It is raining today. Summer is slipping away, like ice cream melting in the sun.

Yesterday, I managed to sit with Anna by the pool at Hurlingham for a few minutes. I was walking home, and I saw her approaching the pool entrance from a different direction. I observed her without her noticing me. Here she was – my tall, lovely daughter – now a woman. When did she get to be so big? Since we had dovetailed – serendipity – I asked if we could sit for a few minutes in the sun and catch up. She was on a lunch break. So we grabbed a few rays. I had to leave promptly, as I was having lunch in Chelsea with my Spanish friend, code name Flamenco.

The staff love Anna at the Hurlingham Club, because she chats to them like a kookaburra. Chip off the old block. I was like her at her age.

Once, after Geoff and I had been away, I went to the Polo Bar and ordered some drinks on my club card; like a club credit card that you pay off monthly. The Maitre d’ asked if I had a tall blonde daughter. I said that I did. He chuckled and told me that she had been ordering food everyday on my card while we had been abroad. I raised my eyebrows. As he handed me the drinks he said, “In fact, she told me yesterday that she had to get home and tidy the house as the place was a tip!”

The next day I asked Anna if she would like to join me for lunch at the Hurlingham. She said that she would love to. I led her to the bar. She knew that the gig was up as soon as I led her to the Maitre d’. I asked him, “Is this the young woman who has been eating at my expense?” We all burst out laughing.

Yesterday at the pool, we went and ordered some coffee at the cafe, and the Aussie sales person – a sheila – chatted away to Anna as if they were best buddies. They knew a lot about each other – little details. Anna gives people time. She always has time to talk. She looks at them in the eye and not over their shoulder.

When we started building works on Limerston Street in 2004, I tried to chat to people in nearby cafes and shops in Chelsea. Not a good idea sometimes. In big cities, people can feel distrustful, question motives, if you are too friendly. They’re wary. Rightly so!

However, our new neighbours, Cem Habib and Caroline Stanbury, were incredibly friendly. When we all downed tools, or our builders did in autumn of 2004, and finally moved in, we would chat over the back fence, the small boundary that separated our small back gardens. I was delighted that they loved to BBQ. We had more in common than I thought. She may have looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of VOGUE, but she loved a juicy steak.

Their BBQ guests often included celebrities like Diane Kruger and Lisa Bilton (first Bridget Jones’ Diary film). They would sit around the garden table on balmy summer’s nights and wrap their laughing gear -their mouths- around food cooked on the Weber by Cem, an avid BBQ chef. Stan the Man, my father, would have smiled with approval.

Today, I am off to see Nicky Barber, my farmer friend, near Winchester. Always a tonic.