a private school (well, a series of them, actually, but I shall concentrate on the main one). It was a very good school. Whilst I was there our GCSE passes were at something like 98-100% grades A-C, with a similar percentage of passes at A-Level grades A-E. The year I took my GCSEs, a quarter of us got straight As. The teachers were, for the most part, excellent, and there was a good atmosphere about the school.

I’m very glad I went to this school and not my local school, which, trust me, would probably have scarred me for life socially, if not academically. I am very grateful to my parents for sending me (and, more to the point, to my mother, who (as she would invariably end up yelling at me during our many rows) went to work to send us to school).

But I think the existence of private education is dreadful. That the education a child receives is not dependent on its own abilities, but instead on its parents’ incomes and political views, is truly dreadful. When you sit down and think about it, how is this allowed to happen? It’s so unfair!

The point is, of course, that while I entirely disagree with this kind of two-tier education system, if I had a child, my concern for its upbringing would mean that, of course, I would send it to a private school (if I had the means), in an attempt to ensure that it received the best possibly education. Why is this country’s education system so crap? Why are so many of our schools so dreadful? Qu’est-ce qui se passe ici? Je ne comprends pas du tout.

"And I speak for all those people who would have shot that burglar a third time.."

Ooh, forgot to say.

Well, not to much forgot.

More, slightly ashamed to say.

But not ashamed enough to not mention it at all.

There we were, eating brunch on Sunday. We marvelled at the way in which no-one had come up with the word squeenius before. Then we commented on the pressure I now face when making scrambled eggs, such is their growing fame.

Then...

Then...

I came up with a new word.

I have no excuse for it.

Squeembled eggs.




I'm laughing as I type this. I can't help it. It's like I've got a disease or something...

Lines you won't see in the Bible: "Anyway, I'm rambling on..."

Something interesting happened today. Well, interesting is probably stretching it a little.

Yesterday, I made about a million hip cards for patients. This involves cutting things up, sellotaping them, laminating them, and cutting around the finished product. My Blue Peter instincts were out in full force. So, I made these cards. And they turned out more or less OK. And I showed them to Claudia and Priscilla. And they both waxed lyrical about how well I’d done them. They got quite enthused about it.

Thing is, I didn’t think they were *that* good. I look at them, and all I can see is the slightly wonky lines that *should* be straight, and inconsistencies in the depth of the borders, and where I went round the corner in a way that isn’t a perfect quarter-circle.

I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, particularly. Cuz, you know, lazy and quite crap. This is, sadly, no secret. But it makes me think of my fundamental problem with life. Which is this:

I’m good at most things; good enough to know that I’m not good enough at any of them.

And OK, that’s not exactly the worst problem to have in the world. But it’s a bit crap, nonetheless, because I know that nothing I do is as good as lots of people could do. (And yes, my grammar is talking a bit of a swan dive here.) I’m gifted academically, but not particularly brilliant at any given subject. I play the flute reasonably well, but on an objective scale I’m rubbish; I can cook and bake well but not *really* well… there’s just a constant list of things that I’m not *really* good at. And it sounds *so* much like I love myself if I talk about it, because yes, I can do lots of things better than lots of people, but I don’t really care, because I know that I’m never going to be the best at anything. Is this making *any* sense at all? Probably not. I probably sound like a complete tit. As per. Oh, arse.

(NB – Have tagged this as slight mental instability just because it fits best there, not because I’m *overly* woeful about this – it is, after all, nothing new.)