I am melting like ice cream. It is so hot today. It as if all my wishes have come true, but at the same time, it is so hot, I cannot think. I am muddled, befuddled. 28 degrees in September! Am I dreaming Australia to London through my diary? Where is the corroboree?  Is someone chucking a boomerang just for me in Oz, so that the hot weather lands over here on my patch?

But looking back at Anna’s days on Family Affairs, Channel 5’s soap, she could think, and she could think very fast. She could look at her script and learn it in seconds. While others were rehearsing for a considerable time, she read it a few times, and bingo, it was in her brain.

Of course, I was oblivious to the story line, until it was aired in the months ahead, after filming.

She stole money; she encouraged her friend Chloe to drink vodka whilst truanting from school; she was a ‘vamp’ at Halloween, she boasted about her portable DVD player (now so passé); she lost a little boy she was looking after; she said she was only able to eat salad as she was on a no carbs diet (prophetic about our wheat adverse era) and she objected to taking the bus!

Not the easiest story line to digest. But hey, she was on telly. And for an eleven year old with no experience at all!!!, she was convincing. The vicar’s wife, kindly, concluded that her character was a deterrent to bad behaviour. It was a help to others! She was stretching it, but it helped me cope with the flaws in Anna’s pretend character.

Anna’s mother in the show was actor Glynis Barber, from the crime show Dempsey and Makepeace, circa 1985-1986, three seasons. She starred in it with her real life husband, Michael Brandon. They are still knocking around in the world of telly.

Her best friend’s Dad in the show was Gary Costello, played by Gary Webster. He was in Minder with George Cole.

Good actors, but not great actors. Still they were earning a good living doing their craft.

I am so hot today, but that summer in England, the year of Anna’s  television debut, was decidedly tepid. So lukewarm, you could hardly get up a sweat.

Today, I played three hours of tennis in scorching hot weather. I was puce like a beetroot. Dad would have said, “Strewth love, you need to sit in the fridge.” I played my last game against a Texan. She was as cool as a cucumber. She forgot that I was an Aussie and said, “I am cool, because I am a Texan.” I said, “But you are forgetting; I am an Aussie.” She said, “But you’ve been here a long time.”

Oh no, am I becoming a pheasant???