Sunday the sun was out and it seemed the people living on their canal boats, sitting and nattering and sailing on their canal boats while the coots paddled by, these were the luckiest in the world. Maria was in town from Saint Joe, Michigan – “I want to do what the Londoners do on Sunday,” she’d said, and my mind had drawn a blank, for I know a Londoner who goes to church in a theatre that says “We Will Rock You”, I know a Londoner who sits downstairs at Maggie’s with a neverending pint, I know a Londoner who studies, who picnics, who watches the game, who heads for the sales, who takes the train to Cambridge, who makes waffles, who goes to the market, who pats small dogs, who does nothing at all, just lets Sunday lap at her feet – Maria was in town, and we strolled along the towpath of the Regent’s Canal, its water rippled and green. Down the street at the Charles Lamb, they’d spread out the sand for petanque games. There was a table in the sun for us, and the Sunday paper, and Mascha the pub dog lay down to let her tummy be scratched. And when the summer fruits trifle arrived with three small spoons, well – what with the cream oozing white down into the red fruit compote, we knew who the luckiest people in the world were.

The blue skies have been good to us these last few days – though last night I read that the weather forecasters are reporting that summer’s officially going to be “rubbish” – and yesterday we walked, me and Olive, across the Waterloo Bridge to Dr Zhivago at the BFI. You have heard the name, I know, but have you seen the film? No, have you really seen the film? In wide chairs that lean back, and on a large screen once the grand red velvet curtains part? We did not know what we were in for until the man with a microphone stepped out, up front, at 7:30 and said, “Just to tell you the format of tonight’s performance–” “There is a format?” I whispered to Olive, and he clicked his phone open to look at the clock. “There will be no food available by the time this is over,” he said. But, after grumbling our way through the overture, so swiftly we were caught up in Russia, our hunger sated, so quickly we were swept up in Omar Sharif’s Zhivago, and the wide-eyed blond – Lara – every man kept falling in love with, in poetry and revolution, unending landscapes and unforgiving winters, in thick furs and in candlelight through frozen windows, in the ice palace in the Urals, in the horses whose bells jangled when they galloped.

Truly there was no food for ready money by the time it was over. We whizzed by Burger King on the 243 bus and came home, ravenous, for a rummage-around standing-up picnic in the kitchen: slices of saucisson, an eighth of reblochon, the last bit of stinky vacherin, and teaspoonfuls of sweet banana jam straight from the fridge. It was past midnight by then and we had the windows open, like the jammiest people in the world.