The weather has broken as they say in Oz, which means that the heat wave has vanished, to be replaced with milder weather. It is pleasant, but the day has no intensity, like when the sun mercilessly beats down out of a cloudless, blue sky. It makes you feel alive. Or it does me.

This morning started with an unpleasant job, to somehow catch Domino’s first pee of the day. The vet wants to test it after he collapsed in Nicky’s field. After donning a new pair of marigolds – washing up gloves – I managed to catch just enough in a large white bowl, until he worked out what was going on and ran off. I sensed he felt emasculated.

Friday was another scorcher. I took Domino for an early walk at the Hurlingham Club before the temperature climbed to dizzy Aussie-heights. I rarely walk to music, but the sunshine put me in a dance mood. It was the sort of weather I woke up to so many times as a teenager, with the promise of fun in the sun.

So I plugged in my IPhone and set off around the perimeter of the Hurlingham Club grounds, along the Thames to the South and through beautiful, pristine, manicured gardens.

I worked my way through Madonna’s famous dance tracks for the next 45 minutes. Before long, I was singing out loud to the lyrics and wiggling my booty when the pheasants and stags were out of sight. John Travolta never looked so good!

The truth is that I was a disco lover in my teens and twenties. On Friday nights, I chucked my school uniform and vice captain badge, and headed to Bardwell Park RSL club. (RSLs are everywhere in Sydney, and they are clubs for returned service men, but everyone uses them.) That was the venue for the hottest disco in the area – that is, in our suburban St George region. Attending the disco required big hair – think Farrah Fawcett from Charlie’s Angels, glittery clothes and platform shoes. And a fair amount of war paint. Accessories included glittery headbands, chokers and big, costume, fake jewellery – think Crystal Carrington in Dynasty.

Olivia Newton John, Australia’s home-grown darling, had smashed it by turning from ‘butter couldn’t melt in her mouth’ Sandy in Grease, to ‘hot chick’ when she brought out her Physical album in 1980. I was 18 and worshipped the ground she walked on.

In those days, remember, every new hit had an accompanying video that was televised. We salivated for the next Abba song in the 1970s, which immediately went to number one on the charts. I, of course was Agnetha the blonde, and Karen Nosworthy was Anni-Frid the brunette. How did the Abba men get these gorgeous women to marry them, when they were not, strictly, that good looking? I was too young to realise that looks aren’t as important as character and talent.

I was in love with Duran Duran and their glamorous videos with supermodels showed me a world beyond Bexley North. I thought that David Bowie was the height of cool: “Put on your red shoes.” Who can forget a young Jerry Hall dancing in to Brian Ferry’s Let’s stick together, dressed in a tiger dress.

At the core of me, I am still a “Dancing Queen, only seventeen”, although that facet of me rarely emerges these days. Sadly!!!

As I turned the corner to the cricket pitch at the Hurlingham Club there was a gardener tending to a bed of flowers, but he had stopped working to smile at me, grinning from ear to ear.

I was singing at the top of my lungs to Madonna’s Vogue.

Come on, vogue

Let your body move to the music

Hey, hey, hey

Come on, vogue

Let your body go with the flow

You know you can do it

It isn’t exactly British to sing lyrics like that. Especially with so many pheasants and stags in the vicinity.

But then again, I’m an Aussie Sheila.