I’ve often heard parents describing exam season as like going into a war, or an incredibly harsh winter, for the entire family. Not just the person taking the GCSEs or A-levels, but the whole lot of you have to start having early nights, gird your loins, and get used to mood swings and anxiety attacks. It’s sort of true, but it also depends quite a lot on the personality of the exam-taker. Some of them want to be tested on the groyne height of a beach in Hastings and practise talking about the climate crisis in French; others want you to butt out completely and leave them to it. Both approaches seem pretty reasonable to me.
I’d forgotten one thing – the terrible guilt. Maybe it’s because the Easter holidays weren’t sunny last year, or maybe it’s because the youngest is my favourite (I am joking), but the guilt is just hideous. It’s like having a little Cinderella in the house, except I’m not the audience – I’m the evil stepmother. Fancy going to the beach, or to a party? What about a lovely lie-in, and then some re-runs of The Office? What about a ball – you know there are some great balls on? Everyone can do exactly as they wish, except Cinders upstairs, who’s trying to memorise the whole of Great Expectations, while the rest of us – even the people who did the same text last year – sit around going: “Is that the one about the orphanage and the porridge?”
We can’t even do positive visualisations of the summer, when it’ll all be over, as that just reminds the poor rag-dressed creature of the time period between now and then. Really, the only way to offset this guilt would be to memorise Great Expectations myself. But I don’t want to. The sun’s out.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
