It turns out that with a deadline, a bro, and the summed might of BPP Law School’s teaching-to-the-test resources, revision isn’t all that hard. This is a lesson I sort-of learned with Louis a year ago, but I did jack-all revision for my other subjects and came out with flying colours regardless, because you don’t actually have to know anything for a History degree. Law is different. A few weeks ago, if you waved a GDL exam question at me – any subject except maybe Criminal – I would turn white, maybe stutter something, and run away. Legal problem questions require a systematic approach, totally unlike my stream-of-consciousness history-writing style; they need actual knowledge of the relevant facts and processes at each and every turn. Each topic requires its own combination of detailed case/statute knowledge and a particular structure with which to apply it. And I need to learn eighteen of them.

So, in the mornings, I trot down to Mikhail’s flat at the bottom of the hill my house is on; we work separately on our notes, grinding through our manual chapters and the overpriced, semi-accurate but still quite useful “GDL Answered” guide. At 4 we run through our flashcards on Mnemosyne, have a meal, and take on some practice papers together. Somewhere between 7 and 9, I roll home for some non-challenging computer games and a night of being chased through my subconscious by the British Constitution, as it flashes in and out of codification like Schrodinger’s nightmare.

I spent the weekend at Sam’s down in Exeter, which as usual was stunningly picturesque (I seem to have good luck with the weather down on the south coast), doing the same routine, with a break on Tuesday to ride a wheezing old DMU down the estuary to Exton on a little branch line (with request stops! how darling!), for a pricey but delicious lunch at something called the “Puffing Billy”. I like the south coast a lot; maybe I’ll retire there when I’m old and fat and worthless. The hours were long, but productive; I work fantastically to a deadline or when there’s an external expectation, but without it I’m very bad at self-motivation, so having someone around that I need to work with and impress is the perfect way of getting through the obscene volume of law. I don’t think I’ve ever worked quite this hard, though that says more about me than the work.

Back in Bristol, alongside the revision the GDL crowd had a great shining glimmer of false hope in the form of a rumour that BPP might pay for the next stage of law school, in the rather likely event that we don’t land training contracts. Unfortunately, the article is wrong (presumably some abused, unpaid intern got the wrong end of the stick – ah, journalism, where it doesn’t matter if you’re right so long as you’re fast) – the offer only applies to people who’ve paid for the LPC out of their own pocket. I’d raise an eyebrow at anyone who does, and both eyebrows at the idea that law firms will find that a compelling reason to hire them – you have to balance “prove a commitment to law” against “prove that you’re financially irresponsible and desperate enough to spend a year of your life and a staggering amount of money on a largely worthless and widely derided vocational qualification with extremely limited chances of a return on it.” Or maybe I’m just bitter because I can’t afford it.

A genuine silver lining was the slightly surreal “Speed Networking” event at BPP on Thursday – speed dating with law instead of romance. I enjoyed two-minute chats with all manner of legal types, including an Ashfords trainee who sold her firm rather well, a cool ex-Army BPP chap who runs the accountancy section, and a nice barrister. And, of course, got to see Higgins and Leyanda again, which is always fun.

Exams are a week today. I’m not feeling optimistic – that’s the wrong word (it usually is) – but I’m feeling prepared. How’s that line go? “When retreat is not an option/and remorse just ain’t your style…”

The first username I ever really had on the internet, from ages 14-17 (so everything associated with the name is loathsome teenage crap and I refuse to stand by it) was Wraithlord42, the first part of which is a Warhammer thing and the second part of which is not a Douglas Adams reference but a reference to The Sum I Got Faster Than Everyone, 6*7=42 (we played something called Maths Gladiators in primary school, and that was the one I always got faster than anyone.) That served on my LJ and various other places for a long time.

Running largely alongside that was the even more embarrassingly terrible “Sausageman10”, which was my Runescape account name back in the day (my little bro came up with it; I usurped the account from him). Playing Runescape with my old clan, TBE (which is, amazingly, still alive) everyone just called me “Sausage”, and I tended to play very tankishly. At one point someone called me “sausagetank” and I for some reason translated that into German to yield the much less ridiculous-sounding “Panzerwurst”.

In 2007, thoroughly sick of both the Livejournal name “Wraithlord42” and all the daft teenage bullshit I’d now associated with it (including the fanfiction.net account through which I got that glorious hit of validation from someone liking my writing, and where I met the lady who’s now my girlfriend, and the livejournal account through which I made some of my best and oldest internet friends) I changed it. The desire to Not Have This Name was far more evident than the desire to have any other name in particular, and the replacement – “Odontomachus”, part of the Latin name of the trap-jaw ant (one of the coolest ants in creation, something I became aware of through the National Geographic back issues we had lying around in my primary school library). It was never really a satisfactory name, and I always wanted to change it. I dabbled in being LBO/Largebluntobject in 2008-9 on TV Tropes and GiantITP, but I’ve left the name – and those sites – behind, without regrets and without nostalgia.

Then, in mid-2010, amidst the gathering storm of hype for Portal 2, Bill (Havokroft/Hovercraft) and I – who had over the previous couple of years gradually become COGS’ premier power couple – watched a video talking about the two robots in the co-op mode, which described them as “like a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pair, popping in and out of the action”, and-

*[COGS] Panzerwurst is now known as [COGS] Brosencrantz
*[COGS] Havokroft is now known as [COGS] Guildenbot

Which wasn’t the first of our many novelty names – (0v0) Ace Blackvest and (0v0) Beard McOldman, (cO/) Teasencrantz and (cO/) Havercuppa*, Mavercraft and Goosencrantz, Sweet Brosen and Hover Jeff, to name but a few – but it just stuck, from there to Tumblr to here and now, and I like it.

* It’s a teapot.