Lovely weather again today. Sunny and warm.

Yesterday I met my sister in law, Susan, for lunch at the Hurlingham, where she had her wedding reception in September, 1988. We had a quick whizz around the stunning gardens.

Dinner was with Mr and Mrs Springbok, our former South African neighbours, in Clapham. They have lived in their large Victorian house in the Abbeville Village for twenty eight years, after relocating from Johannesburg. Very informative discussion on South African infrastructure and politics. Mr Springbok’s family owned a property for generations in Nature’s Valley on the Garden route. Mrs Springbok is an exceptional chef. Beetroot rosti topped with salmon. Veal with mushroom sauce. Their daughters are in the supermodel league.

The day after we moved into our Clapham house in December 1995, I gave birth to Hugo. Anna was almost two. For the next 8 years, Mrs Springbok kept her protective eye us like a lioness. Our mutual displacement from the Southern Hemisphere forged a bond that has lasted twenty years.

The years before children, however, were dominated by working as a solicitor in the City, while not hanging out with the Gang. With the deregulation of financial institutions in 1986, the Big Bang, Antipodean lawyers flooded through immigration at Heathrow to make hay while the sun shone. They were hired in droves to handle the exponential increase in legal transactions.

There were a pack of Kiwis at Barlow, Lyde and Gilbert, where I worked. The Kiwis welcomed the lone Kangaroo. The partners provided a formal lunch for legal staff.  The Antipodeans sat together like a battalion. I felt like an Aussie at Gallipoli, under the repressive orders of British officers. There was no kookaburra laughter over that meal. It was a sombre and stiff occasion.

My best Kiwi mates were Giselle McLachlan and Margie Beattie. Margie’s father was the Governor General at the time. Giselle and I shared an office and a telephone line. The first time Geoffrey rang, she answered, covered the mouthpiece with her hand and said, “Some guy called Godfrey wants to talk to you.” She calls him Godfrey to this day.

There were other Aussies scattered around the big law firms like shells washed up by the surf. In the early 90s it was fashionable for female solicitors, like men, to wear striped shirts, with cufflinks and bow ties. I was shopping near Liverpool Street station in Tie Rack and put my hand into a bowl of silk, elasticised cufflinks. Another hand went in and the hand belonged to my old mate from law school, Kylie Virtue. We looked at each other at the same time and she exclaimed, “Pottsie! What are you doing here?” By then she was married to superstar Rob Clarke, who was working for an advertising agency. He played school boys’ rugby for Australia. Kylie, Mosman bred through and through, is like a bubbly cockatoo, alert, chatty, taut – a dynamo. Whenever we met for lunch, I could spot the plume of her short blonde hair bobbing above the crowd as she strode faster than everyone.

Anne tipped up for a year to do a Master’s degree soon after I was married.

The Antipodeans were like rays of sunshine before I acclimatised to damper weather. They eventually all downed tools and migrated back to the Southern Hemisphere, but for a bit, they brought home to me.

Today, I am meeting my Spanish friend, code name Flamenco, as she is very private, at the Bluebird in Kings Road for a catch up.