Graduation Day

The graduation gowns are awful to wear - without pins, they don't fit at all and slip down massively. I got up nice and early this morning before getting ready and heading to Leicester with Marge, Parge, Sarah and James. We grabbed some lunch in the Piazza and then went into the Union to collect my gown, hat and colours. All Batchelors of Art had red and silver as their colours so I had painted my nails previously to match. I was going to have a professional photo taken but the queue was an hour long so we went outside to take some of our own. I'm not very good at posing for nice pictures and all I wanted to do was play Batman with my gown and run around. Mature. We met with Katie and her lovely parents and then met Dunc and his lovely mum and sister on the way to De Montford Hall where we were graduating. We thought we would take more pictures when we got out of the ceremony so we registered and went in. I was sitting right at the front near to Han and Dunc which was great for chatting but meant we could see absolutely nothing on the stage. When it was eventually our turn to go up, I managed to successfully walk across the stage, shake the chancellor/dean's hand without falling over! As we all filed out, it was just our luck that the heavens had opened and it was bucketing down. Our hopes of hat-throwing pictures were dashed. After a quick meet and greet with our departmental staff, the five of us left to go to a surprise meal that Margey had planned. And Nanny and Grandad, Auntie Jayne, Uncle Barry and Holly and Grace were there too! Well kept secret, everyone! The meal was in San Carlos and over the course of the evening, we saw Dunc and his family and Vicki and her family. The food in there is so good! I went for whitebait, steak and the creme brulee, although I meant to order pannacotta. Rookie mistake..... Over the course of the day, I also got some great presents! James got me Rob Brydon Live on DVD and a relatively unknown film about a dog show called 'Best in Show', although there are more gifts from him on the way, everyone chipped in and bought me a motarboard charm for my Pandora bracelet, Nanny and Grandad got me a graduation teddy bear, Jayne and Barry got me some flowers and Margey, Parge and Sarah bought me some amazing Vivienne Westwood earrings in turquoise blue and orange. They are really beautiful and I shall keep them for special occasions. Thank you everyone for a brilliantly lovely day.