Summer has gone on vacation; banished. All through the night, rain, wind, thunder and lightning jolted me awake from a restless sleep. It wasn’t a fleeting storm; it was as if Zeus, the Greek god of the skies and intense darkness, was back in action, playing bowls all night with the clouds. He raged from dusk ’til dawn. It was much darker at dawn. I thought it was the middle of the night when I awoke, but when I found my watch it was going on 6am. Winter is whispering, “I am a coming.”

Yesterday, the committee for Older People’s Teas and Concerts came for lunch. It was so hot in our little house in Fulham. I could see the women glowing with a sheen of perspiration. It is hard to make decisions about the logistics of hot tea and cakes, when your mind is thinking about stripping off and sitting in a bucket of water; well at least mine was.

As soon as they left, I bolted for the car and its air conditioning. I then made my way down to the Old Rectory in Hampshire. It was so much cooler when I arrived. Domino and I collapsed on a lounger in the shade.

I looked up at the clear blue sky, listened to the birds and promptly fell asleep with him beside me. The heat had sapped my energy. And playing tennis this week in it.

I later headed up to bed at 9pm. Wiped.

As a child in Oz, I don’t remember the heat slowing me down in summer. I have a vivid memory of riding my bike up to the corner shop to buy lollies – sweets – when I was about eight, and in front of me a mirage appeared; the intense heat transformed the tar road into a lake. Being hot to bursting was normal for an Aussie kid in summer. You still ran around the playground at school, or in the backyard, like a tornado. If you didn’t have a pool to swim in, you ran through the sprinkler in the garden.

This is in stark contrast to my children’s experience, on the whole, during a British summer when they were growing up. It was occasionally very warm, but it was a rarity.

Yesterday, I mentioned that when we attended our first parents’ meeting at Hugo’s prep school, Sussex House, Geoff found himself sitting next to Nigella Lawson. She looked as if her skin had never, unlike mine, been fried in the sun. It was flawless. She didn’t have a freckle in sight. And she was spectacularly beautiful. Not only was she unblemished, she appeared as cool as a cucumber. Serene, just like the Mona Lisa. She has an Italian heritage.

Today, an old flat mate from Oz, Jen Atkins, is coming to visit me at the Old Rectory. It is about twenty years since I last saw her.

 

 

 

 

Today is rumoured to be the last hot day of this summer. Looking out of the window of our Fulham house, it is incredible to believe that, very soon, grey clouds will appear again. It has been a long stretch of perfect weather, with pristine blue skies, day after day.

Yesterday, we had dinner with five other couples in a beautifully stylish house on Napier Avenue, just around the corner from the Hurlingham Club. I caught my breath as we were led through the elegant drawing room to the garden, revealed through a backless house, as the enormous glass doors had been concertinaed away to the sides. The impact was palpable and impressive.

Terracotta pots were dotted amongst the symmetrical olive trees at the far end. An Italian garden in London. All perfectly uplit. We had lovely wine and nibbles in the fresh, balmy air. So spoiling. And finally, we took our seats in the formal dining room. I glanced up behind the hostess. Some deceased pheasants and stags, immortalised in oil, stared down at us from their heavy gilt frames. The woman was not a looker. I was unsurprised to hear that she had never been married. The hostess, however, is elegant and striking. The gene pool has evolved favourably.

I was on best behaviour. I had to stuff the kangaroo in me deep down, like a joey hidden in a pouch, hoping that my head wouldn’t pop out at the wrong time.

There were rows and rows of cutlery. And I had a blank; did I talk to the gent on my left to begin with during the starter or to the right first? I was momentarily flustered, and stared hard at the hostess. She was talking to the bloke on the left. So likewise, I chattered away to the gent on the left, like a kookaburra, asking questions about his life and family.

Next I spoke to a Scot, Angus, to my right. He owned a large house in Aberdeen, which was once a seminary to train boys and youths for the priesthood. The chapel has been converted into the kitchen. Later the seminary moved to Blairs College, now closed. He described the house as symmetrical, with rows of windows and a door smack in the middle. It sounded reminiscent of large Scandinavian homes. I wondered if it was like the house in Larson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A disturbing, but brilliant, film in both Swedish and English.

Before dinner, I had to do something about my hair. It had been wrecked by too much swimming and sun, in the last five weeks, since the stellar weather arrived. I had it cut by Sabrina at Richard Ward, who did the bridesmaids’ hair for the Royal Wedding of Will and Kate. I always love hearing about the day, over and over again, like reading a favourite book repeatedly. I was on my way through the salon, when I spied the Countess of Wessex, married to the Queen’s youngest son, Edward, having her hair done by Cristiano, the flamboyant Italian stylist who has been there forever. She is so pretty in real life, with striking blue eyes. And she is very normal. She was in the common parts with everyone else.

It is always a shock to see someone you expect to see from a great distance, through television or the press, up close and personal. It was like the time we went to the first parents’ evening at Hugo’s prep school, Sussex House, and Geoff sat next to, unwittingly,  Nigella. He looked smugly happy when he clocked her after a while. I will tell you about that tomorrow.

Now, I have to prepare for the Older People’s Tea and Concert committee lunch at my house. I can barely stand to turn the oven on in this  heat.

And later today, I will head back the Old Rectory.

 

 

Today is the second last day of summer, according to the weather forecast. It will be sweltering and sweaty again. Yesterday was the hottest September day on record for over one hundred years. It topped 30 degrees.

After gradually transforming into a beetroot during the course of tennis yesterday at Hurlingham, I headed to the outdoor pool to cool off with some of my Book Club friends. We had a BBQ and relished the last drops of summer 2016. We idled away the day, knowing that in a few weeks we will be wearing jumpers and trousers. The pool was packed with other punters, squeezed together like sardines. Everyone was in high spirits.

In the summer of 2005, when Anna was on Family Affairs, the soap, she had to be chaperoned while filming. Geoff took the first tranche of chaperoning, instead of going with Hugo and me to Paphos, in Cyprus. He had a staycation with Anna in London, while we headed off to the sun. Anna wasn’t required every second of the day, so they spent time at the Hurlingham when she was not at the studio.

Meanwhile, I arrived at the Annabelle Hotel, perched on the end of Paphos town. After checking in, Hugo and I headed to the supermarket to stock up on snacks and drinks. I went to pay with my debit card. It was declined. Which was very odd, as there was a wadge of money in my account specifically for the holiday. I was perplexed. I rang the bank. My account had been drained. I was the victim of a fraud. The bank had to cancel my card, my only card. Hence no way of paying for things.

I went to the front desk of the hotel and explained that I had a problem with my card, that someone had stolen all my money. They were very unhappy that I did not have a valid credit card to cover expenses. They looked at me suspiciously. Why had I turned up without my husband? I put two and two together. They thought that I had split up with Geoff. And had no money or means of paying. They insisted that Geoff wire some money. I was treated like a second class citizen.

Just like the weather yesterday, it was baking hot in Paphos in August. All you could do was swim and relax. And that is what Hugo and I did, every day for ten days. It was awkward with the staff. Was I just imagining it, or were the staff really looking at me with pity? I felt self conscious. It gave me a taste of what it feels like to be a single parent.

There was a beach nearby, where we headed when we were bored of the hotel. When the wind was up, there was good surf. I was incredulous that a lot of the children didn’t know how to dive under the waves to avoid being ‘dumped’. I ended up teaching them to dive to the bottom of the sea bed when the turbulence was heading their way. Even with a language barrier, I managed to instruct some Russian children, using a graphic demonstration, how to avoid being pulverised. They were grateful for the tuition.

For Hugo, the highlight was the buffet dinner at the end of the day. It was a different nationality every night. And there was a bar in the pool, where he could swim up, sit on a stool, waist high in water, and order ice creams.

I felt sad though, as it was meant to be our first family beach holiday in the Mediterranean. And I was on my tod, with a hyperactive eight year old, who needed a lot of entertaining. Some of the other fathers and sons included him in pool games, but as a lone parent, there were no overtures to chat to me. Not without a partner. I spent my time reading, and I managed to read War and Peace cover to cover.

Today, I am off the Richard Ward, my hairdressers for over fifteen years. I was their client possibly before Kate Middleton. Tonight, we are having dinner with Hurlingham friends, who live on the stunning street that leads to the entrance of the club, Napier Avenue. Sure to be some cracker pheasants and stags at dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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???

 

 

Friday was lovely again. Summer is gripping on, like a child trying to hold onto monkey bars.

I went to see Nicky Barber near Winchester for lunch on Friday. As Anna’s godmother, she has loyally followed her progress, from birth to baby steps, through childhood to teens and on to adulthood. She was eager for her latest news.

Nicky devotedly watched Anna act on Family Affairs, the Channel 5 soap opera, running from 1997 to Christmas 2005. Selfless of her really, considering that soaps are not, exactly, her cup of tea.

Family Affairs was meant to rival Eastenders, but it never hit the big time. It ran Monday to Friday, each week night, for thirty minutes. It was not, shall I say, highbrow viewing.

Soap operas are not, as far as I am aware, the usual fodder for Sloanes – both pheasants and stags. Except these days, the youngsters are glued to Made in Chelsea. And Downton Abbey is an upper class soap, in a sense.

After Anna was signed by Sylvia Young Agency in the summer of 2005, they sent her for her first audition to play Chelsea Heath on Family Affairs, which was filmed in Thames Studios in Wimbledon. So off we trotted, mother and daughter, parked the car and went into the studio. It was buzzy. Loads of mothers and daughters were there. Some fathers too.

The audition process was just as it is portrayed fictionally. A frazzled woman came out with a clipboard, which she was scouring with a furrowed brow. “Anna Wilmot. You’re next. Follow me.” You could tell she’d done it a thousand times before. I wished her luck, not thinking in a billion years that she would get the gig.

The next day, we received a call from her agent. Anna had landed the job. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

One small glitch. We were all due to go on a family summer holiday to Cyprus. I would be heading there with Hugo and leaving Geoff and Anna to start her soap career. We had been living in our new Chelsea house for just over six months. And now my daughter would be playing a spoilt rich kid named Chelsea. Irony or what!

Today, I am sanding and painting the inside of the garden outhouse. I want to get it done before the winter damp comes. And it is on its way.

 

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.

 

 

It is sunny again. But it is going to deteriorate. The ups and downs of the weather. Does it mirror our moods?

Yesterday, I was in London. It was hot and muggy. We ended up having a BBQ dinner at the Hurlingham Club with mates on the terrace, savouring the last dregs of the summer’s light and warmth.

Domino didn’t care that it was hot yesterday. He is learning to chase the dogs in the local park. He runs up to them, enticing them to chase after him with a little jig around them, and then he takes off at a rate of knots as fast as his four legs can take him. He knows that he is the fastest one in the vicinity. The little dogs try to catch him for a bit, and then they give up and go back to their carers. Domino does the victory lap. He is saying that he is the top dog.

What a lovely thought, to be able to run your socks off and outdo others.

In this prolonged summer we are lucky enough to be having. I miss the water – the sea. I miss the smell of salt. I miss the feeling of salt water around my limbs, sea water invigorating me. I miss Australia. In my childhood memories of Oz, it is the sea, rather than rivers, I think of. That I dream of, awake and asleep, in my landlocked life in England.

Very occasionally, however, I went to stay as a youngster near a river and went swimming. The river felt dead to me. It felt stagnant. Obviously, below the surface, fish and crustaceans, eked their living. Finding sustenance. Living a life. But without the effervescence of the surf – waves making champagne-like froth, it felt tomb like under the surface. Deathly still like a predator. I knew further down, there may be eels in the reeds. It felt a little bit icky. But if you were boiling hot, who cared. You had to cool down in whatever water you could find.

I remember being away with some mates, on a river bank, camping as a teenager. There was a long jetty protruding out into the green, still river water. We did what Aussies call ‘chucking bombies’. That means running as fast as your legs can take you along a wooden dock, and then leaping into the air and landing with the biggest splash you can muster into the river.

I remember picking up speed on this particular hot summer’s day on the river and running with all my strength and might along the jetty. I wanted to impress my friends with the biggest bombie imaginable. I felt on top of the world.

Big problem, my foot went for the next wooden plank to take my weight, and it was ‘bloody well’ missing. I fell through like a dead weight into the water below, and in the process, I bruised my thigh black and blue. Thankfully, I did not decapitate myself, break bones, crack a skull. I got off lightly. But I had the biggest, bluest bruise from knee to derriere – bum- you can imagine. It looked like thunderclouds about to spit out lightning.

That was the feeling I often had when we first moved to Chelsea. As if I had jumped off a jetty, and instead of landing neatly in the water, I kept on falling through cracks, ending up a bit bruised and bewildered. That was because I was suddenly the tiniest fish swimming in a very large pond. And it made me feel out of my depth.

One day as I was waiting outside Limerston Street for my builder, my new neighbour, Caroline Stanbury, pulled up to meet her builder. We were both doing up our houses at the same time. I had never seen a more glamorous woman in my life. I was covered in dust from head to toe. She looked like she had just stepped off the catwalk.

Today, I am savouring what I know to be the last dregs of summer.

 

 

It is hot today. We are back to summer.

Yesterday, I caught the tube to the Tate Modern. The approach is stunning. As you walk over the Millennium Bridge spanning the Thames, you have St Paul’s Cathedral behind you, The Shard to the left, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern in front of you. There was a floating box on the Thames with a small Asian man on top.

Tate Modern is, principally, a venue for modern art. It has opened a new tower, the Switch House, so it has increased by sixty percent. It was a power station in a former life. It is young: sixteen years.

I have to admit, I don’t like the place. It is minimalist, of course, but it is windowless in places, and I felt claustrophobic. I was lost at one point. I overheard another visitor say that he couldn’t figure out how to get around. I assented silently.

The Georgia O’Keefe exhibition was interesting. Her stunning flowers are reputed to be erotic, based on part of the female anatomy. But if you paint or draw a flower accurately, there will be reproductive parts! I preferred her paintings from the time she lived in New Mexico. The red earth reminded me of the red earth of Australia, especially the interior desert near Ayers Rock – Uluru.

O’Keefe called this desert world, the Faraway, as it was so removed from the East Coast where she lived for the rest of the time. Again, there are parallels with the Outback in Oz; instead of Faraway, it is called The Never-Never. It is the ‘back of beyond’. Remote and infertile.

A comment she made resonated deeply with me. She stated, “I wish you could see the place here – there is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees – sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces – it seems so perfect.” I have, on occasion, have had the same feeling when confronted with beauty. I want to destroy it. I feel pain instead of joy. What is that?

Is it that one feels inadequate in the face of such blinding perfection? Is that why people deface beautiful buildings with graffiti?

When we rented in Elystan Street near Brompton Cross, South Kensington, in 2004, we didn’t have any outside space.  There was a drive that ran in front of the house to a small office building at the rear of the property, housing a property  business. Hugo and Anna would sometimes throw a ball out there, but it wasn’t easy as a chaffeur often wanted to park there, waiting for his boss.

I often saw the boss pass by the window. He was very dignified and handsome. He would smile and say hello if we bumped into each other. Occasionally, his daughters would hang around. They were all beautiful, but the youngest was perfection. I was not surprised that she turned out, in later life, to be a supermodel: Cara Delevingne.

Today, I will try to keep calm and cool and carry on!

 

 

I

It is hot and humid today in London. I have just driven to Fulham from the Old Rectory. The autumn tennis season is about to ‘rev up’ at the Hurlingham Club, so I will be bouncing around like a kangaroo amongst the pheasants again.

The traffic, now that school is back, was back to its full capacity. It was gridlock coming down Putney High Street at 9am this morning.

Yesterday, I tried to garden, tried to do admin, tried to sort out clothes from summer to autumn, tried to sort life. Instead, I ended up doing nothing very convincingly. A wasted day, it felt. Even Domino sensed that I was in a pickle. I had the Sunday night feeling. I was skittish. Like a horse that wants to bolt.

At the beginning of 2004, I had to concentrate all my efforts on finding a house to buy in Chelsea. We were climbing the walls in our little rental house. Finally, I found a house on the Ten Acre Estate that I set my heart on, near World’s End, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. We had been outbid on a few houses by the time I saw it. I knew what I was looking for by now. I had honed my buying skills.

It was on Limerston Street, a cut through from Fulham Road to Kings Road, but it was perfect for us. It had two cinemas close by; my idea of heaven. Three bedrooms, but you could squeeze out an extra study on the top floor, and make a small sitting room in the basement with a view of the courtyard garden. It also looked down a treelined street and onto pretty gardens at the rear, so it was light and private.

I had done a few piecemeal projects in Elms Crescent, Clapham, but this house needed a full gutting. Rewiring, re-plumbing, waterproofing, decorating, new kitchen and bathrooms. Would my skills be up to it?

The elderly owners, an ex-Ambassador and his wife, had lived there for thirty years or more. It had damp in the basement kitchen, which like all houses in Chelsea, was half below street level. It had the typical black, wrought-iron staircase to an entrance at basement level, probably for coal to be delivered in bygone times, and then there was a staircase up to the front door, with ornate black railings on either side. The next floor up was originally used as the drawing room, as it had pretty balconies. Now it was the practise to make it a master bedroom and have your living area on the elevated ground floor.

The Ambassador took a shine to Geoff. We offered asking price. We always do if the price is right. No use in haggling and being outbid, in my opinion. It was accepted. The problem was, in this housing climate, sellers would accept a price verbally, and then use it to leverage up another interested party to an even higher price. It isn’t until contracts are exchanged after searches etc in the UK, that parties are legally bound to the sale.

The Ambassador told Geoff that he would not sell the property to anyone other than us. Music to our ears.

Matters were progressing swimmingly, until, of course, there was a glitch. The sellers could not find the correct paperwork for some building work they had undergone, many moons ago. Should we proceed?

It was nerve wracking, but we sorted it out while we were in Bruges for my 42nd birthday. We had to juggle calls with our solicitor with sightseeing, but finally, suddenly, everything dovetailed, and we were able to exchange contracts.

Bruges was fascinating. It was like being in a sinister film set. Very gothic, eerie and dark. We tried to hire bicycles to ride around the perimeter of the town, but they were all taken. The only bicycles that were available were for disabled children. The adult cycled while the child was belted into a chair in front.

The children were up for it, providing that we supplied hot chocolate after. I didn’t really think anything of it, until we saw people stop to stare at these two blonde children whizzing by. They either looked in admiration, as if to say “Good for you!”, or they looked in pity, as if to say, “How tragic!” It is strange how a sight can evoke two extreme reactions – either hope or pity.

Anyway, when we returned to London on the Eurotunnel from Brussels, we were a step closer to begin settled in Chelsea. We were owners of a new house. Now the work had to begin. I had to find builders.

Later, I am going to the Tate Modern to see the Georgia O’Keefe exhibition.

 

 

 

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.