Yesterday, sunshine. Fed and weeded the lawn. Gathered wood and lit another bonfire. I am becoming a pyromaniac.

These days life is more about manual work, but in the first five years of marriage, before the children, it was about brain work. I spent my days thinking and writing in a legal context. That is what I was paid for.

I made two trips to the States with Justin, my boss. We flew business class, which was something, as I had only been on a plane a few times in my life. In those days, you could smoke on planes, so everyone was puffing and huffing around me. Hated that. Couldn’t even open a window. Foul.

The Windy City was stellar. One piece of litigation was filed in Cooke County, Illinois, so Peterson & Ross (P&R) in Chicago were engaged as our local attorneys. We had many conference calls with the two hot-shot lawyers involved, Tom and Greg, before I finally met them. No video links at that time. They sounded like movie stars on the phone. I was excited to finally meet them, and although they were quite nice looking, they were not in the Tom Cruise league.  Films based on John Grisham’s legal novels were just about to start hitting cinemas on a regular basis.

Outside of work hours, we had a lot of fun: jazz clubs, baseball at Wrigley Field, dinner at fantastic restaurants and shopping at Bloomingdales. On the weekend, Justin hired a big American tank of a car and we drove clockwise along Lake Michigan (more like an inland sea) to stay with the senior partner at P&R, who I’ll call Mr X. He had a lake house. I was nervous, as Mr X, who was ancient by the way – old as Stan the Man – had asked me out in London a few months earlier. One day Justin rushed into my office and said that Mr X was on the phone and wanted to ask me out. He’d asked Justin’s permission to mix business with pleasure first. I declined on the basis that I was dating Geoffrey. Dodged a bullet.

It was time to go to the beach for a swim. I was not keen on baring my body, so I feigned tiredness and stayed at the house reading back copies of Vanity Fair. But it was fun that evening. Mr X had a look-out at the back of the garden and we climbed up there to star gaze, drinking very good red wine and chatting. It was a surreal experience, being at the top of the world with an Englishman and a Yank.  I enjoyed the access my job gave me to people far cleverer than me.

Even with the excitement of the international legal world, I missed Geoffrey terribly and couldn’t wait to see him again.

Today, popping along to favourite jewellers, Robinson Pelham, on Chelsea Green, as I need to have my engagement ring enlarged. Arthritis methinks. They made Kate Middleton’s wedding earrings.