RESULTS ABOVE THE CLOUDS

Well, another Thursday, another results day. GCSEs this time.

I'm experiencing this through a whole new set of lenses today.

The first time I met this day was twenty-two years ago. I went to school (25th August, 1994), and I was unbelievably blown away as I opened my envelope. There were As and A*s on every bit of paper - ten in total. No-one from my school had done that before. I could hardly believe that I had, either.

So, Reading Festival? a big blow out? a massive party?

Nah. Me and my boffin-buddies went ten-pin bowling at Megabowl and then I walked home, all the way along the Bath Road in the dusty sunshine. That was it.

The second lens I saw this day through was as a youth worker in my mid-twenties. It's kind of a strange one that, because you're much older with a refined view of things. You see it a bit better.

By the way, isn't it funny how easy things are to see when you can soar above the emotional fog? When you're in the thick of it, it's much more difficult to view it all in perspective.

Anyway, I remember saying things like:

"It doesn't have to define you."

... which is true, and...

"It's not the end of the world," which is also (obviously) true.

We can laugh about that from up here above the clouds - there is a lot of pressure down there though, and it's worth remembering that.

And then, through today's lenses, grown-up and surrounded by people who are brave enough to actually take on the parenting of teenagers...

This seems the most nerve-racking time of all! The fog reaches up and grabs you, envelopes you and magnifies it in a way that your children won't understand and you won't be able to explain to them.

Someone told me about a massive argument that's just erupted between her and her husband because of today's GCSE results. I listened but said very little (what's the wise thing to do?) and in the end tried to re-iterate the point that it's usually hard-work that gets you where you need to be.

When someone else goes through this kind of day, and you feel almost totally responsible for the direction and success-path their lives might take, that's the hardest, isn't it?

I was in the Evening Post. The photographer got me to pose with a stack of encyclopedia, looking smart, square and super-smug - the Straight A student.

My Grandma kept the clipping in her piano stool for years after that. I never could tell her how the article got me bullied in the Sixth Form, or how the unachievable expectation it created around me (Oxford? Cambridge?) shaped my life. That little journey of discovery ended of course, in Mrs Thatcher's office two years later with my A Level results.

But, as I pointed out before, life is way more than a set of letters on a piece of paper, and you are never out of different doors to try or places to go. It is of course, what you make it.

And even now, tapping away here, pretending to be a technical author and a musician and a writer, that's still applicable. And twenty-two years later, I am still determined to make it a good one.