Today is crisp, cold and sunny. A perfect autumnal day.

Fulham, at this time of year is a hive of activity, like bees in summer. The pavements are awash with mothers and fathers, and children toing and froing, to school and back, to after school clubs, to the park to kick a ball or chase the dog. Many ankle biters are mounted on micro scooters, so light that you can throw them over your shoulder.

Or mothers are transporting their children on traffic jammed streets on bicycles with carriages on the front – cargo bikes. I found some very miserable children parked in one outside of Sainsburys last night, plus a small dog. I am sure that Domino would loathe such a mode of transport. He prefers to be on a lead, bouncing beside me, sniffing the myriad of smells he can find on the pavement.

Later, I am having lunch with a friend who lives around the corner from where we lived in Chelsea, in Limerston Street. Anna and Domino are coming too, as her daughter is having a baby any moment. We want to talk about the next part of her life, that of becoming a mother.

One thing I do notice, is that mothers do not use reins on their children. Not like a collar with a lead used on dogs, but a sort of harness around the chest to restrain them from the dangers of city life, like busy traffic. I think that they are a great idea. Mum used one on my brother, Shaun, as he was a bolter. He would take off and hide in the shops we visited. Mum would be looking at a supermarket shelf, and hey presto, he had vanished.

Hugo was the same. I lost him in Peter Jones on a few occasions. Unlike dignified pheasants, I would be calm for half a second, and then I would start bellowing at the top of my lungs, “Hugo, Hugo, Hugo, come here!” I would find him gazing at a random item, like a packet of buttons. My heart would be thumping out of my chest. I could see the pheasants thinking, “Will you please get a grip.”

Children are either bolters or stayers. Hugo was a bolter, just like his Uncle Shaun.

The use of dummies, ‘soothers’ as they call them now, were strictly Non-U in my day. That means non upper-class, not posh. This phrase was invented by Nancy Mitford in her essay Noblesse Oblige to describe acceptable upper-class vocabulary and practise and was adopted by both the upper and the upper middle classes as definitive on the subject. ‘PLU’ was coined to denote ‘people like us’ – the opposite of Non-U(pper-class).

Both reins and dummies are Non-U and not for PLUs at present.

I shall look forward to discussing what is in vogue for new mummies at lunchtime with my friend, who is about to become a grandmother, and she is younger than me.

And tonight, I have Scots and Aussies for dinner. I wonder what they will make of each others traits.