A Grade Sh*tshow

It’s A Level results day and the grades scandal has not dampened the enthusiasm of students in Cambridge to throng into Revolution and Wetherspoons. The scenes outside these two lauded establishments were akin to a crowd cramming through the turnstiles at a football game, wearing Ben Sherman shirts and boob tubes. It did make somewhat of a mockery of social distancing guidelines. At the same time there is laborious planning about a potential return to the office next month, calculating the number of people who can be allowed into the building, the footfall around the tea-making facilities, and how widely spaced are desks. No worries, as if the careful distancing becomes too much, we’ll just need to pile en masse to Revolution, order pitchers of Slippery Nipple and fall into a heap slurring about how much we love and enjoy hugging each other.

It’s a clear win for consistency, and I presume the beverage and entertainment industries have a strong lobby. Though no doubt I’d have done the same on A Level results day if 2001 had been a pandemic year, and having attended a sixth-form college with an undesirable Stoke-on-Trent postcode had led me to need to self-medicate my downgraded results with alcohol. We spent our A Level night in the Revolution in Newcastle-under-Lyme, getting through their range of novelty vodkas. Nothing really changes, does it. Especially not the classism of the Tory Party.

Shortly before it started slatting it down and I had to cower under a bush, I clocked this rather sad-looking funfair.