Stradella Road, Some Aperols, and the Retirement of a Remarkable Man

There is a particular kind of March where you sit down to write and realise that the last twelve months have been so relentlessly full that you don’t quite know where to start, and then find yourself starting with the thing you least expected to be writing about: a house. Specifically, our house. Specifically, the one we’ve just bought on Stradella Road in Herne Hill, and which we will actually be in by May.

We found it last autumn after two years of viewings that were wrong in exactly the right ways — each one teaching me something I didn’t know I wanted until a house didn’t have it. Stradella Road is a five-bedroom Edwardian semi with a garden that is considerably larger than anything two people whose daughter has just left for university strictly need, and which I fell in love with on the first viewing and have been making plans for ever since. Richard has already located a local craft brewing group. I have identified three cafes, two yoga studios, and an eatery in Brixton Market that I intend to work through systematically once we’re in. Herne Hill was Richard’s idea originally — the trains into the City, the green, the market on a Saturday morning — and he was right, which I mention because he doesn’t always get the credit he deserves for being right.

Exchange is in May. Which means this is the last post written from the Horsham house. It feels worth noting, even though we’ll be back constantly — my parents are here, Claire and Sasha are here, and Horsham is still the kind of place that holds you gently even when you’ve moved on.

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The House Without Gemma

Gemma started at Exeter in September. Business and Spanish, which is both entirely sensible and quietly hilarious given that she spent the better part of her childhood loudly insisting she was going to live in New Zealand, not pursue a career in European commerce. She chose Exeter because of the campus and the sports facilities and because — and she said this with enough directness that I suspected she’d been sitting on it for a while — it was far enough from home to feel like somewhere new but close enough to get back to if she needed to. I found this both reasonable and slightly wounding in the honest way that things your children say sometimes are.

She likes it. That’s the main thing. She’s playing hockey for the university second team, which she describes as “competitive but manageable,” which in Gemma-speak means she is comfortably the best player on the pitch in most matches and is being polite about it. She texts me on Sundays with some variation on: “I’m fine, weather there, the Warriors lost again.”

The Horsham house has been very quiet since September. This is not a complaint. But it is a different kind of quiet to the one I’d expected — not peaceful exactly, more like a held breath. I walk past her bedroom door in the morning and there’s a half-second where I forget, and then I remember, and then I get on with things. It happens less often now than it did in October. I suspect the move to Herne Hill will reset the whole thing cleanly, which is probably part of why I’m so keen to get there.

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Summer 2018, Briefly

The World Cup happened. England happened at the World Cup, specifically the semi-final against Croatia, which happened to coincide with a work river cruise on the Thames — a afternoon spent afloat with colleagues in varying states of hope, watching the skyline go by, before we disembarked at Waterloo to find a screen. I have rarely seen colleagues so collectively invested in something. I am not, historically, a football person. But there is something about Gareth Southgate as a human being that compels you to want things to go well for him, and also he does look very good in a waistcoat. The Croatia game was a specific kind of heartbreak that I suspect anyone who watched it will carry for a while. The cruise home was quieter than the cruise out.

In July, Richard decided — with the enthusiasm of a man who has never queued for anything in his professional life and finds the prospect charming in the abstract — that we should queue for Wimbledon tickets properly. Which is why I found myself sitting on Wimbledon Park Golf Course at twenty-to-six on a Saturday morning, in a baking field, surrounded by people with folding chairs and a commitment to the British queuing tradition that I found both impressive and slightly alarming. The guidebook about the Queue is real. There is an official guidebook. We got in. There was Pimm’s. There were strawberries and cream and approximately no shade and a great deal of sun, and the tennis was excellent. I wore factor fifty and was glad I did. Richard was not wearing factor fifty and was also glad I had it.

August brought the Peak District — a fundraising hike with colleagues for CRASH, the construction industry’s homelessness charity, which I mention because it’s an excellent cause and because forty-two kilometres and sixty thousand steps in a day produces a kind of bone-level tiredness that a glass of cold sauvignon barely touches. We had a downpour near the end that came in sideways and filled my waterproof walking shoes (which are, it turns out, equally good at keeping water out and keeping water in). I was sharing a tent with a younger colleague who had not previously encountered the concept of a fly sheet, so we improvised with a tarpaulin and a series of layered bin liners, which kept us alive if not precisely comfortable. I also have a colleague, lovely woman, tremendous conversationalist, who smokes heavily and had additionally overindulged the night before. She walked forty-two kilometres with a considerable hangover. We were one of the last groups back. I remain in awe of her determination, if not her pre-event choices.

The Kensington Project

My Chelmsford development reached practical completion in late 2018, and I moved onto something considerably more rarefied: a luxury residential development in Kensington for a Malaysian developer — the property arm of an ultra-high-net-worth individual. Multi-storey basement, apartments selling north of ten million pounds, Mace as contractor, beautiful interiors throughout. It is, without question, a step up from Beaulieu, and one I’m thoroughly enjoying.

In early August the Malaysian principals came over to London and we hosted a lunch at the architect’s private dining rooms in Brixton — a beautiful space, excellent food, the kind of lunch where conversation moves between work and the general pleasures of London with the ease of people who are well-fed and not in a hurry. I found myself having a very enjoyable chat with one of the guests about children, family, how much he enjoyed the city, where he was staying. He mentioned Holland Park, which I noted was a lovely area, and I offered a few restaurant recommendations with the confidence of someone who knows Kensington reasonably well. He smiled in a particular way and mentioned that he owned several properties in London and that Holland Park was simply his preference. It dawned on me, slightly too slowly, that I had been discussing the neighbourhood with the billionaire himself rather than a member of his team. I recovered. Mostly. The project continues.

Sorrento and Positano

Late August, Richard and I finally did the Amalfi coast, which had been on my list for years and which delivered entirely. Sorrento first — wandering the streets, far too much gelato, glorious seafood, afternoons spent getting quietly magnificent on cocktails at beachside bars in the manner of people who have earned it. Then Positano, which is the kind of place that rewards you simply for showing up.

The highlight was the Path of the Gods — we took a taxi up to Bomerano and walked the Sentiero degli Dei down to the coast, which I would recommend to anyone with functional knees, good footwear, and a tolerance for steps that seem to go on slightly longer than initially advertised. The views along the Amalfi coast are the kind that make you stop mid-step. We finished at a beach club in Arienzo, where we had Aperol spritzes in the sun and ran up a tab generous enough that the owner offered us a ride back to Positano by tender rather than on foot. We accepted. It was the correct decision.

Christmas, and East London with Gemma

Christmas at my parents’ in Horsham, which was exactly what it should be. Tom and Sarah were there, and John and Priya — Priya expecting in May, which is enormously exciting for all of us and particularly for Gemma, who will have a cousin on the Atherton side for the first time and is already planning what kind of influence she intends to be. The answer, based on available evidence, is a very good one.

Between Christmas and New Year, Gemma and I did a couple of days in London together — we’ve made a small tradition of this, the two of us, and I’m glad we have. This year: a self-guided tour of the Shoreditch street art, which was considerably more absorbing than I’d expected. East London has built its own sub-culture with great conviction — good coffee, excellent bakeries, thrift shops, more ironic facial hair per square metre than anywhere else in the city. We started the morning at Ozone, the Allpress café on Leonard Street, where the barista was a Kiwi and opened with a flat white that reminded me specifically of Auckland on a Saturday morning, which was both lovely and slightly disorienting before nine o’clock. The graffiti was extraordinary — whole building-sides of it, political and playful in equal measure. Gemma photographed most of it. I photographed the coffee.

February

Richard and I went to the Brooklands Museum in February, which I went to with the moderate enthusiasm of someone accompanying her husband to something and came away from genuinely interested. The history of the place is extraordinary — the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit, later a wartime aircraft factory, now a beautifully kept museum of British motoring and aviation.

We spent a long time with a former Concorde stewardess who was hosting that day and who had the kind of stories you hope you’ll encounter on a quiet February Saturday: the sound of Concorde crossing the sound barrier, the particular quality of the transatlantic flight at that speed, the camaraderie of the crew. She mentioned, more quietly, that many of her colleagues had had significant health issues later in life and wondered about the radiation exposure at altitude. It landed the way those things do — sitting alongside the glamour rather than cancelling it.

We also got to the Design Museum in Kensington, which I’d been meaning to do since it reopened in its current location and which, for someone whose professional life involves the intersection of function and aesthetics on a daily basis, was genuinely satisfying. The permanent collection alone is worth the visit. I came out wanting to redesign several things, which I understand is the correct response.

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Auckland: Geoffrey’s Retirement Dinner

A few weeks ago, Richard and I flew back to New Zealand. This trip had a specific occasion: Geoff’s retirement dinner, which he’d been promising for two years and had finally, properly organised. A restaurant in Ponsonby, twenty-odd people, the kind of evening that becomes a genuine account of a life.

We flew in the Saturday before, which gave us time to do what I now do when I’m back: a day at Tawharanui, the flat whites, the drive past the Mt Eden streets without stopping, the Bayleys visit, catching up with the handful of people who are still there each time. The list shifts slightly every trip. The ones who remain, I’m glad of.

The dinner itself was everything Geoff’s dinners are: slightly too much wine, exactly the right amount of speeches. The ASB years, the Matakana years, the rugby years, each given their proper weight. His partner Helen — who I’d met briefly before but hadn’t had proper time with — is wonderful in the specific way people are wonderful when they’ve clearly made someone genuinely happy without making a performance of it. At some point his former deputy at ASB stood up and said that Geoffrey had spent twenty-four years in New Zealand and had never once given the impression of a man who wished he were somewhere else. The room laughed because it was exactly right. I thought about it on the flight home.

Tauranga

After the dinner we drove down to Tauranga for four nights — we’d been invited by Leanne and Mike, our old Milton Road neighbours, who’d moved to Papamoa as they downsized. I’d never sat in Tauranga properly before. The Bay of Plenty in late summer is extraordinary in the quiet way that places are when they don’t need to advertise themselves: the volcanic cone of Mauao rising above the harbour at Mount Maunganui, the estuary, the long surf beach. We walked and ate and did very little else, which was precisely right.

I bought a piece of pottery from a woman in a small gallery in the Mount who’d been making the same forms for thirty years and who talked about her work with the settled confidence of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing and why. It’s on the windowsill in the Horsham house now, in the light. It’ll come to Stradella Road in May. Some things travel well.

We stopped in Sydney for two nights on the way back. I always forget Sydney. I should stop forgetting Sydney.

The Question That Won’t Quite Go Away

On the flight from Sydney to Dubai — hours of dark over the Indian Ocean, Richard asleep and me not — I found myself doing the thing I’ve been doing with increasing frequency since that first dinner with Steve in 2017. Running the calculation. Not seriously. Or not only seriously. Turning it over: what it would mean, whether the timing could ever work, whether it would still be Auckland in any meaningful sense after everything that’s changed.

Richard knows I think about it. We’ve had versions of the conversation. His view is that London is where his career is and that he’s not opposed to the idea in the abstract but that in the concrete it’s more complicated than it looks. This is a reasonable view. I hold it alongside my own, which is that I spent fifteen years building a professional life in Auckland and left it at the peak of it, and that I have been back three times in six years and each time the city has felt like something unfinished rather than something closed.

Gemma, when I mentioned it obliquely, said: “Mum. Obviously.” and went back to her phone. I’m not sure what that means exactly. I think it means she would go. I think it might mean she’s been thinking about it longer than I have.

I’m not going anywhere. Not immediately — not with a new house to move into, not with Gemma in her first year at Exeter, not with a project I’m genuinely absorbed in. But the question is sitting on the windowsill next to the Tauranga pottery, in the light. I’m not putting it away.

Gemma texted at the weekend to say the Warriors had won their opening game, and also that she’d attempted my mother’s lemon drizzle cake and it was “pretty good but not the same.” She’s right. It’s never the same as Mum’s. We have both accepted this.