Last time we did this a friend insisted I had to write a ‘What I did on my holidays’ essay for every day. I’m not sure we’ve done something interesting every day, but in that spirit, here’s what we’ve done so far:

Friday
My holiday started early when I left work at lunchtime to go to my final French exam. I’ve not found the practice papers hard, so I was looking forward to the exam if anything (in the same way you might look forward to a good puzzle; a crossword or a suduku). Afterwards, I went for a drink with Helen, one of the other students, and realised that after a year of studying with her I hadn’t picked up on how much we actually have in common. One of the things I’ve really loved about going back to college is making so many new friends, and hopefully I’ve just met another one.

The holiday started for real when Stuart finished work and we got ready for Out of the Blue. They were returning after a couple of month’s absence in a new venue (the refurbished Ohm) and it was great to have them back. We danced all night, and walked home to the dawn chorus (and we might have detoured via the dodgy take away where we were the only sober people in the place apart from the staff).

Saturday
We had planned to spend Saturday recovering, but instead I ended up going to the Take That concert at the City of Manchester stadium. My friend Deborah had bought tickets on eBay (yes, your alarm bells should start ringing) for Sunday’s reserved seating. We ended up with tickets for Saturday’s general admission. At least we even got tickets – other people buying from the same seller ended up with nothing. I put it down to the beautiful way Deborah complained to the seller…

I have to be honest, I wasn’t a Take That fan first time round. Not because I disliked Take That, particularly, more because the whole boy band thing passed me by. Doesn’t stop me admitting that the concert was brilliant. I suppose one of the advantages of being absolutely massive is that you can do whatever you want – and if whatever you want includes a tango version of It Only Takes a Minute, then that’s alright by me.

I wasn’t as impressed by the catering at the stadium, though. I was expecting outrageous prices (£3 for a tiny microwave pizza, £2 for a pie). What I wasn’t expecting was them to sell out of everything I was able to eat before the main act came on. In the end, I had to be content with a bag of crisps. I was very very glad that I’d decided to eat lots of flapjack before I went in (the theory was all the oats and sugar would keep me going through the day. After all, the 6 1” square pieces I ate provided a meal’s worth of calories on their own.)

Wednesday
You’ve seen the picture of my big camp mirror already. What I didn’t mention is how much trouble it was to put it up. I’ve had it for ages, but not been able to work out how to get to the space above the stairs. Eventually, we bought a special ladder with a platform that supposedly works on stairs. It sort of did, but not enough. We still had to dangle precariously over the stairs to get to the wall.

The really annoying thing is after a morning of measuring and measuring again it’s still not hanging straight. The fixings on the back aren’t equal and while we’ve compensated for it, we didn’t do it enough. So the whole thing has to come down again and we’ve got to work out how to pad out the hooks to correct it. I’m really tempted to leave it like it is, except it’ll drive me mad every time I walk past it. Nothing’s ever easy, is it?

Thursday
After a quick trip to Decathlon in Stockport (a sports shop that sells sports equipment? Weird.) we went searching for somewhere to skate that wasn’t up and down our street. We’d hoped that Tatton park might have somewhere, so we went down to have a look. It was very odd to go there when there wasn’t an RHS show on, and I hadn’t appreciated how beautiful it was. While there wasn’t anywhere skate friendly, we’re planning to go back with our bikes to suss out the isolated corners in the near future. Even I feel hopeful that I could potter round without falling off and really hurting myself. Again.

We’re not parking there again though. £4? Rip off!

Friday
I’m so sad! Stuart was up at Maplin looking for plastic boxes for his Thecus mod, and I wandered over to laugh at the rubbish disco equipment. I hadn’t realised how cheap that sort of thing actually is, and so I am the proud owner of a 20cm mirror ball to hang over my decks – and the motor to make it work. Not bad for a tenner, eh? I’m after a strobe next, although I suppose I’d better learn how to mix first.

Today
Our dynamic holiday gets better and better. Today we cleared our backlog of ironing – it only took 5 hours. Rock and roll!

I’ve found this whole GCSE so very difficult, and I still feel I just don’t have the bank of words and sentences I need to be able to answer the pathetically easy questions they’re going to be asking me. And that’s before I’ve got to try and decode what the examiner actually asks me.

I’ve downloaded loads of guidance from the Exam board website, and now I’m more scared than ever. <> – should be easy enough, but it just makes my brain shut down and I sit there, opening and closing my mouth wordlessly like a goldfish. But more stupid.

Look! There’s a castle!

I’m looking forward to having some time off work this Easter so I can really sit down and practice – I have a test next term which everyone passes, but I’d still like to have some personal confidence (and pride) that I’ll do it properly because I actually know my stuff – and if I do it properly I can go on to the GCSE next year without panicking about the jump in difficulty.

I’m loving unlocking this extra bit of the world. I mean, I’ve met the goal I set myself when I joined (I have a theory about travelling that as long as you can count to about three, say please and thankyou, and point at stuff, you’ll be OK) but I want more – I want to be able to go and hire a gîte somewhere vaguely remote and be able to survive for a week without worrying if there will be English speakers in the village.

Finding it very difficult teaching myself to listen – I miss stuff in the recordings she plays that everyone else seems to get. It’s like I don’t even hear it. I think I got into the habit of tuning out if I couldn’t hear (or couldn’t understand) and I’m trying to unlearn that. I’m going to start pestering the hospital about my digital hearing aid, maybe that will help too. Just doing the course is helping me right now, though. I’m finding it easier to tune into the accents of our Indian contractors, which I found very difficult a year ago, and I think that’s down to the French.

Have a habit of thinking in ‘Foreign’ though. So I get mixed up and go “Es tut mir leid, vous pouvez répéter? Or un, deux, trois, quatre, funf, sechs, sieben, huit, neuf, dix. It’s when I get confident and start talking on the fly, rather than thinking about it.

But, yes, I’m really, really enjoying. Which I never expected.