Preparations

Just two little days till I get on the flight to New York. Woohoo! Can't wait.

Anyway, on surveying my wardrobe, I realised that most of the rags dangling therein would not be out of place in one of those Victoria and Albert museum past fashions exhibitions. These were not the trendy threads that I imagined myself swanning about the Big Apple in. There was nothing to be done about it: I would simply have to go shopping!

And God do I hate shopping! I know, I know: I'm gay; I'm not supposed to be able to go more than two days without needing to spend £500 on the latest Dolce & Gabbana must-have, but it's just too stressful! You walk through the shop door and within seconds the first of the 'ever-so-helpful' shop assistants sweep down upon you to ask if you need any help. With what precisely might I need help? Looking at things? I can manage that just fine, thanks! Finding things I like? How the fuck are they going to know what I like! I end up being chased round the store by these intrusive busybodies until I eventually can't take any more and am harried out of the door.

If I actually manage to find anything I like I have to go through the torture out trying it on. That's if anything vaguely approximating my size is on the rack, rather than the XXL tents or XXS corsets that only ever seem to be left by the time I get there. Skulking into the funfair hall of mirrors that is the changing room, you find it has been lit in the most unflattering manner possible so that even if you were wearing a bespoke £10,000 garment by Versace (rather than the badly-made £10 Topman T-shirt you actually have in your hand), you'd still look like a sack of shit. You look around nervously, hoping that no stray Japanese whaling ships might be passing through and try to harpoon you by mistake. And I'm sure the only point of the person at the entrance to the changing room is to make you feel even worse when you have to hand them back because they don't fit. You can almost hear them whisper under their breath, "Well, did you really think you were going to fit into that, fatso?!"

Anyway, despite it all, I did actually manage to pick up a few new threads though, as soon as I got back from the shops, I had to run to the gym and it's only now two days later that I've actually been able to bring myself eat.

OK, so maybe I am a little gay after all...

No Rest For The Wicked

Yesterday it occurred to me that it had been a fair while since I had bothered to exercise my typing fingers and add anything new to this pointless blog of mine. So, seeing as I am currently incarcerated in Hell's Hospital for the night, looking after the Gomers and Gomeres of Lower Londinivm, I thought I might spare a few minutes to clog up the internet a bit more with some random scribblings.

As evidenced by the previous posts, I had recently been wading through the quagmire of tedium and misery that is the membership exam for the Royal College of Physicians. The exam is a bitch and my preparation was, alas, not as thorough as it might have been. I had not expected to pass. And yet it seems I have; or at least that's what MRCPUK.org's internet result page says. Still, despite having rechecked most days since it was first published on Monday of last week, I cannot shake off the idea that when the paper results slip finally arrives in the post, I will find out that there has been some sort of terrible mix-up in the uploading of the computer results and I have, in fact, failed miserably. Though the rational part of me thinks this unlikely, the more significant irrational part of my personality has printed out the computer results page as evidence for when I am forced to sue the bastards for the emotional distress of having to tell everybody that it was all just a big balls-up and I actually failed.

Nonetheless, all that doubt and anxiety over whether I can yet put the letters MRCP after my name cannot really dampen the excitement generated by my approaching holidays. One whole month off work to do with as I please: to laze in bed; to drink on school nights; to fly far, far away. As it is, it looks to be a fairly busy one. After a week's R&R, I'm off to New York with my dearly beloved to see a city that I've always imagined as the only other place I'd live if not in London. Quite frankly, I can't wait till the plane takes off. Once back, I'll have a day or two before I climb aboard the train to Wonderland, whence the manger of my birth and bosom of my family await. Then I've made the courageous and extraordinary decision to abandon London for the New Year and hop on a plane over to the benighted backwater of Brittany to spend it with the Frenchman and his kin. Goodness knows what it'll be like, but after 9 years celebrating the New Year rat-arsed in some sweaty, dark hole of a club in the Big Smoke, I suppose it might be nice to do something a little different for a change. Finally, I head back to Paris for a slightly terrifying party where I am expected to meet and charm the entirety of my boyfriend's ridiculously large, French-speaking, French-being family: that's to say his parents (all four of them!), brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins, grandparents and assorted family friends! I have enquired as to whether it might not be possible to opt instead for the considerably less scary-sounding, mediaeval 'trial by fire' to assess if I'm good enough boyfriend material for their darling son, but have been told that, sadly, that is not an option. Thankfully, though, it is at least a party so I can just get horrendously drunk, which, as we all know, is always guaranteed to bring out the best in anybody.

At least one thing is certain: I will undoubtedly be more in need of a holiday by the end of this holiday than I was before I even started it.