To think that 72 hours ago, this was my view… of the increas­ingly dilap­i­dated nature of our out­build­ings at Red Gate Farm.  We have our summer’s work cut out for us, repair­ing the chicken house and wood­shed.  We left in a flurry of laun­dry, scrub­bing up the house so it will be wel­com­ing to any guests who might want to use it as a retreat over the win­ter and spring.  It always seems so hard to believe sum­mer will ever come, when we leave behind a crunchy lawn, a frozen brook.

Before that brook thaws and fills with its sum­mer fam­ily of tad­poles and min­nows, we have six months of life in Lon­don to accom­plish.  We are back “home,” firmly ensconced once again in the famil­iar house, sur­rounded by friendly cats who missed us ter­ri­bly.  I am hap­pily again cook­ing with my beloved Aga whose con­stant source of warmth is a mas­sive kitty-magnet this win­ter season.

After two days of Recov­ery By Nap, Avery is back at school, how­ever reluc­tantly, and I have spent two gru­elling days at Lost Prop­erty, deal­ing with the dozen or so bags of girls’ belong­ings that the staff some­how unearthed over the hol­i­days.  Girls streamed in and out, exclaim­ing over beloved objects not seen for months, sigh­ing in dis­ap­point­ment at the sin­gle shoe that has not turned up, the house­keys they are des­per­ate not to con­fess they’ve lost, the Chem­istry notes need “right now for a test!”  They sign out the belong­ings they find, in a mean­ing­less lit­tle folder designed to make them take their respon­si­bil­i­ties a bit more seri­ously.  I know I’m not in Con­necti­cut any­more when I read their names: Ara­bella, Poppy, Flora, Astrid, Pippa.  I love Eng­land, and I love Lost Property.

The suit­cases are unpacked of all their Christ­mas trea­sures, the hol­i­day feel­ing a mil­lion years away, a dream.

Our last days at Red Gate Farm WERE like a dream, filled with vis­its from friends, vis­its to friends, for­ays into puzzle-solving…

John’s mom, back home in Iowa, mir­rored us with her puz­zle, one of my presents to her this Christ­mas, a gift only a grand­mother could love.

It is hard to imag­ine our last peace­ful, beau­ti­ful week of hol­i­day with­out pic­tur­ing a cam­era, or two, in Avery’s hands.  John gave her his old Leica for Christ­mas, then together they bought another cam­era and a macro lens to go with it.  But since these cam­eras depend on actual FILM, I have to wait to show them to you until they are all devel­oped.  Who would have thought the world would go back to film?  Still, I have the results of her exper­i­ments with my cam­era.  She was in heaven, walk­ing the prop­erty with her dad, find­ing magic in the details.

She has such a won­der­ful eye!  Even a hum­ble broken-down ham­mock achieves beauty.

The lit­tle stone puppy who spends the win­ter on the pic­nic table, with his chicken friends, has new dignity.

The hydrangea tree, always lus­cious and cel­e­bra­tory in sum­mer, and draped in rare Christ­mas light dur­ing the hol­i­day, became a sort of sculp­ture, with the barn as background.

There was one sun­set I will never for­get.  The three of us walked all around the house, look­ing at the pink, vulnerable-looking sky with wonder.

Nor­mally I race through my day with­out tak­ing the time — at that moment — to appre­ci­ate what I have.  For once, though, that sun­set evening, I looked at my stal­wart, gen­er­ous hus­band teach­ing our beau­ti­ful daugh­ter to share his pas­sion, and felt happy.  Right then.  I know I’ll never get enough of them, but that evening, I tried.

The most won­der­ful part of the over­whelm­ing, exhaust­ing, exhil­a­rat­ing hol­i­day was hav­ing so much time with Avery.  I know the clock is tick­ing on her time in our house — we spend a lot of time talk­ing about uni­ver­sity these days — so it was a lux­ury like foie gras or a beach vaca­tion, to have her around all the time.

We had one last lunch with dear Jill, Joel and the girls at their local diner (where the wait­ress says, “Hey, Jane and Molly!  Happy New Year!”), and luck­ily Avery had her super cam­era with her.

It is impos­si­ble to believe that we will miss six months of my nieces’ lives before July rolls around.  How they will have changed and grown!  Jane will be the age Avery was when we bought Red Gate Farm.

Life goes by so quickly that I really can’t think about miss­ing so much of Jane’s and Molly’s.  Where did this lit­tle Avery go, anyway?

Nor can I think too much about leav­ing Red Gate Farm behind.  Will we ever see it in the spring or fall again, or only in the intense months of sum­mer and winter?

Anne, David and Kate came along for a bril­liant bagel brunch — Kate’s first bagel! — and a nice long chat, for the first time dur­ing the hol­i­days.  Some­times I think we are too ready to let our inter­ac­tions with our beloved neigh­bors to be short and sweet, with the lux­ury of hav­ing them across the road.

It’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent mood to sit in the sun­shine — with dusty motes show­ing just how hard it is to keep that house clean! — and really dis­cuss pol­i­tics, life, Avery’s upcom­ing sum­mer pho­tog­ra­phy camp, child-raising, how much screen-time is too much for a three-year-old.  No one has ever taken Avery more seri­ously as a real per­son, since she was seven years old, as Anne and David.  Their spe­cial brand of respect for her is irre­place­able, and Kate’s total devo­tion not to be for­got­ten.  We were hav­ing too much fun even to take a picture.

By this point, the last day of our hol­i­days, I was in such a state of happy exhaus­tion that I almost skipped my last bell­ring­ing out­ing.  “Don’t do it just to prove it can’t defeat you,” Avery advised, but I couldn’t help it.  So often I do not want to go — it’s hard and scary and intim­i­dat­ing — but I am never sorry when I do.  It was a bril­liant after­noon of bell­ring­ing in Brew­ster, against the back­drop of another beau­ti­ful sunset.

That place has given me a great deal of hap­pi­ness, as have the peo­ple within it.  Are all bell­ring­ing enthu­si­asts as sim­ply wel­com­ing as I have found?  Watch­ing the really good ringers try a “Lon­don Minor” was com­pletely intim­i­dat­ing.  Never!

One last sup­per in my farm­house kitchen

The Ulti­mate Burger

(makes three)

1 lb bison mince

sprin­kle of Fox Point Seasoning

ripe toma­toes, sliced

red onions, sliced

avo­ca­dos, sliced

dol­lops of blue or goats cheese

dol­lops of crema di car­ciofi e aglio (creamy arti­choke and gar­lic dip)

hand­ful rocket/arugula leaves

3 eggs

toasted whole wheat rolls

In a very hot skil­let, fry the burg­ers to your desired level of done­ness.  At the end of cook­ing, place cheese on top of burg­ers.  Pile every­thing onto the wheat roll, then fry eggs (again, to desired level of done­ness) and top burg­ers with eggs.  Sup­ply vast num­bers of napkins.

*****************

 Of course this burger will ben­e­fit from the egg’s being plucked, as ours were, warm from under the hen owned by the cou­ple who adopted lit­tle Jes­sica the kit­ten two sum­mers ago and given to us with love.  I can’t promise any other egg will taste the same.

Now it is time for me to con­coct an Avery-less sup­per as she spends the evening with friends, this cold, grey Jan­u­ary Lon­don night.  Happy Fri­day the 13th!

Christ­mas — after all the plan­ning, choos­ing, trav­el­ling, envelope-licking, parcel-wrapping, food-shopping and antic­i­pa­tion –finally arrived.  ‘Twas the sea­son of unex­pected knocks on the door, vis­i­tors bring­ing presents on a rush of cold air, blue-flamed logs burn­ing in the fire­place, dozens of can­dles flick­er­ing, cars pulling up into the dri­ve­way and let­ting out the peo­ple we’ve waited months to see.  My beau­ti­ful mother, for example!

What a year she has had.  There has been the sad­ness and anx­i­ety over my father, her adjust­ing to being left alone to deal with the end­less prob­lems our child­hood home has pre­sented her with, and then, last month, a heart scare that brought unex­pected surgery and recov­ery.  My brother and sis­ter have been there to sup­port her through every­thing, but I have been able to see her only twice, wor­ry­ing from afar and feel­ing that awful tug of being very, very far away.  To be able to hug her and chat with her, gos­sip and eat together, made Christ­mas a real gift.  And noth­ing says daugh­ter love like… dev­illed eggs!  Her very favorite.

Mom’s Dev­illed Eggs

(makes 2 dozen)

12 eggs

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 tsp curry powder

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

paprika for dusting

Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water.  Bring to a rolling boil and then turn off heat, cov­er­ing the pan.  Leave eggs in boiled water for 15 min­utes, then drain water and place eggs in a bowl and cover with run­ning cold water for minute or two.  Peel eggs and cut in half length­wise, then remove yolks and place in a small bowl.  Mash with a potato masher and mix in all over ingre­di­ents except paprika.  Arrange egg whites on a plat­ter and spoon the yolk mix­ture into each.  Dust with paprika and serve.

*************

Christ­mas Eve saw all of us gath­ered around in the toasty holiday-ish house, my mother admir­ing the Christ­mas tree with its mass of orna­ments old and new, my mother in law tak­ing loads of pho­tos, John tor­ment­ing Jane (or was it the other way around)…

Between stir­ring things and set­ting the table, I man­aged to get Molly up against the “mea­sur­ing door.”  She’s such a tiny lit­tle sprout.

We ate.  My, how we ate!  Oys­ter stew (I had bought an entire GAL­LON of oys­ters, which sounds insane, but we ate every last one, eventually).

We also had four-cheese mac­a­roni and cheese for the kids, and as a nod to my child­hood tra­di­tions, a pile of rather dread­ful egg rolls.

And I suc­cess­fully lit the hydrangea tree can­dles, very lucky to have hit upon a nearly breeze­less night.

Avery indulged her new pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy, brav­ing the chilly night air.

Anne and David popped over to deliver Kate for a visit with her beloved chum Molly.  Their piano duet added a lot to the Christ­mas Eve festivities.

Christ­mas Day dawned cold and fair — no sign of snow this whole hol­i­day, as a direct result, I think, of John’s mom hav­ing given us all incred­i­bly cool snow­shoes for Christ­mas!  We stare at them long­ingly.  Under the tree were the per­fect presents for and from every­one.  Avery gave me this print.  So, so Avery.

I gave John eye­lashes.  Yes, eye­lashes, for our Fiat Cinque­cento in Lon­don.  Here’s how the reac­tion to that present went:

Me: “You don’t look thrilled.  Don’t you want the car to have eyelashes?”

John: “Well, it feels slightly… emasculating.”

Avery: “Daddy, you drive a Cinque­cento.  That ship has already sailed.”

There were the usual iPhoto books and reg­u­lar books — I gave John a first edi­tion of Vita Sackville-West’s his­tory of her ances­tral home, Knole.  Avery of course got a camera.

Or two cam­eras.  Or three, I for­get.  She and John and John’s mom share the obsession.

John gave me hats for my eggs, as befits a girl who gives her hus­band eye­lashes for his car.

We packed our­selves up and jumped in the car to go to Jill and Joel’s.  About five min­utes into the drive, Avery let out a blood-curdling scream.  “DON’T DO THAT WHEN I’M DRI­VING!” John screeched in return.  “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m really sorry, but what just hap­pened was totally scream-worthy.  A MOUSE just jumped from the back­seat ONTO MY COL­LAR­BONE and ric­o­cheted off onto the floor!”

Every­one screamed.  We pulled off the road and jumped out of the car.  “Open all the doors!”  We stood around in the cold.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to get back in,” John said.  “We have to go; it’s Christmas.”

So we climbed gin­gerly back in and pulled into the road again.

“Awk­ward silence,” Avery said.

About ten min­utes later Rose­mary screamed.

“I didn’t think I would!” she apol­o­gized.  “I thought, ‘If it turns up again, there’s no ele­ment of sur­prise.  We know he’s here.  I won’t scream.’  But it appears to be a reflex!”

“How much longer is this drive?” Avery asked.

It was the longest 40 min­utes of our lives.

We arrived and leaped out of the car, leav­ing all the doors open and reveal­ing our story to our bewil­dered audi­ence.  “Put Snow­ball in the car and shut all the doors,” I sug­gested, refer­ring to their homi­ci­dal cat.  But it was deter­mined that a bet­ter plan was just to leave the doors open as long as pos­si­ble.  John dis­cov­ered a dis­gust­ing mouse nest in the first-aid kit area in the back and cleared it out.  “I think these are our air bags,” he said, ges­tur­ing to the pile of shred­ded nest material.

UGH.

The beauty of Jill’s dec­o­ra­tions washed away all the mou­si­ness, how­ever.  What a gor­geous house.

Christ­mas din­ner was sub­lime, and many more presents exchanged.  Among them my beau­ti­ful new mer­cury glass can­dle­sticks from my sis­ter, which graced our table on Box­ing Day.

We ate our­selves silly — Joel’s per­fect roasted turkey, my cheesy spinach and stuff­ing with fresh sage, sausage and cream, shred­ded pota­toes baked with cream cheese.  Then Jill brought out a pile of notes she’d found in her child­hood closet, writ­ten when she was Avery’s age, and she read them aloud.  Lists like “Things I hate about my life,” and then on the other side a much shorter list, “Things that are OK about my life,” and “Things to Do” which included goals like “Get Chris inter­ested in me” — with a check­mark next to it!  “Get super skinny,” “Be Vale­dic­to­rian” — another check­mark.  We laughed till we cried.

Finally home, on a beau­ti­ful moon­lit night, to see the house nes­tled in the cor­ner of the road, look­ing demure and cozy.

It has been the sort of time when we reap the ben­e­fits of all the rela­tion­ships we sow dur­ing the year.  Liv­ing so far away as we do, it some­times feels daunt­ing to stay close to all the peo­ple who “peo­ple” our life.  The next few days brought vis­its from our friends Mark and Lil­ian, who adopted the kitty Jes­sica two sum­mers ago, and Rol­lie and Judy who laughed till THEY cried over the story of the Car Ride With Santa Mouse.  We vis­ited Young Rol­l­lie and Tri­cia to meet their baby goats, and to see how much Even Younger Rol­lie has grown.

We drove into nearby Ridge­field to Luc’s Cafe to devour piles of frites and exchange Christ­mas greet­ings with our friends Shel­ley and Erik, Cas­san­dra and Rebecca.  Just look what Cas­san­dra made for us.

The most thought­ful gift I can ever imag­ine.  Thank you, Cassandra.

Through all the fes­tiv­i­ties, I looked from my mother to John’s mother, feel­ing ter­ri­bly grate­ful that with all they have been through, they are still here with us to cel­e­brate.  Look at the gor­geous pho­to­graph John’s mom took of the three gen­er­a­tions of my mom’s family.

Many beau­ti­ful images of our hol­i­day came from Avery’s new cam­era!  She has signed up for a pho­tog­ra­phy camp this sum­mer, although I can­not really see how she can learn much more.  She cap­tures so much.

Mom, Andy, Jill and I spent one after­noon together just hang­ing around their house with the two girls, watch­ing high­lights of the year in sports, play­ing board games the girls got for Christ­mas, prepar­ing a huge tray of scal­loped pota­toes to go with the ham I had brought, roast­ing in the oven.  John, his mom, Avery and Joel trooped off to the movies.  The per­fect way for all of us to spend the afternoon.

Finally with many hugs and kisses and “Merry Christ­mas” greet­ings, Mom and Andy went home.  To com­fort us from the sep­a­ra­tion, John and I cel­e­brated our 22nd wed­ding anniversary!

The best way to cel­e­brate was with a long walk across the preser­va­tion land, with our res­i­dent pho­tog­ra­pher on hand to doc­u­ment all the flora.

And to recover from all the Christ­mas food, we made the per­fect savoury dish.

Egg­plant Salsa

(serves 6)

4 tbsps olive oil

2 large egg­plants, peeled and diced

a large white onio, chopped

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

2 large cans whole plum tomatoes

large bunch flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

1 1/2 cups bas­mati rice, steamed

grated Parme­san to sprinkle

Sim­ply saute the egg­plant, onion and gar­lic in the olive oil until soft.  Add toma­toes, squeez­ing them into pieces as you add them.  Sim­mer, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, for at least 1 hour.  At this point the salsa can sit until you want to heat it up to eat it.  The fla­vors improve over time.  When you are ready to eat, add the chopped pars­ley and sea­son to taste.  Serve over steamed rice and top with cheese.

************

This is the per­fect anti­dote to all that stuff­ing and turkey!  And if you need another such idea, how about a mas­sive pot of spinach soup?

Spinach Soup

(serves at least 6)

2 tbsps butter

6 cloves gar­lic, chopped roughly

1 white onion, chopped roughly

2 lbs spinach leaves, washed

pinch fresh nutmeg

4 cups chicken (or duck) stock, or enough to cover about 2/3 of spinach in pot

1/2 cup light cream

Heat but­ter in a  heavy-bottomed pot.  Saute gar­lic and onion until soft, then add spinach and nut­meg and cover with stock.  Sim­mer until spinach is soft, then blitz with a hand blender and add cream.

New Year’s Eve came, and so did Anne and David and Katie, for cas­soulet and ice cream.  And the morn­ing brought an intense desire to turn the house from Christ­mas into New Year’s.  We flew about, pack­ing boxes, drag­ging trees and wreaths into the woods to join those from last year, and the year before that.  John hoovered, John’s mom and I cleaned the sil­ver and moved fur­ni­ture!  And all was tidy and fresh.

And so happy 2012 to all of you, dear read­ers.  May we all look back on 2011 with under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion for its pit­falls and losses, its joys and sor­rows.  I hope the New Year brings you all you wish for.

The Christ­mas sea­son has wrought its usual mir­a­cle and we are safely out of the chaos of Lon­don and into the chaos of the mad rush toward A Red Gate Farm Christmas.

We arrived in the mid­dle of the night on Fri­day, our jet­lag routed a bit by a suicidal/homicidal dri­ver from JKF.  I was this­close to shout­ing, “Pull over, you lunatic, and let my hus­band drive!”  Finally we descended the exit ramp off the mur­der­ous high­way and onto the quiet coun­try road to the house and I have never been so relieved in my life.  Thank­fully Avery slept right through it, but the hand I had rest­ing on her sweatered, sleep­ing back was sweaty as we emerged from the car into safety.

Rol­lie and Judy had, as always, vis­ited in the after­noon to fill the fridge and turn on heat and lights, and to leave five fra­grant bal­sam wreaths on the front step.  Could we have any bet­ter neigh­bors?  I also sus­pect Anne and David had done some elf work on that sub­ject, so we had food to wel­come us.  And my dears, the relief of see­ing all the house repairs we had wor­ried over in per­fect order!  We have walls and ceil­ings again!  And our deci­sion to leave the laths we found last sum­mer exposed — but plas­tered warmly between — was a bril­liant one.  Just look.

We dumped our suit­cases and inves­ti­gated the state of the bed­rooms.  The good news?  I had made the beds before I locked up and left in Sep­tem­ber.  The bad news?  Some furry friends had taken up res­i­dence in var­i­ous spots — a bath­room towel, the inside of my goose­down slip­per — and left lit­tle tokens of their pres­ence over the autumn.  I hate to think how to express to them that they are not really wel­come at Red Gate Farm.

We fell into bed feel­ing that low­er­ing of blood pres­sure and rais­ing of Christ­mas spirit that always fills us on our first night “home for the holidays.”

The morn­ing revealed a rather bleak, snow­less Con­necti­cut land­scape.  How bare my pre­cious hydrangea looks, before it receives its gifts of Vic­to­rian can­dle holders.

The win­ter­berry is thriv­ing, though.

It’s amaz­ing what I can accom­plish when I get up, jet­lagged, at 6:30 a.m.!  By mid morn­ing we had been to the gro­cery store and unpacked all our Christ­mas gifts and clothes.  We popped Avery into the car and drove to Judy’s brother’s gor­geous farm, perched high above the Con­necti­cut val­ley, to find Judy her­self in res­i­dence con­coct­ing price­less wreaths and garlands.

“You made it!” she said, giv­ing me her usual tight hug.  “Are you ready to choose your trees?”  it was dif­fi­cult to nar­row down from the choices of unbe­liev­ably, mag­i­cally fra­grant beauties!

For the first time this sea­son, I felt that fris­son of hol­i­day­ness, that sense of mind­less excite­ment and antic­i­pa­tion.  We chose our two trees and dear Rol­lie strapped them to the car in the bit­ing wind.

We came home with trees and var­i­ous gar­nishes via a wood-seller, which meant we had our work cut out for us later in the day.  Indeed, a bit of the pile still awaits stack­ing even today.

The new inno­va­tion to the dec­o­rat­ing scheme this year is this gor­geous, clever sculp­ture, made by Judy!

We got right to work dec­o­rat­ing, and it was worth all the effort.

A quick trip to the vin­tage shop in Wood­bury yielded this lit­tle trea­sure from 1940s Ger­many, one of my new favorites this year to add to the trove in the cupboard.

Finally my energy flagged.  I car­ried a few more pal­try pieces of wood into the wood­shed, then put on a pot of brisket to sim­mer slowly in Guin­ness, toma­toes and gar­lic, and took a long, cozy nap.  What a joy it was to wake up in the dark and hang even more orna­ments on the tree.  Finally we were finished.

The brisket was ten­der and all we could have hoped it would be, but we had barely fin­ished chew­ing and swal­low­ing when we all real­ized we were falling asleep in our plates.  A last view through the win­dow, and then to sleep, me with my copy of “When it Snowed That Night” open on my lap.

We were up again with the birds!  Off to Jill and Joel’s to get our mas­sive pile of pack­ages that Joel had kindly been accept­ing all fall (thank you, dear brother in law).  We piled every­thing in the car and John looked at me and laughed.  “Look at you, accom­plish­ing all this and nor­mally you wouldn’t even be UP by this hour!”

And I went bell-ringing!  I have been look­ing for­ward since Sep­tem­ber to my reunion with my beloved Brew­ster band, espe­cially to deliv­er­ing to them the tiny refrig­er­a­tor I had bought for the tower in hot, hot August, but was pre­vented from deliv­er­ing by the wretched hur­ri­cane.  How beau­ti­ful the tower was in the wan­ing light, and what fun we had ring­ing.  I am a bet­ter ringer than I was in Sep­tem­ber, but it is still a huge chal­lenge to keep up with that very tal­ented group of peo­ple.  “You’re improv­ing, Kris­ten!” said a nice bearded fel­low who is ter­ri­bly high up in the ring­ing world.  “No, no,” I moaned, “you guys are so patient.”  He put his hands on my shoul­ders.  “Look at me and lis­ten.  Accept the praise and encour­age­ment!  It hap­pens sel­dom enough in this life.”

I left behind the fridge and my giant offer­ing of warm can­nellini beans with rose­mary and gar­lic, a gift to them all for their din­ner and car­ol­ing party that evening.  I myself skipped the party in order to be reunited with John’s mom, who had flown into White Plains!  She and John and Avery climbed the bell tower steps to watch me for a minute, and off we went.

Some­times it is bril­liant just to pick up a pizza laden with absolutely every­thing — extra cheese, sausage, ripe olives, red onions and pep­pers! — and go home!  So we did, arriv­ing to show Nonna all the dec­o­ra­tions and to get her set­tled in her cozy room with the red rug, the walls cov­ered with our favorite pho­tos and maps and works of art, the table piled with care­fully cho­sen books, and my favorite photo of Grandpa Jack.

We all trooped into the sit­ting room to admire the tree, the fire crack­ling mer­rily, the dec­o­ra­tions.  What a per­fect joy it is to get my mother in law into my house and know that for the fore­see­able future, she is with us, safe and sound.

Mon­day took us into the city!

We checked into the dar­ling Duane Street Hotel in our old stomp­ing grounds of Tribeca and promptly engaged on a trip down mem­ory lane.  Here is my for­mer, pre­cious art gallery, now pur­veyor of only slightly taste­less lingerie.

I asked the peren­nial and rhetor­i­cal ques­tion.  “If I couldn’t pay the rent sell­ing $100,000 paint­ings, how do they man­age with the occa­sional bustier?”  I know, I know.  Volume.

And here is Avery, all grownup and wax­ing nos­tal­gic, in the school­yard of our beloved PS 234, out­side the famous red door where she was stand­ing on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.

And here she is with the new 1 World Trade Cen­ter ris­ing bravely in the back­ground.  That’s how close we were, on the day.

“Every­thing looks so much smaller than I remem­bered!” Avery mar­velled, strolling around the “yard”, remem­ber­ing days and years gone by.  Her mod­ish out­fit got looks of inter­est from the rather more casu­ally dressed moms, dads and nan­nies who waited for their lit­tle ones.

Off we went to meet my best pal Alyssa and her fam­ily, to tour the Sep­tem­ber 11 memo­r­ial.  This plan had been in place since sum­mer, and I had stolidly refused to think about it.  But here we were, so we went.  And after an ini­tial stomach-achy feel­ing of strange­ness and sad­ness, we began to feel the peace of the place wash over us.

We stood in the cold, still air, lis­ten­ing to the per­va­sive, gen­tle, com­fort­ing sound of the end­less flow of water.  “Lis­ten,” said Alyssa in hushed awe.  “You can’t hear any­thing else.  The traf­fic, the con­struc­tion sounds, every­thing is drowned by the sound of the water.”

It was true.

We rem­i­nisced about what had hap­pened to us that day, in the days after­ward.  “Annabelle,” I said, “do you remem­ber that for ages after­ward you were afraid of the steam com­ing out of man­hole cov­ers?  That was because of the smoke you saw that day…”  Elliot was silent and respect­ful, being only a glim­mer in his mother’s eye on the day.

I asked a police­man how much taller the build­ing was going to get.  “About ten sto­ries, till it’s 1776 feet high,” he said, gaz­ing down at me from his huge, blue-clad bulk.

We took a moment to be bound­lessly grate­ful that we were not there to look for a name of some­one beloved we had lost.  So many peo­ple were.  This par­tic­u­lar engrav­ing broke my heart, as I thought of Elliot.

It is beau­ti­ful, the way the names have been arranged.  The fire­men are all together, in their lad­ders, their engines, their bat­tal­ions.  The bravest, the First Responders.

Office work­ers — one imag­ines them sit­ting at their desks with cups of cof­fee on the day, jok­ing with their co-workers on that beau­ti­ful blue-sky day — are grouped with their col­leagues and desk­mates, when the fam­ily sur­vivors knew enough to say so.

Together every work day, they are together now forever.

“You know what is won­der­ful about this memo­r­ial?” Avery mused.  “It’s very much not about what hap­pened.  It’s about the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and their feel­ings.”  That is the bril­liance of the memo­r­ial, we all decided.  Some­how the hor­rific nature of the CAUSE of so many deaths has been trans­formed into a quiet, dig­ni­fied way never to for­get the indi­vid­u­al­ity of loss.   I think if my mother or brother or hus­band or child were here, I would be com­forted.  I hope so much that the fam­i­lies are.

From the memo­r­ial, we went, appro­pri­ately, to a cozy, can­dlelit din­ner at Roc, home of my bril­liant restau­ra­teur friend Rocco, the ebul­lient chef who fed every­one in the neigh­bor­hood with end­less gen­eros­ity, in the long sad days after Sep­tem­ber 11.  How won­der­ful to be reunited with him!

We sat there, our two fam­i­lies, and ate our­selves silly.  Truf­fled French fries!  Cala­mari.  Giant ravi­oli filled with beef rib con­fit, in a truf­fle cream sauce.  Sim­ply heaven, but then I could have eaten splin­ters and loved it, being with Alyssa.

What an over­whelm­ing flood of emo­tion, sur­rounded by so many of my favorite peo­ple, filled with mem­o­ries of ter­ri­ble days and won­der­ful days.  And so lovely to see Avery and Annabelle reunited, like the cousins they really are, in their hearts.

In the morn­ing we headed up to Rock­e­feller Cen­ter and a flurry of shopping!

About this I can­not tell you, because of all the SECRETS.

We mean­dered back down­town for John’s and my tra­di­tional wedding-anniversary din­ner at Nobu, while Avery and her grand­mother indulged in yet more shop­ping.  My mem­ory is still replete with the glut­to­nous details of our lunch: the bluefin tuna with caviar and wasabi, the yel­low­tail with jalapenos and corian­der, the tuna tataki with tiny sliv­ers of gar­lic, gin­ger, spring onion and Ponzu sauce, the soft shell crab roll, the rock shrimp Tem­pura.  Gorgeous.

And home we came, exhausted by tired feet, exhil­a­rated by adven­ture and cel­e­bra­tion, a lit­tle over­whelmed with emo­tion.  That is what Christ­mas is all about, after all.  The mem­o­ries of both joy and sor­row, the long­ing for those no longer with us and grat­i­tude for those we can reach out and touch.

Merry Christ­mas, all.  And thank you to my dear daugh­ter for all these beau­ti­ful photographs.

Tis the sea­son when every evening, the three of us con­vene to ask, “What do you have on for tomor­row?”  There has been plenty to do, start­ing with a whole series of musi­cal events at Avery’s school.

For these, I arm myself with a hand­ful of tis­sues, since noth­ing brings wit­less tears to my eyes quite like the sound of girls’ voices, singing in heav­enly imper­fec­tion.  There was the “Singing Tea,” a phrase that makes my Amer­i­can rela­tions laugh.  What on earth?  How does a tea sing?  British peo­ple will under­stand that it means a con­cert of the girls who take singing lessons at school, pre­ceded by a tea.  That is, a period of stand­ing around clutch­ing cups of tea and watch­ing the girls them­selves wolf down untold pieces of cake, hav­ing skipped lunch in order to rehearse.

Sand­wiched as she was between Hay­den and Bach, Mozart and Brahms, Avery’s piece was more funny than even it nor­mally is.  “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” of course, by the incom­pa­ra­ble Amer­i­can math­e­mati­cian and song­writer Tom Lehrer.  “My heart will be quick­enin’, with each drop of strych­nine…”  Per­fect for our intensely satir­i­cal daughter.

Then we were onto the Junior Choir singing “Cry Me a River” at the Soiree Musi­cale.  They were heav­enly.  I needed my tissues.

And then there was the week-long adven­ture of the much-anticipated school musi­cal, “Sweet Charity.”

The musi­cal was sub­lime: the dancers pro­fes­sion­ally in time with one another, the lead charm­ing, and the ensem­ble full of crazy energy.  Granted, the plot which cen­ters on “dance hall host­ess” bemoan­ing the loss of their inno­cence while they solicit clients and drink and smoke, is not one I would nat­u­rally have cho­sen for a girls’ school whose cast runs the gamut from 12–18.  But as a friend of mind pointed out, maybe it was just this sort of dar­ing sub­ject mat­ter that grabbed the inter­est of the older girls.  At one point Avery was singing and danc­ing right in front, prac­ti­cally in the laps of the audi­ence, so we fatu­ously chose those seats every evening.  It was such fun.

Finally there was the Christ­mas Carol Ser­vice in the Hall, a room of such ele­gant pro­por­tions that I always feel I’m in a Harry Pot­ter movie.

My mother asked if the girls sang tra­di­tional car­ols, and I replied, “Yes, so tra­di­tional that they sing them in LATIN.”  Sim­ply heart­break­ingly beau­ti­ful, all of them in their black con­cert clothes, shin­ing faces illu­mi­nated by hand-held lights, every one of them gor­geous in her own way.  On the brink of everything.

On top of all these events, we’ve been attend­ing far more than our share of school Christ­mas Fairs, get­ting ideas for our own Fair in a year’s time, for which John is totally respon­si­ble!  I think it is won­der­ful that a girls’ school is happy to have a father in charge.  A good exam­ple to the girls for what a hus­band and dad can be.  And nat­u­rally, we’ve been dec­o­rat­ing our own house, too.

There is of course the tree itself.

It is lovely, but I am bemoan­ing a bit the new trend in trees: some­one has bred one that doesn’t drop its nee­dles but also doesn’t smell like a Christ­mas tree.  This is our fate, this sea­son.  I have hopes for a smelly tree in Con­necti­cut.  The beau­ties of shop­ping for Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions in Eng­land far out­weigh a non-fragrant tree, though.  With our lovely friends Vin­cent and Peter we went strolling (or rather push­ing our way through chok­ing crowds) down Colum­bia Road in the East End.  What an expe­ri­ence!  We looked up at one point and saw this fellow.

Avery is offi­cially in love with the East End: Shored­itch, Hack­ney and Beth­nal Green, not the least for the mes­sages the res­i­dents leave for their read­ing public.

I espe­cially like this last one for the very expres­sive size of the font.  It’s as though the writer begins by feel­ing ter­ri­bly emphatic and annoyed with his neigh­bors, then begins to lose steam, and finally at the end seems to regret being so angry.

We repaired to Vin­cent and Peter’s cozy home where they plied us with var­i­ous tarts and quiches, among them this beauty made with red onions, black olives and sar­dines (photo cour­tesy of Avery).

And then we came home with five gor­geous (if lethally prickly) wreaths made of real holly, as only the Eng­lish can do.  They adorn the back win­dows of the kitchen.

Avery has, of course, set up her annual ice-skating pond with its lead skaters and sled­ders, giv­ing strict instruc­tions to any­one who vis­its to wash hands after touch­ing!  This year saw the addi­tion of some amaz­ing “Insta-Snow”, which works by sprin­kling water on a very tiny amount of pow­der, caus­ing it to fluff up many times its orig­i­nal size!

To keep up our strength dur­ing all these fes­tiv­i­ties, on the advice of my cook­ing friend Caz, I made these:

Sophie Grigson’s Christ­mas Sprouts

(serves 6–8 as a side dish)

675 g brus­sels sprouts

100 g smoked duck breast or bacon, cut into strip

50 g toasted chopped hazelnuts

15 g butter

1 tbsp sun­flower oil

300 ml dou­ble cream

2 tsp turmeric

dash of lemon juice

4 tbsp breadcrumbs

3 tbsp finely grated parmesan

3–4 tbsp chopped parsley

Trim the sprouts of their outer, tough leaves.  Place the sprouts into a saucepan of sim­mer­ing salted water and cook for 4–5 min­utes, until almost, but not quite, cooked. Drain thor­oughly, allow to cool slightly, then cut in half.

Place the but­ter and oil into a wide fry­ing pan over a medium heat. Add the bacon lar­dons and almonds and sauté for 3–4 min­utes, until lightly browned.

Add the sprouts and sauté for a fur­ther 2–3 min­utes, stir­ring constantly.

Add the cream and bring the mix­ture to the boil. Boil for 2–4 min­utes, until the cream has reduced to a rich sauce. Sea­son to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice and spoon into an oven­proof gratin dish.

Mix the bread­crumbs and parme­san cheese together in a bowl, then sprin­kle evenly over the top of the sprout mixture.

Place into the oven and bake for 18–20 min­utes, until the top is golden.

I am not a mas­sive fan of sprouts but even I really liked these.  Go easy on the bread­crumbs as you want the end result to be quite creamy.

One of John’s and my hol­i­day out­ings was a nearly com­plete bust, so let me pass on my intel­li­gence.  “Taste of Christ­mas” sounded so won­der­ful!  We have always loved “Taste of Lon­don,” a food fair at which lots of top restau­rants turn up to serve tiny por­tions of their sig­na­ture dishes.  Lovely chance to wan­der through Regent’s Park — even in the rain, as it was in June! — and eat sump­tu­ously, fac­ing far too many choices, and walk­ing away feel­ing stuffed and gluttonous.

I didn’t read the small print on “Taste of Christ­mas,” which turned out to be at the ExCel con­fer­ence cen­ter — depress­ing! — over an hour’s drive to the Dock­lands, in short, the area far, FAR East where the Olympics are going to take place!  You can imag­ine how far one must go to find land in Lon­don on which to build giant sta­di­ums.  That’s how far we drove.  And upon arrival, we dis­cov­ered only SIX restau­rants were tak­ing part and the rest was a mish­mash of unat­trac­tive Christ­mas orna­ments and mostly-useless kitchen imple­ments.  Once there, how­ever, we tried to have fun, and sam­pled all the food there was, plus we found a very excit­ing sil­i­con mat that one can place directly on the burner of an Aga stove and fry things!  Like these pep­pers, stuffed with goat’s cheese.

The only other last­ing good thing from the dis­mal fair in the mid­dle of nowhere was this salmon dish from Rhodes W1, which I’ve repli­cated as best as my taste buds can accomplish.

Olive-oil-Poached and Smoked Salmon Ter­rine with Sweet Lemon Dress­ing and Microherbs

(serves 6 as a starter)

2 cups olive oil

300 g/10.5 ounces fresh salmon fillet

200g/7 ounces cream cheese

200g/7 ounces creme fraiche

1 tsp capers

hand­ful baby cress

hand­ful baby shiso (Japan­ese coriander)

hand­ful chives

hand­ful fresh tar­ragon leaves

juice of 1/2 lemon

pinch salt

300g/10.5 ounces smoked salmon

dress­ing:

1/4 extra-virgin olive oil

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

1 tsp clear honey

fresh ground black pepper

Bring the cups of olive oil to what can only be called a “shim­mer”.  It’s short of the tem­per­a­ture for fry­ing, but a piece of bread­crumb will move about if you drop it in.  Care­fully lower in the salmon fil­lets and cook at this tem­per­a­ture for three min­utes, then care­fully turn the fil­lets over and cook for another 3–4 min­utes until JUST cooked through.  Remove and drain on paper towels.

In a food proces­sor, com­bine the poached salmon, the cream cheese, creme fraiche, capers, HALF the quan­tity of all the herbs (reserve the other half for gar­nish­ing), the lemon juice and sea­son­ings.  Pulse until well com­bined but not a total mush.  Taste for sea­son­ings and add salt if needed.

Com­bine dress­ing ingre­di­ents and set aside.

At this point, you may decide if you’d like to serve this dish as a sit-down starter or as a fin­ger food.  If as a starter, choose a plat­ter on which you’d like to serve the ter­rine and place a piece of plas­tic wrap twice as big as the plat­ter in the cen­ter of it.  In as close as you can come to a rec­tan­gle that’s about half the size of a piece of typ­ing paper, place a layer of smoked salmon slices on the plas­tic.  Spread a layer of the poached salmon mix­ture on top.  Cover with another layer of smoked salmon, another layer of mousse, and fin­ish with a top layer of smoked salmon.  Cover with the extra plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate for at least four hours, or overnight. Then unwrap the ter­rine and lay it on a cut­ting board.  Care­fully, with a ser­rated knife, saw the ter­rine into per­fect strips about an inch wide.  This recipe should yield 8 strips.  Arrange on the serv­ing plat­ter.  Sprin­kle the reserved herbs over and driz­zle with dressing.

If on the other hand you’d like to serve the dish as a fin­ger food, sim­ply spoon a bit of the mousse on a baguette slice, top with a bit of smoked salmon and a sprin­kle of herbs, and driz­zle dress­ing over each portion.

Our won­der­ful neigh­bors Suzanne and John came to share this with us, to inves­ti­gate all the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, and most sur­pris­ingly, to offer to give our tree a sec­ond home when we leave next week!  How won­der­ful to recy­cle our own tree, and not into pulp, but into a sec­ond family’s celebration.

Finally, as a glo­ri­ous, hard-won Christ­mas gift to myself, today I man­aged to tri­umph over a so-far impos­si­ble bell-ringing chal­lenge.  You’ve heard me rant on about “Plain Hunt on Five” which sim­ply means a method where all the bells change their order in a pre-ordained pat­tern.  Until now I absolutely could not see the pat­tern!  No mat­ter how many dif­fer­ent ways were offered to explain it, I could not see it.

Until this morn­ing!  I have had a week’s enforced absence from the Tower after pulling a mus­cle in my shoul­der, and the chal­lenges of ring­ing had assumed epic pro­por­tions, as any chal­lenge does when one is not allowed to address it!  But today all the pieces fell into place.  My teacher handed me the rope to the heav­i­est bell, the Tenor, and said, “Right, cover on Plain Hunt.  Backstroke/handstroke over the five, then the three, then the one, then the two, then the four, then all over again till we say stop.”

And it clicked!  We were ring­ing for a spe­cial ser­vice involv­ing the parish chil­dren, called “Christ­in­gle” ser­vice where the chil­dren all carry lighted can­dles tucked into oranges and walk up the cen­tral aisle.  So we had an audi­ence of par­ents, kneel­ing with their chil­dren, point­ing to the ropes and to the com­puter mon­i­tor mounted on the wall, show­ing the bells in the bel­fry, swing­ing to and fro.  “That’s what’s mak­ing the sounds!” par­ents explained.  And I was able to keep my place, not per­fectly mind you, but to keep it, and to take my place in the so-familiar tune of Plain Hunt.  Onward and upward straight after­ward, to another method called Grand­sire Dou­bles, and I could keep my place there too.

“You’ll be really help­ful to us now,” said one very advanced ringer who’s never spo­ken to me before.  “Now we can ring a lot of meth­ods we can’t ring if we don’t have 6 or 8 proper ringers.”  Joy!  I am a proper ringer now, or at least approach­ing one.  A lovely Christ­mas gift for me.  I hope very much your hol­i­day prepa­ra­tions are includ­ing some happy-making moments for you, too.

Here I sit in a stream of sun­shine com­ing through what are called the “font win­dows” of my bell-ringing church, grin­ning idi­ot­i­cally at any­one who walks in the door and might want to buy char­ity Christ­mas cards from me.  So far there are no tak­ers on this lovely late Novem­ber afternoon.

Mostly what I am doing is recu­per­at­ing from our Thanks­giv­ing rev­el­ries.  I think every fork, knife and spoon, every roast­ing tray, plat­ter and spat­ula, every pitcher, glass and plate, was pressed into ser­vice!  How deli­cious were the savoury fla­vors of gar­lic, sage, ham and turkey, the lofty spoons­ful of pota­toes cooked with sharp Ched­dar and shal­lots, the spinach with cel­ery and Gruyere.

 Is there any mar­riage more felic­i­tous than that of but­tery car­rots with Demarara sugar and black pepper?

I had for­got­ten the clear, tangy delight of cran­ber­ries sim­mered in cin­na­mony orange juice.

 Of course I can never look at cran­ber­ries with­out think­ing of my par­ents’ first mar­ried Thanks­giv­ing.  In my fam­ily, there is noth­ing more mem­o­rable than a mem­ory of some­one else’s mem­ory, and the story of my father’s adven­ture with cran­ber­ries is leg­end.  “These don’t seem to be mov­ing in this blender,” he told my mother.  [What cran­ber­ries were doing in a blender in any case is a mys­tery to me.]  “Stir them up a bit and see what hap­pens,” she advised, not think­ing to add, “Turn the blender off first.”  They always claimed that when they moved house years later, they were still find­ing bits of mac­er­ated cran­berry behind the curtains.

That was the same ill-fated Thanks­giv­ing when my mother’s sleeve caught on her bath­room shelf full of per­fumes brought back from a sum­mer in Europe.  What a fra­grant Thanks­giv­ing it must have been, I imag­ine now.

 And then, at the last minute when their guests were arriv­ing, my father pulled the turkey out of the oven and tipped the cook­ing fat right back inside, watch­ing in dis­may as it caught on smoky fire!  I could only imag­ine, last night, peer­ing anx­iously at my own bird.

My poor par­ents, strug­gling through a new­ly­wed hol­i­day full of dis­as­ter upon dis­as­ter.   What I love about fam­ily sto­ries is how quickly they turn from tragedy to com­edy, usu­ally within an hour or two.  How happy they must have been when the last guests left and they could close the door behind them and begin turn­ing the day into a legend.

Our own turkey-cooking yes­ter­day was its usual unsci­en­tific, “let’s try this and see what hap­pens” fiasco.  Brin­ing in herbs and kosher salt and pep­per­corns, of course.

The night before, as the best of hus­bands will do on such occa­sions, John sent me a link to a story about turn­ing my expected four-hour cook­ing time into two.  Why this would be appeal­ing I do not know, since the whole day is spent in the kitchen any­way.  The rev­o­lu­tion­ary method involved flip­ping the poor bird over in all its boil­ing cook­ing liq­uid (“ow, that went right through my SOCK!” John moaned at one mem­o­rable moment) sev­eral times, which was unduly stress­ful.  Out came the ther­mome­ter.  “It’s cook­ing way too fast, turn down the heat!”  Then another stab.  “Hang on, now it’s cold inside.”

Sigh.

Oven turned up, oven down, turkey in, turkey out, cov­ered in foil, uncov­ered in order that we could snatch away bits of crisp skin to “test it.”

And then as I was sprin­kling “sugar” on my car­rots to caramelise them, it was only in the nick of time that I noticed my “sugar” was in fact… cous­cous. (It prob­a­bly would have been a great dish, car­rots and cous­cous, but not at that moment.)

In short, it was a typ­i­cal Thanks­giv­ing afternoon.

 In years past, how­ever happy our Thanks­giv­ings have been here in our adopted home­land, I have always felt a bit melan­choly, a bit home­sick for the hol­i­days of child­hood when chil­dren and guests were hang­ing around all day, watch­ing foot­ball and hav­ing a day off usual activ­i­ties.   It seemed sad to me, the first few years we were here, to have the day quite and alone while child and hus­band were at school and work, to have the din­ner at night just like any ordi­nary din­ner party.

Sud­denly last night, though, I looked around at my beloved guests – old friends and new – and real­ized that this is the new nor­mal.  I dote on the moment when Avery and her friends beat a tat­too on the front door, rush­ing in with cold cheeks, demand­ing snacks, then set­tling down to home­work before din­ner.  I really love see­ing my guests come in from the windy dark­ness, bear­ing pies and flow­ers and wine, every­one excited to have “a real Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing.”  Some­how every year we man­age to have peo­ple round for whom it’s their first Thanks­giv­ing, and this makes every­thing excit­ing and festive.

The girls at the far end of the table – the teenage end – read aloud a bless­ing I had con­cocted from read­ing var­i­ous friends’ lovely mes­sages about their holidays.

“We wel­come you here to our Amer­i­can hol­i­day.  We are thank­ful for Thanks­giv­ing — a time to pause and reflect on the joys and sor­rows that a full life con­tains, to appre­ci­ate the gifts of love and life, to cher­ish the mem­ory of those who are not present, to rec­og­nize our absolute grat­i­tude to friends and fam­ily who ARE present.  Today we think of the love we feel for those clos­est to us, and we hold dear all our hopes for the future and for rec­on­cil­i­a­tions to come. Thank you, Thanksgiving.”

We explained to our Eng­lish guests that it had been peo­ple just like them who bravely climbed on the Mayflower to endure the hideous jour­ney to the New World and the win­ter of sick­ness to come, dur­ing which half their num­ber died.  “They left Eng­land seek­ing greater reli­gious per­se­cu­tion than was avail­able at home,” John dead­panned, para­phras­ing Gar­ri­son Keil­lor.  It is hard to believe that our exces­sively jolly, fes­tive hol­i­day has any roots in despair and hunger.

I now feel that the sense of won­der, of appre­ci­a­tion for our Amer­i­can tra­di­tions, the grate­ful con­sump­tion of my lov­ingly pre­pared dishes, is the best Thanks­giv­ing we could ask for.  It has a dif­fer­ent qual­ity from the famil­iar child­hood hol­i­days full of fam­ily faces we saw every year on that day.  Every year here, in what have become our real lives, there is a feel­ing of new­ness to the splen­dour of the occasion.

Sit­ting here in the peace­ful church, sell­ing Christ­mas cards to absolutely no one, gaz­ing on my beloved bellcham­ber and antic­i­pat­ing the hard work that tomorrow’s prac­tice will bring, the friendly ban­ter among us as we pull our ropes in the blink­ing sun­shine com­ing through the win­dows, I am content.

Turkey Meat­ball Soup

(feeds the multitudes)

1 turkey car­cass, plus the veg­eta­bles that roasted with it in the tin

2 lbs/1 kilo ground turkey (turkey mince)

enough breadcrumb/milk mix­ture to make the meat­balls JUST stick together — per­haps 3/4 cup of each

pinch onion powder

pinch gar­lic powder

pinch dried parsley

pinch salt

4 car­rots, sliced

4 stalks cel­ery, sliced

1 cup tiny pasta stars, already cooked

Sim­mer turkey car­cass in enough cold water to cover him for as long as you can, sev­eral hours at least.  Poke at the car­cass to remove the meat from the bones when­ever you pass by.

Pass the turkey broth through a sieve into a stock pot (this is an impor­tant step: one year I poured it RIGHT DOWN THE DRAIN).

Mix the turkey mince with the milk, bread­crumbs and herbs until all is thor­oughly mixed.  Bring turkey broth to a high sim­mer and form golf-ball-sized meat­balls to drop into it, one by one.  When they float to the sur­face, add the sliced car­rots and cel­ery and sim­mer for 20 min­utes.  Add the cooked pasta and ENJOY.

Happy Thanks­giv­ing!

How wretched of me to let so much time go by with­out writ­ing.  But I am sadly sub­ject to a tummy com­plaint that hits me now and then — usu­ally when there’s some­thing I can’t “stom­ach” or I have a lot to “digest” or I’m try­ing to trust my “gut” instincts about some­thing.  In other words, every once in awhile, some sig­nif­i­cant worry that floats through my life joins forces with a coin­ci­den­tal bug or virus — that kind other peo­ple are too tough to suc­cumb to — and decides to take up res­i­dence in my tummy and make me mis­er­able.  Some­times it lasts a very long time indeed.  This time was only a week.  But what an unhappy week it was, to be sure.

All I could do in the way of phys­i­cal activ­ity was to ride my bike every day, gen­tly, with John.  The views of our bike path along the river were restorative.

It has been a beau­ti­ful autumn here in Lon­don, with unusu­ally bright, beau­ti­ful leafy color.  We often wish we were back in New Eng­land for the tra­di­tional incan­des­cent foliage, but this year in real Eng­land, we could not complain.

Over the week­end, though, giant Hoover­ing trucks trun­dled down the road into the vil­lage, which had been cov­ered with ankle-deep piles of orange leaves, and sucked them all up.  The side­walks are bare now, wait­ing for the last few crunchy bits to fall from the trees.  The wind, too, has changed from a brac­ing fresh­ness to a lash­ing damp­ness that turns hands on bicy­cle han­dle­bars into red icy paws.

The best thing for icy paws is hot soup.

Broc­coli Soup With Nut­meg and Gorgonzola

(serves 6)

2 tbsps butter

4 cloves garlic

1 large shallot

2 heads broc­coli, sep­a­rated into florets

pinch fresh nutmeg

chicken stock nearly to cover (per­haps 4 cups)

3 tbsps Gor­gonzola or other creamy blue cheese

3 tbsps creme fraiche

sea salt and lots of fresh black pepper

In a heavy saucepan, melt but­ter and add gar­lic, shal­lots and broc­coli, sprin­kle the nut­meg over and stir to coat every­thing in the but­ter.  Pour in enough chicken stock nearly to cover, but not quite.  You do not want the soup to become water.  Sim­mer for 20 min­utes, stir­ring occa­sion­ally to make sure you get all the broc­coli under the liq­uid.  When broc­coli is soft, remove from heat and puree with hand blender.  Add cheese and creme fraiche, place back on heat and stir until cheese is melted.  Sea­son, being sure to add plenty of black pep­per till soup is slightly spicy.  Serve hot.

*******************

My paws have been par­tic­u­larly occu­pied with adven­tures in bell-ringing!  This crazy activ­ity of mine — half sport, half musi­cal instru­ment — has been both a joy and a curse.  Some­times, as I wake up on a Sun­day morn­ing to find some­thing decent to wear, hop on my bike and turn up at my dear St Margaret’s to spend an hour pulling ropes and exhaust­ing myself, I think, “Why on earth am I putting myself through this?  I could be sit­ting qui­etly with Hello! mag­a­zine, or even sleeping.”

The rea­son I per­se­vere is partly pure stub­born­ness!  I can’t bear the thought of hav­ing put all this effort into learn­ing the craft only to drop it.  This week is the six-month anniver­sary of my first les­son, and it has taken just this long for me to feel a true mem­ber of the com­mu­nity.  Last week eight of us gath­ered to ring for a spe­cial Even­song, cel­e­brat­ing a local com­poser who had been awarded one of Eng­lish Heritage’s “blue plaques.”  The church itself was mag­i­cal in the crisp darkness.

So was the bellcham­ber, with my beloved teacher Howard bring­ing down the “spi­der” that holds all the ropes.

The band gath­ered around — me, plus seven men, muf­flers wound round their necks, blow­ing on their hands.  We rang.  The church­go­ers appeared in their Sun­day best, bring­ing chil­dren over to admire the bell-ringing.  I sud­denly felt an enor­mous pride in my being able to turn seven ringers into eight, to make us a full band, a ringer for every bell, a full octave present.  I was a needed, valu­able part of my small, cho­sen community.

Last week­end saw me at the ulti­mate crazy activ­ity: an entire day out in the Sur­rey coun­try­side, in the remote and beau­ti­ful vil­lages of Limps­field, Mer­stham and Bletch­in­g­ley, ring­ing ALL day long in training.

As dif­fi­cult as the day was, six straight hours try­ing des­per­ately to learn “Plain Hunt on Six” and “Plain Hunt on Eight,” it was an accom­plish­ment.  Sur­rounded by lovely peo­ple, gor­geous archi­tec­ture and coun­try views.

It was just my luck — I think! — that I was given the tough­est, most expe­ri­enced ringer in all the United King­dom to spend the day with, hav­ing my every move­ment scru­ti­nized, and yes, being shouted at.  He rang at the Royal Wedding!

The exhaus­tion com­ing home was tan­gi­ble.  Mus­cles I didn’t even know I had, hurt.

And up first thing in the morn­ing to ring for our beau­ti­ful Remem­brance Day services.

There is no doubt in my mind that my new voca­tion has pro­vided a very sat­is­fy­ing dis­trac­tion from my other pri­mary activ­ity: watch­ing my teenage daugh­ter grow up and away.  She cel­e­brated her 15th birth­day this month, with new head­phones, a sil­ver bracelet, piles of books.

Fif­teen is a real mile­stone.   For one thing, I remem­ber being 15 myself!  I was  my real self that year, the self I am now.  So I know that the daugh­ter I gaze upon now is the real per­son she will live with, all her life.  I like very much what I see.  She is immensely funny, a great debater, a truly lib­eral thinker, and a loyal friend who views gos­sip as a behav­ior only slightly more civ­i­lized than lit­ter­ing.  She has an envi­able sense of style, even if some­times it expresses itself through poems writ­ten in ink all over her hands.

The other side of this shiny coin is, how­ever, the grad­ual with­drawal of the lit­tle, depen­dent, hand-holding child I was used to all these years.  Of course this devel­op­ment took place grad­u­ally… one day she sim­ply brought her­self home from school alone and that was that.  She took her first taxi ride alone, her first Tube ride alone and turned up safe and sound.  Stuffed ani­mals no longer went along on sleep­overs, her book­shelves became filled with books I have not read, her Face­book page filled with peo­ple I have not met.  The sort of cringe-making school pho­tos she always hated are replaced with pro­fes­sional head­shots, taken for her act­ing agency.

In short, the child I poured so much of myself into, spent so many seem­ingly end­less hours read­ing to, march­ing peo­ple in and out of her doll­house, arrang­ing mag­netic let­ters on the fridge to spell her own per­sonal ver­sion of “Mommy,” has meta­mor­phosed into a young lady.  I find the tran­si­tion com­pletely baf­fling, and while I know it has taken place over a num­ber of years, some­times the new Avery seems quite unbe­liev­able to me, dig­ni­fied, intel­lec­tual, a bit remote.  As much as I cher­ished every stage, they all sped by any­way, leav­ing me with an inde­pen­dent near-adult.

Now, Avery and John will roll their eyes as I say this, but… there is a very use­ful par­al­lel in this process to bell-ringing.  Stick with me here.

What makes Eng­lish bells unique is that they live on a wheel, which lives on a frame.  Euro­pean bells just live on a frame and hang down­ward all their lives, being able to chime only in a very lim­ited back-and-forth motion.  Eng­lish bells can live down­ward OR upward, as we choose.  Some churches store their bells down­ward, some upward.  Here are the bells of St Matthew’s, Beth­nal Green, Lon­don, in the down position.

Bells are safest when they are down, because grav­ity has had its way.  Bells, given their own way, would always stay down, as these Mel­rose School bells in Brew­ster, New York are.

The Eng­lish like, in every­thing they do, to push the intel­lec­tual lim­its, to make the sim­ple com­plex, to make the trans­par­ent clever.  So they devised a way to get the bell all the way UP, and keep it there, as long as we like.

Here is a bell in the up position.

When a bell is “up,” it is lean­ing rather pre­car­i­ously against its bal­ance, wait­ing to be asked to fall again.  Here is a whole bel­fry full of bells in the up position.

A bell in the “up” posi­tion is an essen­tially unsta­ble thing, a very dan­ger­ous thing, because all it wants to do is go DOWN.  If you pulled the rope of a bell you thought was down and harm­less, and instead it was up and ready to COME down, that bell would come crash­ing down uncon­trolled and then — inevitably — momen­tum would carry it back UP, and you with it, per­haps tak­ing off your fin­gers if they were stuck in the rope, or pulling your shoul­der out of its socket.  We take “up” bells very seri­ously indeed.

Now you under­stand “up” and “down” bells.

Bell-ringing is entirely about con­trol.  What the begin­ning ringer learns to do is to approach a “down” bell and take its long length of rope in hand, the rope made into tidy coils.  Then you start to pull your rope, and as the bell goes higher and higher toward the top of the frame, you let out the coils.  You grad­u­ally have less and less rope hang­ing down as the bell takes more and more of it up into the bel­fry, finally fly­ing up as high as it can go, point­ing its great mouth straight upward, and at the moment you stop pulling and “set” your bell at rest.

The whole process, tightly con­trolled, should take more than a minute.  You must put all your con­trolled strength into PULLING that rope, because depend­ing on how heavy your bell is, you could be try­ing to pull more than a TON of weight from its happy “down” posi­tion to being 180 degrees in the oppo­site direc­tion.  Bells don’t want to go up.

As I have thought of Avery grow­ing up, from a baby until her teenage years, I now see the whole process as an attempt on my part to get her from the “down” posi­tion to “up.”  How we push them to turn over when they would just as soon lie still!  “Stand up, baby!” we urge, hold­ing their lit­tle hands insis­tently when all the baby wants is to plop back down on its dia­pered bot­tom!  Then walk­ing, chew­ing instead of drink­ing, hold­ing a spoon, going to school, SHAR­ING.  All the things a lit­tle child would rather not do.  They’re hard.

How I doted on all these stages!   The hours I spent dri­ving her to bal­let, to horse­back rid­ing, the end­less evenings spent read­ing aloud from pic­ture books, then watch­ing her choose her own chap­ter books and read alone.  I got her bell “up,” in other words.  My task was bliss­fully clear.  I was to pull steadily, get her bell “up,” no mat­ter how the process went against iner­tia.  And it worked, beautifully.

But what I’ve dis­cov­ered as the mother of a teenager is that what goes up…

The bell wants to come down again, filled with all the power of grav­ity.  And now the job of the ringer is to help the bell come down safely, steadily.  You hardly pull at all, just enough to get the bell off the bal­ance, and then you watch OUT!  Because those hun­dreds of pounds are filled with all the poten­tial you’ve put in them, get­ting them up there.  You can’t let the bell fall on its own, or the rope swings wildly, smack­ing into the other peo­ple in the bel­fry, fly­ing upwards with uncon­trolled, unguided power.  It can’t con­trol itself.  You have to learn how and when to coil the ropes to keep the bell com­ing down in a steady, safe way.

You see where I’m going with this.  All that pulling, all that power you’ve invested in your child — all designed to make her a happy, inde­pen­dent per­son — come back to roost.  The child WANTS to come down, swing on her own.  And you’ve got to fig­ure out how and when to coil the ropes with just the RIGHT amount of con­trol.  Lit­tle steps down.

It’s a fact of bell-ringing that some peo­ple pre­fer to ring up, some to ring down.  Some peo­ple like the chal­lenge of get­ting a bell to do some­thing against its nature, to go up, and some like the chal­lenge of con­trol­ling a very heavy, pow­er­ful force of nature in its inevitable path.

I am a more nat­ural ringer-up.  I like the clar­ity of the task, and the fact that none of it will hap­pen with­out my try­ing really hard.  I am more intim­i­dated by the coming-down of the bell, full of its own power.

But the fact is, you can’t be a proper ringer with­out being able to do BOTH.  My church rings all its bells UP at the end of a ses­sion.  They live in the “up” posi­tion.  But when I ring at Chiswick, they ring their bells DOWN at the end of a ses­sion.  I can’t pick and choose.  What my teach­ers tell me is that even­tu­ally, I’ll be good at both.  I might always pre­fer one job over the other, but I’ll be safely capa­ble of both.  I still panic a bit, now, every time some­one tells me to “ring down.”  But I can do it.

I am lucky that my par­tic­u­lar, per­sonal “bell” is ring­ing her­self down really beau­ti­fully.  I am so proud of her.  I don’t always know when to step in and help con­trol the rope and when to let grav­ity take its course, but I’m grad­u­ally learning.

Good­ness, since we arrived home from Paris a week ago today, we have cer­tainly hit the ground run­ning.  There has been a cold, rainy day out in Green­wich for me — on a boat on the Thames, wet wind whistling — with my bell-ringing friend Alas­tair and his lovely grand­chil­dren… And a bril­liant bell-ringing ses­sion on Sat­ur­day, and the reward that after­noon of a fab­u­lously unusual lunch out in Chi­na­town with my friend Sam at  St John Hotel, the lat­est out­post of the St John empire presided over by Fer­gus Hen­der­son, the famous “nose to tail” restaurateur.

I had a pork and pigeon ter­rine to start (lus­ciously rich, with cor­ni­chons and a dense chewy bread), and Sam a mal­lard and but­ter­nut squash salad.  Then my main course was a rab­bit fil­let wrapped around rab­bit liv­ers, in a but­tery bed of car­rots and Savoy cab­bage, lus­cious.  Sam’s main course of skate and brown shrimp arrived very late and was there­fore on the house!  The delay gave him a chance to share my rab­bit, so all was well.  We can most def­i­nitely rec­om­mend St John: lovely friendly wait­staff and a pretty, sim­ple white inte­rior.  Sam came home with me for a good long gos­sip and John’s bril­liant slow-roasted pork shoul­der with a lemon-garlic-rosemary rub.  Bril­liant!  And thank you as always for the photo, Avery.

John’s Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

(serves at least 8)

1 3-kilo pork shoul­der, boned, rolled and tied

1 head gar­lic, cloves sep­a­rated and peeled

1/2 lemon, cut in two pieces

5 rose­mary branches, just leaves

5 thyme branches, just leaves

sea salt and fresh black pep­per, LOTS

olive oil (as nec­es­sary for proper con­sis­tency, per­haps 1/4 –1/3 cup)

Place all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in a small food proces­sor and blitz until the lemon pieces are very small and the mix­ture is smooth.  Rub over pork joint.  Place in a foil-lined bak­ing dish and wrap foil around the joint to make as air­tight a tent as you can.  Roast at 300F/180C for five hours.  Uncover and roast at 425F/220C for 30 min­utes, then remove from oven and allow to rest for 20 min­utes.  Pour off cook­ing juices, mean­while, and pour through a gravy sep­a­ra­tor into a saucepan.  Whisk a bit of flour and cream into the juices and sim­mer to make a savoury gravy.  Carve pork in thin slices.

******************

Then, because it pays to have friends in high places, we spent Sun­day in Oxford with our friend Jo who is a bril­liant guide at the incom­pa­ra­ble Bodleian Library.

What could be more inspir­ing for Avery’s uni­ver­sity plans than to tour this 17th cen­tury land­mark, where books were orig­i­nally chained to lecterns and every­one stud­ied the­ol­ogy.  An over­whelm­ing sense of his­tory, and of course most impor­tant for me, it’s where Lord Peter Wim­sey filled his head with quotations.

Avery exer­cised her new pas­sion: pho­tog­ra­phy.  She is really gifted.

Gor­geous archi­tec­ture abounded…

You couldn’t look in any direc­tion with­out see­ing some beau­ti­ful detail.

Finally of course, the half-term hol­i­day was ended and real life reared its ugly head, namely at my Lost Prop­erty cup­board at school.  What belong­ings HAVEN’T these girls lost?

I labored cheer­fully and came home to carve pump­kins with John and await Avery and her friends for a muted, teenage Hal­loween.  No more cos­tumes or trick-or-treating for them, just a cozy evening together with pizza, lots of candy and a whole slate of Amer­i­can Hal­loween movies: Char­lie Brown, of course, and Avery’s favorite “Cas­tle” episodes.  I felt a lit­tle melan­choly at being yet again in Eng­land on Hal­loween, where lit­tle dressed-up fig­ures ring­ing the door­bell are few and far between.  Still, it was Halloween.

Today is a typ­i­cal grey, misty Lon­don day, the first since I can remem­ber with no guests, no plans, no par­ties, no expo­sure to pub­lic trans­port, no hol­i­day atmos­phere.  It’s about time, just to be quiet, to let a kitty lie heav­ily across my legs, to take stock of our busy lives.

And to try to remem­ber our Parisian hol­i­day!  It was Avery’s birth­day present.  Sun­day dawned with big plans.  Notre Dame!

We went espe­cially on Sun­day morn­ing to hear the Gre­go­rian mass, and also the bells.  I can report that the bells sounded absolutely dire, off-key, rather unpleas­ant and for­get­table.  I was ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed until we saw a dis­play in the church announc­ing their mas­sive and expen­sive plans to over­haul all the bells in the win­ter of this year.  I looked up at the bell tower and imag­ined them ren­o­vated, chim­ing out over Paris as they did in Quasimodo’s day.

From there we crossed the pic­turesque Pont de l’Archeveche, nar­row­est of all the bridges span­ning the Seine, and home to one of the pecu­liarly Euro­pean padlock-love dis­plays.  Avery just adores these, first seen in Rome, then Venice, then Flo­rence.  Now Paris takes its place in Avery’s visual memory.

We hopped into a taxi and sped to the Boule­vard Ras­pail to visit the famous biologique, organic, food mar­ket.  We queued for the famous fried potato-cheese galettes, well deserv­ing of their reputation!

Hot, savoury and deli­cious, they gave us enough energy to peruse the long mar­ket offer­ing every food­stuff you can imag­ine.  I found it quite intim­i­dat­ing!  But beau­ti­ful and tempting.

I even­tu­ally made a deci­sion and bought a joint of freshly-rotisseried crackly pork, plus these toma­toes, a bag of spicy roquette, and two enor­mous artichauts, like exotic flow­ers when I pre­pared them!

We reluc­tantly (well, I) left the mar­ket and we walked to my beloved Musee Rodin, in whose shabby and bril­liant archives I camped out for months and months 20 years ago, doing my research.  There we ful­filled a Face­book plan that warmed my heart: I met beau­ti­ful Lind­say, the daugh­ter of my singing teacher in Indi­anapo­lis when I was Avery’s age!

How unbe­liev­able to be with the new gen­er­a­tion, smack in the mid­dle between me and my daugh­ter, and she looks just like her mother!  I felt over­whelm­ingly nos­tal­gic, for the won­der­ful hours spent singing as Lindsay’s mother taught me the ins and outs of tech­nique, 30 years ago.

We toured the gar­dens and the house.  Avery took bril­liant images of the sculp­tures so dear to my heart.

And before you get depressed (as we did) at the peel­ing paint, scarred mar­ble steps and creak­ing floor­boards, I must assure you that the Musee is under­go­ing a mas­sive ren­o­va­tion this win­ter, as well as the Notre Dame bells!  It is an idea whose time has come.  But go now, before they close for their repairs.

We saun­tered out into the sun­shine to find lunch.  Sadly our des­ti­na­tion, Cafe Max (another haunt of my years in Paris) was closed.  So we ended up at a rather quixotic and bizarre restau­rant, Home in Paris.  A mas­sive buf­fet!  Typ­i­cal brunch items like creamy scram­bled eggs, sausages and bacon, plus salmon and sole en bro­chette, on bar­be­cue sticks, and tiny steak Tartares topped with quail’s eggs!  Grilled aubergines, pep­pers and cour­gettes, fine beans… and hard-boiled eggs stuffed with — are you sit­ting down? — truf­fled may­on­naise!   And the desserts… Avery was in heaven.

“Have you noticed?” I asked.  “Every­one here but us is FRENCH.”  It turns out the restau­rant is quite a des­ti­na­tion for the locals — so sim­ple to bring your mother who eats only veg­eta­bles, your child who eats none, your teenage son who eats every­thing and can never get enough!  Lovely.

We stag­gered off down the avenue de la Motte Piquet, walk­ing and walk­ing and walk­ing until we reached…

Noth­ing pre­pares you for the sheer SCALE and mag­nif­i­cent design of the gor­geous Tour Eiffel.

Then we hopped onto a tour bateau and spent a stuffy half-hour inside, drift­ing down the Seine, until we came to our senses and stood out­side by the rail.  The Hotel de Ville, the Musee d’Orsay (closed for a strike!), the Jardins des Plantes, all passed by.  We were just happy to be together.

Home on feet that could barely func­tion, we were so tired!  And then, Mon­day in Montmartre.

One of only two orig­i­nal Metro sta­tion entrances left in Paris!  But beware: there are over 100 steps up from the train!  Puff­ing and pant­ing, we headed toward lunch at the cafe made famous by the film “Amelie,” Les Deux Moulins.  Steak tartare, Avery’s beloved croque mon­sieur, feel­ing like total tourists!  Ah well, why not.

And up, up, UP to Sacre Coeur!  Avery’s photo, of course.  She has such an eye!

Avery looked through the tele­scope also made famous by Amelie, and we were all unfairly annoyed that the Eif­fel Tower could not be seen!

I was ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed to find that the famous fruit and veg shop in the film was closed!

I hope this aber­ra­tion was merely a mat­ter of its being a Mon­day?  Still, it was a long uphill walk for a closed shop.

We came home for a brief toes-up and then headed out for a bit of last-minute shop­ping, find­ing the per­fect cape for Avery’s win­ter coat.  And collapse!

Finally, our last morn­ing in Paris.  I awoke feel­ing rather ill, prob­a­bly the result of too much pate and cheese and total exhaus­tion, and was tempted to slip back into bed and recover before our trip home.  “But we really want to see the Oscar Wilde tomb in the Cim­i­tiere de Pere-Lachaise,” John reminded me, and we really did.  So off we went, pick­ing up a lovely lit­tle chyr­san­the­mum plant to give to dear Oscar, and troop­ing gamely through the ceme­tery in search of our goal.

“Look up ahead!” I said, laugh­ing.  “Wouldn’t it be hilar­i­ous if, after all this, that con­struc­tion site were…”

And it was.  Poor Oscar.  Poor us!

We groaned!  “I don’t believe it!  The ONLY grave in the entire ceme­tery under wraps, and it’s Oscar’s.”  Avery left a tra­di­tional trib­ute, anyway.

Ah well, at least we found him.  And dear Chopin!

Fred?  Really?  That seems a lit­tle familiar.

We had to admit, then, that it was time to go home.  A quick lunch at our beloved apart­ment (thank you, Kath­leen and Joe!), pack­ing and clean­ing, and to the Eurostar, where I bought sev­eral bril­liant lit­tle mus­tards in duty-free, Avery milled around the makeup coun­ters, I picked up a Paris Match with the first pho­tographs of the lit­tle Sarkozy daugh­ter, and we came home.

What glo­ri­ous adven­tures.  Over­whelm­ing, really, bring­ing together mem­o­ries of the past, the joy of show­ing our child a lovely time, the drama of appre­ci­at­ing one of the world’s great­est cities.  Happy Birth­day, Avery!

We are back from the unfor­get­table delights of Paris, and I’m even now find­ing it a bit dif­fi­cult to adjust to nor­mal life!  Seem­ingly dozens of loads of laun­dry have, how­ever, helped me come down to earth.

There is no way to con­vey the magic of Paris in pho­tos, or words.  Even the sim­plest things are rather other worldly, like this view from our rented apart­ment, near to the Louvre.

It’s tempt­ing to try to describe the extra­or­di­nary charms of every­thing about Paris: the archi­tec­tural details around every cor­ner, the charm­ing blue street signs, the styl­ish girls and boys on mind-bogglingly speedy scoot­ers, the per­fectly fash­ion­able small French chil­dren speak­ing in high pip­ing voices, “Papa!  Maman!  Je voudrais du pain au choco­lat!”  Even the florist dis­plays have a for­eign, glossy poetry.

We arrived in the early after­noon, dropped off our bags at the lovely apart­ment with its spi­ral staircase.

And there began the pat­tern of our hol­i­day in Paris, each of us going along with the pas­sions of the oth­ers!  We walked and walked and walked, first pass­ing an unex­pected land­mark in my life — Dehil­lerin, the world-famous kitchen sup­ply shop, made famous by Julia Child in her memoirs.

No pho­tographs were allowed inside, so I can­not show you the unbe­liev­able sight of an entire WALL of wire whisks!  Hun­dreds of choices!  Every sort of cast-iron and cop­per and porce­lain imple­ment you can imag­ine, rows upon rows of knife sets, fish molds, madeleine trays, brightly-colored cut­ting boards, stock pots of every size in the world.  Heaven.  I didn’t buy any­thing, though.  Self-denial is my motto, as you know.

From there we hap­pened upon a very sat­is­fy­ing vin­tage cloth­ing shop called “Hippy Mar­ket,” where Avery tried on thou­sands of gar­ments, look­ing espe­cially for a new win­ter coat.  If only her arms were shorter.

She did suc­cumb, how­ever, to this evoca­tive and adorable pair of Con­verse sneak­ers upon which some past owner had writ­ten the words for “love” in many lan­guages, includ­ing Russian!

From there we trooped toward the Pom­pi­dou Cen­tre, pass­ing along the way this incred­i­ble art instal­la­tion.  A wall of words, quite simply.

The gen­eral mes­sage of the wall is a sort of pan-modern sup­port of peace, green­ness, tol­er­ance and love.  Quite beau­ti­ful, as Avery’s detailed photo shows (she is becom­ing a more gifted pho­tog­ra­pher all the time).

We arrived at the Pom­pi­dou and Avery and John decided to take a break, sit on a wall and take pho­tos of the new Con­verse.  So it was but the work of a moment for me to cross the square to “DOD,” or “Dish of the Day,” one of the most charm­ing and deli­cious del­i­catessens you will ever encounter.  I can­not seem to find a ref­er­ence to this place on the web, but trust me, it’s oppo­site the entrance to the Pom­pi­dou.  Fresh breads, fruit and veg, wine, pre­pared foods, sal­ads, and cheeses.  Oh, les fro­mages fran­caises!  I could not resist this dar­ling packet of three dif­fer­ent laits, milks, with its label, “Would you know which is which?  Sheep, goat and ewe.”

I also could not begin to resist two dif­fer­ent sorts of ril­lettes, which are ter­rines of shred­ded pre­served meats, con­fit in fact, sus­pended in… fat.  I bought goose, AND duck.  Spread on a piece of baguette… heaven!

We put aside our acquis­i­tive­ness and went into the Pom­pi­dou, mar­vel­ling at the views from the glass esca­la­tors.  Mem­o­ries of my long-ago days doing dis­ser­ta­tion research came back to me, twenty years ago, a stu­dent, alone.  So much hap­pier to wan­der through the museum with my dar­ling fam­ily!  We each chose our favorite pieces.  Avery really liked the con­cep­tual instal­la­tions of Fluxus artist George Brecht.

John absolutely fell in love with a bril­liant Japan­ese instal­la­tion of a length of cas­sette tape being per­pet­u­ally blown in a wav­ing oval by an over­head fan!  Silly me not to write down the name of the artist…

I myself fell des­per­ately in love with a text instal­la­tion — always text with me! — of metal­lic words, telling a story of two men in a bar, sus­pended around three of the four walls of one room.  Again, I stu­pidly did not take any notes of the artist!  I wel­come any intel­li­gence from any­one who finds her­self at the Pom­pi­dou any time soon.

I find it very intrigu­ing that all three of us eschewed tra­di­tional paint­ing, draw­ing or sculp­ture, even pho­tog­ra­phy was pushed aside in our enthu­si­asm for irony, humor and a decep­tive sim­plic­ity, in these installations.

Hav­ing slaked John’s thirst for archi­tec­ture and salved our cul­tural con­sciences, we turned to the more mun­dane sub­ject of what on earth to eat for din­ner, and where to buy the ingre­di­ents!  And here we came upon a slight dis­ad­van­tage of tak­ing an apart­ment in a very pop­u­lar tourist area: while there is every cafe under the sun, find­ing fresh ingre­di­ents is rather more dif­fi­cult.  But finally we came upon Super­marche G20 in the rue Eti­enne Mar­cel.  And here John uttered one of the sen­tences we col­lect in our game, “I don’t think any­one has ever said this before.”

“Kris­ten, stop fondling the kumquats.”

But who can resist their dim­pled skin?  I didn’t buy any, how­ever, restrict­ing myself to ingre­di­ents I actu­ally needed for din­ner, since we had to carry it all home.  We decided upon a dish of veal sauteed with mush­rooms and gar­lic, the sauce fin­ished with brandy and creme fraiche.  Heav­enly.  Home laden, feet aching, all of us com­pletely worn out, but reviv­ing enough after din­ner to go out for a lit­tle explore in darkness.

We came upon this menu, at the fan­tas­tic — and I mean that lit­er­ally, surely it is a fan­tasy — Restau­rant Le Grand Vefour.

Could any menu priced at 282 Euros — about $380 — pos­si­bly be described as “a plea­sure menu”?  We were gob­s­macked.  What on earth were they serv­ing?  Avery suc­cinctly said, “It would be like eat­ing coins.”  We enlarged upon this theme, imag­in­ing our con­ver­sa­tion with the gar­con.  “Yes, could I have my change in notes, please?  These coins are SO hard to chew.”

Up in the morn­ing com­pletely refreshed to ven­ture out of the apart­ment, find­ing that Sat­ur­days in our neigh­bor­hood are VERY quiet indeed.  “The peo­ple must really respect week­ends here,” John observed, with some wish­ful think­ing, remem­ber­ing the seven-day work weeks of his career.  Look what inter­est­ing graf­fiti we came upon at a build­ing site.

We all won­dered if the sen­ti­ments expressed here are approval, or disapproval?

We saun­tered toward the shop­ping street of the rue de Riv­oli in order to fur­ther our search for Avery’s coat, wan­der­ing into Zara, no luck there, then send­ing Avery off down the enor­mous escalier roulant, esca­la­tor, into the depths of Sephora, her beloved cos­met­ics shop.  Her capac­ity to shop there always amazes her par­ents, as we can­not under­stand how she can look in one more city at another set of shelves con­tain­ing makeup!  But it’s just as I am with cheese and bread, and John with the win­dows of estate agents!

John and I couldn’t quite take 45 min­utes in Avery’s mecca, how­ever, so we agreed to meet later and mean­dered toward the river, for a spot of sight­see­ing.  And there, poor John, I came upon a French… pet store.  Just look at the cha­tons, the pre­cious French kit­tens for sale.  And I mean SALE.  These kit­tens were expen­sive, com­ing in at 820 Euros each!

Poor John.  We had to go back with Avery, and there­upon for the rest of the day she and I imag­ined all the other pur­chases we would give up in order to have a Parisian kitten.

It was time for lunch, and we found our­selves out­side the gor­geous soar­ing Cafe Marly at the Lou­vre where we had seen peo­ple din­ing in lux­ury the night before.  “Let’s just do it,” we all decided rashly (after all, it would take a lot of declined lunches to buy a kit­ten).  And there we were, seated in the sun out­side, with gor­geous views of I.M. Pei’s glass dome.  It was a total DELIGHT.  Just look at my Salade Nicoise, Ver­sion 2011, with a mys­te­ri­ous sauce made of whipped tuna, avo­cado and creme fraiche.

Avery ate every snip­pet of her clas­sic Croque Mon­sieur, a com­pletely deli­cious toasted ham and cheese sand­wich.  If you want an egg added, ask for a Croque Madame!

It was hard to get up and agree to walk again!

But off we went, to the Jeu de Paume for the Diane Arbus show.

And it was WELL worth the walk, the enor­mously long queue.  Her pho­tographs are sim­ply divinely evoca­tive, trou­bling, unique.

This show led to very provoca­tive dis­cus­sions about, for one thing, how impor­tant is it to know the life story of the artist — or any details about the cre­ator what­so­ever — before you see the work?  Avery’s con­sid­ered opin­ion, and I agree, is that knowl­edge of the artist’s wishes, inten­tions, bio­graph­i­cal details CAN add to our appre­ci­a­tion of art­work which with­out that knowl­edge might be mere pic­tures.  But there can be an over-reliance on such details (cer­tainly many the­o­rists want to call them “extra­ne­ous”) that can cloud our imme­di­ate reac­tion to art­work.  I must admit that when we came to the end of the show, and read the time­line of her life — inter­est­ingly at the END of the show, not the begin­ning! — that she com­mit­ted sui­cide… I was not sur­prised.  An awe-inspiring col­lec­tion of images, and what a life.

And so from there home, stop­ping to buy ingre­di­ents for Avery’s beloved “Steak frites.”  What a joy to cook at “home.”  And to col­lapse once more, to refresh our­selves in sleep… and onto Day Three in the morning!

I’m busy in the kitchen this sunny Lon­don morn­ing, prepar­ing for a lit­tle din­ner party tonight — my father’s first cousin is vis­it­ing! — at which I’ll serve the nation’s favorite dish.  Curry!  Next week will see Hin­dus cel­e­brat­ing Diwali, the fes­ti­val of lights, and for that rea­son all the telly chefs seem to be com­ing for­ward with their var­i­ous ver­sions of the clas­sic Indian treat.  What Amer­i­cans may find funny is that British “curry” often does not fea­ture… curry pow­der!  Curry pow­der itself is, of course, an amal­gam of many spices includ­ing turmeric, corian­der, cumin and cin­na­mon.  British cur­ries, includ­ing the one I’m mak­ing tonight, fea­ture a paste of lemon grass, chilli, gin­ger, gar­lic and oil.  I’ll start with that and then add spices as I go along.

If you can imag­ine, Avery is on school hol­i­day this week and next!  How on earth, we might well be tempted to ask, can a school sys­tem be ready for a hol­i­day just six weeks after the begin­ning of term?  Until I became the mother of essen­tially a British teenager you could never have con­vinced me that any­one could need a break in Octo­ber.  But we all do!  This par­tic­u­lar year, when Avery and her mates are buck­ling down to what are called GCSEs (the first really impor­tant exams that will occur next year, after which chil­dren can legally leave school).  Home­work lev­els have spiked and there is real pres­sure to pro­duce seri­ous work in sev­eral lan­guages, three sci­ences and (tough­est of all, to my mind) math­e­mat­ics that I can no longer even pre­tend to understand.

Added to this onslaught of work are the rehearsals for “Sweet Char­ity,” the musi­cal Avery will be in next month.  As the days grow shorter and colder, Avery seems to come home later and later, laden with books and files, starv­ing to death, and with a huge work­load before we can hope to sit down to din­ner.  It was a nice break last week to head over to Kingston to hear the Down­ton Abbey cre­ator Julian Fel­lowes talk about his career, the stratos­pheric suc­cess of DA, his future plans — a series about the Titanic next year!

He was sim­ply adorable!  For all the accu­sa­tions that he is a snob, that “Down­ton Abbey” is a snob­bish pro­gramme, I have to admit that I love it all.  I do think it’s a funny con­tra­dic­tion, Amer­i­cans’ atti­tude toward any­thing resem­bling the British aris­toc­racy.  We may well have fled Eng­land our­selves all those years ago seek­ing greater equal­ity and free­dom, but we love noth­ing more than Hello! mag­a­zine, the Royal Wed­ding, and any­one addressed as Count­ess or Lady.  So I enjoyed greatly sit­ting on the dusty floor of the Rose The­atre in the round, and lis­ten­ing to the plummy tones of Mr Fel­lowes describ­ing his life as a drama stu­dent, some 40 years ago.  “We found our­selves between the bril­liance of John Cleese and Monty Python before us, and Hugh Lau­rie and Stephen Fry who came after us.  In short, we were the bread between the jam, as it were.”

“Act­ing is like play­ing ten­nis,” he pon­tif­i­cated.  “You should always pur­sue each activ­ity with peo­ple who are bet­ter at it than YOU.”

Oh, speak­ing of ten­nis, we have had to admit that very shortly, the courts will be too damp, leafy and dan­ger­ous for us to play.  And so we have taken up a new and totally crazy sport: SQUASH.  One les­son at the Barnes Squash Club has con­vinced at least John that we should pur­sue this, so I’m going along with it.

I can under­stand that if I am going to con­tinue to cook for us, we have to find ever more clever ways of burn­ing off all the calo­ries.  But I have to admit I think I’ll always feel more com­fort­able with the sort of squash that takes but­ter and sage and gets pureed with a hand blender.

Roasted But­ter­nut Squash Soup

(serves 4)

1 large but­ter­nut squash

2 tbsps butter

6 leaves fresh sage

500 ml/2 cups chicken stock

driz­zle sin­gle cream

Cut the squash in half length­wise and dot with but­ter and sage leaves.  Roast at 220C/425F for about half an hour or until fully cooked and soft.  Scoop squash into a saucepan and cover with chicken stock.  Sim­mer for five min­utes, then puree with hand blender.  Pour into warm bowls and driz­zle with cream.

***************

One of the biggest treats of this autumn has been our trip to Bor­ough Mar­ket.  It’s the way John gets me to accom­pany him on his real-estate for­ays into the East-ish End of Lon­don: the lure of every deli­cious food­stuff you can dream up, under one cor­ru­gated metal roof, high above our heads.  Stalls of pump­kins (speak­ing of squash!)…

And figs, a dis­play of which would bring my mother in law to tears.

But per­haps my favorite stall of all is Gas­tro­nom­ica, that famed Ital­ian seller of all things char­cu­terie (what’s Ital­ian for “char­cu­terie,” any­way?), dairy, cheese… and the best but­ter on the face of the earth.

I brought home a head of cau­li­flower to roast whole, and WHAT a good idea that was.  Sim­ply driz­zled with lots of olive oil and sprin­kled with a good sea salt, roasted in a hot oven for 30 minutes.

For­ti­fied by my cau­li­flower, I’ve been a good girl and done my “pool duty” at Avery’s school, a termly oblig­a­tion which entails pick­ing up the keys to the fab­u­lous old struc­ture at a house nearby, cycling through the autumn leaves over to school, open­ing up the box with its money to pay the life­guard, ask­ing mem­bers to sign in, then breath­ing in the steamy air for an hour and a half while swim­mers trun­dle up and down.  One man came in from the chilly out­side to greet me and the life­guard, who pum­meled him with ques­tions about the foot­ball match going on: Wales — vs– France.  “I can’t believe you’re root­ing for Wales, sir,” said the life­guard.  “Well, nor­mally of course I wouldn’t.  But they’re play­ing FRANCE.”  The lesser of two evils, to the Eng­lish mindset.

On Sun­day we all awoke to a foggy day which I spent mak­ing every mis­take in bell­ring­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make.  I led with the tre­ble very badly, finally learn­ing to fol­low the tenor.  It’s a nice les­son in life: to be the leader, some­times it’s nec­es­sary only to fol­low who seems to be last.  Then it was onto Chiswick where when asked to “ring down” the tre­ble bell, I acci­den­tally pulled it down in two strokes.  Was there ever a scarier moment?  “You got away with that because it was the tre­ble, a tiny bell,” Matt said.  “If you’d had a heavy bell you’d be miss­ing a hand right now.”

And this is my new hobby.  How do I get myself into these situations?

The only way to recover was with a lovely plate of lemon sole, sauteed in olive oil and topped with a dust­ing of crispy Fox Point bread­crumbs.  Ter­ri­bly suc­cess­ful to taste, but not pretty enough to pho­to­graph.  On the other hand, the side dish of juli­enned beet­root, shaped into a cake and fried in duck fat, was beau­ti­ful, with its dol­lop of sour cream.

It turns out that while juli­enned pota­toes will form a cake, beet­root will not.  And beet­root with duck fat is sim­ply gild­ing the lily, as it were.  Cook­ing is not always suc­cess­ful if you make experiments.

Avery’s been exper­i­ment­ing this break, but not with beet­root.  First she spent a day in Tot­ten­ham with her fash­ion designer men­tor Stephane St Jaymes, the bril­liant man who offered her a “Take Your Daugh­ter To Work” day last spring.  I love the out­fit she chose for her day with him this week.

I dropped her off at a photographer’s house yes­ter­day so she could be part of a shoot called “hair before and after,” and look what came home!

 So tomor­row, with her new hair­cut and ready for an adven­ture, we are off on the Eurostar to Paris for an early cel­e­bra­tion of Avery’s birth­day.  More from there!