Home to Results!

Our Irish Odysey, from Donegal to Dublin to Bray and Culleybackey, soundtracked by Arcade Fire, is over. I'm looking forward to the next visit, can't wait.

And so after an early morning walk to get the car, we drove home to Aberdeenshire with a very quiet Sam sitting in the back...for the results envelope would be on the door map...once we'd got through the rapturous return home welcome from the dogs.

I told him nothing bad would happen this day , but that a bit of paper with some useful information would arrive to help him decide his next steps. I think he was too anxious to listen, his prelim results had been pretty low and he just wanted to be home to find out.

What a welcome home though, dogs are just so full of love, it bursts out of them from nose to tail. And my house was sparkling clean...obviously the work of the Irish fairies while we were away...or more likely my mum and dad who looked after house, dogs and cat wonderfully.

And so to that bloody results envelope, the one that kids across the land reap joy and despair from in equal measure. So he opened it, spent a good few minutes looking over the copious sheets of blurb before digesting the headlines. He'd passed everything, including Bs for Maths, chemistry and Biology, fantastic news, huge lift from prelims, what a relief and an achievement for a lad who only switched to chemistry only in November and has real struggles with English. But he was low for English, too low to progress to Higher English for the moment, and he was gutted and couldn't see past that to recognise his other great grades. Bosies and reassurance from Ma n Pa weren't enough. But time helps to put a bit of perspective on that A4 bit of paper and by teatime he was coming round to the fact that he was still on track, he'd passed his passion subjects well, and life is still open to all possibilities.

Wishing all Sam's peers a healthy dose of self belief and confidence, a huge dollop of resilience and big celebrations to the achievements bagged in this round!