Today, it is very cold and wet. The temperature has plummeted. This Autumn it has been relatively dry, with lots of sunshine.

Yesterday, as part of the committee, I attended the Marie Curie charity lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mayfair, just beyond the east end of Hyde Park. It was in aid of its hospice, for the terminally ill, in Hampstead, and remarkably almost £100,000 was raised. The charity also organises home care before hospice care is needed.

It is a cause close to my heart, as Dad, Stan the Man, succumbed to cancer towards the end of 2008, dying in January 2010. We had seen him previously at Easter, when he was fit and healthy. Ironically, he was a on a health kick, walking extensively and losing weight. It is a shock when someone you love is diagnosed. Every situation is different, but it it extremely painful.

Our trip, the Easter before his diagnosis, was one of our happiest holidays in Oz: halcyon days. Geoff had his 55th birthday. Dad was on fine form, and that is how I like to remember him. I recall after a long, happy day at the beach, suggesting that Geoff take the children home, and that Dad and I walk home along the coast path together, three beaches in all. We were rarely alone, and I’d never thought of it before. I took a photo of him with one of my favourite beaches behind him. We found a small baby shark dead on the beach. The sun was warm and the sea was sparkling. He hated smiling in photos, but I begged him to grin, and he flashed a Stan the Man smile.

Stan the Man

Geoff’s 55th birthday

Dad was an integral part of the fabric of our time in Oz. He was always present at the beach with us. Looking after the children, in and out of the sea, cooking hotdogs on his portable barbecue, helping me carry the chairs to the beach, packing up when we were tired, buying ice creams for the children, cheering me on when I went for a swim, chatting and grinning.

It was hard when his part of the jigsaw disappeared from the terrain. He left a hole, and the sun never seemed as warm, the sky as blue, the sea as azure, as when Dad was alive. His passing took a little of the colour out of Australia for me: like a photo fading.

The only photo of us all together: Easter 2008

Today, I have to take Domino for a long country walk as he was in London a lot last week and on his lead.

We were up in London again last night, a Sunday, for the first screening in the UK of a brilliant new film, Man Down, at BAFTA house in Picadilly. One of our friends is an executive producer. It is unmissable. It will be in the cinemas in a few weeks.