I remember in the past, whenever I’ve had any exams, there’s always been somebody to point out how boring the job of exam invigilator must be. Quite right too; imagine standing around in a room for two hours in complete silence while students write an essay and you can’t so much as bring in a book to pass the time with. Well, as it turns out, the invigilators actually do have a few sneaky little games that they play in order to make the job a little more fun. Just the other day, in an English Literature seminar of mine, one of the professors at the university was talking about the times he’d been an exam invigilator. Now, before I tell you them, I must warn you that they should be taken with a pinch of salt; he has quite a sense of humour and could have been joking or exaggerating, but I don’t think he was.
    The first game, he said, was called Exam Pac-Man: since there are usually three or more invigilators in any given exam there are enough of them to have their own game of Pac-Man. Between them, presumably before the exam starts, they decide who’s going to be Pac-Man and who’re going to make up that team of dastardly ghosts. Since they don’t have any white pellets for Pac-Man to eat, the desks used by students replace them: the person playing as Pac-Man has to walk past every desk without being caught by a ghost. That sounds like innocent fun doesn’t it? Well, just wait until you hear the second one.
The second game, I can’t actually remember the title of, but we’ll call it The Ugly Baby Game. Basically, the invigilators look out at all of the students and the have to pick the combination of them which would produce the ugliest baby. So, next time you’re in an exam, worried about what you’re writing, if you’ve remembered enough or any other exam related anxieties, be sure to make sure you look nice, because you’re physical appearance is being judged the whole time!
    These’re the only games he mentioned, but I find it quite amusing that they exist. I’d never assumed before that exam invigilators play any games, but, thinking now, it seems pretty obvious that they’d need something to pass the time with.

When I was in Year 11 at school, for PE, we were able to do whichever sport we wanted to. We had to choose two subjects and so every term I did Golf and Gym (Gym being where we were allowed to actually just use the local gym for free!) we were told at the start of the year that we wouldn’t be allowed to do the same ones every term, so there was no point in choosing them, but I guess they were wrong, since I chose the same ones every time and then was allowed to do them. There was actually a trip to a driving range that happened at the end of every term which I always looked forward to, but unfortunately, every single time I was unavailable. Anywho, today I’m going to tell you a sad little story about one of my golf lessons.
    There I was swinging away with my club, knocking the ball no further than it would have gone if I’d only tapped it with my foot, when my teacher, Mr. Holden, approached me.
    “I’ll show you exactly how to swing so that you do can hit it further, watch me,” he hit the ball pretty far. “Now you try.”
    I got into position and prepared to take my swing.
    “Wait a second,” he said, “I think that water bottle in your pocket is probably throwing your balance off, take it out and put it down here.”
    So I took out my Trusty Water Bottle and put it safely on the floor a meter or two behind me. I took my swing and, sure enough, it was a lot better than it had been before.
    “Well done, Adam,” he said.
    I walked out to collect my ball, and once I had it, headed back to where I had been swinging from. Unfortunately, it seemed that some cleaner was walking across the field with a large bag of rubbish and a litter picking claw (the kind I would become familiar with later during my time as an MDSA). I stared helplessly from the distance as my water bottle was grabbed and placed into the bag like a common discarded bottle of coke. There was nothing I could do; it was gone, if only I had collected it before the ball. Alas, that was the end for my trusted companion.

I recently made a video with my good friend David Tubb; it’s about the upcoming series of Red Dwarf and lemons. Here it is, for your enjoyment:

When life gives you lemons, make YouTube videos featuring them hey?

I recently found the file of an old film trailer I had to make in my first year of A Level Media Studies. Most of it was filmed in the wilderness of Corsham. The people acting in it are: Rachel Dinsdale, Sam Dodd, Davey Hamlen, Doug Hamlen, George Moore, Christian Watkins and, of course, me. Enjoy.

My hometown, Corsham, has some really rather interesting features (aside from just generally looking pretty). There’s some vast woodland, an abandoned army base, an old haunted bridge and, as well as all that, it also happens to be in Wiltshire: one of the biggest UFO hotspots of the entire world (perhaps this has something to do with the large numbers of army bases around here?).
    At one particular spot in Corsham, you can see quite some distance into other areas of Wiltshire. One thing you can see, on particularly bright days is one of the mysterious white horses which have been made on many hillsides in England. Here’s a link to a picture of one. These white horses are linked to ancient religions, sky deities and the end of times. Plus, as an added bonus, if you ever visit one, it’s quite likely that you may see a crop circle from that high point (I’ve seen on there).
    As such, it’s quite understandable that some people might be a little startled if, while taking a walk during the night, there are strange bright lights which hover in the air above the point where you can see the horse. The lights appear above the hill with the horse (you won’t be able to see the hill or horse at night though, it’s hard to even see it during the day!) pulsate for a while and then disappear. So you might look at these pulsating balls of light and think in a panic “H.G. Wells told us! We’re darned fools!” and expect that the Earth invasion is looming, or that you’ll soon be whisked off into space by the aliens.                 However, to reach an anti-climax, there is a rational explanation for all of this. Behind that hill is an army training ground, as such, these lights are most likely flares fired during practise manoeuvres. So it seems the strange lights in the sky may not be so strange after all, a disappointment to some I’m sure. I like to believe there’s a rational explanation to all of the fantastical and supernatural things in the world, but that is a bit boring isn’t it?

One thing I have a big problem with is the idea of Heaven and Hell (of Christian theology in particular, I don’t know enough about other religions). How an ‘all loving’ God could burn somebody forever is quite beyond me. I was told once that, rather than being a God who loves everyone, I should look at this way: that God isn’t ‘all loving’ but rather that he (or she, or it) is concerned with administering perfect justice to the universe. I can understand that, worshipping an all-powerful judge who will ensure perfect justice sounds perfectly reasonable (two side points though: I’m not going to go into arguments for or against God in this entry, and also Plato’s Republic shows the ‘perfect’ society and that was arrived at via ideas of ‘perfect justice’ and that society would be pretty darn horrifying in real life!).
    Anyway, I think the ideas of Heaven and Hell are very far from perfect justice; a mockery of justice really. Imagine a real-life judge: if the person being trailed tells the judge that he really loves him, regardless of the crime, he is let off and, not only is he let off, he’s given a reward! That reward being endless pleasure in paradise. However, if the people don’t tell him they love him, he sentences them to be tortured forever. Even if they didn’t know they could just tell him they loved him, they still get the torture. I imagine lots of them would really despise him for sending people off to be tortured too. How is that perfect justice?
Bringing it back to the main point, nobody will ever deserve to be punished forever, because they can’t have done any bad which lasts forever. Meanwhile, you could also say that nobody deserves happiness forever, because everybody does some bad, although, this sounds quite mean to me, if I could give everyone utter happiness forever, I would do it right away.
    Now, I’m going to explain how I imagine an afterlife which was truly based on perfect justice would be (and it is a little similar to some ideas of reincarnation really). When you die, all of a sudden you’re a foetus again (or maybe even a sperm) and you’re actually about to live your life all over again! You get to re-live your childhood! Meet all your old friends! Be reunited with dead family members! etc.! Except, every bad thing that happens to you, and every good things that happens to you, are directly caused by what happened in your previous life. If you were really mean, then in your next run through of life, lots of things will go badly for you. It would go on and on until a ‘perfect’ person came about, somebody who never did any wrong (and no, consensual sexual explicitries are not immoral) this person would then live there life again, but this time in a perfect world… Heaven basically. But they wouldn’t stay there forever, if they’re ‘perfect’ again, there next life will be there too, but if, this time, they acted quite jerkish, then their next life would be a little worse. Like I said, it’s quite like ideas of reincarnation, but without the horrible nightmare of being separated from all your loved ones and having your memory erased so that you forget them entirely!
    Feel free to comment if you disagree with me, or you have different ideas! I’m interested in other thoughts.