It’s rapidly approaching another “big day” in my life – yep, my birthday. You can tell, because things always start to go brown around the time of my birthday. The leaves start to fall off the trees – see above – and the nights start to draw in. Autumn is coming. In the place where I work there is a small garden, where (sadly) no-one ever goes, not even me. Well, I am there to work after all. When I arrived for work this morning, the leaves from the big beech tree in the garden had started to fall and they’d built up on the steps.

Although you couldn’t describe it as a significant birthday in any of the normal senses (no zero at the end), it’s deeply significant for two reasons.

Firstly I’m celebrating it as a married woman and I never for one moment though that’d be the case when I celebrated my last one. Second – well, second I’m about to do something that by rights I should have done thirty years ago. Although I probably couldn’t quite describe myself as being in the autumn of life, I’m certainly in the autumn of some parts of it. At the ripe old age of 49 (which I will be in a few days time), I am going to become a student in three weeks time. I’m going to fulfil an ambition that I have held for a long, long time and I’m off to get myself a degree. (She says assuming, of course, she passes!)

Assuming all goes well, I’ll graduate aged 53. Assuming I don’t think of a massive money making scheme that will earn me enough to pay my way through university, I’ll come out of it with two things, a degree and a bloody huge debt. I’ll be glad of the first but not so glad of the second. I suppose the good thing about incurring my student debts now is that it won’t prevent me from being able to get a mortgage or anything because I’ve already been through that hoop.

My days at the moment are punctuated with gut-wrenching “OMG what have I done”, “I am SUCH a fool for deciding to do this”, “how on earth am I going to fit in when the UCAS magazine that dropped through my door is giving me great advice like snog lots of people, make sure I drink one non-alcoholic drink for every alcoholic one etc etc”. Basically I’m wondering whether it’s just too late. Whether I’m deluding myself by thinking that after all this time I could do it.

Is it too close to autumn and too far from spring for me to be successful?