Friday was sunny again. We are having a bonza summer. So welcome. They have been underwhelming for as long as I can remember.

This was not the case, however, for many years after we married. I have a theory. If is hot in May, then it will be a good summer. If it is still tepid in June, it remains tepid.

After gardening for the morning on Friday, I downed tools and went for a swim. Such a luxury! There is nothing nicer than being covered in sweat from exertion, whether gardening or tennis or whatever, and then cooling off. Like a snake shedding skin, you feel that you have lost a layer after being submerged.

I hardly saw water for the first five years of marriage. I was parched. We sometimes went abroad to the sea, but that was it. I was landlocked. A fish out of water.
Once married, it took 7 years until our membership of the Hurlingham Club finally came through, and I had access to water again in the form of the outdoor pool.(The waiting list for Hurlingham is now closed. It is so popular.) By then, Anna and Hugo, very small, were around.

Before that, I was head down in the City working as a solicitor. Just short of a year, I left Barlow, Lyde & Gilbert, as I had a sixth sense that Justin, my boss, may be leaving too. I was right. I went to the ‘other’ boutique insurance firm, Clyde & Co.
When Anna was born, I continued to work four days a week. It was agony handing her over to her Scottish nanny, Yvonne, and heading off. But it was softened by the fact that Emma had also gone back to work for 3 days a week. Yvonne also looked after Issie, who had been conceived at the same time as Anna. Two little blonde, chubby, cherubs together in a double pram, like twins.

Since I had trouble conceiving Anna, I didn’t hang around trying for another. Geoff and I went to Australia to introduce Anna to the relos when she was 14 months. Dad had not met Anna, nor Shaun and Wendy. Mum had flown over to lend a hand in the dead of winter, February 1994, just after she was born. Off we headed to the Great Barrier Reef. A dream come true for me.

 

I shall never forget flying past Cairns and seeing the reef from the window of the plane. It was as if God had strewn opals periodically in the perfect, blue sea.

When Dad clapped eyes on Anna, it was love at first sight for him. Anna woke at 6am. As soon as she was fed, Dad would be there like lightning to take her off for a walk. She was a trooper. She came out to the reef with us. The world below the waterline on the reef was just like the film Finding Nemo, a Bollywood kaleidoscope: of topaz, rose, mustard, emerald, all in neon colour.

It was here that I conceived Hugo. He is an Aussie boy!

Tomorrow it is Bank Holiday Monday and more gardening.