My ‘top secret’ job today has kept me from blogging until now, late in the day. Sadly, I have not solved the Brexit problem, nor have I made the weather better – it has been dire all day. Nor have I solved world peace, nor even remotely ‘made a difference’.

I periodically glanced at Wimbledon on the tele, and I despaired for those non-Centre Court ticket holders, who had seen no action – zero – due to the rain. They were wandering around like sheep without a shepherd. Drinking Pimms, diluted by the rain, and eating soggy sandwiches. Hoping, against hope, that the sun would win through and they would see some action.

Centre Court now has a bazillion pound electronic roof (both in terms of cost and weight), which is closed when it rains. It was closed all day today. So if you were one of the lucky few with Centre Court tickets, you were okay. If not, it was a wash out for you. Luck of the draw!!!

Wimbledon, yesterday, was sublime for me until – late in the day – 4.30 pm. I sat in the sunshine, smugly watching fellow countryman, Nicky Kyrgios, crush his opponent. And then, another Aussie, Tomic, playing a Spanish opponent. Who could believe it? Talk about luck. Australia is ‘the lucky country’, and I had ‘lucked in’. You win ballot tickets, and you see the only Aussies seeded at Wimbledon! That is very good luck!

Somehow, a contingent of green and yellow – Aussie colours – sheilas and blokes – had nabbed frontrow tickets. They kept up a non-stop, tightly-choreographed cheer-campaign, in song, for both Aussie racketeers. Was I proud? Not sure! It was funny, but it was, a tad, naff! What does ‘naff’ mean? It a word that Sloanes use to indicate that something is not quite right… really what they mean is that something is a bit off, like fish left out in the midday sun. Like finding a sweat-drenched shirt in the bottom of your Gym bag after a few months.

But at 4.30 pm, as predicted, the heavens chucked it down, and play was suspended. It happened in a few seconds. One minute, I was on Court no. 2 watching Tomic fight to get through the first round and, the next minute, the heavens opened, and it was bucketing. Within lightning seconds, ‘fit’ grounds-people ran and pulled covers over the perfectly manicured lawns, like magic.

Thousands of people ran from the grounds to get home. Southfields Tube was hell on earth. The Powers that Be had closed the entrance to the Tube, as they didn’t want a crush on the platform. So instead, we all stood on the road and waited to be mowed down by the traffic in torrential rain.

Life is so much like that, isn’t it? One moment you are in heaven and then, suddenly, there can be a turn in direction.

Still it was a corker of a day. I spent it with my Brit mate from Steep Tennis Club, talented artist Louise Braithwaite. After-all, skin is waterproof! She had just returned from Glastonbury, where it was a mud-fest, due to the extreme wet weather this year in June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today the weather is threatening to rain. Which is a complete pain, as I am off to Wimbledon later this morning. I won two tickets in the Steep Tennis Club ballot for Court 2, and I am going with another woman from the C Team, Louise Braithwaite. Louise paints ‘happy Lowrys’ of perfect British locations, from Salcombe to Scotland, lavender fields to the Ritz. I want her to paint the Old Rectory, with cricketers in the background.

I love this time of year. I keep Wimbledon going, non stop, on the tele, from 1pm to sunset, and I pop in and out to see if any of my favourites are on court. I feel no guilt whatsoever! I don’t always watch the technique closely, whether they are slicing or top-spinning, I just love the vibe. The perfectly manicured green grass and the players’ white attire. Strawberries and cream, and Pimms.

When I was at university in Sydney in the early 80s, I used to finish studying at midnight, and then I’d tune in to Wimbledon, which was just starting at lunchtime there. I didn’t even play tennis. I had no connection, whatsoever, to the game. But every year, I’d be up half the night watching it again. I found the back and forth of the ball, ‘conk, conk, conk’ and then ‘Out’, very soothing after a day at the books. Back then, it was Martina Navratilova versus Chris Evert, and who can forget Yvonne Goolagong, our very own Aussie champion. I loved Becker, Borg, McEnroe and Connors. It felt so glamorous.

But there were two Aussie blokes that canned the doubles’ title at Wimbledon during my Uni years – Peter McNamara and Paul McNamee – they won in 1980 and 1982. They were called the two Maccers, and Macdonalds was aspirational then, not dodgy for causing obesity. I managed to stalk McNamara at the Hurlingham Tennis Classic a few years in a row, and I finally managed to get the pic with him. He seemed happy to oblige.

It was a dream come true, from 1989, to be actually watching the tournament on tele during the day in London, not too far from the All England Club. In the summer of 1997, Shaun and Wendy, my brother and his wife, came to visit with baby son, Ryan. They piled into the top floor of Elms Crescent. Nicky Barber came, with baby Harry, to celebrate Ryan’s first birthday in mid-June. We tried to make impressions of the boys’ hands in clay, but it just ended up a sloppy mess.

Jo Fothergill’s father was very senior at the All England Club, and she gave me two Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon. I took Shaun. I had no idea how special those tickets were – the sheer luxury of them. On the news over the years, I had seen long queues outside the grounds. People even slept overnight to be in the front section of the queue.You can still obtain, if you are lucky, tickets to the three main courts, Centre, 1 and 2, on the day, by queuing at Turnstile 3 (there is something so democratic about that). If you have a ticket to one of those three magic courts, the seat is yours for the day. Otherwise it’s a scrum.

But when Shaun and I turned up at Wimbledon that day, I had no idea of how it all worked. I thought that, even with a ticket to one of these premium courts, you had to run and grab a seat once you made it through the gates.

So it was with some delight, we discovered on arrival, that we didn’t have to queue, but we could bypass the queue. Just stroll in! When we went to Centre Court, nice uniformed people explained that the seats were ours all day, and we could pop in and out as much as we cared to. Even if we went for a bite, nobody could play Musical Chairs and take them. It was like finding out that instead of Economy, you were flying First Class. Bliss!

So off to Wimbledon I go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather is better today. Summer has decided to pop in for a visit, but I fear it won’t stay for long.

Last Friday, I saw my old boss (circa 1988-89), Justin, and our client, Charles, for dinner at Zuma, in Knightsbridge. It was twenty five years since we’d all been together. Justin was our host and, as always, was perfect in his suggestions as to what we should order. He tried to order an Aussie wine, but the delivery hadn’t been made. Flamenco texted me her suggestions, as it is one of her favourite restaurants. She took me there for lunch years ago, and I have been back from time to time. Love the whole Asian fusion vibe! Reminds me of home and Singapore. The black cod was amazing. It was all amazing!

When we left just after 10pm, the bar was heaving with all the ‘beautiful people’. It could have been a fashion shoot, rather than real life.

I love the film The Devil Wears Prada; I love Meryl Streep, playing the powerful editor of Runway (modelled on Anna Wintour at Vogue?), and all the fab actors, Emily Blunt (as her assistant), Anne Hathaway (who sells her soul to the devil –fashion) and Stanley Tucci. One of the best lines is:

Fashion is not about utility. An accessory is merely a piece of iconography used to express individual identity.

When I travelled with Justin and Charles to San Diego on business, decades ago, I told Charles that I didn’t really spend money on clothes. He looked at me in disbelief. Was I a normal 27 year old female? All the pheasants he knew were into fashion. We laughed about that at Zuma.

Maybe I was, a bit, like Andrea, played by Anne Hathaway, before she sold her soul and started wearing designer kit to fit into the fashion world. When someone from Dolce and Gabbana rings up at the beginning of the film, she asks, “How do you spell Gabbana?” They hang up instead.

In downtown Sydney in the early 80s, global brands were not part of the landscape. Just before I departed for London, Hermes opened up in Martin Place. Now all the big brands are represented.

In the Wandsworth years, I lived in old jeans from GAP and run of the mill stuff. I was more interested in buying the latest wallpaper or Farrow and Ball paint for the house. I just wanted to look neat and tidy.

Now I do know what Dolce and Gabbana is. Fashion is everywhere. It is part of everyday life. I wore Missoni, bright orange and gold, on Friday evening. I wonder if Charles noticed?

At the end of the night, the three of us walked back to the Bulgari Hotel on Hyde Park to find cabs. Two guys were taking photos of a leggy brunette. I don’t think she was a model, but she could have been: maybe it was for Instagram. We all said goodbye, with promises to keep in touch. Justin was off to United Arab Emirates, where he lives. Charles closer by, in Wandsworth, and me, to Fulham.

I walked back to my car, parked in Sloane Street. So easy to park after 6.30pm. I walked past Boodles, the luxury jewellers on the corner, across from Harvey Nicholls. Mike Wainwright, a member of the family who own it, was a father at Broomwood Hall. He kindly checked the claws on my engagement ring from time to time. When we moved to Chelsea, I was trying to clear up after the builders, and tried to move a large door. I slipped and crushed my rings, so that they were no longer circular, but oval. I jumped in the car and headed straight for Boodles. I was distraught the whole way. I rang the security bell, and a security guard in a black suit let me in. I explained to a well-dressed sales person that I knew Mike and that I had damaged my rings. Customers seated in velvet chairs, sipping champagne, were staring at me.

I had not checked to see how I looked before making the dash to Boodles. I was completely covered in a fine layer of white dust. I looked like a ghost. The sales assistant had not blinked an eye when I entered like a crazy woman. He just took the rings, and said, “We will sort it madam.” Boodles’ treatment. And they did.

Today I am going to do some gardening and try to relax after the Brexit hysteria that is hitting social media. I think people need to calm down. People are getting nasty with friends!

 

 

I don’t think I can possibly talk about the weather today, when Britain has just exited from the European Union. Will this vote bring fair weather or storm clouds? Who can tell?

It is one of those momentous events, where you, forevermore, remember where you were when you heard the news: like JFK being assassinated, the Berlin Wall coming down with the collapse of communism, Diana dying in a car crash in Paris and the Twin Towers in New York tumbling down after being hit by terrorist planes. And now this!

I wish I had a crystal ball, and I could see how it is all going to pan out. Will my children have a worse future? How would Britain have developed if we had stayed in? We shall never know.

I suspect that some of the older pheasants and stags at the Hurlingham Club are toasting the news at the Polo Bar.

Not only are we out of Europe, but also we have lost David Cameron as Prime Minister, Scotland may hold another referendum to leave Britain, there is ‘carnage in the markets’, we could have another General Election resulting in a Labour government, and we may all need visas to enter European nations soon. And will a lot of my continental friends need to go home? Will my pheasant and stag friends on the continent need to come back to Britain to live? The repercussions are endless. It is a lot to take in.

So much has changed in London over the time I have lived here, now for almost 30 years. It is obviously cosmopolitan now! Where will it be in another 30 years?

Yesterday, I talked about renovating our house in Elms Crescent in Clapham, on and off, during the eight years that we lived there. It was when the children were little. Increasing property prices flabbergasted young couples, like us. In the time that we lived there between 1996 and 2004, the sale value increased threefold, like all the houses in the area.

The increase in property prices in London was common fodder for dinner party conversation post 1995. It was like we were all getting rich. Like we were winning the lottery. When in fact, all the houses on the market were going up at the same rate, whether you were selling or buying. It only made a difference if you were buying in another country, which had not seen a property boom.

This should be compared to when we sold our first little terrace on the north side of Clapham Common in 1995, just before Hugo was born. We made zero profit. We bought it for the same price that we sold it for. And that was after five years.

Is it a good thing that property prices are now so high in the capital that young people can’t get on the property ladder? Maybe my children will end up going back to Kangarooland! If they do, they will find that, due to globalization, central Sydney and the surrounds is prohibitively expensive too.

If they hop there, Geoff and I will too!

Tonight I am meeting my old boss, Justin, and our former client, Charles, for dinner in Knightsbridge.At Zuma. It has been a long time since we’ve all been together. 25 years.

 

There was torrential rain overnight. It is hot and humid today. It feels like there will be a thunderstorm later.

Yesterday’s Hurlingham Tennis Classic was a lot of fun – quintessentially English. Lopez versus Berdych, Sock versus Gasquet (who has the best back-hand, apart from Federer) and then doubles with the older players, including Bahrami, the Iranian exhibitionist. His trick shots and banter are hilarious!

I bumped into various women from Broomwood Hall days, in Wandsworth, wherever I went. There was one elegant mother queuing for sea food, who had been inspirational to many when it came to house renovations. Her entire family would camp out in a few rooms for months, while the rest of the house was gutted and transformed. She was visionary. They moved up the property ladder every time they sold.

Like a lot of Wandsworth women, I became an avid, amateur interior designer. I devoured the monthly issue of House and Garden. When we first moved into Elms Crescent in the Abbeville Village, to the east of Clapham Common, we could only afford necessary repairs – that meant nothing pretty. The roof needed replacing. The windows in a charming upstairs conservatory, overlooking the garden, were leaking and needed attention. The Victorian tessellated tiles in the hall had cracked and needed supporting from underneath via the cellar. Boring repairs!

When Hugo was six months old, my parents, Stan and Bev, came to meet him. They had met Anna when we all went to the Great Barrier Reef, where Hugo was conceived. After our memorable trip to Salcombe, they came to stay at Elms Crescent.

Stan could not sit still. He was a work-horse. The lawn was full of clover and he decided that it needed eradicating. He enlisted Geoff’s help. I went out for the day with Mum and the children. According to Dad, Geoff disappeared for a considerable period of time. He was eventually found, locked in the toilet, reading P. G. Wodehouse. Dad christened him ‘glass arms’, a term that stuck for years. When I came home, the lawn, instead of being green, was all dirt, with seed. I had a fit. Where would the children play over the summer? I had to wait for the grass to grow. It did grow and it was, indeed, free of clover.

When I started working in September 1997 for Blatt, Hammesfahr and Eaton, a Chicago law firm with a satellite office in the City, Geoff and I decided to renovate the upstairs conservatory. A few years later, over another summer time, we built on a downstairs conservatory. We decorated all the rooms over time. We put in utility room, with waterproofing, in the cellar. We changed the hedge in the front garden for iron railings. We landscaped the garden. We did everything that we could to improve the property. We didn’t camp in a few rooms whilst these renovations took place, but we did live with the builders. If you’ve done the same, you know the aggro.

Elms Crescent was a wonderful home when the children were young.

It felt like Stone House, Geoff’s childhood home. Even though it was in London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is cloudy and humid.

I am off the Hurlingham Tennis Classic, with an Aussie sheila friend, later today.

The tennis tournament started yesterday with some doubles at 5pm. The players are, mostly, retired from the professional circuit and play in exhibition matches around the world. I noticed from the players’ board that Mark Philippoussis was playing in the opening game. I caught him coming off court a few years ago and wangled a photo with him. I have also seen other Aussie players, Lleyton Hewitt, and the doubles legend, Peter McNamara, at the tournament. It used to be principally retired players that came to entertain us, but now some of the current top players come to limber up for Wimbledon. So I have seen Nadal, Berdytch, Dimitrov and Sharipova, to name a few. Today, some of the top players will, no doubt, be playing again.

There is only one grass court that is used, with stands at either end and seating on the sides, so you can almost reach across and touch the players. There is a carnival type atmosphere at Hurlingham during the Classic. It is quintessentially English. Geoff and I headed there last night to meet my Book Club (and husbands) to enjoy the fun! I had some potted shrimps: very small, tasty prawns in butter on toast. And some English sparkling wine, made near us in Hampshire, at Nyewood.

The shrimp and the sunny evening, took me back to our last summer in Salcombe in 1998, ten years after landing at Heathrow from Australia on 19 August. We celebrated the occasion by inviting friends, on holiday nearby, for Aussie sparkling wine and king prawns. I found a fishmonger in Kingsbridge, the biggest town nearby to Salcombe, which sold Aussie-style giant prawns.

Geoff and I peeled away all afternoon and finally it was time for my pheasant and stag friends to arrive. They all piled into the garden of the little cottage we were renting on Island Street, where all the boating shops are located. Anna served food (aged 4) and Geoff made a moving speech. I could see a few damp eyes.

 

The day was a hard one. I started crying, on and off, from dawn. I couldn’t believe how home-sick the anniversary made me feel. There was a jewellery shop right next door to our rental cottage, and Geoff popped in and bought me a pair of earrings to cheer me up. I was so excited when I saw the little black box. I stopped for long enough to peek inside. I didn’t like them, and then with resumed tears I pouted, “I don’t like them!” So off we went and bought some alternatives that I did like.

Hopefully it won’t rain while we are watching the tennis, although it looks as if it might.

 

 

It’s a miracle. The sun is shining brightly this morning. This is good news, as Book Club is meeting at the Hurlingham Club this evening, for a BBQ, to say good bye for the summer. Once school is out in July, Chelsea and Fulham are like ghost towns.

Where will members of my Book Club go? One American will go to her harbour side house not far from New York and another to her house on Lake Michigan. The Honorouble will go to her house in Cornwall, where all good pheasants go for the summer: alternatively they head to Salcombe or St Mawes in Devon, Blakeney or Brancaster in Norfolk, West Wittering near Chichester or Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Another will head to Wengen in the Swiss Alps, where they have a chalet. Another will go to the South of France, where her mother and sister have a house near St Tropez. Another will go to her cottage in Dorset. Another will go to Isle of Wight, off the south coast, where she holidayed as a child. Another will go to her house on Hayling Island, where she holidayed as a child. Another will stay in her Hampshire house. I will stay in my Hampshire house.

The Hurlingham is quiet as a mouse over the summer break, particularly in August. (We have spent a few summers there, treating it as our personal resort.)

It is the same in Manhattan and Paris. A mass exodus for the summer holidays.

In the days when our children were tots, we headed to either Cley-next-the sea in Norfolk with Nicky and John Barber’s growing clan (and the Tawney family) or to Salcombe with a number of families. Some always rented great houses in South Sands, like the pink fairy tale house, ‘The Malt’, out by the headlands and where they moored their fantastic boats. We, by comparison, went for the modest house in town and rented a basic boat with an outboard motor so that we could pootle around the estuary (hired boats are not allowed out through the heads to sea).

Geoff and I were keen to holiday there again, ever since the magical time we had with Stan and Bev, my parents, in 1996, when Hugo was six months and Anna two years. So in the August of 1997, that was where we headed, with a car laden with baby and toddler paraphernalia: all but the kitchen sink jammed into our station wagon (estate car).

We also holidayed there again in the August of 1998.This time we shared a boat with our best buddies, the Glens. I was expecting a glamorous run- around. Instead the boat that Geoff hired, much to my initial disgust, was a large, blue, wooden barge. It was not in the least bit glamorous, but it was cool in its own way. It was named ‘Sheena’ and it weighed a ton. If the tide went out, there was no way the men could shift it off the sand into the water. We would have to stay put until the tide turned.

 

 

That very warm and sunny summer, we chugged around to the various beaches around the estuary, picnicking, crabbing, eating ice-creams, and building sand castles and moats.

It was too cold to swim without a wet suit, so the best you could do was paddle. I was frustrated to say the least. To be so near to clean, turquoise water and not be able to submerge yourself in it! The children were oblivious and frolicked away in the shallows.

In the year between our two summer holidays in Salcombe, I had been very busy. I started working for Greg Hopp’s Chicago law firm in September, 1997: Blatt, Hammerfahr and Eaton, in their satellite office in the Lloyd’s building. We also began the first of many renovation projects on our Victorian house in Elms Crescent, in Clapham. And that would lead me back to Salcombe again and again.

Today I am heading back to London in time for tennis this morning.

It is pouring with rain as I write this. Rivers are forming on the driveway and gushing out onto the street. Welcome to the British summer!

On Friday, I took Domino down to Emsworth to walk along the pebbled beach to the bridge to Hayling Island. There is a windmill and a charming pub just before you hit the traffic on the bridge. It is worth a visit. It was low-tide, so the boats were marooned on the mud flats, lurching drunkenly to one side. There were a few grandparents out with grandchildren. Were they filling in for parents off at work? Or was it simply some quality time together?

That got me thinking about childcare in Wandsworth in the 1990s, when Anna and Hugo were small.

 

In the 60s and 70s in Bexley North, where I grew up, nannies, au pairs or mother’s helpers didn’t exist. Nor indeed anyone that helped with housework. Childcare and housework were strictly the domain of the ‘Missus’. Lucky her!!!

And then let’s not forget the maternity nurse!

They are all different.

An au pair is a young woman or man from a foreign country, working for, and living as part of, a Host Family. They would help, typically the mother, with the small children for a few hours a day and do ‘light housework’. For this they would receive a small allowance (£40 a week in my day). In their spare time, they would pursue cultural activities and attend English classes. Or go out partying. They were not supposed to have sole charge of the children. A parent may pop out to the shop or ask the au pair to take the children to the Common, but it would be for a short time. A mother’s helper was pretty much the same, except they were mostly British and worked longer hours. Again, they were not supposed to have sole charge of the children. They could live in or out.

Sole charge was strictly a trained nanny’s job. Many of the pheasants and stags I’ve met, around my age, were under the charge of a nanny at a young age. Some of them only saw their parents between tea in the nursery and bath time before bed (think of the children on Downton Abbey). The ‘best’ nanny is considered to be the Norland Nanny, in her characteristic brown uniform. She (I don’t think there are any he’s) is trained for three years in all aspects of childcare at an academy, currently at the rate of £13,000 a year. Celebrities, royalty and aristocracy compete ruthlessly for them.

Of course, I noticed a number of parents, in Wandsworth, using their au pair or mother’s helper like a nanny. Without the pay!

So I had a nanny when I worked as a solicitor, which I shared with Emma: so she looked after Anna and Issie when I was in the City. I had an au pair for 6 months when Hugo was two months. She was Micky from France and was gentle and lovely.

But before she arrived, there was Ann French, the super maternity-nurse. She had worked for royalty and her previous job was working for Jean Claude Van Damme, the ‘Muscles from Brussels’. (Geoff still loves his action movies.) She came to look after Hugo and me –  us all really – when I couldn’t cope. After Hugo was born, I was getting weaker and weaker. One night I took a turn for the worse, and I had to be rushed back to hospital, undergoing an emergency operation. I had no choice but to have help. A wonderful group of friends gave me Ann as a gift, to help me get better. So incredibly kind and loving! You know who you are.

Ann was an angel. We had moved into Emma and Jim’s house while they were away skiing, as our house was full of builders and mess: I had an emergency caesarean the day we moved into Elms Crescent, after unpacking the kitchen. Ann came to us just like Mary Poppins. She was technically only required to look after Hugo and help me get into a routine with him: feeding and sleep etc. When she saw the predicament we were in, I couldn’t lift a leaf let alone a baby, she took over. She ordered Geoff around, sending him off to buy groceries; did all the cooking and washing; did everything required for Hugo, including bathing and feeding him and nursed me: feeding me iron rich foods and making me drink Guinness. If that was not enough, she helped us move back into Elms Crescent, unpacked our moving boxes and sorted out the builders. I owe her a huge debt.

Today I am at the Old Rectory and if it stops raining, I am training with the Steep Ladies’ C team.

Yesterday the weather was foul. It was depressing. Rain on and off all day, with very short bursts of sunshine. Frankly, a bit grim.

I went to my old stomping ground – Northcote Road – in Wandsworth, yesterday morning. I have a short-term job, which is top secret. I am not, however, a spy – sadly.

The transformation, over the last two decades, of this habitat for young parents, and their offspring, is staggering. In the 1990s it had a couple of cafes, and that was about it. Now all the high-end brands are present, including Gail’s, the upmarket café, selling designer food. This is no greasy spoon. I went in and ordered a pecan and cinnamon muffin and a cappuccino. I felt guilty that I didn’t order “skinny”. I felt ancient. There was a queue of well-dressed, trim, groomed mothers around me.

I don’t know when the phrase Yummy Mummy was coined. Certainly it was around in the late 90s. It was used to denote a young, attractive and wealthy mother. There was a smattering of Yummy Mummies at Broomwood Hall, where Anna went, and at Eaton House, where Hugo went. (Susannah from ‘Susannah and Trinny’ and Lady Helen Windsor were mothers at Eaton House, just by Clapham Common.) The very few foreign mothers spring to mind first – Princess Marina Lobanov-Rostovsky (married to a Russian prince) and Maria Guyard, a stunning Swede (married to a charming Frenchman). Marina always wore designer jeans and high heels to the school gate. Her nails were always immaculate. Maria was straight out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement, with her honey skin and white-blonde hair.

But there were some Sloane pheasants that also fitted the description. They would meet at the Nightingale Patisserie, across the road from Broomwood Hall, after the school drop off, and chatter away in their well-modulated voices.It was where I first heard the word Botox mentioned. They weren’t using it. They were intrigued by it.

The café era was only in its infancy in the mid-90s. The first Starbucks opened in 1998, on Kings Road, Chelsea. The Seattle Coffee Company was its predecessor and sold all its cafes to Starbucks when it came on the scene.

Mothers at the Broomwood Hall school-gate, who tended not to work full time, were not dressed in Lycra, ready to hit the gymn. They may have ridden a bike to school with their children, also on smaller bikes. They may have walked with their black Labrador in tow, like Niki and her three pretty daughters, Mimi, Tara and Perdy. Niki was certainly a Yummy Mummy. She is half Danish. She had lived in Hong Kong for years. Her mother lived in Bermuda. There is a slight hint of the foreign. She could give a supermodel a run for their money. She had the killer combination of being beautiful inside and out. Look how kind she was to Anna and to me!

The Harbour Club, Diana’s gymn, opened around this time on the Thames in Fulham, near Chelsea Harbour, but it was a new concept. It did however, become a habitat for Yummy Mummies. David Lloyd Leisure was gaining momentum, since first opening in the early 80s. It offered high-end quality fitness and leisure for the family. It was not the sort of gym you associated with the likes of the YMCA.

The Pheasant was evolving in the 90s (refer to Cooler, Faster, More Expensive – The Return of the Sloane Ranger for information). Diana was the game changer. When she separated from Prince Charles, she threw away her frilly shirts and tweeds and started to look a lot yummier. A lot sleeker. She spent hours at the Harbour Club. Her arm and leg muscles became well defined. Think of her at the end of the diving board on the Al Fayed yacht in the South of France. She did not look like she was wearing a Speedo. She wore leopard print for goodness sake. And bikinis.

However, regular blow dries, pedicures and manicures and cosmetic procedures were not common for the Wandworth Yummy Mummy in the 1990s. That may have been happening north of the river, but not so in the south.They may have been happening for women in Paris, for decades, before the Sloanes caught on.

Today I have to do my top secret job and dead head the roses, which have been beaten up by the heavy rain. They are all bruised. And I am going to take Domino to the south coast, if it stops raining.

 

Today is hot and muggy.

Yesterday was filled with tennis. I played in the morning and in the evening. In between I watched at bit of Queen’s.

In the evening, we ended up having drinks with Richard and Louise Corrie on the terrace at the Hurlingham Club. You’ve got to make the most of the long summer evenings in England!

Royal Ascot has started. I’ve never been, but a lot of my friends have donned their top hats, for men, and pretty hats, for the ladies. Charles (my friend from Clyde & Co days) and Susie were in the Royal Enclosure, I noticed.

I’m not much of a fan of equine pursuits, whether riding myself, or watching flat racing or polo.

I rode a bit at Iventure, the farm owned by my Aunt Wilma, in the grasslands of New South Wales. That’s how you got around on the farm. Or by truck. I just didn’t have the right skills to make a proficient rider. My cousins, by contrast, looked like they were born in a saddle. They just jumped off and on horses like cowboys in Westerns on television. For fun they would ride full throttle and then grab onto a low branch of a tree, letting the horse continue without them, riderless. They were always up to pranks – my cousins. Shaun, my brother, loved their mischief. Especially with the eldest, David. Together they somehow managed to climb over the Sydney Harbour bridge at night.

I was very gullible as a teenager. Wilma told me to help David move some horses from one paddock to another. David, with Shaun spectating, told me to open the gate and then stand right in the middle between the posts. Of course he then spooked the horses and en masse they charged at me. I dropped to the ground and they pounded overhead. One stomped on my hand, which could have broken it, but miraculously I only suffered a bad bruise. What a moron I was.

On another occasion, David and Shaun built a large wire enclosure, big enough for the three of us to fit in. A female magpie will attack you if you go near her nest of chicks. David suggested that we carry out an experiment. I would approach the tree where the mother-magpie was feeding her young. He said that when she attacked, he would let me back into the wire enclosure with Shaun and him. Can you see where this is leading? Dutifully I left the safety of the wire enclosure and walked slowly to the tree. The mother-magpie swooped to attack me. It was like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Of course, when I ran to re-enter the safety of the wire enclosure, they would not let me in. I ran for my life with the mother-magpie chasing me off.

There is one friend I have, Niki, who is crazy about horses. And her three gorgeous daughters are too. And her younger son. They have won bucket loads of rosettes and trophies. They live on a farm in Wilton. They gave up life in London long ago, to pursue a country life.

I met Niki when Anna started nursery school, Noah’s Ark, aged two. She was in a class with Niki’s daughter, Mimi.

Sloane mothers are diary driven. You arrange play dates to happen in the future, at a specific time and place. They rarely happen spontaneously. Anna was oblivious to this custom. She often asked mothers, at pickup, whether she could come to their house to play. She would knock on their kneecaps and when they looked down, she would put in her request. They invariably replied that they would fix a future date with me. Anna just didn’t get it. One day, she knocked on Niki’s knees and Niki said, “Of course.” And off Anna went, without delay, to play in her beautiful house on Baskerville Road. Anna went to play, a lot. She just kept on knocking on Niki’s knees. When I went to collect her, I was asked in for a cup of tea and sometimes even a glass of wine. This was almost Australian behavior.

Everything about Niki, and her girls, was beautiful. She became one of my closest and treasured friends. She still is.