Breaking news in from Oxford - Daughter no. 1's room is reportedly on the first floor of St Something's and has an "awesome view over the gardens". She still sounds a very happy bunny, and day one is now well and truly under her belt. Apparently, she's been assured that the netball club is a dead cert for a great social life so is planning to go along to the trials, despite having never played before. Hmmm, not sure that netball's the best choice when you can look a Shetland pony in the eye (Daughter no. 1 is smaller even than her dear ol' mum), but maybe it is a better bet than hockey - especially as she's still bearing the scars of hockey-induced plastic surgery on her dainty little chin! In fact, come to think of it, I can understand why netball might have a distinct appeal...

After five years of relentless slog, she's finally made it.  Daughter no. 1 is now safely ensconced in an ivory tower somewhere in the dark recesses of St Something's College, Oxford.  We travelled south together at the weekend - and for the entire journey by car, plane and train, she literally beamed with excitement.  Not just a subdued little Madonna-esque smile either... a great cheesy grin that would have done an ecstatic Cheshire cat proud.  Speaking personally, one quick glance at the tinder-dry French literary tomes which she's going to be studying in her first term would have been sufficient to reduce me to a state of weeping hysteria rather than extreme euphoria, but then there's no accounting for taste. So I bade her "bonne chance" in my best French accent and returned north asap to see how Daughter no. 2's UCAS statement was coming along.  Not well, as it transpired, since evidently her over-zealous mother (charged with "proofreading it but not changing ANYTHING") had not been able to resist adding a sentence (only one - I thought I'd been so admirably restrained).  Apparently the said sentence didn't go down too well with her teacher, who (she claims) spluttered "what on earth did you put that in for?" A definite case of "could do better" - reckon Yours Truly had better stick to dotting 'i's and crossing 't's in future.  After all, being a model mother, I should know that my role is to know nothing about anything - a role which I evidently perform to perfection. Indeed sometimes I think it's amazing that I've managed to muddle through the last 47 years at all, given my many (and apparently serious) shortcomings in just about every area known to mankind.  Not for nothing is there a quaint little sign up on our hall wall proclaiming: "Ask a teenager while they still know everything"...