The weather is even worse today. I have been tempted to search for a cheap, package holiday, somewhere hot and, away from Hampshire. I am presently wearing a jumper. It is 1st July. I am actually considering lighting a fire.

Wimbledon today will be a challenge – for the tournament organisers and punters alike – with more rain forecast on and off. Centre Court will have the roof on and, at least, we will see some action on tele. Hugo, my son, who is working at the shop on Court number 1, says that the shops and restaurants are heaving when it rains.

Yesterday, I wrote about our summer holidays in Norfolk. They were often chilly, perched on the slate-grey North Sea. On the other side of this stretch of sea is Scandinavia. I am part Swedish – through my Dad, and Geoff part Norwegian – through his Mum. I have always fancied myself as bit of a Viking, and it is comforting to think that Geoff and I share some tenuous ancient lineage. That connection always felt stronger when we visited Norfolk. And our golden-haired children reminded us of that link.

When Stan was battling with cancer eight years ago, I took myself off to Stockholm to find a bit of myself and him. I felt completely at home amongst the Swedes, much more than anywhere else in the world, apart from Sydney. The locals obviously thought that I was one, as these people who looked like Abba greeted me with ‘Hej’ (hey) – hello in Swedish. There is a magnificent stretch of tiny islands, the Archipelago, dotted around Stockholm. Very urbane, sophisticated Swedes turn their backs on the modern amenities of the mainland, and head out, en masse, in the summer, to live with Mother Nature on these idyllic islands. And they live very basically.

This is a bit like life on the Norfolk coast. There is a little house, not much more than a shack really, that is (0r was?) perched on the tip of Blakeney Point. We knew an extended family that holidayed there each year. It had no electricity or water, so they lived like Robinson Crusoe for a week or so each year, catching seafood, cooking it on open fires, sailing and getting pretty sea-salted. Their hair was like dreadlocks after a while.

We were invited to go and have drinks with them one evening. This entailed walking for an extended period of time through black, squelching mud. I rarely had a pedicure in those days, but I indulged in one just before my holiday. What a waste of money! After this pilgrimage to the shack, my feet look like pig’s trotters. It took weeks for the ingrained mud to wear off. There was something wild and romantic about what this family was doing. Facing the elements, together, was bonding.

Norfolk is wild and untamed. It is brooding, vast and eternal. It is not manicured, groomed or done.  It is sparsely populated, as it is on the way to nowhere. Somehow you felt better for smelling the sea air, eating the local fare and being blown away on the beach each day.

But it was always good to get back to Wandsworth and ‘civilisation’.

Today I am going to have to do some serious gardening at the Old Rectory. It is looking like a jungle out there.

 

 

 

 

 

The weather is still rubbish, so no more on that subject. There are some summers that are like tepid tea. Only just drinkable.

When the children were small, we went to Salcombe, in Devon, and/or to Cley-next-the-Sea, in Norfolk, for our summer holidays. My abiding memory is that it was never very warm. Even if the sun was out, you still had a top over your swimmers – what Aussie call cosies – short for swimming costumes. But there were many days that the sun did not make much of an appearance, and it was freezing. Other families joined us, including John and Nicky Barber, on these travels to East Anglia.

The form was that you would pack a picnic lunch, and then head to a local beach by car. The favourite beach was Stiffkey – pronounced Stookey. You couldn’t drive all the way to the beach. You had to dump the car, and then walk for about 20 minutes to the sea. Norfolk has huge tides. When it is low tide, huge tracts of sandy beach is revealed, and the sea is miles away. Just a thin strip of blue-grey, a long way out, overshadowed by huge skies above. When the tide is coming in, the sea moves so fast that, if you are not careful, you will drown.

We invariably set up camp in the sand dunes, where we were safe whether it was low or high tide. We took little nets and floats for the children to play with in the small estuary nearby. They were happy trawling for shrimp or floating around for hours at a time. They built sand castles, and the hours passed by happily. But sometimes, it was so cold that we gave up and headed home, disappointed and, wondering how we would kill time. The children inevitably got cabin fever playing board games or building Lego inside, and they ended up tetchy and cross.

There was a very handsome fishmonger in Holt, a lovely market town. It was a joy to go and buy potted shrimp or mackerel pate from him. In those days, there were antique shops everywhere, and you whiled away time ‘junking’. That meant looking through piles of junk for treasure. I bought some lovely glass and porcelain in Holt.

 

Then there was Holkham Hall, the ancestral home of the Duke of Leicester. Parts of it were open to the public. Like a lot of stately homes, the family relied on revenue from day visitors. Anna wrote to the Duke when she was about 8, saying how much she liked his house. He wrote a warm, handwritten postcard back to her, saying that he enjoyed living there. Holkham Beach is across the road, and it is a pristine, large beach, again with huge tides (they filmed some of the training scenes for Chariots of Fire there). I have a vivid memory of watching the children swimming in the freezing, shallow sea, when it was high tide, and the sand had been enveloped. I remember looking at Hugo and it dawning on me that he had turned blue. There was a bitter wind blowing off the North Sea.

At that moment, I felt a thousand miles, physically and metaphorically from my roots, from the warm sunshine and sea of Sydney.