Today the rain of the last few days has thankfully cleared, and I awoke, in time, to watch the sun rise, sleepily and mistily, above the trees leering over the cricket ground, like old men, at the back of the Old Rectory.

It is a momentous day. Anna, our daughter, is returning from her travels, from Colombia to New York and, finally, to Heathrow.

The sunrise in England is, invariably, a gentle announcement to the new day. Not a brash yell; just a gentle, golden, glowing hello, before the orb reveals its full form in the sky, like a shy youth.

Many times on the Illawarra coast in Australia on our visits back, I crept out of bed to see the giant, invasive orb appear on the eastern horizon of the Pacific Ocean. Closer to the Equator, it announced itself with a hooray, “Let there be light.” It was startling.

I loved the sight of it. It meant a day by the sea, and by the sea, salt and sand and fun. Hamburgers: laden with beetroot and pineapple, bacon and eggs. Local ice creams: Paddle Pops in all the colours of the rainbow, Mango Weiss bars full of fruit like mango, and Golden Gaytimes with salty caramel and choc/biscuit encrusted. Fish and chips and deep fried potato cakes called scallops. Sunburn and peeling noses. Tired muscles from the pounding rollers.

There is a subtle change in the weather at the end of August in England, even on a clear, sunny day. The sun is now losing its intensity, like a fire dying down. The leaves are burning brown and some are falling. The sun will sink to the west earlier and earlier as autumn stealthily approaches, like the long shadow of an unwelcome visitor.

When Anna arrives we will sit in the sun and talk; she can try to communicate her foreign travels to me, but, of course, I will only be able to touch gently, from a distance, the extent of it all. It will be cut off by experience, distance and time.

When we came home from our staycation in Wiltshire at the end of August 2003, it was almost time for the children to go back to school. They were both getting wound up like springs. It dawned on me that it may not be run of the mill nerves. They both didn’t like their respective schools. It was as if, finally, I could properly see this. The summer had shed light on the fact. What were we to do?

Was I being dramatic? It was still a few days until the end of the holidays. We would continue to ponder the situation.