Thoughts about Church

Charlotte Church, actually, who is looking decidedly more rotund than her modest three months of pregnancy should by rights have produced as yet.

I'd like to think this is because good ol' Char, ever the antidote to the ironing board/lollipop celebrity contingent (that's physique, not a fad diet, just to clarify), blatantly found out the good news and went "Preggers? Wicked. Pass me that creme egg".

And, with the shops full of empire-line smock dresses, which make everyone look as though they're either five months gone or setting up a nice sideline in smuggling anyway, what better time for Ms. C to start putting it away? I would.

"Can I have a bit of lard with that leek?" she may well ask, from her regal place on a velvet cushion, balancing a Lindt bunny on her bump while Gavin massages her swollen feet and slices a Twix into her salad. The lass can't drink any more, remember '“ all those alcohol calories have to be found elsewhere.

Like, um, Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey sandwiched between a couple of cookies'¦ or a peanut butter and banana fried buttie'¦ or a bit of brie, melted so it's all runny in the middle, with some bacon'¦Whoops, just salivated on the keyboard, which can't be good for the electrics.

Rest assured, dear reader, I myself am not eating for two.

I'm eating for exams, which is surprisingly similar.

The morning sickness, the night sweats, the feeling that your former carefree life is being slowly juiced under the colossal weight of responsibility until it is just a pulpy mess in the collecting tray of the great Compresser of Consequence (unfortunately I have no test on analogies formed around modern electrical kitchenware, or I'd be cruising).

And at the end of it all, after multiple hours of extreme pain, you give birth'¦ to something I sincerely hope resembles a quality UCL 1st year English paper.

But at this stage, frankly, it could be all the lyrics to the Saved by the Bell theme tune written on an old tissue.

"What am I hoping for?," they ask. 2:1 or 2:2, I don't mind as long as it's healthy.

Oh, how I wish I could be one of those people who treat May like a party dress they need to get into.

I wish stress left me only with cravings for cottage cheese salad and beetroot juice.

I wish I spent the whole revision period on a mad metabolism high, forgoing meals and public transport in favour of essay practice and jogging to the library, and came out of it at the end having gained a first and dropped a dress size.

But, alas, in my world, a stack of custard creams is a study aid prized above pens.

As Mary Poppins (nearly) said, a spoonful of sugar helps the Old English paradigms and Medieval Literature thematic motifs go down'¦ and the day I ignore Julie Andrews' advice is the day I stop climbing every mountain until I find my dream (also the day I stop making frocks from the living room curtains, which would be a terrible shame indeed).

Make that sugar a spoonful of banoffee pie and we're in business.

In a lecture a few weeks ago, I wrote a list of "all the books I'm supposed to have read this year but haven't" (strikingly similar, you'll find, to the original list written many months earlier, entitled Books I'm Meant to Read This Year) and found, to my horror, it was about 20 books long.

That's a small Pret A Manger-worth of snacking before I've even got onto proper revision.

Each of these papery specimens seems to require its own appropriate form of nourishment to nurse me through '“ something French for Rousseau and Roland Barthes, maybe pommes frites or a pain au chocolat; something fanciful for Ovid, perhaps a souffl or a packet of iced gems; humous for the Greek tragedies, a chicken leg for Chaucer, you get the picture.

And nothing but a stiff G&T will see me through 12 chapters of Wordsworth.

My difficult birth, at least, is only a month away, while Charlotte's going to be in the smock dresses for another six.

And when little Church does finally arrive, I really think she should call it Gulliver, after Swift's political satire'¦ or Guylian, after the praline seashells.