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.

It is beautifully warm for autumn today. I will take Domino for a long walk.

On Friday, I prepared at the Old Rectory for a London group of friends to visit over the weekend. I enjoy the process of preparing and hosting. Although, sometimes, I wish I could wiggle my nose and the preparation would be over in a jiffy.

I lay in bed the next morning, after a late dinner the night before, wondering what it would be like to be a Lady in bygone times, living in a big pile – think Lady Montdore in Love in a Cold Climate, the Nancy Mitford novel, or the Queen herself, never having to lift a domestic finger. Downstairs an army of staff would be ready to serve a buffet breakfast to guests in the dining room. They would have been up since the ‘crack of’ to prepare food and light fires.

Lady Montdore is depicted as a crashing snob in Mitford’s novel. Her high social status protects her from direct criticism, and it gave her unfettered license to be insensitive and rude to others further down the social ladder, without obvious repercussions. Abuse of power! Her comments make you both wince and laugh. When her beloved, estranged daughter, Polly, loses her baby at birth at the end of the novel, she declares, “So the poor little baby died, I expect it was just as well, children are such an awful expense, nowadays.”

She constantly refers to “having all this”, pointing to her lavishly wealthy lifestyle. “I love being so dry in here,” she says while being chauffeured to her stately home in the rain, “and seeing all those poor people so wet.”  An outrageous comment, or is Nancy Mitford highlighting the human temptation in any human heart to look down on those less privileged than us? In order to make ourselves feel better? How many times have I witnessed the arrogance of wealth? Wealth is no excuse for poor manners.

A friend of mine was in India recently. He was educated at Yale and is a successful banker. He has a huge, generous heart, like his wife. He got into a lift. The lift operator was from the lowest class. He asked him how his day had been so far. The lift operator visibly flinched as if he’d been hit. My friend asked what was wrong. He replied, “I am sorry, Sir, but it is just that no-one talks to me.” As a member of the untouchables, the lowest caste, the lift operator was invisible to most people. Maybe if the lift operator had been born into an upper middle class family in Connecticut, he would be a banker and not the lift operator.

I had set the alarm for 8am on Sunday morning to lay the breakfast table. Geoff and I are the ‘staff’. I like guests to have a lie in. I hate being helped in the kitchen. I have a routine, and I am too OCD to have it interrupted.

I have the breakfast process finely tuned now. Muesli/yogurt/fresh fruit from our garden or Waitrose OR bacon/eggs or toast/pastries. Done and dusted, easy peasy. Geoff is in charge of the fry up and tea/coffee, and I am in charge of the rest. We are dab hands at it now. We could open a B&B.

Many of my Sloane friends have someone to help in the kitchen during a Saturday night dinner party. At least then the place is cleared up for the next day. I can’t be bothered to organise it. I would rather just crack on. And I know where everything goes. And I like to think over the evening and debrief with myself, before hitting the sack after the others have gone to bed. Geoff is always up helping!

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, I get muddled up and call Domino, our dog, Hugo. When I am in Australia, I often call Hugo, “Shaun”, my brother, and vice versa. But I never get Anna mixed up with any other person.

I have no doubt that Domino, subconsciously, has become a baby sustitute. On walks, I sometimes beckon to him, “Come on, baby.” When he is being cute, I say to him, “Good boy, darling,” just like I used to say it to Hugo.

I miss having small children, on one level, with their uncritical devotion. Often when I walked along the street with Hugo when he was a boy, even up to the age of twelve, he would instinctively slip his hand into mine.

When Hugo went to boarding school, Harrow School, just before his fourteenth birthday, the apron tie was ripped off. I did not like it. I think of his time at Harrow, both positively and negatively. The negative, is that I lost day to day contact. I know, stereo-typically, teenagers retreat to their bedrooms at some point, never to be seen again. But, I did not witness this steady transition from dependent to independent. It was artificially forced on us by boarding school.

We went to see Hugo every Sunday for lunch or tea for the five years he was at Harrow. When he left school, he asked me, “Mum, why did you and Dad come up every weekend?” I answered, “We thought you needed to see us.” Without any accusation in his voice, he told me that he often had to cut short things he was doing to meet us. The truth is, we needed to see him. Many of the boys only saw their parents after several weeks. At eighteen that is okay. At thirteen, it would have been agony for me.

We did the same thing every time we visited. We took him to Old Etonian (ironically as Eton is the rival school) for pizza or Cafe Cafe for a burger. We stayed for about 45-60 minutes. Time never ran over. Conversation was sometimes stilted. Geoff and Hugo talked about football a lot. I had to listen, pretending to be interested. I usually zoned out and observed other parents with their boys. To my mind, it seemed that pheasant and stag parents had a more formal relationship with their boys. I was more needy. I wanted to ‘soul search’ Hugo: touch him and stroke him. Look for signs that he was unhealthily unhappy. Sometimes he was stressed: with work; sometimes he was tired and grumpy. He was never utterly miserable to my knowledge.

In the early years, I would bake cakes for him, and take up “tuck”, food like fruit and crisps. Filler food. I despaired at the state of his room, but over time, he became tidier. Eventually, he banned me from coming to his room. Fair enough, it was his space. If somehow, I managed to get into it, he said in a non-aggressive way, “Mum, don’t touch anything. I know where everything is.”

At the beginning of Harrow, they take a photo of the new boys in the tails that they wear on Sundays for church and lunch, and formal occasions. They have their boater-straw hat – in front of them. I only saw a handful of boys wear their hats around the Hill; the school is on the top of a hill, called Harrow on the Hill. And they take one towards the end of their school life.

Hugo told me that he was late for his new boy photo and had to run as fast as he could. I think you can see that dynamism in the photo.

The school is spread out all over the Hill. And Hugo lost weight with all the walking and running. At first, he would forget to take the right thing to class. And he would have to run back to The Park, his house, and leg it back again to class. In the first term he looked shattered, white as a sheet, and I fretted and worried. I imagine that if you took an aerial film of the boys between lessons, it would look like ants swarming over an ant hill.

But he survived. I just about didn’t. I missed him more than words can express. I miss him after seeing him on Monday at Uni.

So I am going to take my baby, Domino, out for a walk in a minute. And then he shall curl up beside me and rest his head on my lap. I can see the attraction of dogs; they don’t grow up and leave home.

 

 

 

Today it is wet and cold. I think I should stop talking about the weather, unless something extraordinary happens, like snow falling.

Yesterday, I had a long walk with Domino after endlessly driving around Warwickshire and Gloucestershire earlier in the week; we needed fresh air to blow away the cobwebs.

And then I continued to read Nancy Mitford, as she is a tonic. I am reading The Blessing, detailing the marriage between a British aristocrat, the innocent rose, and a French aristocrat, a naughty but charming cad; the union between a pheasant and a goose.

It is illegal, I have been told by a Frenchman, to eat the ortolan songbird whole, which weighs an ounce. But the French covertly do; they cover their heads with a napkin, to cover the shame of the act, and they eat all of it; even presidents have been rumoured to partake. I think it’s awful.

The novel, publishes in 1951, highlights the difference between the grooming habits of English and French women during the second world war.

When the Frenchman, Charles-Edouard, first meets the Englishwoman, Grace, he asks her what she does all day. He comments that appearance and clothes fill a Frenchwoman’s day, entirely. He asks her, “How do you fill those endles eons of time when Frenchwomen are having their hair washed, trying on hats visiting the collections, disussing with the lingere…?”

When I first married in 1989, very few Sloane women spent hours on grooming. Makeup was minimal or entirely absent. One friend told me long ago, that her husband hated the smell of foundation, and she was banned from wearing it. Certain pheasants, do, prefer their women to come a la naturelle.

Diana, the Princess of Wales, wore more and more makeup as the years progressed, and she became more glamorous over time. Remember the heavy eyeliner on that fateful Panorama interview, when she split the beans on her unhappy marriage? Peter York who wrote the original Sloane Ranger Handbook in 1980, later wrote Cooler, Faster, More Expensive (2007), about the evolution of the Sloane into various forms, like Eco Sloane, Chav Sloane, Bongo Sloane and, finally, Sleek Sloane. The last variety are heavily into grooming: spray tans, blow dries, mani/pedicures, botox, facials, waxing, makeup, designer clothes. They are like current day Frenchwoman of the same class.

When Hugo had just started at Harrow, his boarding school, he came with me to Cannes for a short holiday; we stayed at a hotel on the  Promenade de la Croisette, along the beach front. I was going to go for some R & R; Hugo’s holiday plans had fallen through.

I forgot that Frenchwomen often sunbathed topless. Not ideal when you are with your teenage son. The hotels have private allocations on the beach front, and you have to pay for a lounger. The front row is allocacated to those who have the best rooms at the hotel; the back rows are for those without sea views and facing the street behind the hotel. We were in the back row. I was fascinated by the French family occupying the front row. They never swam. They had the sleek, olive, unfreckled skin that reeks glamour. Madame wore a white bikini and high heels. Her hair was blow dried to perfection. She wore a large Cartier watch on her wrist.

 

I, by comparison, a kangaroo, bounced in and out of the water, looking dishevelled. She visibly shaken when I dived into the water in front of her.

Today I am having lunch with an Aussie girlfriend.

 

Yesterday, is a bit of a blur, as I was dead tired, as floppy as a jelly fish, after being evacuated from the hotel in the Cotswolds, yesterday morning.

I wanted to revisit some haunts nearby, as the little cottage we rented, when the children were six and four, has bonded me to the area forever; nostalgia has woven an umbilical cord that occasionally pulls me back. We also visited there with my brother and wife, Shaun and Wendy, when the children were teeny tiny.

I adore Nancy Mitford’s novels, detailing the idiosyncracies of the British aristocracy. She was firm friends with Evelyn Waugh – Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited. She was an aristocrat herself, a toff, and she lived for a brief period at Batsford Park.

These days you can walk in the arboretum, but you can only glimpse the house. It cries out, “Look, but don’t touch.” It is a miniature Houses of Parliament: not pretty, but intimidating – and vast. The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate were inspired by her life there. In these classics, Lord and Lady Radlett dwell with their children, all Honourables, styled Hon., at Alconleigh, a vast and freezing house, inspired by Batsford Park. The Hons commune in the airing cupboard, where the heating dries the linen, to gossip, as it is the warmest place in the house. If they like you, you are a honorary Hon.

I also visited the gardens of a smaller private house across the road, Bourton House, Bourton on the Hill. It is reputed to have one of the finest gardens in England. I visited with Wendy, in May, 1997.

As I arrived, the owners were getting into their car. I gushed like a water tap, “Are you the owners?” They didn’t wince – looking down their noses at a paying punter. They were friendly. They were American. I continued to gush, “I visited here when my children were very small.” They appeared genuinely excited that it was a special place for me.

The garden had matured to perfection. Topiary was trimmed to immaculate geometrical shapes, like French women. Nancy Mitford, adored France, but loved England. Two of her male characters are French. France features prominently in her writing. I gazed at the bench positioned in an archway. I remember Geoff and Wendy sitting there. I could see Ryan, my nephew, just about to turn one, sitting on the stripey lawn. Nostalgia, good for you or not?

I then headed to my trust meeting. The house it was held in was private, and not open to members of the public. It was eye-wateringly beautiful, and it was on a grand scale like Brideshead: an example of strawberry gothic. The windows contained numerous gothic arches, encased in gothic stone surrounds. A flag was flying of the family crest – a stag. It was a good omen, that I was right to style male Sloanes as stags in my diary.

I was ushered into the library. Stags and pheasants like a witty story, so I told them about my escaping death that morning when the hotel almost went up in flames.

It was a very Nancy Mitford moment. I took in my surroundings. There were leather bound, gold lettered books everywhere. There was a lot of taxidermy. A stuffed leopard, with his teeth menacingly exposed, was perched on the back of one sofa. There were small stuffed crocodiles. Crocodile Dundee would have approved. “Strewth mate,” he may have remarked, “that’s a shrimp – prawn – of a nipper compared to the ones I wrestle.”

When we went for a quick walk after the meeting, to give Domino a stretch, the daughter commented to me, as we gazed back at the golden building lit by the sun, “It’s England.” I responded, “Yes, I feel like I should sing Jerusalem.” She grinned.

As we arrived back, I said that I was mad about architecture. So she showed me around every nook and cranny of every room. Would she have done that if I had been a pheasant? No, she knew that kangaroos are a different breed and have no aristocracy to mention.

 

There is a thick mist this morning at The Manor House Hotel in Moreton-in-Marsh. I have been up for a few hours with Domino my canine companion.  At just after 6am the fire alarm rang briefly in my room. I looked out the window. No sign of the Fire Brigade, just a sleepy Cotswold town in Gloucestershire. I thought no more of it, and I went back to bed. I could, however, hear a distant fire alarm at the rear of the hotel. Was it a kitchen fire?

In fact, unbeknownst to me, there was a roaring chimney fire just behind my bedroom wall. I then started to hear rapid movement in the corridor. It was the real thing!

So what did I do? What I have always told do in a fire: leave the building? No, that is not what I did. As I couldn’t see smoke in the corridor, in haste, threw my jewellery on the bedside table into my handbag (no way was I going to lose my engagement ring), grabbed my computer, threw everything back into my hold all, and then, and only then, Domino and I made our way down two stories from the top floor. Madness. I was in a nightdress with my coat over it.

Bleary eyed guests apeared on the front pavement in various forms. Many had got dressed! Madness? Most had left all their belongings in their rooms, apart from car keys and phones. Sensible! They look bemused as I appeared, loaded with luggage, and walking Domino a short distance to where my car was conveniently parked in front of the hotel entrance. I was alarmed to see that the flames were exiting the chimney right above my attic bedroom.

 

They looked positively envious, as they watched me safely store all my possessions in the boot and slowly put on my jewellery. I may have been in my nightdress, without makeup, with dishevelled hair and leftover mascara, but I sparkled!

Finally, we were allowed into the lounge, where the staff eventually served tea and coffee. At 7.30am, they announced we could have breakfast, but no fried food as the gas was off. By now the fire brigade had arrived, and were beavering away. Dogs are not allowed in the restaurant. I ignored the rule. At 9.30am the fire brigade left, and Domino and I are now back in our room, bathed, dressed, teeth cleaned and with makeup applied. Me, not Domino! It is amazing how such simple rituals, if denied to us, become of paramount important in a crisis.

Yesterday, I made my way to Leamington Spa to see Hugo, at the house he shares with five other Warwick students. The dishwasher had broken, so you can imagine the state of the sink. I had brought Waitrose Chinese Meal for Two en route. At first, I wasn’t sure I could eat without gagging. But, Hugo managed to disinfect some plates and cutlery, and we sat in the sitting room, with that horrid oatmeal-type carpet below our feet.

Leamington Spa is grand in the centre, with neo-classical, cream stuccoed terraces, with a splash of linear, black wrought iron embellishments. It was a tonic to see my boy, so handsome and happy. Happy children, happy mother.

Today, I have a meeting for a charitable trust I am involved in, in nearby Adlestrop. In the meantime, I will visit a garden at Bourton-on-the-Hill; a garden I visited many moons ago with my sister in law, Wendy, and her baby son, Ryan. Then I will pop across the road to Batsford Park, where Nancy Mitford, who wrote about her class, the upper class, lived briefly in the early twentieth century. It inspired her famous book, Love in a Cold Climate. If I am feeling blue, I reread it at speed, and the clouds, metaphorically, lift.

What a dramatic start to the day. Domino has collapsed in a heap, and he is fast asleep on a comfy blanket.

Today, is sunny and warm, but the weather is distinctly autumnal.

On Friday, it was cloudy and cool. I headed to the South Downs to walk Domino and found a squad of Aston Martin drivers taking in the view, chatting away like a bunch of cockatoos. I could hear them talking about which pub to head to for lunch. They were members of a a club. The cars were vintage, current, and there was even a boxy, unattractive model made in the seventies. The sight of them took me by surprise, high above sea level; a reminder of the idiosyncrasies of the Brits.

I then headed to the Rogate Air Fair at the village church. The whole thing was very Vicar of Dibley. A woman was clutching a straw basket at the door, asking for donations to support refugees who had relocated to the Chichester area.

I bought a small oil of seagulls circling over East Head, at West Wittering, the furthermost point of Chichester Harbour; it is where Domino and I walk sometimes when I am pining for the sea. It was painted by a friend of a friend. She told me that she had painted it with her father, and had been reluctant to part with it. She had hoped it would go to someone she knew: who would appreciate it. Serendipity working – it was meant to be. I told her that my father, Stan the Man, and I shared a love for the sea.

As a result of the mutual reminiscing, thoughts of Dad shadowed the rest of my day. He was there in my dull consciousness, and then a distinct memory of him would flood to the forefront of my mind, pin sharp.

The sea; I am missing it. The freedom of it. Plunging into the froth of the breakers, and forgetting it all. Both Dad and I loved it! The ability to submerge body and soul into the turbulence of the surf.

On Saturday night, we went to a dinner party in Godalming, Surrey, north of the Old Rectory, back towards London. I sat next to a salt of the earth type, Alistair, married to Sally. Their marriage has revolved around boats on the Isle of Wight. Their three sons work in the boating world. One rowed at Winchester, the boarding school, with Team GB gold medallists who won at the Rio Olympics 2016.

Alistair has swum the Solent twice, in season and out. I bemoaned the fact that the water is freezing.

He explained that wetsuits these days are much lighter. He asked whether I knew what the ‘3/5 ‘ was. It is a wetsuit where the arms and legs are 3mms, and the body 5mms: improving limb movement. You no longer feel that you are in a heavy straightjacket. I was encouraged.

I told him that I was like a fish out water at the moment. That I had not swum in the sea since March when we were in Oz. He said that the next time I was on the south coast, I must ring him on the mobile, and he’d fetch me in his rib, so that I can swim in the sea.

“You’re on,” I grinned. But maybe next summer!

Today, I am heading off to Warwick to see Hugo and then heading south to a meeting in the Cotswolds. Domino is coming with me, and he will sleep in a hotel room for the first time in his short life.

 

Today, I am back at the Old Rectory. It is cold. I have the heating on for the first time since summer.

Yesterday, the concert and tea for older people was a success. No mishaps. We had enough food for everyone. As we rely on donations of cakes, it is always a stab in the dark. We don’t know how many people will turn up.

I once took an elderly friend, and she broke her hip when she rushed to speak to the performer. She had been a ballerina when she was younger. The classical music, I know, reminded her of her performances, when her body was in its prime. She managed to recover after a gruelling rehabilitation, and she even swum in the sea near her house in Spain the following summer.

When she was fit again, I took her to the next concert and tea. We got talking about her ballet days on the way home. I had never seen photos of her dance around the world, sometimes with Nureyev. When I was helping her out of the car, she invited me upstairs to look at her photo albums. I said that I would next time. I was tired after helping at the tea.

She died soon after, and I never saw the photos. I so regret not saying yes to her.

At her memorial, there was an amazing photo of her as a young woman, with one leg almost touching her back and her arms elegantly outstretched, one behind and one in front. It was posed, not on a stage, but on a rock, looking out to sea. It was one of the most moving photos I have ever seen. It was breathtaking. I had only seen her walking with a stick.

I must try to get Lania, the daughter of my Aussie friends, Jen and Glen Atkins, to replicate that pose, at the sea, in Sydney. She is currently training with the Dutch National Ballet. Every time I see a photo of her, I catch my breath.  Her star is on the rise.

Today, I am going to the Rogate Art Fair at the church. Then Domino and I will head to the Downs for a long walk. He can run freely, at speed, up there.

Today, it is colder, and autumn has properly pushed summer off the map.

I have a concert and tea for older people later today, at St Paul’s, Onslow Square. We are expecting close to four hundred guests. The event is free and volunteer led. It is an impressive achievement.

Yesterday, I mentioned a disturbing dream about a tsunami, the underlying theme pointing to my desire to protect the children, when they were young, from all harm; parents obviously can’t, as they cannot eliminate random risks. I still have the same instincts. Nothing has changed, but they are no longer in my care 24/7.

Inevitably there were accidents and mishaps that happened to them growing up, despite my overly protective instincts. Anna has a scar on her forehead, and Hugo has one on his lip to prove the point.

Anna was, always, easily spooked when she was young. She watched White Fang, with a young Ethan Hawke. Mild fare, but in one scene there was a dead body under a frozen river. The sight of this motionless old man’s face, triggered a bout of nightmares for Anna – ending up as a nightmare for Geoff and me. We were up and down to her bedroom, in the wee, dark, still hours for about six weeks.

On another occasion, we were staying in Scotland at a houseparty – a fully fledged pheasant and stag event. There was tartan and velvet, at dinner, as far as the eye could see – miles of it.

While we were having a jolly good time at dinner, the children were being entertained elsewhere. Mine were five and three years at the time. The group watched Rowan Atkinson’s hilarious, but cringeworthy, movie, Bean Movie, in which he stains and tries to clean Whistler’s Mother’s face. The scene should be called Face Off. 

First, he sneezes all over her face, then he uses a handkerchief to clean off the snot – disastrously the handkerchief has blue ink on it from a leaking pen in his pocket, then he tries to remove the ink with chemicals; initially, he is successful, but then the chemicals completely obliterate her face so there is only the canvas left.

Somehow the disappearance of the mother’s face traumatised Anna. She couldn’t sleep for weeks. She woke us up, repeatedly, every night. I think she wanted to check our faces were still in place.

I had a good look at the painting at the Musee d’Orsay, while I was in Paris, a couple of weekends ago. The mother is in profile, and her expression is vacant. Did she suffer from dementia? Some of the older people at our concert do! It is heartbreaking.

It is clear blue sky this morning. The sun is holding on to its hat.

I was glad to wake up this morning. I had a vivid dream last night that made me restless.

We were driving past a beach in Britain. Geoff stopped the car to take in the view. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the waves were breaking, and they were crystal clear. I ran away from the car, even though Geoff was calling me to come back. I just couldn’t resist those Australian-like waves. He remained in the car with Anna and Hugo.

All of a sudden, the sea started to recede very quickly and for a long way. Eureka. I remembered that this is what happens in tsunamis. The water was now rushing in like a wall. I couldn’t make it back to the car, so I ran to a building nearby as fast as I could and climbed six flights of stairs to the top floor.

Very conveniently when I opened a rear door on the top floor, there was safe, dry land, on a hill. There were parents everywhere gripping their children.

I had that desperate, sinking feeling that Geoff had not been able to drive the children to safety.

Anguish engulfed me for a few minutes, and then I saw the car appear. Geoff was there with Hugo. But I could not see Anna. Had I lost one child? But then she slowly emerged from the car. She had hurt her leg, but she was alive and well.

Relief washed over me like a warm blanket. And then I woke up.

In the summer before Hugo went to boarding school in 2009, we decided to use our Singapore Airlines airmiles, about to expire, and go to Phuket and to a small island resort, on Koh Racha, that some friends had raved about. Instead of the usual Mediterranean holiday, we headed much further east. It was the rainy season, but it was guaranteed to be warm. It had been hit badly by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

It was the time of the bird flu epidemic. I didn’t feel well on the flight, and when I arrived I had a temperature. Would I be quarantined? They had heat sensors in Singapore. Luckily, I made it through. It took five days and strong medication to get back to normal.

The Racha resort was stellar. Modern, sleek Asian decor. The children had the time of their lives. There were not many guests so the staff spoilt them rotten, supplying them with endless virgin cocktails in the pool. I had to stay in the room for the first couple of days as I was ill.

When we went for the second week to Phuket mainland, Geoff picked up a newspaper and gasped. Whilst we had been on the island there had been a murder. One of the male staff had become insanely jealous when his female lover went off with another man, and he promptly stabbed her to death. We worked out that this had taken place while I lay eating chicken broth in a remote villa, while Geoff and the children were at dinner on the sea front. There had been a high speed sea chase and police had combed the island on foot to track down the killer. They hadn’t caught him. He had jumped from a cliff to his death.

What if on this wild chase, he had seen my light on and knocked on the door? The island was tiny. The only inhabitants were associated with the resort: guests and staff.

I was quite glad to get home to Chelsea!

Today, I have lunch in Sloane Square with Mrs Springbok. She can tell me about the sun and sea she’s just left in Plettenberg Bay, on the Garden Route in South Africa.