You were in your important BBC meeting this afternoon, so you won’t have felt the strong warm breeze – ‘A godsend for sports day,’ parents were saying to each other. I thought that even if a God existed he’d be a little tied up with starving people in Africa or abandoned orphans in Eastern Europe to worry about providing free air-conditioning for Sidley House’s sack race.

The sun shone on the white lines painted on the grass; the whistles hanging around the teachers’ necks glinted; the children’s hair was shiny-bright. Touchingly too-big feet on small legs bounced on the grass as they did the one-hundred-metre dash, the sack race, the obstacle course. You can’t really see the school in summer time, those huge pollarded oaks hide it from view, but I knew a reception class was still in there and I thought it was a shame the youngest children couldn’t be out enjoying the summer afternoon too.

Adam was wearing his ‘I am 8!’ badge from our card this morning – just this morning. He came dashing up to me, that little face of his beaming, because he was off to get his cake from school right now! Rowena had to get the medals so was going with him; Rowena who was at Sidley House with Jenny all those moons ago.

As they left, I looked around to see if Jenny had arrived. I’d thought that after her A-level disaster she should immediately start revision for her retakes, but she still wanted to work at Sidley House to pay for her planned trip to Canada. Strange to think I minded so much.