6 March 2017, 11 am
I emerge from the whisky fug and spend most of the day being an invigilator with the Onssek, the EyeEyeEyePeePee and the bits of Mr Davies that the whisky left behind, which are primarily the glassy eyes and the leaden feet. This year’s EQEs are being held at the Walsall FC stadium. As if last year’s horrendous experience at Bristol City’s stadium was not sufficient to put us off mixing The Beautiful Game with The Beautiful Qualifying Exams ever again. Today it is the pre-exam. The candidates arrive wearing numerous layers of extreme-weather, 30-tog clothing, prepared for the arctic conditions which their predecessors endured in Bristol. In Bristol, I gather, the heating had to be turned off to prevent the electrics from exploding, and temperatures plummeted to a level at which if you didn’t keep writing, you were at risk of losing your fingers. Luckily the EyeEyeEyePeePee, or the EyeEyePeePee as he was then, was one of the invigilators and, being a practical kind of man, had a thermometer to hand. Not that the thermometer either raised the temperature or fixed the electrics, but it did enable the gathering of proper quantitative data, sufficient to send to the EPO by way of Documentary Evidence, which they immediately deemed late-filed and exercised their discretion to ignore. But I digress. Walsall FC, unlike Bristol City, have heating, lighting and electricity, not to mention a kiosk selling bacon butties. We are made to feel most comfortable. The numerous layers of clothing are tossed aside and several candidates will be completing their exam papers in nothing more than their thermal underwear. I imagine that Walsall FC must be in a different division to Bristol City, although I do not profess to be an expert in such things. Just before noon, a deathly hush descends on the packed hall. I feel a sense of foreboding, like a snail approaching a salt pot. Nothing on earth would entice me back to sit an EQE exam, I think. I can remember almost nothing of the original experience, or indeed of the knowledge I supposedly acquired in preparation. And yet the evidence suggests that I did at one point sit these exams. I am guessing my brain conducted some kind of post-traumatic wipe-out, which turned out to be so effective it lasted my whole career.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |