Back in Hampshire. Very nice weather and more forecast for the weekend.

Yesterday was spent travelling. Your flight may only  be 2.5 hours, but the getting to the airport, immigration, waiting to board…after  the flight, immigration, baggage reclaim, then to get the dog and finally back home  – let’s face it, short haul is often best part of a day.

We were back at the Old Rectory at 6pm after leaving the hotel in Lisbon at 8am.

The second half of our honeymoon was in Taormina, Sicily.

Shrewd move on Geoffrey’s part. A week of sightseeing in Tuscany: Siena, Florence, Pisa. Then a week by the sea.

We arrived at the hill top resort and were told by the concierge, a man who looked like a frog (not to be froggist), that our room would not be ready until the next day. Our pleas that this was our honeymoon fell on deaf ears. Instead of a room with sea views and a double bed, we were shown to a room with two single beds facing the road. And then, when we finally moved into our sea view room, there was a peculiar smell. It was the plumbing. I kept pouring shampoo down the ancient cistern, but to no avail. It kept on smelling.

But hey ho, when you’re in love, it hardly matters, right? Well, it did matter, but we just had to get on with it. It was the days before carbs were bad for you, so we gorged on pasta at lunch and dinner. Visited the Roman ruins above the town and Etna, the live volcano. We mostly just read and relaxed by the pool and down by the sea.

Geoff and I bought a little house in Clapham just before the wedding. He had sold his bachelor flat with the avocado bathroom some time before. But there was a hitch, the roof needed redoing. I was naïve in such matters, but this meant that we were delayed moving into our new home by a couple of months. Geoffrey’s parents Tony and Eve, who we called Pops and Mutti (Geoffrey studied German at Durham), were visiting Africa for several months so we moved in to house sit.

We had left England in winter and after our honeymoon, returned to summer, not spring. There was a heat wave in May that lasted all summer.

I thought to myself, this can’t be all bad. The Poms exaggerate when they talk about tepid summers.

My one job was to pick the fruit in the orchard for Mutti and freeze it: blackberries, raspberries and gooseberries. And water the rockery. After a hard day’s work at the law firm in the City, I would don old clothes and start harvesting. Geoff would mow the four acres on a sit down mower. I was exhausted. Adjusting to married life in a new country, establishing myself at work, harvesting, commuting to London (the trains were often delayed) and trying to be the perfect Sloane wife: all a bit much. To my horror I managed to kill the rockery. What would Mutti say on her return?

I fell ill. Which meant that I missed a few weddings and in particular, Ghislaine and Peter’s, at her brother’s, the Lord’s, house in Scotland.   

Neverthless, for that first summer, the sun shone and shone and shone. But the clouds were brewing.

The children are coming to Hampshire for the weekend and there is a lot of gardening to do. Time for the first mow.