Exams and Flowers

The temperature dropped as I trotted towards the exam room. My breath looked like dragon smoke in the freezing air. I clenched my hands inside their bright purple gloves, trying to get some warmth into them. I sat, the only one waiting for an exam, on one of three ice cold plastic chairs outside the building. Beautiful music drifted out from the exam room where the examiner was playing.

I slipped one purple hand out of its glove. All the tiny warmth I'd built up in my hand vanished into the frigid air. Digging numbly in my music bag I located the list of my pieces. Quickly I shoved my hand back into the glove.

The examiner came to the door.

"Charlotte?" she asked.

I nodded. I followed her up the steps into the exam room. Some wonderful person had put a gas heater in it. The examiner sat back down at her desk. I pulled out the piano stool and wriggled my fingers out of their gloves yet again. Despite my attempts to keep them warm they were still purple as my gloves.

My fingers ran up and down the piano as I played scales. Though they were working hard no pleasant warmth spread through them. They remained stubbornly cold.
"Oh well," I thought. "I'll just have to play with cold fingers."

So I did. I rumbled away, hoping that I'd remembered everything that my teacher had told me. I think I played rather well considering my hands were so cold. Finally after what seemed like an hour of torturous singing and ear tests the examiner folded up my piece of paper.

Thankfully I skibbled out. Imogen was sitting outside waiting. She handed me her bag and trotted off. No sooner had I sat down to wait for her than I got nabbed by my teacher's wife. Though I'd wanted to open my result with Imogen I had to open it early.

But as soon as I could I wriggled back to the exam room and sat down on a low wall. Someone started playing another piano and I couldn't hear Imogen's exam. Slowly my eyes started to close. But the wall was too cold and my feet were nearly numb so I couldn't go to sleep. But I was exhausted. All the extra lessons and practises were over!

Imogen finally came out and we hurried back to our teacher to open her results. After ages in the freezing cold place we were glad to come back to the nice warm van.

"Let's have morning tea out," Mum said.

We cheered. Mum treated us to hot chocolates and doughnuts. I was starving and very glad to eat something. While Gemma-Rose finished eating Mum went to do a little shopping. We stayed at the table and waited.

Mum appeared with a trolley at the checkout. We saw two bunches of flowers sitting in the front.

"This one's for you, Imogen," she said handing a bunch of orange flowers to her. "And this one's for you, she handed me hot pink flowers.

Our grins spread from ear to ear. We've never been given flowers before as congratulations. When we got home Imogen and I tried our hands at flower arranging. We mixed the pink and the orange flowers in the vase.

We made a huge cake from two sponge cakes, whipped cream and strawberry jam. It was so tall that the slices fell over as soon as they were cut and I got rather good at catching slices as they collapsed onto the side.

On the whole the exam weren't too bad. I think that the time in between exams is wonderful. There is the couple weeks spent resting from practise and lessons. And when we begin again in a little while we'll be all rested and ready to start preparing for another exam.