I can still remember the day I got my A level results.

I was expected to get an A (an A star by current standards) in English.

So, I had always been a bookworm and knew more about books than my fellow students, would be called back by my English teacher talk about books I had read which were not on the curriculum.

I had written a short story which got a national award. 

I was really on for a good grade.

I got an E.

I was absolutely devastated. 

I can’t even remember my other grades, I was so shocked by the English result.

So, a friend who had left school at 16 who was thoughtful, and in lots of ways smarter than me, and who died two year later in a motorbike accident, took me for a walk.

He made me walk a long way from my home, up to the Malvern hills and then up to the Worcestershire Beacon – and sit.

He had timed it right, so we watched the sun go down and he said to me, ‘You are more than your A level results. Whatever you do, I will still be here, and you will be amazing.’

He wasn’t, and I wasn’t.

But I have had a good professional life which has had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with my A level results.

Easy to say now, if I was back on that day, or on this day with those stupidly given grades, I would still be devastated.

So, for my niece who is funny thoughtful, amazingly smart, who is surprisingly 18 and who still disarms me with memories of how we checked out my jewellery stories, who knows to take a water sprayer on a hot dog walk, who has passed her driving test, who has thought about what she wants to do with her life much more than I ever had at her age…and so much more that are just between aunt and fave niece.

I salute you.

I want to say to you, ‘I will still be here for you and you will be amazing.’