FRESH from reaching the six-feet mark, the Big Friendly Giant - as our eldest is to be known from now on - is in the middle of his GCSEs. It's a highly pressurised, traumatic and exhausting time. It can't be easy for him either.

The mental scars from my own school exams have yet to heal. I've never got over the humiliation of getting a U for my Physics O-level. Ungraded, it stood for, but it might as well have been useless.

And I still wake in hot sweats, convinced that my English Literature exam is today and I still don't understand King Lear.

I vividly remember that cold, sickly fear that everyone else had done more revision and I was bound to fail. Three decades on, life's turned full circle as I fret about the BFG's GCSEs.

Is he revising enough? Is he revising too much? Are we pushing him too hard? Are we pushing him hard enough?

I had a beer at the weekend with a bleary-eyed dad who'd come straight from five solid hours of chemistry revision with his daughter. FIVE HOURS! I hadn't done any revision at all that day and I felt sick all over again at the prospect of being a failure.

To be fair, the BFG seems to be taking it all in his giant stride.

"Feeling OK, son?" I ask on exam mornings, butterflies whizzing around in my stomach.

"Fine," he says before ambling off to school, leaving me to worry all day at work. By the time I get home, desperate for news, he doesn't want to talk about it.

"How'd it go?" I ask, my heart thumping with anticipation.

"Fine."

"Was it hard?"

"A bit."

"Do you think you've done OK?"

"Dunno."

I'm even cutting the grass myself for the next few weeks to allow him to concentrate on his studies.

So far, we've got through ICT, English Literature, Religious Studies, Maths, and Drama Practical, with plenty more to come.

The only problem so far has been over the Drama Practical. He'd been allowed a lie-in on the basis that the exam wasn't until 10am.

After that, he had to go into isolation for the rest of the morning because Drama clashed with Religious Studies. He was due to sit RS separately in the afternoon so he wasn't allowed to speak to anyone who'd already taken the exam.

The plot went to pot at 9.15am, when a school secretary rang, demanding to know where he was because he should have been in at 9am for a final drama rehearsal.

Naturally, I ran around being very overly-dramatic but, even then, he stayed completely calm, saying: 'Dad, don't worry - it'll be fine.' I raced him up to school and, on the way, I gave him some last-minute coaching for the afternoon's RS exam, with questions about the Catholic Church's attitude to contraception, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and the role of women.

"Dad, did you know that Saint Paul decreed that all the women in the world weren't worth a single testicle?" he asked as he got out of the car. A bit harsh but you learn something every day.

There were no such dramas the following day as I walked the BFG's little brother Max to primary school. He seemed unusually subdued so I asked if anything was wrong.

"Dad, are they going to put Christopher in jail if he fails his GESCs?" he asked, sadly.

"Of course not, why?" I replied.

"I heard Mummy say they were putting him in isolation," he replied. "I've been worrying all night."

THE THINGS THEY SAY ANNE Tallentire, of the Multiple Sclerosis Society's Tuesday Group, which meets at Darlington Rugby Club, remembered the time son Michael, aged three, was being looked after by his Nanna.

"Who looks after you, Nanna?" Michael asked.

"I have to look after myself - my Mummy's gone to heaven," she replied.

"Well, don't you think it's time she came back?" said the little boy.

HEATHER Brown recalled the time she was teaching at Harrowgate Hill Infants in Darlington years ago and a stray dog known as Scamp was a regular visitor.

Scamp had an unfortunate habit of licking his 'undercarriage' and the teachers feared the worst one day when a little boy called Peter piped up: "I know that Scamp's a boy - do you want to know how I know?"

Mrs Brown did her best to change the subject but there was no stopping Peter.

"Because when you shout 'Here, boy' he comes," he explained.

JENNY Brookstein told how her two-year-old grandson Harry was getting all cuddly with one of his Mum's friends.

"Ooh, will you marry me, Harry?" she said.

"I can't," replied Harry.

"Why not?" asked the friend.

"Because I haven't got a Prince's costume yet," he explained.