Marilyn Manson is a customer at my parents' shop! Apparently, he lives in west Cumbria and bought a guitar from off last December. Well, someone called Brian Warner did anyway, and you never can tell . . .

We also have a customer called Mr Brownsword.

I've cause to believe my degree result is currently sitting in my inbox, but due to having a computer in several pieces, thanks to the difficulty of installing broadband on it, I can't access my e-mail. I'm online via my parents' computer, and so I would check it via the web interface, but its newfound speediness doesn't quite compensate for the fact that it isn't working.

My brother's drawn a picture of some really fat people playing instruments and with the caption "Broadband comes to Brampton". Some people have too much free time on their hands.


Later

Have broadband! Have degree!

Have monitor that only displays 16 colours, but nonetheless, yaaaaaay!

In other news, I *didn't* get a distinction. Oh, I got an average of 73%, but "only" 66% for my project, and since you need over 70% for both project and taught bit, noooooo.

I know! What the beep? I can't not get a distinction! I was the thirteenth best thirteen-year-old Mathematician in the country! I got 9 A*s for my GCSEs (and an AO Level besides) (and should have had one for French, as I learnt every single word we'd come across in five years, and sailed through 7 out of 8 of the exams, but noooo, you had to get above a threshold in all of them). I got 5 As in my A Levels. I got into Cambridge. I could have gone to music college. I left Kent as the top student in the faculty. I got one word wrong in my last Dutch test. All but one of the people who did the M.Res course last year got distinctions. GAH!

But:

1) I worked really fudging hard. For all the times I said, "Alas, I only did three hours of work today", it's hardly surprising because I'd worked for fifteen hours every day for the past week and had to crash at some point. i.e. I Did My Best.
2) When times were good, they were really really good, both terms of the course and getting to do all the cool stuff that living in York and Australia and getting paid for it afforded. If I missed out on a distinction because I was seeing metal bands and baby wombats, so be it!
3) When times were bad, they were really really bad, and they were bad for about two months. So I should feel proud to have done as well as I did.
4) My project didn't end up going the way I'd expected it to, so I can blame the topic for going weird. Anyway, if I do another two hours' work, I can become a co-author of a published paper, and I should get a credit in a textbook too.
5) If I do decide to return to academia, I believe the powers that be will let me anyway, especially since one of my lecturers told that what I perceived to be my nasty hackish mathematical ways are in fact mad but genius.
6) I'm now officially the most sk1lled person in my (extended) family ever.
7) And anyway. 66% is Black Metal.

So I think I can cope.