This morning, when I arrived back at the Old Rectory, early, I found dead leaves from the beech tree on the drive. In London, which is ahead of the game in its trajectory to autumn, all the plane trees were shedding.

Schools will be back next week. London will be crazy with traffic, both on the roads and otherwise. The footprint will increase exponentially. The tourists will have departed.

Yesterday, I had lunch with Anne at the Bluebird cafe in the sunshine. She is my first friend from Kingsgrove Infants and Primary School, in Sydney, which we attended many moons ago. Too many moons ago to think about!

Her girls were itching to get back to school in London. The holidays are too prolonged, in Britain, over the summer, in my humble opinion. Historically, it was so that the pupils could help bring the harvest in. Now they just start to climb the walls if there isn’t enough to do.

Yesterday, we also went to see The Deep Blue Sea at Curzon Cinema Chelsea. It was a live streamed performance from the National Theatre to 650 cinemas around the UK. It was harrowing. It began with an attempted suicide, and it ended with only a glimmer of hope.

In the short interval, we had a speed dinner. We were with friends from Hurlingham, and we had all brought something to add to the picnic. Salmon and new potatoes, followed by strawberries, meringues and cheese. And wine! I needed the sustenance given the intensity of the performance.

In Anna’s first term at Queen’s Gate school, in 2003, in the lead up to Christmas, she managed to land the part of Nancy in Oliver Twist. She sang As Long as He Needs Me with convincing pathos, despair and hope. I could see people dabbing their eyes as she drew to a close, wrapping her shawl tightly around her for comfort.

The bottom line, let’s not forget, was that Nancy was willing to hang in there with Bill, even though he was a criminal and beat her up from time to time. At the end of the play, off stage, but with shadows cast onto a screen so that we could glimpse the nail biting action, Bill snuffed her out like a candle in the wind. There was thunderous applause.

Mrs Schollenberger was sitting beside me. She encouraged me to enrol Anna at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone, North of Oxford Street. Some young hopefuls attend the theatre school full time, juggling academic studies with music and theatre tuition, and if they are lucky, performing in actual productions. Anna enrolled for Saturday mornings.

This meant we had to be up bright and early to trek up to the school, through Hyde Park and onwards north. I didn’t mind, nor did Geoff, as the school was located near Regent’s Park. I would go and have breakfast and read the paper, stroll through the rose garden and think, while Anna sang her heart out.

Many years ago, we went to the Open Air Theatre in the park and watched one of my brother-in-law’s former pupils, then aged nineteen, in a production of Romeo and Juliet. The ex-Harrow student, was Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s come a long way since then. Even then, you could see his star quality.

Before long, Anna insisted on auditioning with the agency attached to the school, as she wanted to try for parts. I thought that it was a long shot, but they took her on.

Today, it is raining. I am almost glad as it means that I won’t have to drag the hose around the garden.

 

The weather is milder. The heat is being turned down, like a radiator switching off at the end of the day.

Yesterday, I was back in Fulham, in our little house near the Hurlingham Club. The children are both in residence, so it is nice to touch base.

I went to Parsons Green for lunch at Cote Brasserie with The Hon., which signifies that her father was titled. She is charming, clever and funny, so it was fun to catch up with her summer news. She had been to Scotland for large chunks of it, and she was telling me how, with the glorious weather lately, her party were able to picnic in the great outdoors. The Queen, apparently, when she is at Balmoral, adores to get Philip barbequing, and they eat with plastic utensils. Hard to believe, I know. Surely the butler brings the polished silver.

Last weekend, Anna had three of her St Catharine’s College friends, from Cambridge days, to stay at the Old Rectory. On Saturday, the weather was glorious, and they frolicked around like little lambs in the sunshine, enthusiastically moving from one activity to the other and eating outdoors.

On Sunday, however, the weather imploded, and they were forced to walk in the rain. They had been handed out ‘rain covers’ at the underground, covered in McDonald’s Big Macs.

I love Big Macs, and if I am the mood, I will order one at the drive through at Wandsworth Bridge roundabout, just like I did in Sydney. It reminds me of the diner in Happy Days, a hit TV series exported from America when I was twelve. Portraying perfect people, living the American dream. And hamburgers and shakes were a big part of that dream. I now realise that it was the foreshadowing of product placement marketing in screen productions. Think of all those Starbucks takeaway coffees we see in films.

Off the four of them went, like troopers, to walk in the rain, clad in hamburgers. They still managed to look stylish. The advantage of youth. As a foursome, they represent major aspects of Great Britain: one is Scottish with reddish hair, one is Irish with dark hair, one is from Yorkshire with blonde hair and Anna, well she is a mixed blend of Aussie and English.

When the Brexit vote was looming, I drove through Nyewood on the way to the South Downs. It has a summer festival. The residents make scarecrows and place them in their front gardens. There is one house that I have always admired, as it was obviously a nondescript bungalow once, but the inhabitants have cleverly clad it in clapboard, so that it looks like a New England style.

Their scarecrow gave away that they were Aussies. It was holding tell tale signage. They were obviously pro-European. One sign was pointing to Bognor if the country remained IN Europe. The other was a sign to Bondi Beach if the vote was for OUT. I wonder if they have sold the house by now.

Today, I am having brunch with two Aussie friends in Chelsea, before one heads home for a stint. Like many Aussies, they are land locked here due to work commitments. I wonder if they dream of the surf like me?

Tonight we are going with Hurlingham friends to the Curzon cinema in Chelsea to watch, live from the theatre, The Deep Blue Sea. Everyone takes a picnic to eat at interval. It is the new thing. If you can’t get a ticket to the theatre, you go to the cinema and watch it on film in real time. No possibility of product placement marketing on these occasions.