The camping calm after the storm of GCSE results day

I’d like to say a huge thank you to all those kind readers who got in touch to express sympathy – and, indeed, make practical suggestions – after my angsty outpouring last week in the wake of my daughter’s GCSE results.

To recap (I swear I won’t go on and on and on about it), she had excelled in art but hadn’t achieved a high enough grade in maths to study fine art at the same sixth form as her friends, and I was at my wits’ end because three out of two people struggle with maths (boom-tish!) and it just didn’t add up.

But then, after telephoning and emailing and acquiring a vice-like stress headache, my girl was offered a place at an even better school, a pinchme-i’m-dreaming sixth form for which she had previously been shortlisted.

You may have heard my shriek of joy echo through the land when I got the call.

She didn’t, obviously, because by that point she was at Reading Festival and had her phone switched off, as she didn’t want to waste her battery speaking to the woman who gave birth to her, paid for the ticket and was securing her academic future.

She returned on Monday, filthy, exhausted and dehydrated, just about managed a “Yay!” and slept for 20 hours, while I popped pills in a fruitless bid to soothe my throbbing temples.

On the plus side, she did not abandon her tent, as did thousands of others, although she confessed to being so tired she was sorely tempted. Surely some enterprising gang could set up a business dismantling tents at the end of festivals?

Or, now the myth that spare sleeping bags and tents are given to the homeless has been busted, a surcharge to discourage reckless abandonment.

But she’s home, the tent is in the car, and today we’re all off camping in Sussex. It’s a last hurrah for summer, a chance to unwind before the new term at a new school begins. With any luck, the fresh air might even banish my headache.