Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [37]
In a desperate bid for a fun alternative, I spent three days in the month leading up to the start of the university year, sitting in the foyer of MI5, the British counter-espionage service, asking to interview for a job.
I had initially written to MI5, and had received a succinct reply saying thank you for my letter, but there were no posts currently available for me. The letter was signed off by a Miss Deborah Maldives.
Now, I might have been born at night but it wasn’t last night, and even I could tell that Miss Deborah Maldives was a fake name.
I made up my mind to go and offer myself in person.
In hindsight, I quite admire the balls that I showed to go to each of the many entrances of MI5 HQ in central London, over and over again, day after day, asking to speak directly to Miss Deborah Maldives.
Each time, I told the security guard that I had a meeting booked with her, and waited.
Each time I was politely told that no one of that name worked there and that my name certainly wasn’t down for any meeting.
So, I would leave, and try the next entrance along.
Eventually, on the umpteenth attempt, I was told to my surprise, that Miss Deborah Maldives was coming down to see me.
I suddenly wasn’t quite so sure what to do with myself, as I waited anxiously in MI5’s marble foyer. Oh, God, Bear. What have you done, you idiot?
Finally a stocky-looking gentleman, who definitely didn’t look like a Deborah Maldives, appeared at the other side of the revolving, security-controlled glass doors. He beckoned me forward and the door started to turn for me.
Moment of truth, I thought, and walked through.
Mrs (or Mr) Deborah Maldives sat me down in an interview room and told me that there were proper channels to apply for MI5, and sitting in each entrance’s foyer, day after day, was not one of them.
He then smiled.
He admitted that I had shown the sort of spirit that was required for counter-espionage work and suggested I reapply, direct to him, when I had a university degree. I took the card, shook his (her) hairy hand, and scarpered.
So there is some better motivation to go to university, after all, I thought.
Frantically, I applied late, in the vain hope that somewhere, anywhere, might accept me.
CHAPTER 33
The Royal Marines description of me as ‘happy-go-lucky’ is good for many things, but somehow it doesn’t wash with university applications.
And with my mediocre A level results I was getting a hefty number of rejections winging my way.
A lot of my good friends were heading to Bristol University. But I had as much chance of getting in there with my ACDC grades as Deborah Maldives had of winning a beauty pageant. Yet I really wanted to be with my buddies.
I finally persuaded the University of the West of England (UWE) (which was the less academic version of Bristol University) to offer me a place studying modern languages. (Incidentally, I had only pulled this off by going down there in person and begging the admissions lady for a place, face to face, after sitting outside her office all day. This was becoming a familiar pattern. Well, at least, I have always been persistent.)
I wasn’t allowed to study purely Spanish, which I loved, so I had to do German and Spanish. My run-in with the beautiful German Tatiana had led me to believe that the German language might be as beautiful as her.
Boy, was I wrong.
The language is a pig to learn.
This became the first nail in the coffin of my university experience.
The up side was that me and my best friends, Eddie, Hugo, Trucker, Charlie, Jim and Stan, all got to share a house together.
Now when I say house, I use the term loosely. It was actually an old disused hotel called The Brunel. Situated in the roughest, cheapest part of Bristol, where call girls and drug dealers cruised the streets, The Brunel soon developed somewhat of a legendary status amongst our circle of friends as an outpost, full of eccentric Old Etonians living in bohemian squalor.
I quite liked