Nerves must have ‘done the job’ then but don’t say “lackaday”! :)
No one is born egg-headed to sail through it. Make another try,
not necessarily at CAE.
I’m not much of an expert on CAE but your English is not that bad as you
might think it is.
You flunked it, so what? Why don’t you try to apply a laid-back attitude to your learning curve now? Of course, there’s no way you ‘weasel out’ of some heavy-booking and if you really want to skip all the way to this “would-be imposing edifice of proficiency” right off the bat, you’ll have to put your back into ‘midnight oiling’ anyway (but try not to become
a “comma-counter” at the same time, it kills your creativity)
There’s indeed some way to go but working your way up to it slowly and gradually will get you to leap over those “three letters”.
And don’t sorry for your posting, whatever it is it’s yours.
No one expects you to produce a trenchant academic discourse here.