So There Are Currently..

..fifteen days until I leave home to head off to university. Fifteen days! That's fifteen days of lovingly (well, grudgingly) prepared meals made by my mother; fifteen days of clean clothes miraculously appearing in neat piles in my room; fifteen days of soft, comfy couches and large television screens. Essentially, I have fifteen days of being almost totally dependent on my family left to enjoy. Quinze jours. Fünfzehn tage!

Though I'm rarely the first to admit it, I can concede that I am treated far too kindly by my family. And considering that, for the most part, I've grown up in the grey concrete city of London, I should probably posses a far more steely attitude than the languid disposition my eighteen years of existence have afforded me with so far. I mean, the only form of public transport I rely on to get home after nine in the evening is called Dad's Taxi Service. My long suffering mother spends hours a week folding my freshly washed socks together; and despite the rules set out when I was twelve, I get my allowance even when I haven't tidied my room (but come to think of it, I might be lucky to even get an allowance at this age!)

So will I spend the last fifteen days of real adolescence trying to perfect my beans-on-toast recipe? Will I ask my mum to show me how to do my own laundry? I doubt it. In fact, I resent the very suggestion. Instead, I will use this time far more wisely - I'll spend the last days of irresponsibility with the friends I have left from high school who don't make me want to rip my own face off, and I'll set about tidying the mess that's slowly been building in my room over the last five years of teenagerdom. I'll buy pots and pans and carrot peelers for the communal kitchen I will be sharing with five other students at university, and I'll pack them in to boxes. The boxes will be stacked in the car, the car will trudge its way down the coast of England to the picturesque South East, and my parents will unload the bags and boxes in which my entire life for the next year will be contained. They'll wave goodbye, I'll dry my eyes; and I will resolutely get on with my life..

If practice makes perfect, then so be it. I'll wash a hundred loads of laundry before I realise the most economic ratio of detergent to fabric softener. I'll make a two hundred cups of tea before even contemplating getting a Thermos mug. And I'll spend three weeks worrying about coping with being completely dependent on and responsible for myself before realising that I'm having the best time of my life. University - and maturity! - here I come..