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.