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.