Yesterday the weather was foul. It was depressing. Rain on and off all day, with very short bursts of sunshine. Frankly, a bit grim.

I went to my old stomping ground – Northcote Road – in Wandsworth, yesterday morning. I have a short-term job, which is top secret. I am not, however, a spy – sadly.

The transformation, over the last two decades, of this habitat for young parents, and their offspring, is staggering. In the 1990s it had a couple of cafes, and that was about it. Now all the high-end brands are present, including Gail’s, the upmarket café, selling designer food. This is no greasy spoon. I went in and ordered a pecan and cinnamon muffin and a cappuccino. I felt guilty that I didn’t order “skinny”. I felt ancient. There was a queue of well-dressed, trim, groomed mothers around me.

I don’t know when the phrase Yummy Mummy was coined. Certainly it was around in the late 90s. It was used to denote a young, attractive and wealthy mother. There was a smattering of Yummy Mummies at Broomwood Hall, where Anna went, and at Eaton House, where Hugo went. (Susannah from ‘Susannah and Trinny’ and Lady Helen Windsor were mothers at Eaton House, just by Clapham Common.) The very few foreign mothers spring to mind first – Princess Marina Lobanov-Rostovsky (married to a Russian prince) and Maria Guyard, a stunning Swede (married to a charming Frenchman). Marina always wore designer jeans and high heels to the school gate. Her nails were always immaculate. Maria was straight out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement, with her honey skin and white-blonde hair.

But there were some Sloane pheasants that also fitted the description. They would meet at the Nightingale Patisserie, across the road from Broomwood Hall, after the school drop off, and chatter away in their well-modulated voices.It was where I first heard the word Botox mentioned. They weren’t using it. They were intrigued by it.

The café era was only in its infancy in the mid-90s. The first Starbucks opened in 1998, on Kings Road, Chelsea. The Seattle Coffee Company was its predecessor and sold all its cafes to Starbucks when it came on the scene.

Mothers at the Broomwood Hall school-gate, who tended not to work full time, were not dressed in Lycra, ready to hit the gymn. They may have ridden a bike to school with their children, also on smaller bikes. They may have walked with their black Labrador in tow, like Niki and her three pretty daughters, Mimi, Tara and Perdy. Niki was certainly a Yummy Mummy. She is half Danish. She had lived in Hong Kong for years. Her mother lived in Bermuda. There is a slight hint of the foreign. She could give a supermodel a run for their money. She had the killer combination of being beautiful inside and out. Look how kind she was to Anna and to me!

The Harbour Club, Diana’s gymn, opened around this time on the Thames in Fulham, near Chelsea Harbour, but it was a new concept. It did however, become a habitat for Yummy Mummies. David Lloyd Leisure was gaining momentum, since first opening in the early 80s. It offered high-end quality fitness and leisure for the family. It was not the sort of gym you associated with the likes of the YMCA.

The Pheasant was evolving in the 90s (refer to Cooler, Faster, More Expensive – The Return of the Sloane Ranger for information). Diana was the game changer. When she separated from Prince Charles, she threw away her frilly shirts and tweeds and started to look a lot yummier. A lot sleeker. She spent hours at the Harbour Club. Her arm and leg muscles became well defined. Think of her at the end of the diving board on the Al Fayed yacht in the South of France. She did not look like she was wearing a Speedo. She wore leopard print for goodness sake. And bikinis.

However, regular blow dries, pedicures and manicures and cosmetic procedures were not common for the Wandworth Yummy Mummy in the 1990s. That may have been happening north of the river, but not so in the south.They may have been happening for women in Paris, for decades, before the Sloanes caught on.

Today I have to do my top secret job and dead head the roses, which have been beaten up by the heavy rain. They are all bruised. And I am going to take Domino to the south coast, if it stops raining.

 

Today is hot and muggy.

Yesterday was filled with tennis. I played in the morning and in the evening. In between I watched at bit of Queen’s.

In the evening, we ended up having drinks with Richard and Louise Corrie on the terrace at the Hurlingham Club. You’ve got to make the most of the long summer evenings in England!

Royal Ascot has started. I’ve never been, but a lot of my friends have donned their top hats, for men, and pretty hats, for the ladies. Charles (my friend from Clyde & Co days) and Susie were in the Royal Enclosure, I noticed.

I’m not much of a fan of equine pursuits, whether riding myself, or watching flat racing or polo.

I rode a bit at Iventure, the farm owned by my Aunt Wilma, in the grasslands of New South Wales. That’s how you got around on the farm. Or by truck. I just didn’t have the right skills to make a proficient rider. My cousins, by contrast, looked like they were born in a saddle. They just jumped off and on horses like cowboys in Westerns on television. For fun they would ride full throttle and then grab onto a low branch of a tree, letting the horse continue without them, riderless. They were always up to pranks – my cousins. Shaun, my brother, loved their mischief. Especially with the eldest, David. Together they somehow managed to climb over the Sydney Harbour bridge at night.

I was very gullible as a teenager. Wilma told me to help David move some horses from one paddock to another. David, with Shaun spectating, told me to open the gate and then stand right in the middle between the posts. Of course he then spooked the horses and en masse they charged at me. I dropped to the ground and they pounded overhead. One stomped on my hand, which could have broken it, but miraculously I only suffered a bad bruise. What a moron I was.

On another occasion, David and Shaun built a large wire enclosure, big enough for the three of us to fit in. A female magpie will attack you if you go near her nest of chicks. David suggested that we carry out an experiment. I would approach the tree where the mother-magpie was feeding her young. He said that when she attacked, he would let me back into the wire enclosure with Shaun and him. Can you see where this is leading? Dutifully I left the safety of the wire enclosure and walked slowly to the tree. The mother-magpie swooped to attack me. It was like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Of course, when I ran to re-enter the safety of the wire enclosure, they would not let me in. I ran for my life with the mother-magpie chasing me off.

There is one friend I have, Niki, who is crazy about horses. And her three gorgeous daughters are too. And her younger son. They have won bucket loads of rosettes and trophies. They live on a farm in Wilton. They gave up life in London long ago, to pursue a country life.

I met Niki when Anna started nursery school, Noah’s Ark, aged two. She was in a class with Niki’s daughter, Mimi.

Sloane mothers are diary driven. You arrange play dates to happen in the future, at a specific time and place. They rarely happen spontaneously. Anna was oblivious to this custom. She often asked mothers, at pickup, whether she could come to their house to play. She would knock on their kneecaps and when they looked down, she would put in her request. They invariably replied that they would fix a future date with me. Anna just didn’t get it. One day, she knocked on Niki’s knees and Niki said, “Of course.” And off Anna went, without delay, to play in her beautiful house on Baskerville Road. Anna went to play, a lot. She just kept on knocking on Niki’s knees. When I went to collect her, I was asked in for a cup of tea and sometimes even a glass of wine. This was almost Australian behavior.

Everything about Niki, and her girls, was beautiful. She became one of my closest and treasured friends. She still is.

 

Today the weather is lovely, so there will be plenty of tennis play, at Queen’s Club, this afternoon. Yesterday, British Andy Murray, and Australian Nick Kyrgios, won their matches. So I was happy.

Last night we had a great dinner with some Aussie friends, Gill and Gazza, at their fabulous penthouse apartment in Kensington.

The other Aussie guest was George Masselos, who recently joined Gazza in a charity bike ride over four days, 720 kilometers, from Bilbao to Barcelona. He’d come all the way from Sydney for the bike ride, in aid of the early detection of heart disease. They recently lost a dear friend to this affliction.

George is a third generation Kytherian Aussie. The Peloponnese Island of Kythera, south of mainland Greece, only has 3,500 inhabitants, but in Australia, there are 60,000 people of Kytherian origin. There was a mass immigration from the island to Down Under in the first half of the 20^th century. George had all that Greek charm that Aussies love. And humour. We all laughed at a photo of kangaroos, taken at the ski resort of Thredbo, one looking like a boxer, about to beat the photographer up.

We have been to Athens and a few Greek Islands over the years and they are magical. But not Kythera. It’s now next on our list.

But in the early days of parenthood, our holidays were in Britain – the bucket and spade years. Either on the North Sea in Norfolk, around Stiffkey (pronounced Stookey) and Cley-next-the-Sea or Salcombe, Devon. It was too much of a hassle to transport all the children’s kit abroad.So it wasn’t exactly hot!

In June 1996, Mum and Dad, decided it was time to meet Hugo, who was six months old. I asked Emma whether she knew of any quintessentially English coastal towns, that Bev and Stan would enjoy. I could tell by the way her face immediately broke into a smile, that she knew the right answer. Without hesitation, she told me to take them to Salcombe, Devon. She had holidayed there her whole life. She insisted we use their family’s boat, which was moored in the harbour.

 

After hours of driving along the A303, then the M5, then inland through hedgerows on windy country lanes, we finally saw the signpost to Salcombe. The view from the summit surpassed our expectations. The vista below was breathtaking. There was the steeple of an ancient church, a pristine Victorian town painted in pastels and an aquamarine estuary (as good as the Bahamas), filled with sailing and motor boats.

We were enchanted!

It was so different to the surf beaches on the east coast of Australia. We ate cream teas in quaint teashops, sat on the beach while Anna played on the sand with a bucket and spade, drank beer in pubs that came right down to the water’s edge, caught a little red ferry from town to South Sands, near the heads, where a tractor, with bench seats, drove right into the sea to transport you to shore. We explored the interior mangrove estuary in Emma’s family boat as far up as South Pool, with its charming white washed pub. Dad would sit on the balcony and watch the dramatic tides for hours. In no time at all the outgoing tide left the boats marooned like beached whales on the mud flats.

English holidaying at its best. It was the beginning of a long association with Salcombe. Now modern, state of the art, houses are being built. Back then it was strictly Victorian or Edwardian architecture. In Australia, the same evolution is taking place on the Illawarra coastline, where my family live. Red brick bungalows are being replaced with clean edged, or New England style clapboard,abodes.

Dad loved Salcombe so much, that he was buried in a pair of trousers, his favourite pair, which he bought in a shipping style shop in town.

Today I’ll try to catch more of the action on tv at the Queen’s Club.

 

More rain today. I drove, first thing this morning, from Hampshire, straight to the Hurlingham Club for tennis. The forecast was for rain at lunchtime, but unfortunately it poured, mid-morning, right in the middle of the game.  We all got soaked to the skin. I then dropped Anna’s high heels, which she’d forgotten, to High Street Kensington where she is working, as she is off to the St John’s Summer Ball, in Cambridge. It is meant to be one of the world’s top ten annual parties. She won’t get any sleep and will come back like a zombie.

 I then drove straight back to walk Domino at the Hurlingham Club, as there was a promising break in the rain. Mothers were everywhere, pushing babies and toddlers in prams, making the most of the precarious sunshine.

 The sight of small children out and about reminded me of the blissful summer of 1994, the first summer with Anna on maternity leave and the last at Stone House, the Wilmot family home. Tony and Eve, Geoff’s parents, decided that the house was too big for them and put it on the market in spring. By then Tony was in his late seventies. The rest of us were heartbroken.

 The entire clan made the most of the “last drops” of the Kentish home that summer. I walked with Anna through the fruit orchards and swung her in the hammock. If I stayed overnight, when Geoff was away on business, Eve would come in at 6am and scoop Anna up to play, and I would go back to sleep. We sat on the lawn and ate scones at teatime and played hours of tennis. We dreaded the day when we would have to say goodbye.

 Of course, buyers quickly came along. It was a fantastic house. It did, however, need a lot of work. The Aga still ran on coal and there was no heating. Just before exchange, the buyers changed their mind. They said that the renovations were too ambitious for them.

 Tony and Eve were knocked sideways. In their world of honour, your word was your bond. They had already found a small house near the High Street in Sevenoaks and exchanged contracts. They were under pressure. In July, Tony was up at the crack of dawn to collect an African friend, Sabor, from Gatwick. That sort of early start was not unusual. They never had lie-ins. 

 Tony, Pops, often did physical things reserved for younger people. In the seven years I knew him, he acted like someone half his age, even if his body was slowing down. He mowed the lawn on a sit down mower, all four acres. He carted coal up from the cellar every night for the Aga. He played tennis, but we had to hit the ball to him, as he couldn’t run very far or fast. He was tireless when it came to working with the church. When he retired from business in Africa, he founded a theological college for Africans, in Karen, near Nairobi, Kenya. He was principal until 1989, then aged 74.

 Going back to his early morning trip to Gatwick, somewhere on the way he had a serious heart attack. I was left to look after Sabor, who somehow reached Stone House. I sat on the lawn, with Anna, chatting to him for hours, while everyone else was at the hospital. He told me his sad story. He was a Liberian, and as a child he watched his entire family shot by rebels. It was a familiar story, repeated by many of the Africans I met at Stone House in my early years in Britain.

 That last summer at Stone House was magical as I was a new mother, but wistful as well, as it was the last. My children would never know it or remember it.

I am going to see some Aussie friends for dinner tonight with Geoff.

It is raining today.

But on Friday it was sunny and hot. The Book Club women arrived with their canine companions, and we spent the first hour bathing them as they rolled in fox excrement. The smell is mega offensive, to put it mildly.

Then we settled down to lunch. Someone had donated a beautiful bottle of rose, made at Angelina and Brad’s French vineyard.

We then headed to Scotland for Peter’s 60th birthday party on Saturday night at his Scottish baronial home. We started with drinks in the magnificent drawing room, with views over the River Doon cascading, like a waterfall, down the man-made weir. Ghislaine’s dress was breath-taking. It was her Belgian great grandmother’s, and it fitted her like a glove. It had small shimmering beads all over. She looked like a beautiful flower. My black velvet dress was drab by comparison.

At dinner, I sat next to Mike Marlin, a singer-songwriter, aged 55. He told me that he never finished his physics degree at Oxford. He left and went into the City, where he invented a computer programme that was very useful for investment banks. He obviously did well! But his latest career, which he started in his late forties, was to form a band. He recorded a cover of the Bee Gees hit ‘Stayin Alive’, which you will remember is very high pitched; they sound like a bunch of sheilas singing. Mike had the idea of recording it with his much deeper voice singing along. A record label heard it and signed him. He has been recording and performing ever since. His next gig was the supporting The Stranglers.

Leaving Oxford without a degree must have seemed pretty tragic to Mike at the time, but he defied the odds and went from strength to strength. By contrast, leaving the City for me, when Anna was four years old and Hugo was two, did not result in fame and glory. Instead it meant domesticity! I was a stay at home parent from then on, with a few interior design jobs on the way for others and renovating our own homes in Clapham, Chelsea, Fulham and Hampshire.

I approached parenthood, and creating interiors and gardens, with the same dedication and gusto I tried to practise law. I increasingly became a Tiger Mother. I micromanaged all aspects of the children’s life and development. I signed them up for every extra-curricular course I could find: singing for Anna; art for Hugo; football and cricket for Hugo, and tennis and swimming for both. I am not alone in channelling my own ambition into my offspring. But because I was foreign and didn’t know the form, how schools worked, where to find lessons, I was often behind the game.

The first club that Anna joined, aged two, was a singing group that met in a church in Fulham, run by a Sloane, Joya. The cherubs would sit on their mothers lap and sing sweet songs about sleeping bunnies etc. I met two great friends there through Emma – Sally and Jo. They are still my close friends today. It was a bonding time between mother and child, but oh no, not for me. As soon as the singing started Anna would jump up from my lap and sit on someone else’s lap. It was embarrassing in the extreme. We persevered though as Sally lived around the corner and invited us each week to tea, where her nanny cooked for the children. It was heaven not to have to cook nursery food once a week.

Today I am off to Nicky’s for lunch. And if it stops raining, I will dead-head the multitude of roses that have bloomed this year so gloriously.

Today it is cloudy, but forecast to be warm. Great news, as I have my book club coming to the Old Rectory for lunch. With dogs. So dogs galore! Then I have to pack. We are going to Scotland over the weekend to celebrate Peter Kennerley’s birthday – a big one.

Yesterday, the free concert and tea for Older People was a roaring success. The Chelsea Pensioners were absent as they had Founders’ Day, so we missed their scarlet jackets and polished war medals. Guy Johnston, the cellist, played some wonderful pieces and the audience were thrilled. Guy was the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2000. We are nearing our 6th anniversary of the concerts  and teas– 34 so far.

 

The event is driven by volunteers. There is a team in the morning that lay the tables for 500 guests – we average between 350 and 500 per concert – and make egg, cucumber and salmon sandwiches – 50 loaves worth. The doors open at 2.30pm. The concert begins at 3pm. Tea is served at 3.45pm; all the cakes are donated by members of HTB church.

I am in charge of clearing up. I have 4 teams: the cup team who use the industrial strength steamer; the cake-stand team who take them apart, wash and store them; the saucer team in the back kitchen who wash and store them in crates, and the rest is done in the sink at the back of the church. We finished in record time by 5.15pm.

I was tired by the time I caught the underground from South Kensington to Putney Bridge, which is five minutes from our front door. I collected Domino, our Italian greyhound, from Anna, who was babysitting him and drove straight on to the Old Rectory. The first thing I did when I arrived, was to walk around the garden and see the progress since Tuesday morning.

Sheer joy – as I spotted that the roses had exploded into life.

So I shall let the photos do the talking today.

 

I love the beauty of summer flowers.

It is sunny and dry today in London.

I am so pleased, as the guests for the Older Person’s Concert and Tea at St Paul’s, Onslow Square, this afternoon at 2.30pm, will not be rained upon as they make their way to the church. Many of them are transported to the event by bus, and some of the guests are in wheelchairs or have sticks or frames to help them to walk. In the last six years, we have only had rain once. Even if it has been chucking it down in the morning, the skies have cleared for their arrival. Thank God.

Yesterday I went for a long walk with Domino, and we met another blue long-dog, but a whippet, Molly. She was a beauty. It was love at first sight. Even though Domino is a smaller breed, Molly didn’t mind. They trotted along together, turning to kiss or smell each other from time to time. The owner was an extremely elegant older pheasant. She explained that her two daughters and son lived in Wandsworth with their families. Apparently, there is the greatest concentration of young children in Wandsworth, than anywhere else in Europe. Until Anna was ten, and Hugo was eight, we added to those statistics.

The pressure to get your child into a local school, state or private, was immense. I think it is even worse now. If you wanted to get your child into Honeywell, a leading state school, off Northcote Road, you had to live close by. That meant that house prices in those streets were at a premium.

We did not live on one of those streets. So our only option was private schooling. Or to move out of London. It is well known that some Sloanes register their children for school even when they are still in the womb. Or as soon as the child is delivered and the sex is known, possibly even before telling the grandparents the good news, they promptly register them for public school (senior school). An Etonian father (Eton College in Windsor where Will and Harry went), or a Harrovian father (Harrow School where Winston Churchill went), will do it immediately! We opted for Broomwood Hall, in Wandsworth, for Anna for the equivalent of primary school. Her cousin Sophie, Susan’s daughter, was already there. That made it easier for us to get her in.

The first stage was to attend an Open Day and look as keen as mustard. I dressed like a good Sloane. Long floral skirt and beige blazer. I stiffly linked arms with Geoff, in a jacket and tie. We had fixed smiles plastered on our faces as we toured around. We were enthusiastic about everything, even about necklaces made out of pasta, acting as if they were Cartier or Van Cleef.

The next stage was an interview with the headmistress, Lady Katherine Colquhoun, who was terrifying. She was tall, had auburn hair which she clipped back with tortoiseshell slides, wore Ferragamo shoes with bows and spoke with an intimidating posh accent. She looked like one of Diana’s red haired sisters. Lady C was married to Sir Malcolm, 9^th Baronet of Luss. She had married well. Together, they built a school empire in the area. It expanded over the years from one site to four sites.

At the interview, she served us tea in porcelain teacups. I was shaking so much, that I almost spilt the Earl Grey over my Laura Ashley dress. Geoff asked her what her husband did. She was obviously offended and curtly replied, “He has a house (which she pronounced ‘hice’).” She was telling us that her husband had an estate, i.e., he was landed gentry. There was a rumour that one prospective parent asked why there were no coloured children at the school. She apparently replied, “Because there aren’t any embassies nearby.” This was clearly a school strictly for baby pheasants and stags.

What chance did we have to get Anna in, if I had an Aussie accent as wide as the Sydney Harbour Bridge? Would Geoff’s credentials be enough to nail the deal?

Broomwood Hall sent letters to prospective parents on a designated date to let them know if they were in or out. On that day, I sat on the bottom step by the front door, waiting nervously for the postman. Clomp. Finally, there it was on the doormat; the starched white envelope that held my daughter’s education, and future, in its hands. I tore it open. Phew. It was a yes.

Looking back it is ridiculous how much we cared about getting Anna into that school. As it was, it didn’t suit her, and we moved her to a school in Chelsea, Queensgate, when she was ten.

And the truth was that Lady C isn’t really a pheasant. She’s a kangaroo from Canberra. She had reinvented herself and marketed the product well.

 

 

 

 

Today is humid and hot. There were flash floods in south London yesterday and overnight. My tennis coach, Paul, told me this morning that a man, driving his Mercedes under a bridge, was quickly engulfed by water after a torrential downpour. This caused the electrics to fail, so that he couldn’t open his window. A passing builder found a stray brick and threw it at the window, smashing it after two attempts. The driver managed to climb out just in time, before the car completely disappeared.

A few years back I visited some friends who are close to Bear Grylls. I tagged along to watch Bear film a similar scenario; a jeep plunging off a bridge, followed by Bear demonstrating a rescue of the trapped passengers. They had to tow the jeep out several times and reenact the scene. Bear had to keep jumping back in, just when he’d dried off. The guy is considered, world wide, to be a survival legend. He’s even taken the US president on a survival trek. It was a blast to see him in action at close range.

 

Last night I had dinner at Judy Cahusac’s stylish new home in Fulham. Judy is also a legend; a role model to many women. Before she retired, she ran, and owned, a mega media recruitment business. She made it big in business, before it was really possible for women to make it that big. She was a trailblazer. I also found out, that in a former life, she was the secretary for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (think 10 with Bo Derek) – the genius comedians – at The Establishment, the first satirical nightclub in London. She also worked for MI5, the domestic security branch; not to be confused with the international MI6 and James Bond.

The other male guest, apart from Geoff, ended up being the grandson of a previous Governor General of Australia, the Queen’s representative in Australia, Lord Stonehaven (pronounced stonavon). He was in office from 1925 to 1931. He, and his lovely wife, have a house in Toulouse, France, where the archives of his grandfather are kept. He invited us to come and see!

The final guest was Jean Cooke, previously Sewell. She was on my first ski trip in Verbier, where I had my Bridget Jones moment, ending up face down in a snowdrift. She runs the retail arm of Wimbledon. Anna, our daughter, went for a job interview with Jean while she was at Cambridge. At the end of the interview, she told Anna to give us her love. That gave Anna a shock! This year Hugo is team leader in the Centre Court luxury goods shop. Go and visit him if you are there. Last year he served Mrs Federer.

I had a royal dream overnight, probably due to talking about royal connections over dinner. In the dream, I was great friends with Will and Kate. I was staying with a number of others at Balmoral. Bagpipes were playing all the time and hearty, ruddy-faced stags and pheasants were wandering around in tweeds. It was time to dress for dinner and to my horror, I had forgotten to pack black tights to match my dress and shoes. Kate offered to lend me a pair of hers. When I went to put them on, they were about 20 feet too long. I tried and tried to stuff them into my shoes, but they just wouldn’t fit. What is the message of the dream? That as a kangaroo I don’t fit in perhaps.

Today I am meeting the music director, Fi, for the Older People’s Concerts and Teas I help with. We have one tomorrow at St Paul’s, Onslow Square, South Kensington, and a cellist is playing.

So the weather is Australia sort-of hot. That means over 25 degrees.

It is lovely!

I met an ex-Wandsworth pheasant, Nicki, for lunch in the Surrey Hills, not far from the Old Rectory. At The Pheasant and Dog; a stylish pub. The area is outstandingly beautiful.

The first half of my time in Britain was in Wandsworth. Nicki moved, with her husband and babies, to a Queen Anne house in Godalming, many moons ago.

Nicki is a true friend. We can laugh or cry together. I once helped her with some interior design. We were at the Chelsea Design Centre choosing fabric, and one of the sales assistants at Colefax and Fowler asked if she was European royalty. She is very tall, gracious and regal, like Princess Diana.

We had a lovely lunch in the lovely sunshine. A happy moment in time.

But no one is happy all the time. That is a fact. Life is up and down for everyone.

However, I have known people who have suffered much more than others. Some fell at the hurdle and haven’t managed to get up. Others just keep on, trucking on, despite hardship. They keep on jumping back up and manage somehow to keep bouncing ahead. Like my joey, Jade, my pet kangaroo. But they carry scars.

I went down to the local Tesco tonight. It was 6pm. I asked the sales woman, “Is it almost time to knock off?” She was so desensitised that it took a moment for her to register that I was chatting to her. She said, “No, I’m here to the very end.” That meant 11pm. She said, “I have small children.” I said, “I hope you have a good night.” She would not, I fear! She was missing her family.

When I drove back to the Old Rectory, junior cricket practice was underway on the cricket ground adjacent to the house. I watered my glorious garden (the lupins and the roses are blooming), as it was thirsty.

 

Then I went and found a deck chair, and sat on the hill, and watched the fun at the cricket ground, listening to the girls and boys laughing as they practised. Volunteer coaches were putting them through their paces, getting them to stretch themselves, try harder. Free fun, with a purpose, in the sunshine.

From time to time, I have met offspring of wealthy parents who don’t seem to have a purpose.

Despite the press, money does not make you happy. Too little makes you desperate. Too much can ruin you if you lack purpose.

There is so much more to life than money, thank God.

Hugo had a friend at his prep school. His parents were billionaires. The mother died of a drug overdose in her house on Sloane Street, a stone’s throw from Cartier, Tiffanys and Harrods. We were flying back from Australia and Geoff opened the complimentary newspaper to read the news. That little boy had slept in our house many times, tucked up on a trundle bed in Hugo’s bedroom, at the top of the house. He had lost a mother to drugs. And she had all the money you could imagine.

Well on that cheery note, I am off to London for a job interview.

Dinner is at a legendary pheasant’s house.

Summer has returned from the Continent. Hip, hip, hooray.

Friday was dismal, weather wise. Anne, my friend of many years from Oz, came with her two daughters, Sara and Sophie. And dogs, Lucy and Max. Domino was thrilled to have some canine company.

Anne is at the top of the game, professionally. She is General Counsel (GC) for a major accountancy firm. She was previously GC for them in Australia. Sara excitedly told me that there had been a write-up about her Mum in The Australian newspaper the day before. Anne was mentioned as one of the superwomen, opting out of private law practice, to forge an in-house career for a major corporation.

It was some down time for Anne, with her girls and her old school mate, me: we met at school at the age of five. Astonishing that we have remained friends for almost 50 years.

First we had a delicious lunch at The Hawkley Inn. As good Aussie sheilas, we all chose meat! Burgers, steak and pork belly! Then after lunch, we went for a walk towards The Hangers, a pretty ridge of woodland, not far from the Old Rectory. On the way we were stung by nettles; the dogs wanted to eat the adorable, fluffy lambs and the mothering cows looked at us threateningly.

Did this faze our GC Anne? Not one iota. She adroitly managed a conference call midway on the walk with Mark from Scandinavia. Whilst she power-talked away on her iphone, she expertly avoided nettle stings by lifting her hands above her head. Anne is a multi tasker. Crucial for a successful business woman!

Sara and Sophie now attend a leading Central London girls’ school, similar to the ones my children attended a while back.

What a contrast to the school gate Anne and I arrived at each week-day morning from the age of 5 to 12 in Kingsgrove, a suburb of Sydney, in the St George district!

At our school, Mums, rarely Dads, dropped their children off in modest cars, Combi vans (like the Crundwells), Fords, Holdens (General Motors) and Japanese cars, or by foot. They were dressed in pretty summer dresses and thongs (flip flops), or they wore casual trousers teamed with cotton shirts. Smoking was not evil in those days, not known to kill you, and some would be puffing away. They went off to jobs, few professional, or home to housework.

Contrast that to the “Chelsea” mother at the school gate. Of course there are ‘normal mothers’, but many are the super over-class that inhabit the area. Mother has her hair regularly blow dried. Her nails and toes look like polished Smeg fridges. If she is off to the gym next and not to the office, she is kitted out the latest Sweaty Betty attire. She perhaps drives a Porsche Cayenne or Range Rover, both rather too large for the narrow streets of Chelsea. Sometimes, Masters of Industry, of both sexes, drop their children off en route to the office, so will be expensively clothed by well-known designers. Alternatively, the chauffeur or nanny drives them.

Hugo went to school in Chelsea, on a one way system fed from Kings Road. A small number of parents would just double park and clog the system. The pandemonium that ensued was spectacular. Non-school drivers would furiously honk their horns to no effect, and some would actually get out and threaten offending parents. Rather than move on, the offending parents would ignore it all and serenely alight from their cars and walk their boy to the front door and then serenely drive off. It was as if they were in a parallel universe where theirs was the only car that existed. Many times, the police were called by residents.

Obviously when Anne drops her girls to school she abides by the law!

Eventually a no park zone was installed in front of the school.