I am not as melancholy as I have recently been, as I awoke, this August Monday morning, to a stinking hot summer’s day at the Old Rectory. Geoff could be seen shirtless watering the hydrangeas and roses – at 7am – unheard of.

The weekend was consistently hot and sunny. I swam lengths. I sat in the sun, in a swimsuit. It was bliss. The Kangaroo could relax. The weather certainly put a bounce back in my step.

On Friday I headed to the Petworth estate to take Domino for a decent run around the lake there. The park has the largest herd of deer in England. Petworth is due east of the Old Rectory along the A272 from Petersfield, just beyond Midhurst, where the polo is played at Cowdray Park. You glimpse the South Downs on the right all the way. It is a stunning, scenic drive.

Petworth is a seventeenth century, stately home (completed 1688), once for the sole use of noble families. It is now run by the National Trust, with visitors traipsing through many of its ornate rooms. We took the children there on the way home from a 40th birthday party in West Wittering, on the south coast, eight years ago, so Anna was 14 or thereabouts.

There is one room which has numerous, ancient scenes of the Battle of Waterloo. The descendants of the household fought beside Duke of Wellington to defeat Napoleon at that battle in Belgium, so the room was a tribute to those efforts. There was a guide present to answer questions, and Anna intelligently and knowledgeably engaged him in the history of the period. It would be the subject she later studied at Cambridge, history. He was clearly impressed.

Visiting National Trust properties around Britain is like taking a hot bath. The quiet respect shown by visitors on tours of the house is reassuring. The tea, cakes and scones provided in the tea rooms are invariably delicious and always the same. The people who eat them, often older people midweek, are dressed in neat and tidy apparel on the whole. Chinos and checked shirts for men. Often same for the women. The waterproof resting on the chair behind in case of a shower. Good sensible shoes to walk in the house, but also in the grounds, which set off the house to perfection. There is a timelessness about such visits. The world may be imploding. But these houses are testament to something solid and good.

I am sitting in one of the two reception rooms at the Old Rectory, once the abode of clergymen. The previous owner told me that Queen Mary, grandmother to the Queen, used to come and admire the dolls’ house that was stationed in this room. The house was used for Sunday school. Bottles of milk were delivered to the larder at the rear at the for the youngsters. There are lovely old servants bells in some of the rooms. Sadly the days of staff  are long gone. Geoff and I are the servants. Still, there is a history to this house.

 

There was a history to Stone House in Seal, Kent, the former rectory that Geoff was raised in. Clergy, were seen to be part of the gentry, not nobility, like the inhabitants of Petworth.

Many suburban Aussie homes don’t have that same sense of the past.

Yesterday, Geoff dropped Domino off further on from Petworth at the Whippet Hotel near Gatwick. I missed him dreadfully over night. He is the first dog I have had since my last dog Ben as a teenager.

We are off to the Cotswolds to have a week with a number of friends, including Nicky and John Barber and Barrington and Sarah Burles – and their offspring. Hugo is with us. Anna is still in Columbia. We will be a stone’s throw from Blenheim Palace, and not far from the little cottage we rented near Moreton in Marsh, many moons ago.