Today has started off with a promise of warmer weather later I live in hope.

Yesterday, I headed up to the Hurlingham Club in London, a stone’s throw from where we  live, to book a tennis court for Geoff and Hugo for tonight.

There was a contingent of Americans, with introductory letters from their clubs in America, at the tennis pavilion, signing in to play. They looked like fish out of water. They were limbering up, with lunges and squats. I have never seen a pheasant or stag put themselves through similar paces to get ready for a match.

The Hurlingham Club has reciprocal arrangements with clubs all over the world. We have used the arrangements several times. The best arrangement was with the Coral Beach Club in Bermuda. Niki asked us to Bermuda in 2001 and, again, in 2002, the year of my fortieth birthday.

Bermuda is paradise on Earth. Anna keeps on sending us photos of stunning beaches in Columbia, where she is holidaying, but, as beautiful as they are, they are not a patch on Bermudan beaches, with pink sand (crushed coral from the reef surrounding the island) and turquoise water.

We house-sat for some friends of Niki’s mother and her husband, the Mayor of Bermuda. This entailed looking after a part Doberman. He fell in love with me at first sight and tried to climb into bed every night. Geoff had to take him for a long walk each day. We were near the lighthouse. I clearly remember looking out of the window and seeing this dog drag Geoff, at speed, up the steep steps to the road. Geoff was almost airborne.

We spent time with Niki’s family at their enchanting pink house in Somerset. All Bermudan houses have stepped white roofs, to collect rainwater. The house was perched on a promontory, with coral adorning its craggy waterline. They also had a pontoon perched in the bay to the right of the house. This meant hours of fun in the water. When we were not submerged looking at the kaliedoscope beneath, we were drinking tea and eating banana bread, a staple food. Or playing with their dogs, Hector the Great Dane and Oscar the Terrier.

Occasionally, we headed out on the boat to secluded bays. We snorkelled and ate watermelon in the sea, the salt making it more delicious. The Mayor taught Hugo how to swim. He just threw him in my direction and barked, “Swim!” Hugo obeyed.

 

Alternatively, we were at the Coral Beach Club, enjoying the amenities. We caught the bus there, as it is almost impossible to hire a car. The clubhouse was perched high above the beach, with stunning views out to sea. A decent swim away was the reef. There was  complimentary snorkelling kit if you felt like venturing out. Once I swam to the edge on my own, and the seemingly perilous sea was laid out before me. Deep, deep, fathomless depths.

At 4pm on the dot, tea was served in the pretty, colonial looking drawing room, with a beachy palate. And it was free.

The Duke and Duchess of Kent were guests – the patrons of the club that hosts Wimbledon. They were staying in one of the cottages. I observed that they never muttered a word to each other. Even at lunch, they ate their meal in silence. They swam separately. They were in their own worlds. I have no idea how the dynamics of that relationship worked without language. How can you relate if you don’t converse, ever? Still waters run deep?

Today, I am going to go for a swim at the outdoor pool at the Hurlingham Club. I helped choose the materials for it. And I prevented, in my opinion, a major eyesore.

 

 

 

Oh dear, back to a rainy British summer. But there is a promise of sunshine tomorrow.

Yesterday, the rain teemed down from the heavens. I had paperwork to process, bills, that is what I mean, but I found out that Jane Austen’s last abode was ten minutes away in Hampshire. Strewth, I thought, the greatest female writer of all time, as far as I am concerned, lived a stone’s throw away from the Old Rectory. So I chucked Domino in the car, and off we went to find Jane. Forget the paperwork.

I am not going to regurgitate information that I researched after my visit. I am going to tell you how it really was, as I found it.

Well the weather when I arrived was foul. I was wearing a waterproof. Very unattractive. My hair was damp and dishevelled. Very unattractive. I was wearing flip flops. Very unattractive. I don’t think that Jane would have cared in the least. She was a flipping feminist after all.

I saw her abode across the street from my car. No major carpark and officials managing me to park miles away – like some National Trust properties. I just parked my car on a street nearby, and walked over to her house, which from the outside looked pretty and substantial.

But inside it was very insubstantial. Downstairs, three very basic rooms. Upstairs the same. Out the back, a cookhouse. It was a facade to grandeur, but the inside was modest.

A guide told me that her father was a clergyman. No doubt they didn’t have a lot of cash. A local, childless, gentry family liked the look of them and adopted Jane’s brother Edward, and he became an aristocrat overnight. Like winning the lottery. He took possession of the manor down the road, Chawton Manor.

Jane and Mum and sister lived down the road in a modest dwelling, the cottage which I walked around in three minutes tops. Not a lot to admire. Not like the manor down the road that her brother was given by the Knights that adopted him.

And let’s consider Jane, living there in the last quarter of her life (she died at 41) writing masterpieces in modesty. No wonder she came up with so many stories about women being subordinate to men in practicality,  not of course in reality. Women are, of course, the equal to men. And they have babies. Without women, the human race is extinct. Well without men, the same is true. The truth is they are completely equal.

Murray won Wimbledon for the second time this year. Poor lad, I think he cried because he proved that it wasn’t a fluke. Theresa May is now our second female Prime Minister. She is also not a fluke, but a godsend. Thankfully she didn’t cry. Because she would have been ridiculed. But if she cried, who cares. Both men and women cry. David Cameron almost lost it when he was leaving No. 10. I don’t get the stereotypes. Who is best for the job? That is what matters.

I am worried though, about Jane. Why am I worried. Because, although she was the greatest female novelist that I know of, she was poor. She initially wrote, so the guide told me, under the name of ‘The Lady’. She relied on her ‘lottery’ brother’s good fortune when he was adopted. Thank God he was really. Or Jane would have been destitute possibly.

I am glad that so many lovely films have been made based on her novels. And dear Colin Firth, his career may not have flourished as it has, if he had not emerged from the pond in Pride and Prejudice – where his shirt clung to his chest – the wet t-shirt look.

The nation swooned. But this time it was a man, in a period drama!!!

Today, I think that the weather is rubbish again for the whole day. I hope that this is not the case. But I can’t complain, because every time that Jane had to walk to her lottery brother’s house, she didn’t have Crocs, plastic shoes, but satin shoes that got wrecked. Thank God for progress and non organic shoes, i.e., polymers.

Last Friday, I spent the day chained to the stove. 21 of Geoff’s family were coming for Saturday, as my nephew-in-law was playing at the neighbouring cricket club.

On Saturday morning, I sent Geoff off to Waitrose in Petersfield for some forgotten ingredients. We adore the programme Two Greedy Italians, with Antonio Carluccio. He has many Italian restaurants around Britain, including South Kensington and Cambridge, which we’ve happily eaten at many times. He was in front of Geoff in the checkout queue. Of course, I would have said something to him. Had a good look at what he was buying. Geoff just smiled. Dad looks a lot like Carluccio, which is maybe why I love watching the programme. He has the same mischievous grin and leathery face.

When Geoff and I were first married, it was a novelty to cook and prepare for a dinner party. To set the table, adorn it with flowers and change into something pretty. I loved the occasion of it all. And the formality.

Ghislaine, the Honourable, sorted me out with my first cook book shortly after I was married, and I also added Delia Smith’s bible to my repertoire. I still it use now: especially for scones.

It was hard to switch to British ingredients, as the brands were completely different to those sold by Coles and Woolworths, the Aussie supermarkets of the time. Sainburys, Tescos and Waitrose were new territories to conquer. It took time. The Kangaroo found it all bewildering and foreign! In the first week off the plane, I ventured to Army and Navy in Victoria and ordered two steaks. It cost £30. I was appalled, but I was too embarrassed to reject it. Meat was, by comparison, very expensive in the UK.

I cracked a few recipes, which I wheeled out time and time again: crab and camembert mini quiches, baked asparagus and chicken, lamb in redcurrant sauce, beef wellington, pavlova (an Aussie staple), a cooked cheesecake, a hazelnut and cherry torte …

My sister in law, Wendy, adores to cook. She loves every inch of the process – apart from the cleanup. But then who likes that part! We were often in Oz over Christmas, near Hugo’s birthday, or Easter, Geoff and Mum’s birthday. Wendy, of course, made these occasions magical and delicious. She has great artistic flair, so the food and decorations always looked gorgeous.

My father, Stan the Man, also adored cooking, and they shared that bond until he died. Her requested addition to the eulogy I delivered at his funeral, was to remark on the fresh delicacies he brought her on almost a daily basis: vine ripened tomatoes and ham off the bone. Not the pale toms or the processed ham, all with water added.

 

As Dad repeatedly advised the family, “If the ingredients aren’t up to scratch, then the food will be shocking.” Dad’s views on ingredients has proven a saving grace in my culinary efforts. Tough meat, inedible meal. Unripe fruit, inedible. Past the use by date veg, inedible. Dad taught me how to smell, assess and choose fresh produce wisely. And to detect if water has been added. If the orange skin is bright orange, but spongy, then it will be pumped with water. Better leather like and taut. If the rock melon (our word for the orange melon) is still hard at the tip, then it is still unripe.

Dad managed to cook a large dinner party for my 21st. Clear beef consomme broth, veal layered in mozzarella and tomato, followed by baked cheesecake. All with Aussie sparkling wine. Inspirational really, given that he worked by the sweat of his brow during the week. But on weekends he cooked delicious meals and looked after his delicate orchids, usually with a beer perched nearby. He would spray them with a fine mist of water. He was a paradox in that respect. A bloke’s bloke, but with feminine traits. But to look at you would never have guessed that side of him.