It has been lovely weather for the last few days. But Summer is dying. The leaves are turning brown, and soon they will start to drop.

It is the same time of year that we upped sticks from Clapham, moved the children, started Anna in a new school, put the furniture into storage, moved into a shoe box of a rental and hoped that we would find a new home to buy.

But there were lots of positives to keep up spirits.

It was surreal living in the heart of Chelsea, like in tourist land, around the corner from The Natural History Museum, The Science Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was like being on holiday every day, at first. I would take Hugo to look at automated dinosaurs, life size Tyrannosaurus Rexes and raptors, on the way home from school. Or walk on the escalator through planet earth with the sound of moving lava cracking around you. Or go in a space ship with simulated flight. It was fun for the children.

And for me, beautiful objects, art and antiquities, to gaze at from time to time, at the multitude of museums and galleries. Walking in Hyde Park, with Kensington Palace in the background, almost daily.

We trekked from Clapham to see the flowers piled outside the gates of Kensington Garden after Diana died in 1997. Now that we lived nearby, some six years later, the children frequently played at the Diana Memorial Playground. It always made me feel a little sad.

Everything was at your fingertips: shops, restaurants, museums, art galleries and parks. I was like a child in a sweet shop.

But there was the nagging problem of finding a house to buy. We saw a number of houses. We made an offer on a house in Fulham, but someone outbid us. The estate agent rang me on my mobile and tried to persuade me to up our offer. Her words: “You will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t buy the house.” Her words made me sick with anxiety. Was she right?

The truth is that we would have regretted it bitterly if we had bought that house. As it transpired, the house that we bought was near both the children’s schools, and we could make a life in the community, not commute into the area as many did.

Today I have friends coming for lunch, and we will be able to sit in the garden.