Summer Term 2025

July to September 2025

Summer term is very much a term of 2 halves. The first 8 weeks is dominated by studies, exam prep and exams themselves; the last 4 by colouring in, school trips and end of year celebrations. This all plays out against a backdrop of increasingly long days, blooming trees and, of course, bucketloads of cricket.

It is when London wakes up from the 97 month long winter and starts to come alive. When the weather is good (and it has been great this year) its a lovely time to be here.

So what if the days are still cold. At least it’s not dark, and you’ve got to remember to pack several jumpers and/or puffer jackets if you want to watch an evening cricket match.

The first ‘working half’ of summer term felt particularly busy this year. Not just because of visitors, (Jim and Angela and Judith), west end plays/date days and of course Eurovision catch up with the cousins and the very exciting visit to Ted Lasso’s Richmond!

Studies and exams were getting more full on – particularly for Ellie and Jessie. Fortunately, they were also getting their heads around the idea of exam prep, which limited the pre exam stress to a manageable 12 out of 10. Exam stress typically peaks in the May half term ‘holidays’ (read: study week) and this year was no exception. We were getting better at carving out this time for study (no travelling in May) and the new discipline showed – with all 3 girls getting excellent report cards this year. Now that we’ve been through the ‘transition period’ and they understand the UK system a bit better, they are all starting to thrive here academically which is lovely to see.

As if that wasn’t enough, Jessie decided to trial for an ‘occasional place’ at Alleyn’s – a daunting task considering the very large number of applicants for the handful of open spots. A fair amount of exam prep, a strong performance in the group activities and an unsurprisingly charming interview with the Form Master meant that she said goodbye to Sydenham High at the end of the Summer Term and transitioned to Alleyn’s in September. Sydenham has been great for Jessie, but Alleyn’s feels like a wonderful opportunity for her and we’re excited to see what that brings.

Sienna is just steam rolling her way through life. It was her turn to go to Osmington Bay for camp with school. A much anticipated event with much discussion around dorm rooms and outfits. She was playing piano in the school music cafe performances and attending parties galore.

Liz’s 3 board roles kept her busy (alongside the broader role of Dogwalker in Chief; Chief Child and Dog Psychologist and CEO of Everything on the home front) including a couple of days in Barcelona for one of her boards in May.

Ant was juggling his normal portfolio and also working through the various business cases and interviews to formally transfer from the Australian partnership to the UK. After 4 interviews and more background checks than I could mention, we received the welcome news that the transfer had been approved and we would be transferring over in September. Finally having the clarity of where we’ll be for the medium term, and to give everyone clarity on where they’ll be at school has been really welcome.

This also gives us the clarity to be able to look to buy a house here – which will be an important piece of the puzzle to help everyone to really feel settled. Sadly this requires a heap of effort and luck to turn the aspiration into a reality. We have started the search and at one stage it looked like we had hit the jackpot with the first house we saw, but sadly this fell through, and we’re now back to constant online searches, relationships with a myriad of estate agents and trying to fit in house viewings around our already challenging schedules. No doubt this will dominate a good chunk of our free time as we move into Autumn.

Alongside all this was the, at times, overwhelming cricket schedule. The English season is much shorter than Australia (the kids club season runs 3 months, adults and County also run through the summer break) but this means that the kids often play several matches a week. Times 3-4 players in the family. Equals a lot of cricket.

This year Sienna was playing for Dulwich 11s and Kent West Region; Jessie was playing for Dulwich 13s, in a really strong team that threatened to win everything it entered; Ellie was playing for Dulwich and Kent 15s County; and Ant was playing occasionally for Dulwich and more regularly for a Wednesday night social league. The season was really successful overall – Sena taking lots of wickets (top bowler in the North Kent League in 2025 getting a 1.89 average) and massively improving her batting for both teams;

Jessie cutting her teeth on captaining a team plus having a great year in her first year of ‘you’re out you’re out’ cricket + Ellie topped the batting tables in the Surrey League and establishing herself as an opening bat for Kent (including her first county 50).

So a great year… although fair to say that we were all pretty ready for the season to finish by the time the last game came around in mid August – there had been a lot of games and everyone needed a break (that is until trials in September and winter nets start in October!). Sports in this country do not stay in their lanes and run all through the year.

… but I’m really jumping around time wise here. Let’s go back a bit and pick out some chronological highlights –

Jessie celebrated her 13th birthday (ouch) in May with a trip to the Natural History Museum and lunch at Flatiron,

followed by a sleepover with Matilda and Pricey; followed subsequently by an Escape Room party with another group of mates. It was literally the Festival of Jessie for a couple of weeks there … but I guess you could argue that this is no different from any other time period????

To celebrate the end of exams, Ellie finally got her braces off. Luckily the almost three years worth of orthodontist bills and discomfort were worth it, and she now has lovely straight teeth (a pretty massive change from where we started from), and she could now pass for anything from 15 to 25 years old. Slightly terrifying.

After the exams Liz and I went to Africa for an amazing 8 days … but that’s the topic for another blog.

… and then suddenly it was the end of the school year. Ellie went off to Berlin on a school trip and we wondered where the term had gone. Life was moving way too quickly.

As soon as Ellie came back from Berlin we bundled her into the car and took off down to Cornwall for the first break of the summer holidays. We had heard lots of great things about Cornwall, but to be honest we hadn’t really believed any of them.

The beaches are great! Really? You know we’re Australian, right?

The water isn’t cold at all! How would you define cold? We thought.

The food is amazing! We’d been to English seaside towns before and hadn’t been blown away.

Still, wilting under the weight of positive feedback, we decided to give it a crack. We booked 6 days in a cottage just outside Newquay and booked the kids in to 5 days of surf school – fully expecting they would last approximately 15 mins and never surf again.

We left London at 4am on a perfect spring morning, terrified by the stories of days long summer traffic jams that basically stretch from Dulwich to Cornwall. By the time the kids stirred at 7am for breakfast we were already mostly there. Either we’d got lucky, or our proven ‘leave early’ strategy worked in the UK as well as it did in Australia.

We were running so early that we stopped for a hike on the stunning Dartmoor, to give Gus a break and allow Liz to explore the setting of one of her erotic-period-drama-psedo-porno shows – Poldark. Both seemed satiated by the hike up to the ‘Cheesewring’ and the wonderful views over the moor.

We then made our way into Newquay and Fistral Beach – and were immediately taken by the beautiful, flat sandy beach running between two headlands with perfect waves lining up to the shore and a gentle offshore wind. To top it off, it was all dog friendly (as was everything we went to in the entire area). These were not Kent coast beaches, and we were suitably impressed.

We went down to the water to feel how cold it was. We’d been to Portugal in the middle of summer and felt how freezing the water was when it was 40 degrees outside. This was bound to be freezing.

Nope. 18 degrees – about the same as Sydney in November. Wetsuit weather, sure – but absolutely fine. Again we were needing to acknowledge that our preconceptions were just wrong.

We quickly grabbed some lunch and Ant went for a surf – the beach is really flat so the waves break relatively softly – perfect for beginners or those who haven’t surfed for a year.

After this, we made our way back to our beautiful house in the hinterland, overlooking the lovely Gannel Estuary.

Cornwall Day 1 had massively over delivered.

For the rest of the week the mornings started with Liz, Gus and I heading to the beach, playing ball and having a morning surf. The girls then did lessons each morning whilst Ant juggled work and time at the beach.

The girls hadn’t surfed for the 2.5 years since we’d been in the UK, and were pretty nervous to start. Luckily the conditions were perfect for learning and the surf coaches were great, and they were soon back into it. Within the first lesson Ellie was back out on the break catching unbroken waves and within a couple of days Jessie was out there with her. Sienna was confidently riding unbroken waves in the middle. The coaches were great, and a number of the ‘group lessons’ we booked ended up being ‘privates’ because no one else signed up. Most importantly they all absolutely loved it – probably more than any other time they’d been surfing – which was lovely to see.

To be fair, the weather was pretty variable whilst we were there. It rained some of most days we were there, but it really didn’t matter. Fistral Beach was closed the 2nd day we were there due to 80 km/h winds and washed out 8 foot surf. Luckily there’s another beach (Towan) completely sheltered from the prevalent westerly winds in the harbour which is 2 feet whilst Fistral is 8ft… so perfect for us.

When we weren’t surfing, the area is packed with wonderful coastal walks around some absolutely stunning beaches and headlands (perfect for Gus), golf driving ranges and excellent restaurants. And there was no where Gus couldn’t go. Perfect.

Our 6 days there was way too short. We pushed our departure back as late as we could on the Saturday to get one final surf in before heading back to London to meet with Fi, Hannah and Sam for dinner; even hitting some traffic on the way home could not dampen our mood.

We loved it so much we’ve already booked for another weekend at the end of September.

Who knew the UK could do beaches so well?

And how come it took us more than 10 years of living here to work that out?

Following our Cornwall extravaganza we had a week or so in London for the kids to catch up with their friends and for Sena to do some tennis camps.

Ant went off to Geneva for a fun weekend with Matty, Alan and Daz which was a wonderful reminder of how lucky we are to have such good friends over here, and how important it is to make dedicated time to spend together. But not too frequently, because recovering from these catch ups is not getting easier with age!

As soon as Ant was back from Geneva we drove up to Oakham for a county festival where Kent played Surrey, Yorkshire and Hampshire in 5 games over 3 days. This was a residential thing for Ellie – so she stayed on site at the Oakham School (famous for being where Chris Broad went to school) and we got a wonderful farmhouse 15 mins down the road. It was a fun couple of days watching some excellent standard of cricket (these girls are getting good now) – even if most of Ant’s time was taken up on calls (at least being done from the side of a cricket field!).

Working from the side of a cricket field became the theme of the next 10 days or so, as both Ellie and Sienna had a series of matches on work days all over southern England. We are so fortunate that both our jobs are flexible enough to allow us to cater for both work + taxi support + lead cheerleaders at the same time!

The summer holidays were moving quickly now. Suddenly it was early August and there were only 3 weeks left.

We took the girls out for an ‘appreciation evening’ – which included a visit to Westminster

followed by a swanky dinner at Sticks and Sushi in Victoria. Everyone had to give a presentation to include:

What have you achieved this year
What are you proud of in terms of your achievements
What are your 3 big goals for next year
1 thing that you are most proud of about everyone else
A quote

The purpose of this was to help the kids acknowledge all that they have achieved this year, instead of ‘walking past’ their achievements and rushing on to the next thing (which, let’s face it, we’re all really good at doing). With some pressure and plenty of initial pushback, they all prepared for the task and gave wonderful presentations – which were suitably rewarded with some excellent food!

To round off this phase of the summer holidays, Liz went on a series of ‘mummy daughter’ days out …. Vintage clothes shopping and Vietnamese with Jessie, movie and burger with Sienna and shopping and Din Tai Fung with Ellie!

As is our usual end of summer schedule, we planned a trip to Zakinthos, Greece for a week with Alan, Ana, Matty, Ale, Dan and Dolce. This is the one holiday of the year where there are no expectations, nothing to learn and no pressure to do anything. Except play table tennis, classic catches and eat BBQ fish. There would be diving, snorkelling at Porto Limnionas and boat trips on offer and of course uno, poker and late night chats.

We arrived home on the Saturday evening of the August long weekend. We said hello to Gus – despite how much we trash talk him, we do secretly love him – and went to bed for the night.

At 5am Sena came into our room complaining of a sore tummy. She showed us where it hurt, and a bit of googling confirmed our fears of a potential appendicitis. Off to Kings College Hospital we went – feeling grateful even then that we weren’t doing this in Zakinthos (much as we loved the place).

We were seen immediately and spend the next 5 hours having varying tests to confirm what we already knew – that she had appendicitis.

She was immediately put on antibiotics to manage the infection, but then had to wait for a slot in the theatres. Unfortunately considering it was a long weekend with only emergency staff on, a slot was a pretty variable concept. There was no doubt she was an emergency case, but she was being managed, so not as ‘emergency’ as others who, quite reasonably, took precedent.

It wasn’t until Monday evening when her slot finally arrived she was able to have the operation (on mummy’s birthday) and have the offending 5 grams of otherwise useless organ removed. As far as we can tell, the only thing she won’t be able to do is properly digest grass, she she should be OK. On the bright side, the delay in getting theatre time meant that we transitioned from one twenty-something year old doctor at the end of a 48 hour shift (and looking every minute off it) to another twenty-something year old doctor who looked relatively fresher.

Sena was in hospital until the Wednesday – not massively comfortable considering it was a post operative paediatric ward with 6 beds in Sena’s area (so pretty noisy) but she did get excellent care throughout. So 5 days later she was recovering at home with chocolates from Ariana and much attention and love from the whole family.

Not entirely the relaxed run in back to school that we were planning… but again we were very grateful to have this happen 10 mins from home rather than on a Greek Island!

Autumn Term is a beautiful time of year in London. It’s already looking busy, with a new school year (and a new school for Jessie),