It's a Bank Holiday Monday, the sun is shining in Airdrie, the trees have all turned that beautiful, beginning-of-summer green, my mum is lounging in the back garden with a newspaper and I have to study.

My day has been spent lying on my bed leafing through notes on le passé simple and le subjonctif, cursing the French and their crazy tenses, wondering why I didn't bother learning this stuff as I went along and glancing out the window every now and then to see the green, green leaves swishing gently in the wind. It's an unfair world.

Tomorrow will be much of the same. Only tomorrow I'll be 21.

I do believe it is that age where one becomes a 'grown up'. At 21, my mother was married and had a mortgage. I'm still dithering about the family home, playing at being a student and demanding a family birthday party to celebrate, complete with ice cream and jelly and pass the parcel.

As well as being a grown up, I'm having to tackle preparing for exams as well. The pressure of tomorrow might be too much.

It's terrifying how quickly time passes. I can still remember being 7 or 8, getting a Sindy camping set for my birthday with a birthday cake shaped like a rabbit. That was back in the day, before I even knew what an exam was.

When I do finally grow up and decide to inflict the world with my offspring, I'm going to plan it carefully so that the poor sods don't have their birthdays in May or January, the exam months. I might just go for July babies for guaranteed summer holiday freedom for birthday celebration. They'll thank me for it one day.

Posted: Monday 26 May 2008 18:10:12