It is baking hot today. The sort of heat that makes lettuce wilt in seconds.

Domino is listless. It is too hot to do much.

I went early to the Hurlingham Club and swam lengths at the outdoor pool before the hordes arrived. I can smell the chlorine lingering on my skin. It stirs so many happy childhood memories of swimming in a pool somewhere in Bexley North, the suburb of my formative years. Maybe it was the Olympic pool at the end of Preddys Road, where my first friend Anne lived on the hill. Maybe it was in her pool with her sister Gill. Or in the Crundwell’s pool next door. Or ours. It didn’t matter. It was coolness in the midst of intense sunshine, searing down from a pale blue, cloudless sky. Just like the sky today in London.

It is in stark contrast to our spring tour of Switzerland, which followed skiing in the Alps, in Verbier, with Geoff’s brother, Patrick. The weather was icy cold, but sunny, by Lake Geneva.

Our first pit stop was Vevey, the home of Charlie Chaplin. We stayed at a charming hotel, the Hotel du Lac, the setting for the Booker prize winning book by Anita Brookner. It was just as in the book; there were long term residents, mainly older, that had their mail delivered to them by staff at breakfast. It was perused whilst they ate their toast and jam. Hotel Trois Couronnes, a short way up the promenade, was the setting for the Henry James novel, Daisy Miller. It tells of a rich, head-strong American girl, Daisy, who behaves badly in polite European society. Does that sound like a particular Kangaroo in the midst of Sloane Rangers in England? Her reputation is ruined, and she tragically dies. Daisy’s reputation, not the Kangaroo’s!

The beauty of Lake Geneva floored and inspired me. Across the glassy lake, majestic pinnacles, snow capped mountains, stand guard like sentries. We walked from Vevey to Montreux, past endless fading mansions. Some had been turned into apartments. Others had been bought by corporations and restored. Thankfully, some were still the abode of wealthy residents, living in style and waking up to a magnificent view each day. As we walked I could see in my mind’s eye the nobles and gentry taking a stroll along the lake in their finery: to take exercise, but also to be admired.

Next stop, after the scene of the chicken Kiev theft, was Bern, the medieval capital. It is perched on a gorge with a curved rushing river surrounding it. It is imposing, forboding and handsome. The ancient aspect of the city enchanted us. Bears are still kept in a bear pit. The vertical facades of the buildings hide vaulted walk ways for pedestrians to escape the weather. The one thing that flummoxed us though, was that there was no night life. Few places to eat. The Bernese obviously like to stay home.

Finally, Lausanne. We saw the famous clock in some ancient square, where ancient figures glide out when the hour is struck, but mostly we just tried to stay warm. It was raining and freezing.

It was a whistle stop tour. I remember the cities. But I mostly remember driving inland from Lake Geneva through snow laden landscapes. Stopping for strudel and hot chocolate in villages that seemed frozen in time as well as by the weather. Marvelling that for months the country was a winter wonderland, like in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. So different to my Sunburnt Country.

 

 

Still hot summer’s weather today. I am in London to catch up with life in the big city.

Yesterday, I mentioned that it is A level results this week. I hope all my young friends will be happy. Disappointment makes the heart sick.

Geoff went off on a gap year after finishing at Tonbridge, a boys’ boarding school in Kent. During his travels he found himself washing up in a hotel in Interlaken, between Lake Geneva and the capital Bern. So many times he told young Anna and Hugo the story of the stolen chicken Kiev.

It is part of our store of family stories, told over and over again, so they can be repeated almost verbatim. Like the imaginary friend he made up during one particularly long and tedious car journey. His name was Eric the Elf, but Eric was pronounced “Ewic” (Eric had a lisp), and he was in love with Raquel, but Raquel was in love with Gary. Even I found Eric funny, and I consider myself the comic in our family. Eric, forever more, travelled with us on car journeys, until the children were older.

Back to the hotel in Interlaken. One night Geoff was working in the kitchen washing up. Pedro the waiter hid a chicken Kiev in a  drawer to eat later. Geoff saw him hide it. He nicked it and ran outside to eat it in the bushes. When Pedro discovered that his precious morsel had been stolen, he threatened to kill whoever had taken it. Geoff pleaded innocence. Pedro, of course, suspected Geoff, but he could not prove it. Just like Fawlty Towers!

Geoff’s 50th year was a year of much change for our entire family, although this was still eclipsed at the time of his birthday.

We celebrated it in March/April with his youngest brother, Patrick, at his chalet in Verbier, Chalet Alsica, by the sports centre.

Patrick had been living there for some time, and it was a perfect opportunity to introduce the children to skiing. Patrick, of course, looked like he was born on skies and put us all through our paces. Geoff didn’t mind being shown up, as he had always adored his youngest sibling.

 

After two weeks’ wonderful skiing, we went off in search of the hotel in Interlaken, during our tour of Switzerland to celebrate Geoff’s five decades. The kitchen, thirty two years later,  was still exactly the same!

Today, I have friends to see. The summer holidays is isolating at times.

 

 

 

I am now back at the Old Rectory. It is stinking hot today. There is little difference between today in Hampshire, mid-August, and a hot summer’s day in Oz. It’s harvest time in the country. The fields are alive with activity. Like bees swarming over honey.

Nicky Barber is harvesting at her farm near Winchester: the barley and wheat. John, her husband, explained to me that the planter that sowed the crops last spring had a computer programme that precisely recorded the undulation of the fields and pattern of planting, so that the combine harvester working at the moment will be equipped to reap and sort the crops with utmost precision.

The dust that is generated by harvesting is phenomenal in these dry conditions, making the fields look like the Sahara Desert and not the normal green, lush fields of Britain. It reminds me of my heritage, with all my grandmother’s generation, on my mother’s side, deriving their livelihood from farms in the grasslands of NSW just before the Outback. In the summer, it was a sunburnt country.

 

Like in Dorothea Mackellar’s poem My Country:

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.

We had a BBQ in the Cotswolds on Friday night with the Barbers and other families. In that  last August in Norfolk, on holiday with the Barbers in August 2001, the weather was unseasonably warm. Geoff even managed to get his shirt off, and the children played in streams formed by the outgoing tide. We had lots of barbies on the beach.

There is nothing like the smell of meat being cooked over charcoal, rather than on the stove or oven grill. Stan the Man, my father, was an expert barbecuer. He had a mammoth barbie in every home we lived in, dwarfing the rest of the backyard with its presence, like a shrine. He even kept a roving barbie in the boot of his station wagon, and he would russle up grub for hungry grandchildren after a long day at the beach. He was a barbie legend.

Last Friday in the Cotswolds, before the barbie got going at 6pm, we had a cream tea by a navy and white cricket pavilion. After an afternoon of tennis and games. Nothing like an English summer’s arvo, with tea and scones. And the civilised chatter of pheasants and stags, convivial and pleasant. Many of the young ones were embarking soon on gap years abroad before starting Uni next October. They are anxiously waiting for A-level results this week to determine their Uni places. I am glad those days are behind us.

Geoff had a gap year with his mate Paul. They went everywhere, but for a time he worked in a hotel kitchen in Interlaken, Switzerland. For his 50th birthday, we went skiing and then headed to that very same hotel for old time’s sake. And to see if the drawer where he hid a chicken kiev, to his peril, still existed.

Today, I have to hit the garden and catch up with jobs at the Old Rectory.

 

Today the weather is very temperate.

It is self restrained and composed like the pheasants and stags I am on holiday with. They are truly good people. Adjectives like level-headed, reasonable, stable, warm, agreeable, discreet, modest and disciplined come to mind. They are admirable people, and I am fortunate to be spending time with them.

Particularly, with my friend Nicky Barber, my first friend in England. She embodies these attributes in spade loads. As a result, the Kangaroo is influenced for the better.

Yesterday, Geoff and I went off on a driving tour. I usually get fed up with being in the car. I like to be active, bouncing around here and there and causing havoc. However, the calming effect of my holiday guests has tamed me, temporarily. I feel like I am living in a Jane Austen novel at the moment.

We drove to see two garden attractions, which were similar, but very different. One was brand spanking new, and the other was traditional and old.

The first was Daylesford Organic Farm. It is owned by the hugely wealthy Bamford family, the B in the JCB digger empire. As such, the farm shop, cafe and shopping area are surrounded by modern topiary works-of-art. There is nothing sloppy about this place. It is immaculate and sleek – very Notting Hill.

Then we drove to Hidcote Manor Garden near Chipping Camden. It is a roomed garden made circa 1905. Hedges and topiary ‘walls’ eclipse what is around the corner. You are kept in suspense and then the vista, in all its floral splendour, is revealed. Ta-da, you are impressed.

After we left Barrington and Sarah Burles in Entrecasteaux, Provence, in the early 90s, Geoff and I detoured to Monaco. I adore Princess Caroline of Monaco, and I wanted to be in close proximity to her. I adored her late mother even more, Princess Grace. What poise and elegance! The trip was a must for me.

But the next stop was the Loire Valley, home to the grand mansions and ornate gardens of the French nobility – such as Chenonceau, Villandry and Chambord. The area is reminiscent of the Cotswolds – I connect them in my mind. Its the warm stone and topiary that does it.

However, when we arrived in Tour in the middle of the Loire region, late at night, we discovered, to our horror, that there was a conference in town. There was no room in the inn. Everything was booked. All that was left was a choice between a ludicrously overpriced hotel or a room above the local bistro.

Geoff thought that we should be sensible and stay in the room above the bistro. I threw my toys out of the pram. I wanted to be indulged and spoilt. I threatened to go home. He said that I didn’t have any francs. I waved my credit card at him in response. These were the passionate rows of our early marriage. In the end we made up and went for a nice meal.

The next day we were walking around a chateau and I saw, to my horror, Ghislaine’s brother and his wife across the way. I had puffy eyes from our argument the night before. Of course, he saw me as I ducked behind a pillar. And he came over and outed me. “Why are you hiding?” I told him the truth, and he has teased me ever since.

After Hidcote yesterday, we went looking for lovely houses in small hamlets like Evenlode on the way home. We were not disappointed. We found plenty of exquisite architecture. Wow!

Today, we have are having a BBQ. It will feel a little like Oz.

I dreamt last night of the Aussie sea. I was swimming in pounding surf. Even though I was under the frothy water, and the waves were crashing overhead, I could hear the sea gulls above. Sailing in the air. Making music.

When I woke up, I remembered that I was in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. Landlocked. Even so, when I looked out of the window, the gentle sunlight of the English morning greeted me with a polite hello. Blue sky with fluffikin clouds. English countryside is subtle – not too much brashness. It’s not pushy.

Yesterday I popped into Chipping Norton to look at the antique centres and pick up some supplies. No one queue barges in the Cotswolds. They politely wait their turn. Nice manners. They patiently wait for you to reverse park if they are behind you in the traffic.

The gentleness of the English countryside is soothing on the soul. It stills your heart. By comparison the Aussie summer at its height is relentless, intense with searing heat and blinding light. It is tiring and makes you restless. You are relieved to be at the beach when temperatures soar.

 

Yesterday, our house party played a lot of tennis, walked in the countryside and later all met up for a delicious afternoon tea of home cooked cakes. Chat was muted, friendly and respectful. There isn’t a lot of teasing, the Aussie style of taking the mickey.

But if you are a kangaroo like me, you occasionally want to shout out and kick your heels. Yell. Scream. Let off steam. Break into a disco move.

You can do that in the surf, but not on an English country holiday with a gaggle of pheasants and stags. If you did, however, let loose, dance a little jig in the middle of a tennis game, the pheasants and stags would just turn to the person next to them and excuse you, saying, “She’s not really crazy. She’s acting like that because she Australian.”

How I let off steam in polite English company is to tell funny stories and make them laugh. It is quite an effort sometimes to weave a yarn, but it is worth it to make them burst out laughing.

Today we are visiting Hidcote Manor with Hugo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today the weather is tepid again; weak-tea weather. It leaves you longing for something with a little more intensity. At least it is dry.

Yesterday we drove to Corn Close Cottage, the little house we rented near Moreton in Marsh sixteen years ago. Is nostalgia stronger than reality? Do we freeze-frame happy memories so that over time they increase in potency? Or are some memories so sweet that you bottle them exactly as they were?

Whenever I think of our year at the cottage in Aston Magna my brain whirrs into a haze of sentimentality. When we rented the cottage the children, Anna and Hugo, were six and four years. I was in my late thirties. Life was very sweet indeed. It was a year of the seasons: planting, growing, maturing and harvesting of the crops; followed by a snowy winter where we were landlocked for a few days; to spring full of new life: foals, lambs and calves…snow drops, frost, daffodils and crocuses and then the full symphony of summer again. These stages can be partially eclipsed in a metropolis.

Geoff and I made our way through Moreton in Marsh and turned left off the main road to the back roads to the cottage. So familiar, like an old cashmere jumper. We turned away from Batsford Stud, at the rear of the former Mitford (Nancy Mitford wrote many of my favourite Sloane novels) estate. A horse was in the field with its gangly foal. New life! Stunning views unfolded to the right of the tapestry landscape. We were then on the lane to the cottage. There were ripe wheat fields right up to the road. A farmer was poised to harvest. And then we saw the cottage. My eyes flooded with tears. Here it was – our little slice of heaven.

There was a pretty mother in the garden holding a golden haired little girl. Three handsome small boys were playing with lego at a wooden picnic table. We boldly introduced ourselves, and to our delight “Maria” showed us around the cottage. Lovely additions had been made, and they had increased the garden by buying a slice of the neighbouring field. Maria swooned about how happy they had been there. History repeating itself.

Today, we will walk and drink up the beauty here.

The Cotswolds, today, is a little cooler than Hampshire.

Yesterday, we travelled along the M40 to Chipping Norton, where we are holidaying.

It was the same route we travelled many times in our year of renting Corn Close Cottage in Aston Magna, near Moreton in Marsh, 16 years ago. You turn off at junction 9 and wind through pretty golden/honeyed stone villages. The window frames are often painted a cool lichen or grey, which offsets the warmth of the stone. There is the odd grand house in each town. And the intermittent stone gate or lodge suggests a large country house at the end of a treelined drive.

The countryside is a neat patchwork quilt of green and golden fields. Harvest is taking place right now. We passed fields of golden round wheat bales.

We met up with Barrington and Sarah Burles on arrival, and caught up over a cuppa. Many years ago, they invited us to stay with them at a pretty honey coloured farm house near Entrecasteaux, in the Var region of Provence, in southern France. Barry had holidayed with the British owners as a teenager. And, as a newlywed, he had been lent the house with his beautiful wife, Sarah.

We had a wonderful week eating at local brasseries and soaking up the translucent light of the region, the same light that inspired Cezanne and Van Gogh.

There was a basic local restaurant  run by two handsome French brothers, that Barry had formed a friendship during his first visit. We often ate the simple food there, drinking the local vino. It felt exotic and foreign. The evenings were balmy and hot. It was my first overseas summer holiday, following our honeymoon in Italy.

In truth, I was a little intimidated by the sophistication of it all. I had no mastery of French. “Please” and “thank you”, with an Aussie accent, was the sum of it. Geoff studied French at Uni, so he was able to show off his perfect accent. I tried to take a crash course in French before the trip, but Geoff’s verdict was that I was “linguistically dyslexic.” A sore point even to this day. I have never let him forget his lack of encouragement.

Entracasteaux’s architecture was reminiscent, in my mind, of the Cotswolds’ architecture that I later discovered, but with a French twist. The same warm, golden stone, was utilised. The 16th century castle, which dominated the town up on the hill, gave the town a noble feel.

There is a local manor in the Cotswolds, Chastleton, which is in the middle of nowhere. It is a one of England’s finest Jacobean houses, completed in 1602. It is clearly British, but again the same golden stone.

 

I love that warm stone. It reminds me of sunshine in a cool climate.

Today, we are going to drive to Corn Close Cottage and take a trip down memory lane.

 

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.

 

The weather today is sunny, but not very warm.

I have always found August a melancholy month in England. The fresh limey-green of the spring is long gone, and the flowers are on the turn, past their very best. Even the weeds are giving up the ghost and dying down.

You are acutely aware that, very soon, Autumn will be upon us. The leaves will then shed, and the cold will appear. One savours every last drop of sunshine at this time of year.

This was not the case when we visited Bermuda in August, 2002. It was humid and extremely hot. It was vibrant and not in decline, like the British summer. A lot of the islanders depart for less sweaty climes. It didn’t matter at all to us, as we were in the water most of the time.

One of the most surreal experiences of my life time, was a visit to the former home of Robert Stigwood, the big music producer in Bermuda. He produced, amongst many other films, Grease (with my favourite Olivia Newton John) and Saturday Night Fever, the disco film. Apparently, the Bee Gees sketched the hits in the film, starring John Travolta, whilst visiting Stigwood in Bermuda. Stigwood instructed them to get to it, and they did. Stayin Alive was born.

Like me, Stigwood was an Aussie who lived in exile, in Britain, but also Bermuda – a tax haven. When he made megabucks with these hits, he bought and restored an incredible Georgian house in Sandy’s parish, Wreck House. It had a topaz bay to the left before you reached the house on the headland. You can find it on the internet.

By a random chance of fate, I went for the day to swim in the bay. A friend was doing some work for the new owner, Bruce Gordon. She thought that Niki and my children would have fun.

We settled on our sun loungers, and finally the family joined us. We had a long swim as it was too hot to do much more. At lunchtime golf carts brought down pizzas.

Geoff settled out in the shallows with Bruce, an Aussie, would you believe it. They had a long chin wag. He later told me that Bruce owned WIN television. This is the very same regional broadcaster based in the Illawarra, Australia, where the Potts family are settled. What a coincidence. He even owned the Scarborough pub up the road, perched on a cliff high above a fantastic beach, Coalcliff. It was our favourite place to swim one Easter holiday, as there were high winds, and it is sheltered.

Every time I drive past the pub or see the WIN logo flashing up for the 6pm news, I think of our swim at Bruce Gordon’s in Bermuda, an Aussie billionaire.

Today is better weather. But not an inch on a hot summer’s day in Australia. Tepid again. Like weak tea.

Yesterday, I headed to the outdoor pool at the Hurlingham Club, Fulham, for a swim. I was  feeling like a fish out of water. Or even a duck out of water. I needed to be near some water. And to be submerged. The mermaid was feeling landlocked.

It wasn’t that warm I noticed as I laid my towel down on the sun lounger. As I was reading, I heard a “Quack, quack, quack.” One of the pretty ducks from the lake at the club was lost in the pool enclosure. He kept up a racket for a long time. And then I looked up from my book to see him, as if it was his domain, venture into the pool amongst the pheasants and stags.

He confidently glided off the edge and floated amongst the pheasants and stags. He even managed to get into the swimming lane, reserved for those intent on doing crawl up and down the roped off area. And then he popped up at the other end and waddled away. He just shook the water off and didn’t look back. If only I could do that.

It was a metaphor for me. I may look like I belong. But I am really a duck-like creature, amongst the Brits. A kangaroo, trying not to jump above the crowd. But I always do.

I am very proud of my contribution to the outdoor pool construction. I was on the Swimming Pool Committee, with Louise Corrie, when it was being built. I do not normally make a fuss. I like to be liked and to like. I do not like confrontations. But when they were fitting out the pool, they wanted to put a huge flower bed at the sun bathing end.

I protested loudly, reasoning that parents would not be able to see their children as they swam. My main objection was that it would look hideous. And kids would put their hands in and chuck the dirt everywhere. My objections were noted. So I enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the wonderful pool. I won the battle. Some battles are worth fighting. Most are not.

I sort of enjoyed my time by the water’s edge yesterday afternoon. But it was slightly cool. And when the sun went behind the wool-like clouds, it was frankly chilly.

The truth is, I have had the odd mishap in perfect aquatic scenarios. In two out of three perfect climes, Hayman Island in the Great Barrier Reef and Bermuda, it was bordering on disastrous in the glamour stakes.

In Hayman Island, I was recovering from an operation. I was run down. Whilst on the island I developed a large boil on my chin. It started as a spot, but before long it was Vesuvius. I went to the hotel doctor. He prescribed antibiotics, but he said that if worse came to worse, I would need to have it cut open. Thank God it subsided. Geoff joked when we were off to dinner, “Shall the three of us get going?” Ha, ha, ha.

In Bermuda, I was bitten by a mosquito on my neck. On the eventing news they informed islanders that a very deadly strain of mosquito had ventured onto Bermuda. And to be vigilant. Especially if you were near the lighthouse. Like in an Alfred Hitchcock film, I looked out of the window, and, immediately, saw – the lighthouse. That mosquito bite turned into a mountain. I tried to cover it with my hair. I tried lotions and potions. It was not to be conquered. But I did not perish. But it was sore, ouch sore.

So although I have loved a few exotic locations in my time – foremost, Hayman Island, (Australia), Bermuda and Heron Island (Australia) – they have not exactly loved me.

I will tell you about Heron Island, a David Attenborough favourite, another time.

Today, I am off back to the country.