After the shock of the spectacular (in the worst possible way) AS results, we went away for a few days to reflect. The Troodos Mountains are great for just one thing, escaping the Nicosia heat and having nothing to do but talk. And then we went to stay in Pissouri. I was pleasantly surprised because I had not stayed at the Columbia Beach for twenty years. It has been very tastefully done up and the staff were all amazingly polite and helpful. My first such experience in a hotel in Cyprus. But then someone told me it is a German company!

After weeks of idling around in the air conditioning, today is a serious day. The first item on the BBC news this morning was a headline story about how many students in the UK and worldwide will receive their A level and AS results today. Is there any student or parent waiting for those all-important results today, who needs a reminder? While my 17-year-old son will probably sleep soundly until at least lunchtime, I have been a nervous wreck since about 6am this morning…

We all make sacrifices for our kids and some of them are more painful than others. This summer’s big sacrifice on my part was a day at a water park yesterday, which the kids and their mates thoroughly enjoyed while I struggled with the expense, the heat, the crowd and the lack of sun beds. It did, however, give me the opportunity, (whilst sitting for hours under a tree trying to avoid the sun and the other fun seekers), to ponder some of life’s more impenetrable mysteries.

I can’t believe how hot it has been for the last week. It was officially 46 degrees at one point last weekend, which means you can be sure that it was probably about 50 degrees in Nicosia at the hottest point. The sort of temperatures guaranteed to make the environmentalist lobby even more smug and patronising than usual, ranting on about climate change and carbon emissions. On the upside, it may of course help them with their penchant for dressing really badly; if you do have to go out, there is very little that you can wear in these kinds of temperatures.

If you were thinking of going to Ayia Napa and haven’t been recently, I really wouldn’t bother. I have had to go twice in the last week and it was not a pleasant experience. Imagine the set of the Jeremy Kyle show, a heat wave, excessive alcohol consumption and vast amounts of unattractive flesh on display. It is not pretty…

There has been much talk of growing up in our house over the last week. My eldest child reached the ripe old age of 21, which is great for her because it means that she can now drink legally anywhere in the world that she might wish to go. It doesn’t necessarily mean she is a mature adult, as evidenced by her response to a haircut she was not happy with at the start of the week and some rather reckless driving towards the end of the week.

Some people are saying that this World Cup has been rubbish. I think it has been great fun. Despite England’s disgraceful exit at the hands of Germany, the various examples of poor refereeing decisions and embarrassing slip-ups with the jabulani ball, there has been so much to entertain the fans. And most of it off the pitch.

I went for lunch with a friend the other day and we ended up chatting about the important things in life, (other than football), to a complete stranger. That man, the stranger, was a poet and artist in residence on London’s South Bank. We discussed creativity and how many people struggle to get some of it in their lives. That could, I mused, be a direct consequence of how schools and exam systems do their best to knock it out of kids before they really learn to express themselves in any vaguely interesting ways. And we reward them for all the wrong things.