Again, I'd happily read more if you wanted to write more. Much of this rings true for me - the mixture of benign and ridiculous interviews, having a terrible entrance exam followed by a wonderful one, not really knowing what to do with yourself while you were hanging around Oxford waiting for possible interviews and so on.

At a risk of having the dread A-level conversation at twice the age it ought (if ever) to be hand, were English entrance papers ever marked as such (as opposed to being used as starting-points for discussion) and if so, did you ever find out your marks?