Off to London I went

Well, today I had my grade 8 piano exam in London. I haven't had a more horrible experience in a long time. It didn't go particularly well, I didn't say enough for the aural - and didn't have enough time to think of and say more, I kept hesitating and he moved on to the next test -, I wasn't at all sure about the second aural test, I know I got one change right because it was very exaggerated, but the other two were pretty much guesses. I couldn't think of the right word to describe one of the changes. The sight-reading was better than it could have been in some ways, it only had 2 flats (B and E) and I had been hoping for fewer than 4. The beginning and end were ok but the middle didn't go very well. You only get half a minute to look at it, and my brain wasn't functioning very well, so I had only looked at the first line by the time I had to play it. Despite the fact that I know my scales and pieces well I still make quite a few stumbles. I only stumbled once on my scales (F# melodic minor I think) but I made a couple of mistakes in my pieces. So I'm not that happy with it really. Hopefully I still passed, that's all I was aiming for and I really hope I achieve it.

My day improved a little, on the way back Carol and I had hamburgers, apple pies and fries, I also got a free sugar donut (which Carol and I shared - it was quite nice really). And I ate the chocolate buttons that I bought on the way to the station at the beginning of my day. It's quite worrying that all my happy memories are due to food.
Actually, that's not completely true. I arrived at the station in town about 10 minutes earlier than I had planned to meet Carol, so I ended up standing outside the station for those 10 minutes and it was lovely! I was listening to music (from 'Albertine' by Brooke Fraser) and it was really windy (reminds me of home :P) and it was just really nice weather in my opinion :).

And now I'd better go, I need to leave in about 25/30 mins to go to college. I'm playing one of my exam pieces in the 'Spring Concert', plus I'm in the choir. Got to be there by 7.15pm as it starts at 7.30.

Oh yes, and I found out last week that I passed my sign language exam with full marks (as did everyone else in my class, though I was sure that only about 2 of us actually paid attention in lessons!). So that's good. Yeah. Better go...