The weather is rather bleak today. There is fine mist laying low on the ground, and a steady, light rain is falling on the garden.

When we went home for the Christmas of 2003, after our move to Chelsea a few months earlier, it was a splash of colour, transposed onto a muted winter landscape in London.

One minute I was wrapped in an overcoat trying to keep warm in London, and the next day, almost, I was on the beach hitting the surf in my cozzies. There had, of course, been, in the interim, a long haul flight taking twenty four hours.

And there was another addition to the family to meet: Sophia, my brother and sister-in -law’s new beautiful daughter. New life, at Christmas, at a time of great change for the Wilmot family. It was a joyous time.

But, we still had not found a house to buy in Chelsea. I felt like a nomad. It was an unsettling time for us all.

It was hard coming back, in January, to our tiny rental and to more British winter, after the colour of Oz! It was as if we had regressed to black and white cinema again. The shops had their post New Year sales on, and their windows had replaced cosy nativity scenes with basement bargains. The Christmas lights and baubles, and the festivities, had given way to gloom.

It would be a few months to spring. You just have to get on with it in the first quarter of the year in Britain. It’s like the play Waiting for Godot, where nothing ever changes, day after day. In Beckett’s play, Godot never turns up. But spring does in Britain, like magic.

No matter what the weather, during this first glum quarter from January to March, I had to get out and go for a walk in the morning. Otherwise I’d go loopy.

My favourite place to walk when we moved to Chelsea was Hyde Park, with Kensington Palace, the Italian Fountains and the Serpentine lake. And coffee shops dotted around the place to duck into for a hot chocolate.

Heavy snow fell in the January after we returned from Christmas in Oz, and the park looked like Narnia in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the book, the witch turns her subjects into statues with her wand if she’s fed up with them. Even the Peter Pan statue in the park was encrusted with snow. The horseman, astride his mount, was also covered in snow.

As I approached the Lido, where swimmers, braving duck pooh, swim lengths in the man-made lake during the summer months, I was just thinking how cold I was. I wrapped my coat, even tighter, around my frame as I approached the swimming zone.

I could not believe my eyes. There was a woman who had just jumped through the ice covered lake in a black swim suit. I had to blink to check I was not hallucinating.

I made my way quickly to speak to her. I was so impressed. I asked if I could take her photo so that I would never forget the moment.

 

There is a group known as the ‘Icebergs’ who swim in Bondi sea pool 365 days a year. But they never face ice. It is flipping cold in winter in Sydney, but still. My mother, Beverley, also knows some older bravehearts , Kevin and Babs Eastman, who face the sea water every day in Bulli pool, near where she lives. These people are known as ‘troopers’. Made of ‘tough stuff’. They’re great Aussies.

It is promising to cheer up later in the week. Snow and ice are still a long way off.