Hurray! This is the happiest day in my life! I'm seventeen today! Still young (which is nice), but no longer a kid (even nicer) – and, starting tomorrow, I can legally drive!

I'm mad about cars. I started to learn how to drive at the tender age of twelve, when my girlfriends still cared about their dolls. No idea why, but I never found dolls too amusing, and have always been attracted to motor vehicles instead. In any other aspect one could hardly call me a tomboy: I always had my hair long; I got introduced to makeup rather early in life; I preferred skirts to trousers; and all that – so everything about me was actually girlish. Everything but my love for cars.

And now, at long last, the day has come!

I can drive better than many, believe me! Yet up until now I was only allowed to do so with an adult by my side – and this is not what I have been looking for, really. But starting from tomorrow I’ll be fully capable of doing it all by myself!

Can't wait for tomorrow to come! The morning that’ll allow me to grab the key for Auntie’s Jaguar and, weather permitted (hey, weather, you’d better behave, I've been waiting for this waaay too long!), I’ll lower the roof; then I’ll adjust the driver’s seat to my body and the mirrors to my eyesight; and then I'll start the engine; and, finally, I will press the accelerator down… No, no, I won’t do it harshly, I’ll press it gently, no matter how much I want to put it down all the way at once!

Tomorrow is Saturday, and Auntie Claire had promised to let me drive – alone! – wherever I want to, and for as long as I wish – with one condition (there’s always a condition, isn’t there?) that I don’t come back home too late. And I won't, I'll only make a circle or two around Richmond, and then take the A316 towards Hammersmith, and the A4 towards Westminster. I'll drive into Parliament Square, then I will circle Piccadilly Circus, go halfway down the Strand, then I’ll turn north. I will move slowly through Covent Garden, and Soho, and Marylebone – and from there I'll drive all the way back to Richmond.

I had been working on the itinerary week after week after week, I ground every corner, every traffic light, every pedestrian crossing... I'm not going to get lost anyway – the Jag has a satnav built in. And I'm not going to breach the Highway Code; I will be very cautious, and everyone will see who’s the best, the most considerate driver in the world!

Oh, how I wish tomorrow were today! But then I'd have missed my birthday party tonight – and this I do not wish. Not at all.

I'm sure my girls will have prepared something rather entertaining for my bash, and also I saw Jacque, our chef, bring over a whole basket of ingredients for my birthday cake! It's going to be big, really big! And Auntie asked me whether she could invite Breta and Robin Kent with their cutest kids. She said Mrs Kent's sister is in town as well – and I'm absolutely looking forward to seeing her again, to see if she still is taller than me, because I remember her being really tall last time I saw her, but I was only fourteen then and quite a bit shorter than I am now.

And the boys will come too, including Thomas, the best of them all.

Maybe tomorrow, when I'm driving, I'll pick him up and take him to Central London – it would be cool to drive around with him in the passenger seat. Or maybe I won’t – haven't sorted this one out just yet.