I graduated (again)!

Lovely, lovely day today at my graduation. I had a nice day off work and left the house bright and early at 7am. Mum was slightly surprised to open the door to me at 8.30am! Got dressed up, went into Leicester to the Curve to have my photo taken, spent half an hour fannying around with kirby grips in the loos trying to get the stupid hat to stay on. 'Are we going to have one with your teeth showing?' asked the photographer. 'No.' That's the good thing about being 38 and not 21, you can say no to things like that....
Then we had a very early lunch at San Carlo, and got in a taxi to De Montfort for the prize giving because apparently my mum can't do a 10 minute walk across town. The prize giving was in a kind of classroom with wine and nibbles, and it was quite dull but mum and dad were very proud so that was nice. One of my tutors asked what I was doing and then said: 'I hope you're not going to waste your GDL!' which really pissed me off. Then another taxi to the graduation. We hung out in the cellar of a bar across the road from Curve and had tea, it was nice and peaceful and good to hang out with mum and dad. Dad seemed on good form despite bad headaches.
The graduation was quite flash, we were in one room on tiered seating, then they raise this panel and the whole auditorium is in front of us with parents etc, and John Bercow on the stage giving a speech. We all had to cheer and whoop! John Bercow was ace, then I walked across the stage and they said 'Siobhan Godwood, winner of the Ilex prize for blah blah...' which I hadn't expected and was quite nice.
Afterwards we had cocktails in Memsaab for old times sake, then Laura persuaded me to invite mum and dad to have dinner with us. So they did, which was lovely, we were all quite pissed, then I went home and couldn't sleep.