It really is all go, go, go at Casa Cochrane at the moment.

Birthday celebrations are now well and truly over, with only a couple of half-deflated helium balloons bobbing about to remind us that it ever happened. I had a really lovely day - well, week actually - and got lots of lovely presents. Including my very first digital camera that is all mine miney mine and not a hand-me-down, a beautiful ring and my first piece of Tiffany jewellery. I say first with a view to getting more. I feel sorry for whoever ends up stuck with me for life, my expectations are ridiculously high.

On Friday night, the night the photo from the previous post was taken, there was cocktail-drinking and disco-dancing and laughing at randoms in orange skinny jeans. Coupled with a blue jacket and bow-tie. Yes, seriously. I love you, Glasgow! Started off in a bar with Elaine, Gillian, Emma and Gemma, gossiping and having glasses thrown at us (don't ask), then Elaine, Gillian and myself headed on for a bit of a boogie. There was a lot of leaping about and finger pointing, even some high-kicking, and, "Eeeee! I love this one!" Can't beat it.

All of the fun aside, I'm now 21. Which is getting a bit old-ladyish for my liking. It'd probably be acceptable to refer to me as a spinster now. I think this is probably why 21st birthdays are generally quite explosive and alcohol-fuelled. To help you forget this fact until a few days after the event, once you're actually used to being 21.

Now it's back to reality, however. Tomorrow is my exam for Journalism and Creative Writing. I'm starting to wish I'd actually taken notes for this class. What I have written down is generally half a sentence, followed by "What a load of crap!" underline three times. One day I kept count of how many times the lecturer referred to his own book and mentioned MySpace, blogs and "the web". He likes to call it "the Web", you see. Makes him feel trendy and down with the kids. He's not. At all.

Uni, if you gave me entertaining lecturers, I wouldn't resort to drawing caterpillars and practicing my signature. That's all I'm saying.

I'm crossing everything that I manage to pass this. I might walk in with my arms crossed, legs crossed, fingers crossed, legs crossed and wait to be led out of the room and asked to go join the circus with my excellent contortionist skills.

And once all of this is over, which won't be a moment too soon, I'm going to have to get myself gathered together for lift off. On Tuesday, I'm off to America for 12 weeks of fun and frolics.

My tiny, lazy brain can't quite cope with it all. It's all quite exciting, though. As the beautiful Miss Penny Lane would say... It's all happening.

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.