The weather makes it easy

Ok let's get it out the way - in many ways I am an extremely shallow person and I make no bones about it. My primary motivation for the move, besides the shortening distance to India and family, is the weather. There I've said it - I care about the weather. I must be British. I want to live in the heat and I don't mind the torrential downpours very day or few days because after they beat down on the green lush earth I hear the sun comes out. without. fail.

I know it's silly being so hellbent on living somewhere warm and truth be told my tolerance for winter has increased. And I have a stellar collection of overcoats. Classics, heavy and timeless, offering all the warmth for a range of occasions that winter brings. But chance and choice being offered I'd rather have a heat headache than a miserable winter mood. Looking at grey drizzle torture dripping rain does not my ideal life make.

The past few weeks, almost as if to taunt me, the weather has been brilliant. Just the perfect yellow shade of sunshine bouncing off this beautiful city, it's old and new architecture complementing each other. In winter and particularly on rainy days I find the old buildings look a bit sad and the difference between the old and new a bit jarring. But not these two weeks, as if my eyes have re-calibrated themselves mellow.

I've had bus rides and park walks and a steady sunshine with a whispering breeze on my back. I've had perfect strangers smile and tube rides on empty trains. All this is usual, factors of September weather and my child in school, but I'm seeing it anew I think, trying to capture it before we go.

A grey morning of drizzle and forecast of gales over the next few days has thumped me back from the sunny London dream. I remember what it is that I am looking forward to. Sun sun sun.

I've shipped my stellar winter overcoat collection to Singapore. It should still be in style when we come back to these winters in a decade or so.