The heatwave has broken, like a taut rope that has snapped. Rain is forecast for London.

I drove down to the Old Rectory at 7am this morning, and I could see that it had been raining earlier. The garden’s thirst had been quenched, without me traipsing around with a hose for hours.

After our tour of Switzerland in 2003, we decided to have a summer staycation. By now Anna was 9 and Hugo 7. We borrowed a thatched house in Wilthsire, near Marlborough and did country stuff. The local harvesting had caused a fly infestation, so we arrived to find big sticky tapes, encrusted with dead flies, hanging from exposed beams in the kitchen. I left it to Geoff to change them periodically.

A day trip was made to Bath, a city that means a lot to me. My friend from Uni days in Sydney, Susan Durlacher, had a close connection with the city. Her mother and husband, Joanna and Louis, had a coach house tucked away behind the Royal Crescent.

I stayed with them just after I landed in England in 1988. It was just before Susan’s wedding to Geoff’s brother, David. We became sisters in law. Prince and Princess Illinsky, from Palm Beach, Florida, were staying with them. The house was tiny, but we all managed to squeeze in.

I was transfixed by the perfect Georgian architecture of the city. My eyes were out on stalks as I turned every street corner. It has stayed locked in my heart, as an exquisitely designed city, alongside Paris and Venice. The Georgians in the 18th century flocked there to drink the water from ancient Roman baths. Assembly rooms, that remain today, are built over them. Jane Austen lived there.

We stayed with my parents, Stan and Bev, and brother and wife, Shaun and Wendy, in 1989, after Geoff and I were married in April. Dad was an aesthete by nature, even if he liked a tinnie or two of beer. He relished every aspect of the city; marvelling at the symmetry of the design. From above, the Royal Crescent joined by a road to the Circus looks like a key. Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon reminded me of the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno in Florence.

It was during this staycation that Geoff and I played with the idea of moving from Clapham. I was too much of a Londoner by that stage to consider a move out of London. I dreamt of living in the central area of London where the tourists throng; to be able to stroll in Hyde Park, pop into the Victoria & Albert Museum, walk down Sloane Street to Sloane Square, pop into Portobello Road markets and browse in Harvey Nicholls. If you live in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea you are entitled to a parking permit which spans from Marble Arch to Notting Hill. It covers a vast area.

Little did I know that within a few weeks we would be moving to that area.

Today I am gardening. The flowers are dying, not due to lack of water, but they are fading now as Autumn is around the corner.