I am back at the Old Rectory this morning, after dashing for a quick walk with Domino at the Hurlingham Club in London earlier. It was snowing, on the way down, as I hit the Hindhead Tunnel. The first flurries of snow this winter.

I love the Old Rectory. It is solid and substantial, unlike terraces in Chelsea, which are tall and thin and usually one room wide. I used to struggle with the idea that there were couples asleep in the adjacent rooms on either side of our bedroom when we lived in Limerston Street, Chelsea. I could have yelled out goodnight like in the Waltons. But the Old Rectory is also reminiscent of the old vicarage in Kent, Stone House, where, Geoffrey Wilmot, my husband grew up. His parents, Anthony and Eve, filled it with their family, all seven of them. Twins at the top and twins at the bottom – bookends.

I have misled you. I met my first pheasant, Susan, in Sydney. We were waiting to go into a university lecture on linguistics and she started chatting to me. I had never met a pheasant before, and she stuck out like sore thumb in the land of kangas and emus. First it was her attire. Sloaney. She was wearing a blue gathered skirt with a crisp white shirt. The shirt had puffed sleeves and a Peter Pan collar. She had ballet pumps. I later noticed that she wore a gold signet ring on the pinkie of her left hand, engraved with her family crest. And then there was her voice. Dead posh. I was wearing a canary yellow shirt and white dungarees and old tennis shoes. I looked like a cockatoo. Lady Di had not come onto the scene, so Susan was a novelty. A exotic creature that was fascinating and glamorous. Her nails were always manicured. Mine, I bit off. I had freckles and a tan. She had the flawless complexion of an English rose.

Susan and me in Palm Beach, Florida

Susan’s stepfather, Louis, Argentine (born in Argentina to British/American parents) and Susan’s mother, Joanna, (British; a WW2 refugee, brought up in Palm Beach, Florida), welcomed me into their family, and I spent hours at their house, sleeping over, talking politics, occasional gin and tonic (new to me).

They took me to my first smart restaurant in Sydney for Susan’s 19^th birthday. The crowd was mainly posh Brits on gap years. I sat next to Louis and read the starter menu. I ordered the seafood salad thinking it would be a prawn cocktail. Out came a plate filled with mussels and oysters. Of course I knew what they were, because Dad loved them and gobbled them up in vast quantities, but my youthful palate was not so keen. Anyway, with my crisp white linen napkin glued to my lap and surrounded by ‘Hooray Henrys and Carolines’, I ventured the first bite of a mussel. I started to gag and without hesitation Louis turned to me, lifted my napkin to my lips and instructed, “Spit it out.” He then disposed of the napkin and asked the waiter to take away my plate. Supreme gentleman. We then all danced the night away at the upmarket disco there.

My life up until the age of 18 existed within a radius of ten miles, apart from the occasional visits to my grandparents’ holiday home on the North coast, The Weekender. Susan and her family helped me see beyond the horizon of Sydney Harbour to a big wide world that I had only glimpsed at through literature and cinema. They made it real and tantalising.

Susan asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding to her fiancé, David, at Holy Trinity Brompton, Knightsbridge, in September 1988 and afterwards at the Hurlingham Club. She had returned to London after Uni, completing her course two years earlier than me. I had made a possum’s mess of my life in Oz so I thought, “Why not try your luck Pottsie and go to England to the wedding and see if you can work over there in a London law firm.”

So on that second day in England, 2oth August, 1988, Susan and I headed down the A3 to Kent on a sunny day, with lamb’s wool clouds overhead, for me to meet her future in-laws and the best man, David’s brother. As we drove up the sweeping gravel to a large Victorian pile, I could see a group playing croquet on the lawn.

Now I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the kanga in the land of pheasants and stags. Have you guessed by now? David’s brother was Geoffrey, the best man.  I was at Stone House and about to meet my future husband.

It’s mothers’ day this weekend. And on Monday it is Book Club in London. But not after some country tonic.

The sun has got its hat on. Hip, hip, hip, hooray! My mother Bev taught me that song. I’ve just come back from a dog walk at Hurlingham with Vicky, a fellow member. Richard Branson’s mother was leaving after a spot of croquet. She the spitting image of her son.

Last night, I had dinner with friends that we met in 1993, when I was still kangarooing around the place: Paul Cowley MBE and his wife, Amanda, and Tricia Neill. We all did something called the Alpha course together over twenty years ago at HTB, an Anglican church in Knightsbridge. Tricia is now President of Alpha, and Paul pioneered work with ex-offenders, meeting them at the prison gate and helping them to reintegrate into society.  Paul himself has gone from prison to pulpit. In between, he was in the army (he did three tours of N. Ireland and one in the Falklands). When we met Tricia she worked for News International, organising exhibitions. Both of them have had a major impact on many people.  Dinner was at Tricia’s flat on Kings Road, in a new complex. 

I remember attending a wedding reception there in the late eighties, when it was a university campus. No doubt I was kitted out, yet again, in one of my many broad shouldered, over the top creations.

After Geoff and I married, we hit the wedding circuit big time. The pheasant-brides were still championing the Princess Di look. Large brimmed hats were obligatory. Stags wore, without exception, morning suits. If it was an officer’s wedding, there was usually a guard of honour. It was not the form, however, for the stag-officer to wear his uniform. He wore a morning suit like the other stags.

A sit down lunch or dinner, followed by dancing, was unheard of back in the 80s. Canapés (nibbles to Aussies) were served with champagne and tea, and after speeches, the happy couple departed, on their honeymoon, in a car defaced with lashings of shaving cream, balloons tied to the back bumper and rocks ricocheting in the hub caps. Things have changed over the years, but this was the way it was back then.

Two Lucindas at a 80s English wedding

Two Rowe Roses with Barrington Burles

My father, Stan the Man, would have had a fit at the lack of tucker (food). Australian weddings were long drawn out affairs. The 80s/90s Aussie brides were crazy about the Diana meringue dress, but apart from that, an Aussie wedding was a very different kettle of fish. For starters, the bridal party consisted of a trillion bridesmaids and ushers, flanking the happy couple in rows facing the congregation. The ushers wore tuxedos. Sheila guests wore pretty frocks and no hats. Blokes wore lounge suits, if that. The dinner was a sit down saga, and the speeches went on and on like the Outback desert.

After saying goodbye to Anne, my best friend at Kingsgrove High School was Karen Nosworthy; Nos for short. She fell in love, as soon as she graduated, with Dallas Brown, a carpenter. I was the bridesmaid at their wedding in the early 80s, and my outfit was, in fact, chic. Nos always had style. Now she is an accomplished artist. The dress was made of delicate voile (with hand smocking that would have made any pheasant squeal with delight) and a pill box hat, with delicate netting over my face. The reception was at the Municipal Town Hall where I used to study in the library. Swot student by day, bridesmaid by night. 

Karen Nosworthy on the far right. Me in red. A typical Aussie ‘just tuck in’ lunch.

My combined Arts and Law degree was a long drawn out affair between 1981 and 1985, and I was dreaming of a life beyond the books. Day after day, I would find my usual cubicle, amongst the reference books, at the Town Hall. But before my study kicked off, there was one book I carefully examined, page by page, before I put my nose down to learn about contracts and torts. It was a table sized book of Charles’ and Diana’s wedding. I was enchanted by their fairy tale.  Then I would, reluctantly, put it back, and it would be back to reality.

Tomorrow, I’ll head off first thing back to the Old Rectory.

Yesterday, I headed down to the Hampshire south coast to the charming seaside town of Bosham for a solitary walk along the harbour. There was a smattering of people pottering around the flat, calm, grey water – a world away from the pounding, effervescent surf of the East coast of Australia. Regal swans glided along the foreshore, hissing menacingly at Domino. I could hear the tinkling of rigging, flapping against masts of sailboats. I like the music it makes. It’s as if the boats are beckoning the sailors to release them and take them on an adventure. Just when I thought that the sun had left the solar system, the clouds parted and weak spring sunshine flooded the scene.

Dinner, the night before, with our friends on the Thames, was in the same vein. The strong tide whooshed past the picture windows, and white commuter ferries glided past, occasionally, like the swans I’d seen earlier in Bosham Harbour. 

I am now back in Fulham, London, at the ex-butcher’s Shop. It is hard to believe that dead meat was once sold here, as it is the prettiest little house you can imagine. It is unusually double fronted, but only one shallow room deep. I’ve white-washed the walls and accented the cool palette with the colours of the tropics: weed green, orange peach, flame coral, flamingo pink, sunny gold, cool aqua and turquoise.

The art is the same: a Slim Aarons print of an elegant  woman in white shorts (the socialite CZ Guest) standing by a classical topaz pool with her young son and golden dog, framed by the blue sea of Palm Beach, Florida; a photograph of swimmers doing laps in the Bondi Beach sea pool as huge foamy waves smash over the edge; an oversized photograph of the coral of the Great Barrier Reef in the basement (so that I can pretend I am below sea level down there); prints of Bermudan houses in tropical colours with white roofs; a watercolour of an Australian estuary with gum trees (all places I’ve been and will talk about in due course).

You get the picture. I just want to pretend that I am at the seaside when I am in that house. It is always a shock to find noisy traffic and the clackety, clackety, clack of the tube outside.   

But a stone’s throw from my front door is the Hurlingham Club. It’s a haven in a busy city. Due to more rain today, tennis with the older pheasants is cancelled. If the rain abates, I’ll take Domino for a walk in the perfectly manicured gardens. Walk amongst the daffodils and the stark, white magnolia trees.

Now you may be wondering how an Aussie Sheila ended up as a member of the Hurlingham Club, a bastion of pheasants and stags. Certainly not in my own right! You have to be proposed by pheasants and stags. And these were supplied by new toff hubby, Geoffrey, after we were married. I was desperate to join as it has an outdoor swimming pool, and I figured that it was the only way that my amphibian nature would be satisfied.

Anna and Hugo before the pool was renovated.

Hurlingham has been a kind friend to me, cosseting me from hectic London life. As I age, it essentially stays the same, like the sea. It is the scene of many landmarks. It dawned on me that I was in love in September 1988. It is where my children Anna and Hugo played, grew, learnt to swim and play tennis, we ate Sunday lunch most weeks and we socialised with other pheasants and stags – at the endless BBQs on the Rose Terrace, over drinks in the Polo Bar or dining in one of the restaurants. In the quiet of the conservatory I pondered, planned and dreamt of the next stage of life. 

Tonight I am meeting some rather important people for dinner.

Bad news; the rain is back this morning. So, sob, no tennis at the Hurlingham Club. I will stay put at the Old Rectory and go up to London just before dinner. The wood burner is going full throttle. I will feed logs, intermittently, into it to stave off rigor mortis.

The wood burner is the heart of the Old Rectory in winter months, along with the Aga in the kitchen, where Domino (my princely blue Italian Greyhound) parks himself most of the day, if he isn’t burying himself under a blanket somewhere.

I have an Australian mate, Rob Kilham, who is a first class stirrer, which means someone who takes the mickey out of you, who teases you. Especially if he’s fond of you. Or thinks you’re getting a bit too big for your gumboots (wellies).

Rob’s the type of Aussie bloke you see on adverts for cold lager, draining his can of beer (tinnie) in seconds, and then wiping his mouth with a tanned bronzed hand, whilst flexing his biceps at the same time. When I think of an Aussie male, I think of someone like Rob. He’s in the Hugh Jackman, Mel Gibson camp. Russell Crowe in his Gladiator days.

He’s a heroic rescue fighter by day (or sometimes night). Think Batman. Rob has saved many peoples’ lives during natural disasters, especially bush fires and earthquakes. He’s a hero!

Rob was part of a rescue team dealing with a landslide that occurred at the ski resort of Thredbo on 30 July, 1997. Two ski lodges were destroyed; 18 died. They located Stuart Diver buried under three concrete slabs that threatened to crush him. It was is a badly kept secret that Rob was pivotal in keeping his spirits up, and away from despair  – his wife had drowned beside him – with his banter and compassion during the 12 hour rescue operation. 

You see Rob has the gift of the gab. I first met him when my High School debated against his boys’ school. I was the last on my team to round up our argument that a “Women’s Place is not in a Cave”.  My team was on the side of feminism. I thought I had the debate stitched up. No such luck. Rob wiped the floor with me. Annihilated my arguments. The audience was all boys, and they fell about laughing like cackling kookaburras. I ended up laughing too, even though it was at my expense. Rob’s team won.   

From left; beach babe Helen, me, Aussie hunk Rob, brother Shaun, sister-in-law Wendy.

The rest of the time Rob lives the Aussie dream. He landed his beach babe wife Helen (think Baywatch) and built the dream house with a bird’s eye view of one of the best beaches in the world, Stanwell Park. It is on the Illawarra coastline just South of Sydney, where my family relocated from Bexley North in the late 90s. Rob was smart. Before the area boomed, he had his eye on its potential and bought the land for a song.

So you can imagine the thrashing I got when I turned up in Princess Di like attire in the late 80s and 90s. “Geez love, when did you turn into your grandmother?” Growing up he was used to seeing me in bikinis, thongs (our word for flip flops) and shorts. Or he would target my new way of speaking. “Have you got a blue arsed fly stuck in the back of your throat Pottsie?” My maiden name was Potts. Aussies love nicknames.

Getting back to British rain, the first time Rob met Geoff, my new toff husband, at a barbeque in Oz, he said, pointing to the few fluffy white clouds in an otherwise blue sky, “See those clouds mate. I reckon they’re the empties sent back from England where I hear it’s always pissing with rain.” Geoff roared with laughter. Thank God he has a sense of humour. He replied, “Yes old boy (he calls all men ‘old boy’ if he’s fond of them). You’re absolutely right. But that‘s what makes England so green and beautiful.”

So I shall just have to take comfort today that the rain will nurture my garden.

In brief, yesterday ladies from my London Book Club turned up to do some local shopping and have lunch (only one pheasant among them-London is cosmopolitan these days). It made me laugh when they alighted from their cars clad in designer kit and suede boots that wouldn’t stand a chance on a country walk.

If there is a break in the weather, I’ll head down to the South Coast and take Domino for a walk.

Later, I will head up to London to have dinner with friends who live in a little flat right on the Thames in Battersea.

Oh my goodness. How exciting, another bonza morning. Sunshine again.

Friday was all about my long term Aussie Sheila friends, Anne and Gill, who have recently moved to London for a stint.

On Friday evening, I attended a charity dinner for International Justice Mission (IJM) with Nicky, and her husband John Barber, and some of our closest Scottish friends. Anne was my Sheila companion. IJM is an amazing organisation. I went to the Philippines with Nicky last November on a field trip. More on that in another blog.

Earlier I met Gill for lunch at The Ivy, Kensington. I had the scallops and a green salad. Gill had the tuna carpaccio and a green salad. Typical female lunch food. 

We took our daughter, Anna, to the one on King’s Road for her birthday. She had the chocolate bombe. Look on YouTube to see how they pour hot salted caramel sauce over the chocolate sphere, and it melts. Worth the calories! The food is good at The Ivy, but the décor is a feast for the eyes. They also rate high for people watching. The tables on the benches are very close, so it is hard not to overhear conversation. The gentlemen to the left had the full works – three courses. It was a reunion of sorts. One of them had been to Israel and was showing the other photos. I was listening while I waited for Gill. They had lobster for main course.  Stan the Man (Dad) would have approved. 

I go WAY back with the sisters. Anne was my first school friend. My first best friend.  I got to know Gill when I went over to play after school and on weekends. We spent lots of hours swimming in their pool. Their mother, Beryl (Bez), was a legend. She made things happen for her kids.

Anne is beautiful (as is Gill), professionally very successful (she is a mega lawyer right at the top of the tree), and we met under a gum (eucalyptus) tree in the school yard on our first day of school in 1966. Typing that date makes me feel ancient. We went to Kingsgrove Infants’ School (state), which was near where we lived in Bexley North. This area is inland, about 15 minutes from the sea, South West from Sydney. It was an ordinary, predominantly white, middle class suburb, which had nothing in common with the glamorous ones hugging the harbour like Paddington, Mosman or Vaucluse.  

45 years on… The Bexley North Sheilas

When I found Anne on her own under a tree, liking the look of her, I asked, “Hi, I’m Sandra. Will you be my friend?” And she said yes, and we started playing make believe under the tree in the dirt. I have an image of a couple of seconds in my memory bank. 

Anne and I parted company when she won a scholarship to a private senior school. Up until then we were inseparable.  She was pepper and looked like Snow White (and a lot like Cora in Downton), and I was salt, a blondie, with freckles galore. When Bev, Mum, picked me up after school, she would ask, “Why can’t you stay neat and tidy like Anne?” Somehow between the hours of 9am and 3.15pm I would unravel like a ball of merino wool. Bev would drop me off to school, crisp and neat with plaits or a pony tail. By the end of the day, I looked like I’d gone through a bush backwards; my clothes would be crumpled and covered in dirt, and my hair would be loose and flying everywhere.

Anne was always first in the class. I worked hard to keep up with her. In our final year, she was captain and I was vice-captain.

Our after-school club was the BJ School of Physical Culture (physie for short), which is still a huge craze in Australia. Back in the 60s and 70s it was synchronised exercise drills and marches to music. There were team and individual competitions (Champion Girl) at a regional and state level. Champion Girl finals were at the Opera House. I have a little glass bowl of my medals. Anne and Gill were stellar at physie, along with their older sister Jenny.

In preparation, physi girls would go to the hairdresser and have their hair put into a teased and quaffed concoction.  The hair was pulled tightly to the top of the head where an intricate bun of curls was arranged like a little crown. Then copious amounts of hairspray were applied so the hair wouldn’t move. Our Mums would get us up onto the kitchen table and paint our legs dark brown, even though our hands and necks were white and, of course, lots of fake makeup was applied. We felt glamorous, but looked ridiculous for small girls. And then we would wrap toilet (loo) paper around our buns overnight, so that the hair could be paraded around school the next day. Anne and I thought we were the bees knees and acted like preening cockatoos.  Now teased hair, fake tan and makeup are banned for young competitors. 

I’m back at the Old Rectory today. Some of my Book Club are coming down for lunch, and then I have tennis training for the C team tonight.

As for most people, there are many mundane minutes of my life that hum, in the background, to the lyrics of my diary. They’re the boring bits. I don’t want to tell you everything, like in a reality TV show, aka Big Brother. But I don’t want to give you the impression that I have a 100% charmed life either, or you will end up hating me.

That’s the problem with Facebook. Everyone puts their best foot, usually manicured, forward. You don’t see ‘friends’ loading the dishwasher, sorting laundry, doing admin, stuck in traffic, walking the dog, shopping for food, yelling at their children or partner. The groundhog day stuff. That is the stuff of most people’s lives, and mine is no exception.  Or the events that make your heart stop and your throat constrict. Really bad news. Job loss, chronic illness, death, heartbreak and disappointment.

The Classical Concert and Tea for Older People was a success yesterday at HTB, Onslow Square (you can find details on the HTB Church website). Derek Paravicini performed on the piano. He is known as the ‘human ipod’; look out for him on YouTube. Although being severely autistic and blind, he has thousands of pieces stored in his brain, and like a jukebox and without rehearsal, he can play them perfectly.

The concerts have been running for almost six years, six times a year. I joined the committee when I lived in Chelsea. There is a core committee – slightly older than me – of pheasants. Their habitat is Chelsea and Fulham. Adjectives like selfless, honest, charming, moral, wise and hard-working come to mind. Good C of E women.

This modest type of pheasant doesn’t like the limelight. No – this sort of pheasant is low key and longs to blend in with the undergrowth. They are understated by nature. For ages, I didn’t know that one was a Lady So and So.

Aristocrats, when you meet them, introduce themselves by their Christian names. I stood beside Viscount Chelsea at Harrow School once, and he told the registrar to call him Ed.  Commoners who marry titles are not necessarily of the same ilk. I am sure, though, that Kate says, “Call me Kate,” when off duty.

Slightly blurry, but here I am presenting to our audience, including the Chelsea Pensioners.

Hugh Bonneville, Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey, was on Desert Island Discs, on Radio 4, last weekend. Do you remember the scene in Notting Hill? Hugh Bonneville is Bernie, Charlie’s friend, played by Hugh Grant. At a dinner party he meets Anna, a film star played by Julia Roberts, who is really playing herself. Out of context, Bernie doesn’t recognise Anna/Julia.  Whilst he is stuffing his face with nibbles, he asks her what she does for a living. She tells him that she’s an actress. It is only when he asks her how much she’s paid and she replies, “Fifteen million dollars,” that he recognises her. The penny drops.

I was at a fundraising lunch meeting for the Chelsea Academy, a non-private High School, when a similar thing happened. It was a different group of pheasants this time.

This cool guy wandered in; he was dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans. He sat down next to one of the pheasants. I almost fell off my seat. Here was one of the heroes of my teens and twenties. She turned to him politely during the light lunch of sole and roasted vegetables, and she asked him, “And what do you do?” He replied, with a cheeky grin, “A little bit of music and photography.” She said, “Good for you.”

After he left, I turned to my elegant, neighbouring pheasant and asked her, “Do you know who that was? It was Bryan Adams. You know the one that wrote Summer of 69 and the theme tune to Robin Hood with Kevin Costner, Everything I do. That guy.”

She grimaced with embarrassment. 

Mr Adams turned out to be very supportive of the Academy, as he lived in Chelsea. My children, then in their teens, were waiters at an event at his home. Mr Adams was fantastic with the junior waiters, all children of committee members. 

The children with Bryan Adams. 

Today I have a charity dinner for International  Justice Mission, so we have to stay up in London  for Friday night, which is out of our routine. At lunchtime, I am having lunch with another Aussie Sheila, posted to London, Gill.

Okay, the weather has deteriorated today. Winter still isn’t quite over. Spring is teasing us. The daffs are out. The magnolias are blossoming, but the weather is still cold. My dream last night; I was showing a friend photos of the coastline where my family live in Oz on the Illawarra peninsula: the rocky headlands, the pounding surf, the seawater lap pools carved into the headlands and the golden sand. In the dream I said to her, “Not long now until summer.” When I woke up, I felt homesick. For an Aussie Sheila who spent long stretches of her early life submerged under water, I realised, like an amphibian, that I need warm water to engulf me. I grew up under the water line, in its tomb like quietness. It was where I thought, wondered, dreamt, grew, budded, developed into womanhood.

Yesterday at the Hurlingham Club, I played a splendid game of tennis with some elderly pheasants. We wore regulation white. It was sunny and warm, a luxurious glimpse of summer. Mice man laid bait.

I mentioned yesterday, that I was like a kangaroo. Well, when I was 14, I visited my Auntie Wilma’s farm in the grasslands west of Sydney, just before the Outback and the red desert, where the aborigines wander around and eat widgedee grubs. Shaun and I spent our August school holidays there just like Bev (Mum) did during her childhood.  I came back to Sydney with a pet kangaroo in my back pack, which I named Jadey.

This is not what city kids usually end up bringing home as a souvenir.

One night I was driving through the farm with Wilma’s husband, Don, when we came upon ‘roos feeding on wheat crops. Don stopped the ‘ute (utility truck) and loaded his shotgun. I started to sob. I’d seen too many episodes of “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo”, but I was also resigned. It was the law of the land. Kangaroos are pests. As Don’s bullet hit the mother, I saw her reach into her pouch and throw to safety a little tiny baby – a joey. I pleaded with Don not to shoot the joey trapped helplessly in the headlights. “Please, please Uncle Don, don’t shoot it.” It won’t survive he told me. “Oh, I’ve got a great idea. I’ll take it back to Sydney with me,” I pleaded through tears. Don hesitated. Then he put down his gun. As he unloaded his gun he said, “I don’t know how you’ll do it. But I believe you. If you don’t, it will have to be shot.”

When Wilma saw me get out of the ‘ute with a joey a foot high, at first she threw a fit. But she eventually relented and showed me how to look after it. She made makeshift pouches from old jumpers, which she cut holes in and secured underneath with a belt. That’s where Jadey snoozed by day, like she had with her mother. At night she slept in an old hessian wheat sack tied to my bedroom door. When the time came to leave the farm, we bought a small back pack and smuggled her onto the 10 seater plane. She slept most of the way, and if she stuck her head out, Shaun and I pushed it back down again. In those days, they didn’t check bags on domestic flights.

Jadey and me, aged 14

So Jadey came to live in suburban Sydney with us. Bev adored her. Tied a towel nappy around her. Eventually she started jumping and bumping around the house.  Stan was fed up when she jumped over the coffee table, and landed on his head while he was having a snooze on the sofa. “Strewth, its either me or the kangaroo!”  Sadly, Jadey was relocated to a kangaroo petting zoo, but I still went to visit her after she left.

I am part of a group of volunteers who, six times a year, put on a free classical concert and tea for senior citizens at St Paul’s, Onslow Sqaure, South Kensington. It involves making a hundreds of sandwiches and cups of tea. There is a mountain of washing up. The Duchess of Cornwall came to our Jubilee Concert! Our guests of honour are the Chelsea Pensioners, magnificent in their scarlet uniforms. Today is the event. 

This morning I was greeted by warm sunshine, flooding into my cosy Fulham bedroom. We are having such a damp winter. Rain, more rain, and then even more rain…most days. Even at the pinnacle of the South Downs, where you expect good drainage, you will find a mud-fest at present.

Yesterday, I watched close friends renew their marriage vows on their 25^th anniversary. Everyone in attendance had been at their wedding at Holy Trinity Brompton, Knightsbridge, in 1991, and here we were all again. Except of course their two daughters.

The same vicar presided. His opening comment was that everyone must have sent their parents in their place. Polite chuckles could be heard. I thought, “Thank God for hair dye.” Some were thicker, and some were thinner. And many of the same crowd had been at my wedding 27 years ago.

Like any animal in a new terrain, my senses were on red alert during the early years in London. I studied the Sloane species with a metaphorical microscope, working out their speech, habits and manners. If only Downton Abbey had been on TV then. I wanted to blend in for the sake of my new husband, Geoff.  To be honest, I just wanted to blend in.

Nevertheless, I was a kangaroo in a field of pheasants and stags. And they could tell that. No amount of Russell and Bromley shoes, leather with gold buckles, or Alice headbands that I wore, could conceal the Aussie Sheila within. Like a kanga, I was always jumping and bumping into the wrong things. Or people.

Living with Nicky St John helped my education enormously, but the kanga was still peeking out of its pouch. You can take the Aussie Sheila out of Australia, but you can’t take the Aussie out of the Sheila. I found after a while that I was saying words like “absolutely” instead of “yeah”, and “super” instead of “great”. Trying to adopt the lingo (language).

And weddings were a big part of the early years. Life was like Four Weddings and a Funeral, but without the funeral.  On travels back to Australia, I had silk outfits made in Bangkok in bright colours – orange coral, canary yellow and blue turquoise – with huge padded, bouffant shoulders. I wore large brimmed hats that eclipsed my sight. It was impossible to kiss people hello. And a nightmare that Sloanes kiss twice; one on each cheek. Princess Diana was my role model.

Looking forward to this coming back into style..!

Our friends’ wedding day is a vivid memory. The couple had a glamorous reception at the Accademia Italiano, now defunct, just off Hyde Park. The backdrop was Canaletto paintings framing us, as we sipped vintage champagne and scoffed bite-sized canapés. 

But to this day, I can remember the feeling of being an outsider. Like I was watching everything through a glass barrier. And I felt lonely. I had my handsome new husband who adored me, but I needed friends.

Rumour had it then (and still now!), that the Establishment is reluctant to open the gate to their paddock, whoops, sorry, field and let outsiders in.

I thought that if you didn’t know how to shoot, fish and ski, you were done for. If you didn’t know that there were certain words that would make the pheasants and stags wince, words like serviette, lounge, toilet. Well, I soon learnt to stop saying those words, and I substituted their ones.

And yet as I sat in the church yesterday, I realised that I had forged a good life in Britain. I had worked out that wherever you are, whenever, it is better to be yourself. No-one likes a fake. I have met a lot of pheasants and stags that have opened the gate to me, and welcomed me. You know who you are and I am very grateful.

So today, I have a tennis match at the Hurlingham Club, and then the mice man is coming. We have mice. End of terrace houses, apparently, are prone to them. And soon I’ll tell you about how I met my husband and ended up living in Sloane Land.

I just opened the curtains to find a heavy frost on the lawn and the cricket ground beyond. Just like sparkling diamonds encrusted on emerald in the watery morning sunshine.

Yesterday the bloke came to quote on repairing the fence. Why is it always more than you hoped it would cost! Lunch at Anna’s godmother’s house in Winchester – always a tonic. Tennis training at 7pm – fun as usual, although freezing.  Floodlit outdoor courts.

Anna’s godmother is Nicola (Nicky) Barber.  She is worth writing about. She was my first Sloane friend. We shared the top floor of a flat in Battersea in 1988. I was fresh off the plane from Sydney. She’d relocated from Edinburgh to work at Sotheby’s on Bond Street. Her maiden name was St John. Not pronounced as it sounds. It is pronounced “Sin Gin”. Rowan Atkinson make a ‘dog’s dinner’ out of the surname in the Richard Curtis film Four Weddings and a Funeral.  Hilarious wedding scene where he is the vicar, and he repeatedly mispronounces the groom’s name.

My landlady, Lucy Hurst-Brown (double barreled of course), was adamant that Nicky and I would not get on, as we were too different: chalk and cheese.

Our first meeting was on a Sunday afternoon. I was lonely and cold, and had been watching television in the sitting room. I remember the first programme was Only Fools and Horses, which I’d never seen in Oz. It was the one where Del Boy and the gang hang chandeliers in a stately home, and they come crashing down. I laughed out loud. It became a fav tv show. The second program was a David Attenborough documentary on moles. In a deadpan voice he described how the male and female moles would find each other in a dark tunnel and copulate. The moles were screeching away and violently wrestling each other during his commentary. It was the contrast between his deadpan voice and the dramatic visual that riveted me. My first lesson in British understatement.

Geoff, Nicky and me at Frere Street, our flat in Battersea

Nicky had been away for the weekend. At the end of the 80s, single Sloanes invariably left London over the weekend. Nicky is tall, elegant, slender and has a cut glass accent. I am short, blonde (not natural anymore) and, at the time, I was tomboyish. We hit it off immediately. My first words to her were along the lines of, “Strewth, it’s cold in this house. Do you know how to turn on the fire?” Unbeknownst to me, Lucy only ever allowed it to be on if she had guests. Nicky, who is very law abiding, nevertheless took pity on me and turned it on.

She really took me under her wing. Her room was ordered and neat, with watercolours of Scotland, painted by her grandfather, hanging on the walls. My room had nothing in it. I just chucked the contents of my suitcase in the cupboard. Occasionally I would return home to find her white teddy bear “Fluffy” sitting up on my pillow case. Nicky felt sorry that I lived such a minamalist life. Sloanes adored knick-knacs back in the 80s and 90s. The more the merrier. They believed that clutter made things cosy.  

Nicky would always let me have the first bath. And I left it in a tip. Never rinsed it out, and left greasy remnants of blue Fengel bath oil for her. She made me Mighty White toast every morning with marmalade – a new taste for me. And then we rushed to catch the train. She would stride out, and I would almost have to run to keep up. Once on, I would chat away like a kookaburra at the top of my lungs, and she would indulge me until one day she said, “Sandra, people don’t talk on trains. They read the paper.” I had so much to learn.

So today I’m back up to London. Geoff and I are going to attend a ‘renewal of wedding vows’, and there will be a lot of old friends there. Then more friends for dinner.

Hello… So I had a dream last night. I woke up and thought that if I had a blog site it would be good place to share it. And then that got me thinking, “Why not do a blog?”

I am half way through a stalled book: Confessions of a Sloane Sheila, about an Australian, Matilda, who falls in love with a Viscount, but she doesn’t know he’s a Viscount when she falls in love with him. They meet at a bar at the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney, down by Circular Quay, on a Friday night after work.

A bit like Mary falling in love with Prince Frederick of Denmark, and becoming Princess Mary, and then giving birth to princes and princesses, and living in a castle in Copenhagen.  The story goes that Fred chatted up Mary in a pub in Sydney during the 2000 Olympics. She didn’t know who he was, so she fell in love with the real him; before she knew he had all the goodies. And now she wears a crown and speaks Danish I guess. So she can actually understand Danish Noir television, like Borgen and The Killing, without reading the subtitles.

I’m digressing. I often ‘go walkabout’, so you will just have to learn to bear with me.

So, I am a middle aged female – Sandra. I’m from a nondescript suburb in Sydney.  As a child and teenager, my skin was scorched by the Australian sun. I often had green hair from swimming in over-chlorinated pools which would then get bleached out in the sea water at the beach. 

Stanley (Stan the Man) and Beverley (Bev) – Australians tend to shorten words, e.g., arvo for afternoon etc., are my parents, and I have a brother, Shaun, who was a surfer Adonis in his prime.

I trained as a lawyer in Sydney.  At 26 years of age I met Geoffrey Wilmot at a wedding, at the Hurlingham Club, in London. He was the best man. I was the bridesmaid. We got married and moved to Clapham. We had two children, Anna and Hugo. And then we moved to Chelsea. Not the posh end near Peter Jones, but down near World’s End in Limerston Street. 

After Geoff changed jobs in 2013, we sold our Chelsea house and bought an old butcher’s shop in Fulham (the blood had gone) and an Old Rectory in Hampshire, and then I almost killed myself overseeing the renovations. I have dabbled in the world of interior design. Without formal training, I decided that it was unwise to start a business.

So that is my potted background. The rules of the blog are that I should try to write no more than one page, or you will get bored, and I will digress. I should tell you what happened the day before and what is about to happen in the next twenty four hours, and then I’ll report on how it turned out. I will have weekends off, or I might go loopy.

You will learn about the first half of my life in Australia, the Australian years, and the next half in Britain, married to a toff. So there will be flashbacks. And you will get to glimpse how an Aussie Sheila has coped in the land of the Sloanes. 

Help, I am almost at the end of the page… So in the dream, I discovered that I was in Brazil. I was living with a family in a poor area. Their car, in the garage, turned into a bed at night. Their daughter explained to me that people who lived in the area where the street numbers started with “190” were wealthy.  There were three districts: the rich one, the middle one and the poor one. And you were prohibited from building a nice house in the bottom two, so the houses never changed, and everyone got stuck where they were.  What does it mean? 

I am at the Old Rectory at the moment. A landscape man is going to come and give me a quote on a fence that’s fallen over. And I am off to Winchester to see Anna’s godmother for lunch, and tonight I have training with the C team at Steep Tennis Club. So I am over one page, but it is the first blog!!!