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.