I BLAME Bjorn Borg for my failure to do well in my A-levels.

Him and a host of top tennis players – Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe, Chris Evert. They are to blame because they distracted me from revising. I remember lying out in the sun, half in and half out of the house, watching match after match, while trying to learn passages from King Lear, the poems of Wilfred Owen and the properties of igneous rocks.

It was the same two years previously with my O-levels: tennis was a major distraction. I can’t remember which tournament, I image it was Queens, the precursor to Wimbledon, but I was glued to the screen and found it hard to concentrate on anything else.

Yet, to be honest, tennis wasn’t the only thing that turned my attention away from my books. I’d do anything – tidy my bedroom, stroke the cat, wash my hair – to avoid those dreaded textbooks.If “getting distracted from revision” was an A-level, I’d have got an A*. Although, thankfully, A* wasn’t around in my day to push my dreadful results even further down the scale.

Now it’s far worse. Much revision, in particular past papers, is computer-based. It takes just a touch on the screen to replace quadratic equations with Facebook. Within moments you are deep in conversation with friends about last night’s telly or the gossip from someone’s party.

It is so difficult for parents to police. And there’s internet shopping too, with pop-ups alerting teens to the latest bargains from fashion chains.

In the old days, at least you could see your child with a pile of books in front of them. Now they can flick between screens before you’ve even opened their bedroom door. I’ve got two teenage daughters, each revising for different sets of exams. They are both holed-up in their rooms all day, so I can only hope they’re going over their work, not trawling the Top Shop website.

I don’t envy them. The lead up to exams is a horrible time. It consumes your every waking moment. My youngest daughter barely left her room for the entire Easter holiday, emerging occasionally for meals and baths, blinking like a pit pony on the rare occasions I tempted her out into the garden.

There’s no end of advice to lessen the stress, some of it useful – “take regular, short breaks” – and some plain stupid: “sleep on your exam notes” or “read difficult bits in funny accents”. My eldest daughter revises with music blasting all around her. I can’t see how any of it sinks in.

I’m just relieved that neither of them likes tennis.