Updating: The Short Story 1 (Australia)

Ok...I'm officially crap, and I just can't really be bothered going into a blow-by-blow account of the summer, so...here's the short story:

1. I finished up at Aith Junior High School and left the Islands of Shetland on a ferry on the 7th of July. I spent the next few days on the mainland running around like the proverbial blue-backsided flea and left for Australia.

2. My god that's a long flight, and the shower in the BA lounge in Singapore was TOTALLY worth the money the Qantas Club cost.

3. On arrival in Brisbane I hooked up with Dave and we spent the next few weeks doing a whistlestop tour of East Coast Australia. On our way we took in Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort, went up north to Cairns and snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, headed out to the Atherton Tablelands where we stayed with Dave's wonderful aunt and uncle and I picked up Harry Potter 7 (more on that later), then flew to Uluru - where I slept in a tent! - and finally headed to Sydney.

4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Despite all mocking from Dave, who thought I was kidding when I said that we'd be going on a three hour round trip drive to Cairns if I couldn't get a copy of it in Atherton, I fired through the book and, despite all my fears, it really did live up to all my hopes. Smaltzy-but-neccessary-I-suppose epilogue not withstanding.

5. Sydney was probably my favourite part of Australia, and I took in all the usual sights including the Opera House where I saw a very good performance of Othello, visited the Botanic Gardens and saw the fruit bats, and spent a day wondering around Taronga Zoo where I learned that a baby duck-billed platypus is called a puggle.

Gutted

I got the results of my recent WOMBAT. I only got an A...and I'm honestly disappointed.

I'm disappointed becuase I only got an A in a made up exam, based on the fictional world of an adolescent wizard.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Harry Harry HARRY

Oh. My. God. The Excitement!

Promotional Wombats

Okay, that title is a bit of a tease - the Wombats and the Promotion are actually two different issues.

So first...the promotion...

An open-air production of Love's Labour's Lost in St Alban's in which the rather talented Nalini Chetty features as Katherine. Nalini reckons that Katherine "doesn't say a huge amount, just falls in love and wafts around stage" but I'm sure she does it well! (I have been trying to get the LLL Flyer up, but for some reason Blogger doesn't want to do it...if I can manage it, it will go up!)

Tragically, I won't be able to go see the play, as it's on between 19th and 27th of July, and I shall be in Australia. Anyone who does go, however, do please let me know what you thought...

Next..Wombats...

Or Wizards Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptiude Test to those uninitiated Muggles. Basically...it's for big Harry Potter Geeks like me to see just how much of geek they really are. Now, I've previously got deeply excited about WOMBATs, and today I sat the WOMBAT Grade Three - the final, and hardest, of the WOMBAT tests. It evidently appeared on J.K. Rowling's Website a couple of days ago, but as I'm not quite sad enough to check it every day, I didn't know about it until today. So I sat the test - and you know what, it was HARD! Unlike earlier WOMBATs, this one wasn't as reliant on mere fact recall, and required far more extrapolation based on what we know of the Wizarding World at large, from History of Magic - how we all wish Harry had paid more attention in Professor Binn's classes - to Politics, to DADA*.

As soon as the results are out, I shall let you know if I've continued my relatively high standards (O and E so far). Of course if the very worst happens and I get a T for Troll...I shall delete this post and deny all knowledge! And until then, I'm waiting for the always thorough Lexicon to come through with their post-WOMBAT analysis in which I should get a rough idea of how I did with my guesswork!

*And by the way...I'm sure that JK Rowling, or which ever minion she got to write the WOMBAT used the Lexicon in composing their questions...

It's Official: I'm a Geek.

I am officially a total geek. Having got overly excited that Level Two of the WOMBATs were available on JK Rowling's website last week, the results came out today. For those of you not in the loop with these sorts of painfully geeky things, WOMBAT stands for Wizard's Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Test and is designed to test basic knowledge and survival skills in the world of Harry Potter. Being entirely a written paper it is open to Muggles as well as Wizards and Witches and is as good as we can get without sitting OWLS or NEWTS.

Like the OWLS and NEWTS the grading scheme is O, E, A, P, D, T. Standing for Outstanding, Exceeds Expectations, Acceptable, Poor, Dreadful and (god forbid) Troll. In Grade One - a fair while ago - I was alarmingly pleased with myself to get an O for Outstanding - the highest grade. This time round I'm almost ashamed to admit that I'm annoyed with myself for only getting an Exceeds Expectations in Grade Two. I clearly need to spend more time re-reading the books and wallowing on the Harry Potter Lexicon before the next and final exam!