The weather has imploded. Cold and grey again. Good day for a museum trip with Gill.

Yesterday I drove to see Nicky for lunch, always a tonic. The drive from Petersfield to Winchester is breathtaking, along the top of the Downs. The patchwork of fields below, green after the plentiful winter rain, reminds me of the patriotic hymn Jerusalem “In England’s green and pleasant land.” Nicky is a farmer. She runs the show like my Auntie Wilma did in the grasslands of New South Wales. She has sheep, chickens and agricultural land. I love walking through her fields when the wind is swishing the crops from side to side. It takes me right back to the days when I had a pet kangaroo.

Nicky was my trusted confidante during my courtship with Geoff. Geoff was part of a close knit group of pheasants and stags (the Gang) and Nicky was part of the Gang. Leisure time included walking in the Lake District, shooting weekends in Dorset, the endless weddings of the time, dances, weekends at Stone House or other country houses in the Home Counties and trips to Scotland. All country pursuits. It was unusual to find a Sloane in London over the weekend. They considered the country to be their natural habitat. Still do. During the week, dinner parties, the pub or a cheap Italian or curry. The gastro age had not arrived. Celebrity chefs like Nigella and Gordon Ramsey were of the future.  Sloanes worshipped Mary Berry and Delia.

Many of the stags in the Gang owned estates or were land agents, having trained at Cirencester Agricultural College. So we went to where they were based and they laid on the shooting and walking. I had to buy a Barbour and Wellington boots (gumboots). I was drenched from top to toe on many occasions. My hair looked a mess. I looked a mess. Pheasants, however, suited the environment. They looked all rosy and glowing with their flawless English complexions.

On one weekend in the Lake District, the Gang found themselves suddenly engulfed in thick cloud and rain. The temperature plummeted. I was freezing, my bones ached and I had snot dripping down my face. Where was the beach? Where was the golden sand? The sun? Where on earth was I? How did I get there? I was delirious with cold. Geoff noticed the snot and discreetly wiped it off with his pristine white handkerchief. He thought I was a trooper. I wasn’t. I was pretending to be the perfect Sloane like the other pheasants. I was faking it.

And let’s turn to the shooting weekends, which were rough shoots, pretty low-key events. Not the blood baths you would find on commercial shoots. The men had the guns (these days women do too and I imagine the Queen always has had a gun) and the women (some with babies strapped to their backs) and farm labourers – called the beaters – went through the woods and hedgerows making loud noises and banging trees with sticks to flush the pheasants out. Labradors and springer spaniels are the Sloane’s favourite breeds, precisely because they are integral to shooting. Nicky has two springer spaniels.

I was in love. I wanted to be with Geoffrey, not whacking trees. And it often rained and I was cold and not really deep down very happy to be so cold and wet. I did love the lunches though. You had a big pig out when you finished. Stilton and cheddar, fresh bread, pork pies, soup. In the evenings you scrubbed up and the men changed into a jacket and tie or black tie and the women found their Laura Ashley dresses and pearls or a velvet evening dress for smarter dinners, again with pearls.

Today I have tennis with pheasants my age or thereabouts. And then I am meeting my Sheila friend Gill who I have known for almost fifty years and we are going to the Botticelli exhibition at the V&A.