The weather is freezing again and the weekend is meant to be the same. And to think that last weekend I was beavering in the garden in sunshine.

Yesterday I met Flamenco at the Bluebird café, on Kings Road, for a catch­up. I met Flamenco in 2003, when Hugo started at Sussex House, his preparatory school, just behind Sloane Square. Flamenco is married to an important banker, M. As we stood on the pavement waiting for our boys to emerge from the Arts and Crafts building on Cadogan Square, we were often first and would smile at each other. Eventually we started to talk to each other. Eventually we started to have lunch together. Eventually we introduced our husbands to each other and eventually we became close friends, confidantes. Eventually we went on holiday with them and other Spanish friends to Andalusia. We were included in her large, lavish, stylish, relaxed parties at their incredible flat on the Thames.

Flamenco lives a big life, a scenic life. Every day is an adventure, to be grabbed with both hands. She is 100% engaged in the moment. Life is a full of family, friends (both in London and Spain), fashion, culture, politics, art, travel, skiing, food, all at an exceptional level. There is nothing mundane about multi­lingual Flamenco. Even how she appears: tall, regal, shiny dark hair, big smile, chocolate brown eyes and always dressed impeccably.

One of the main things we had in common was that we had married Brits. Like me, Flamenco had to navigate the terrain of British life in the 90s, but she did so on her terms. Becoming a pheasant was not on her radar. She made Chelsea her habitat, but she did not evolve, she adapted. I started off in Wandsworth, a stronghold for pheasants and stags. So while I was wearing Alice Bands and Russell and Bromley shoes, she no doubt was wearing Valentino and Lanvin. What are on her radar are new emerging designers, chefs and artists.

Whilst I was married in a meringue, Flamenco was married in couture. After Geoffrey proposed, I was in a state of euphoria. I was in love and intoxicated by it. The reality of leaving Aussie culture and the life I had known since dot was not something I thought about. Geoffrey became the centre of the universe and that was that. Even a bottle of wine and cheese on toast at the kitchen table was wonderful. If Geoffrey was near, I was ecstatic.

Shortly after we were engaged, we were due to have a quick drink with his sister, Rachel, at her flat in West London. I wore a demure shirt, but decided to team it with a black leather skirt. When the door opened to her flat, to my great horror, I found the Wilmot family assembled for a surprise engagement party. “Surprise,” they cried in unison. There was his mother, Eve, dressed in a floral Laura Ashley dress. And all Wilmot women were similarly attired. I spent the whole evening trying to pull my skirt over my knees. I did not fit in. My hair was too blonde, my face too freckly, my clothes all wrong. At some subliminal level I committed to evolving into a Wilmot woman, worthy of bearing Wilmot children. What a mistake. Authenticity is what I most value in a friend. And in Flamenco I found it in bucket loads.

After we moved to Limerston Street in Chelsea, I tapped back in to the sun drenched kid I had once been. The one with the skinny body and sunburnt freckly face, who ran around a scorched backyard (garden) with her dog Skipper and jumped in and out of swimming pools and the sea. But for some years from marriage onwards I remained a pheasant. But you can’t stop the Kanga from jumping out eventually.

Today Hugo is coming home from Warwick University where he is studying Chemistry. Tons of dirty laundry no doubt. I am having a coffee with my friend Inca. She is half Peruvian.