Today is meant to be mixed weather. I am hoping not, as we are going to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Polo Gold Cup, at Cowdray Park, Midhurst. I will be dressed up. I am usually not when I visit. It is where I often walk Domino in old clothes, and then I pop into the cafe for a cuppa.

Yesterday was on and off sun and rain, all day, in Hampshire, at the Old Rectory; it is summer holidays now, so I will be spending more time here until September. London is emptying. The exodus has begun. It will be a ghost town soon. I am pleased to be in the countryside, in this green and pleasant land that I love.

That first summer in 2000, at the Corn Close Cottage in the Cotswolds, was similar to the weather yesterday – mixed rain and sunshine.

But it didn’t matter too much, as we were topped up with sun after visiting Australia over Easter. Stan and Bev, my parents, were now living in Cater Street, Coledale, on the Illawarra Peninsula, four streets away from Shaun and Wendy and their boys, Ryan and Jonah. It is about an hour south of Sydney on one of the most stunning stretches of coast you can imagine. It meant that we could also regularly catch up with Brett and Gillian Davis, my friends from Uni days, and their three children, Jackson, Taylor and India. They lived next door to Shaun and Wendy, and they shared an idyllic communal garden next to a creek. It was an Aussie haven – heaven –  for my children. They played with their cousins and the Davis children, who were just like cousins.

 

Our first visit to the new family home right on the sea was a dream come true! It was thrilling to be able to run down in flip flops (Aussies call them thongs) in swimmers (Aussies call them cossies), with a towel over my arm, and plunge into the surf at the end of the road. Something that I had not experienced growing up in a landlocked suburb in Sydney.

And it amounted to three trips to Oz in two years with my children. We also made the trek to Jervis Bay, which boasts the whitest sand imaginable – forget the Maldives. It is about 3-4 hours from Sydney. Anna fed rosellas from her hand on the way to the beach. Sadly no kangaroos were spotted. The beach was virgin perfection. And we stopped at Berry on the way, an historical town with good grub (food).

As the 20th century turned into the 21st century – the new Millennium, ending the last 1,000 years and 2,000 from Christ – the Sloane in me was fading fast. And with Corn Close Cottage providing a countryside vista when we arrived back in the UK from Oz, it continued to recede even more. The Kangaroo was starting to show her face. The pheasant facade I’d partially adopted was deconstructing.

The children were growing up. Anna was in her second year at Broomwood Hall. Hugo was about to start at Eaton House, on Clapham Common north side, in September. Despite the Sloane-ness of these institutions, they had a streak of Aussie in them now, in character not just ancestry. The visits Down Under made that vein stronger, like the veins of coal mined in the Illawarra area for many years.

They were little joeys – as well as a budding pheasant and stag. And, they would prove to show both sides of the coin in the coming years, as we continued to board Singapore Airlines’s flights, on that long, horrendous journey back to Oz. But it was always worth it when we arrived. And from then on we stayed over in Singapore for a tropical stopover. That broke the journey! Geoff had stayed at the Shangri-la, in the Valley Wing, on a previous business trip. He suggested that after Anna’s bicycle accident that we have a stopover this time. I wonder if he regretted it in retrospect, as I insisted on similar stopovers forever more. And both ways!

 

I’ll let you know how the polo goes tomorrow.