If today is your day of destiny - a still moment in time that crystallises your life's dreams up to this moment; that distills every conceivable destination board of your future onto one piece of paper: I say to you with the benefit of wisdom beyond my weight: Don't worry. Be happy.
It was thirty years ago today that I opened my envelope and cried an ululation I've only been able to repeat twice since. Once when saying goodbye to my dad and once when the most perfect cat I'll ever own died.
The cause of my tears? A "C" and two "E"s. (Do such humble grades even exist any more?) Or more accurately, two years of congenital laziness, thinking staring at my shoes, bunking off lessons, and devouring the NME would somehow compensate for not being able to place the English Civil War in the right century.
A place on a prestigious course at Warwick was now closed to me, and even my second choice was beyond me - at Essex of all places - proof if ever it was needed that 18 year olds set their hearts on getting to places they haven't a fucking clue about.
Like it mattered a shit. Of my two closest friends, one went to Notttingham, as was his burning ambition, and dropped out two years later, before becoming a squillionaire Ad Man. The other turned his back on education and successfully pursued a musical life instead.
And my own failure proved a serendipitous one, as I hitch-hiked my sad-assed soul into a much better life in deepest Wales, a three year pupation from child to adult which, if nothing else, gave me a deeper appreciation of the construct called luck.
I've looked at life from all sides now, and I can safely say, no matter what sliding doors I'd have chosen, the odds are I'd still be a fat, alcoholic, failed gambler. Them's the cards, folks, play 'em as they lie.
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