I think we’re get­ting a clean­ing lady tomor­row! I just fin­ished vac­u­um­ing with my fab­u­lous solid-gold Miele machine, how­ever, and things look pretty good! John’s in Zurich tonight so Avery and I are plan­ning a visit to the video shop on the way home from school, and a pop­corn and movie evening. She went off to school today slightly dis­tressed at hav­ing for­got­ten (of course, it was I who for­got, evil mummy) her gloves for skat­ing, but mol­li­fied at the prospect of get­ting her Level One badge. We caved to pres­sure and bought her her very own skates, which should help.

I’ve got to go pay the ran­som for John’s shirts at Ye Incred­i­bly Expen­sive Dry Cleaner, so more later.

I think I’m lonely! It’s so odd to walk around and around my neigh­bor­hood, and the school neigh­bor­hood, and no one greets me or even notices me!  I am a total stranger, which does not suit me actu­ally.  Some peo­ple at home have sug­gested, “What a great oppor­tu­nity to rein­vent your­self!”  But it turns out, I kind of liked who I was already.  There is one mother at Avery’s school, an Amer­i­can nat­u­rally, who has been really sweet.  Invited me out for cof­fee last week and ended up spon­ta­neously tak­ing me in her car to a pet store where I bought a real lit­ter­box and lit­ter!  .s opposed to the roast­ing pan, YUCK, that had been serv­ing as a lit­ter box until now!  I know, now you’ll hes­i­tate to eat my roast chicken.  Any­way, this mom, Becky, is lovely and her daugh­ter Anna is one of Avery’s favorite girls in the class.  But when she told me that her hus­band was due back from New York that day, I had an awful moment where I real­ized that back at PS 234, I would never not know if a dad was trav­el­ing!  I knew the ins and outs of everyone’s sched­ules, when Annabelle had piano, when Cici had Tae Kwan Do, when Michele’s hus­band had his scary trip to the Mid­dle East, what Cather­ine was feed­ing her four chil­dren that night.  And now, sob here, I don’t know any­thing about any­one, nor does any­one know any­thing about me.  I find it lonely.

I got Avery off to school this morn­ing and then came home feel­ing sorry for myself, know­ing that all the peo­ple I care about were fast asleep except for John who was busily engag­ing with his stim­u­lat­ing work con­tacts, and Avery, busily defend­ing her net­ball goalie posi­tion.  I actu­ally lay down and took a nap!  Isn’t that the first sign of depres­sion?  Or is it not being able to sleep?  I can’t remem­ber.  I woke up when the lovely porters, my crush Bob and his lesser cohort Iain, knocked on the door with two feck­less look­ing boys to help carry all our junk away.  I pitched in, and the old say­ing “many hands made light work” was man­i­fest.  So our kitchen is empty of all its char­ity rub­bish, and I packed up the last of the rub­bish rub­bish to put out on the pave­ment (Brit for side­walk, you know) this evening.  That at least felt good.  Then I went off to buy book­shelves, feel­ing that if I did some­thing I’d be more cheer­ful, only to find there’s a two-week lead time.  I’m about ready to do it, though.

The eighty or so boxes of books in the study is not only ugly, but it means I’m read­ing the same things over and over!  It occurred to me that peo­ple always say exer­cise is good when you’re unhappy (never one to shy away from drama­tis­ing a sit­u­a­tion), so I deter­mined to walk from South Kens­ing­ton where I’d been at Conran’s in the Miche­lin Build­ing, all the way home, if I didn’t get lost along the way.  I even exe­cuted the risky manouever of call­ing my beloved brother-in-law Joel to get an update on Jane, liv­ing dan­ger­ously when such dis­trac­tion could eas­ily get me to Isling­ton or Chiswick instead of May­fair.  But I tromped suc­cess­fully all through Hyde Park, actu­ally not mak­ing any wrong turns and hear­ing the lat­est Jane genius tricks, like her abil­ity to pick out spe­cific books from her shelf on com­mand.  That child is a genius.  Which is so unfair, because like her cousin Avery, she’s also gor­geous.  Totally unfair, like two invest­ment bankers mar­ry­ing each other.  Joel cheered me up with news of their house sale and the pres­sure now to find some­where to live by June.  I allowed him to intro­duce this con­ver­sa­tional topic (a true mea­sure of my feel­ings for him) even though the word MOVE is con­sid­ered foul lan­guage in our house.

So I got home safely, feel­ing vir­tu­ous, and headed straight to school pickup, still feel­ing melan­choly although Joel’s chat had cheered me up, thank you!  Next time I need to catch up with my sis­ter as well.

Of course I felt happy to see Fifi, and decided to go up to her class­room for the first time, to meet her beloved teacher, Mrs. Bick­ley.  This name sounded to me like she would look like Mary Pop­pins, all done up in Vic­to­rian garb with her hair in a bun, so I was not pre­pared for the youngish New Zealan­der I met.  A dar­ling class­room, all sweet lit­tle brown desks whose tops come up, just like in all the nov­els where the mis­er­able home­sick girl hides her tears under her desk­top.  No tears here, though.  “It’s hon­estly as if she’s always been here, Mrs. Cur­ran!  She fits like a glove, and such a lovely, lovely writer!  Such an imag­i­na­tion.”  The room is on the fourth floor of a gor­geous white house with cir­cu­lar stair­way inside and lovely slightly shabby car­pets.  I probed for rea­sons to worry about Avery’s work, or some­thing we should be focus­ing on, but this was all met with smil­ing reas­sur­ance that noth­ing can mar the per­fec­tion that is the mar­riage of Avery and King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School.  Finally I made a lame and pathetic offer to help out if she ever needed it, say­ing self-pityingly that I was a non-working mother, and with the air of push­ing me out the door, although no push­ing actu­ally occurred, she said brightly, “How lovely, and so good to know.”  Hmmm.  Don’t think par­ents are nec­es­sary in the per­fect world of school.  Avery kindly led me out of the school and we ended up in the patis­serie in the High Street, where she tried to teach me to crochet.

Clearly I need to get a life.  Becky has invited me to the Wednes­day morn­ing cof­fee she has with some moth­ers from her kindergartener’s class (the class I read with, actu­ally!), so I think I’d bet­ter go.  And of course noth­ing can dim my inter­est in the food­stuffs on offer here, so tonight we’re hav­ing a pork fil­let (don’t for­get to pro­nounce the t in true British thumbing-their-noses-at-the-French fash­ion) with a mari­nade of gar­lic, lemon juice, white wine, rose­mary and olive oil, mashed potato (why don’t they say the plural?  don’t know), and roasted beet­root.  It is the new super food over here, and Avery is heartily sick of it.  “But it cures every­thing,” I main­tained.  “We don’t have any­thing to cure,” she pointed out rea­son­ably.  “Well, it also pre­vents things,” I persevered.

Any sug­ges­tions for how to keep me out of emo­tional dol­drums wel­come, please.

Did any of you grow up in the East, or in Eng­land?  Because appar­ently if you did, you grew up with name tapes.  Rather, your mother did.  I recently went online to Cash’s, the place for such essen­tial Eng­lish items, for name tapes for Avery, that is lit­tle cloth tapes with her name embroi­dered on them in prepa­ra­tion for the even­tu­al­ity that she loses some arti­cle of cloth­ing at school.  In fact that’s already hap­pened, the dreaded full-outfit exchange with Lily which resulted in no cardie for sev­eral days.  Any­way, I ordered them, and paid 50 pence extra to have a horse embroi­dered on each one.  Well, they came.  And my pun­ish­ment was to have to sew one of them on every blessed item of Avery’s school attire.  Shirts, skirts, jumpers, coats, swim­suits, dance cos­tumes, socks, tights, track suit sweater and trousers, what­ever.  Urgh.  Kind of cute, though, in a for­eign, “we’ll never have to do this again” sort of way.

Any­way, appar­ently Eng­lish chil­dren all have them for school, and all my East­ern friends had them for the oblig­a­tory eight weeks of sum­mer camp.  Geez, I barely sur­vived one week of gym­nas­tics camp at eight or so, no name tapes involved, or at least my sainted mother didn’t com­plain about sewing them on.

I’m con­tem­plat­ing a much nicer week.  Just rub­bish to get taken away, and then, fur­ni­ture to be bought, and then…OH NO!  I have to get a life!  I can no longer pre­tend that being 1) class mother at school, or 2) some­one about to close her gallery or 3) some­one about to set­tle into a new coun­try house in Con­necti­cut, or 4) some­one about to move to a for­eign coun­try, or 5) some­one who just did move to a for­eign coun­try… can clas­sify me as some­one with some­thing to do.  Soon my desk will have a printer, my phone will work, my kitchen appli­ances will work, my child’s back­pack will every day with­out FAIL be packed with its proper stuff.  And then what?  I had bet­ter find an occu­pa­tion.  Well, there is edit­ing the beloved cook­books writ­ten in the 40s by my Con­necti­cut friend Anne’s mother, Gladys Taber, and writ­ing my own (whose over­all con­cept needs a much bet­ter blurb than I’ve con­cocted so far, for any­one to buy it).  And then I heartily hope to receive you all as guests soon.  So there’s that.

Mean­time, I just found out my dar­ling par­ents get to travel to Con­necti­cut to cel­e­brate Baby Jane’s first birth­day.  How we wish we were there.  We did select the per­fect present, how­ever, but I can’t telll you because that would be…telling.

Mon­day beck­ons so must to sleep.

I’m sure Avery could teach me how to say that in Latin.  We spent all Thurs­day after­noon and evening going through her Latin text­books and teach­ing each other how to say things like “noli tan­gere, Rufe!”  Which will come in handy if you have a friend called Rufus that you want not to touch any­thing.  She is remark­ably good at it.  And pul­chri­tuda, too.

In any case, we con­tinue to wade through piles of horse show rib­bons, linen nap­kins, kitty pris­ons whose screws won’t come apart for flat stor­age but bear adorable labels like “I’m Hermione, a dark small tabby.  My final des­ti­na­tion is Lon­don Heathrow, please take care of me!”  I suc­cumbed yes­ter­day and took a long nap and when I woke up John had com­pletely set­tled the kitchen which is a huge help.  I had hereto­fore been pro­duc­ing roast chicken, spinach and red pep­per pasta, roast joints (why is it called a joint?  as far as I can tell it’s not an elbow or a knee, it’s just an ordi­nary roast beef, must find out), and count­less break­fasts of fried bacon and eggs com­pletely sur­rounded by enor­mous piles of din­ner plates, use­less kitchen appli­ances and many, many mis­matched cof­fee cups.  Now all is pris­tine, except for the floor which is cov­ered by boxes of stuff to give to char­ity.  And tragedy has struck in Crush Land: my dar­ling porter Bob has been kicked upstairs to Senior Build­ing Man­ager and his replace­ment Iain, while lovely and help­ful, is not crush mate­r­ial.  So apply­ing to him for help in the rub­bish line is not going to have any heart-stopping impli­ca­tions.  Oh well.

Let’s see, Fri­day Avery and I had an after-school snack at the lovely Patis­serie Valerie in the Maryle­bone High Street, only she had a gor­geous slice of choco­late sponge cake and I had a hor­ror called “Chick Pea and Potato Soup,” whose name alone should have warned me that it would be really odd, and it was.  I couldn’t take the whole thing, but any­way I was dis­tracted by Avery’s tale of their school excur­sion to the Uni­corn The­atre for a pre­sen­ta­tion of “Tom’s Mid­night Gar­den,” taken from the Philippa Pearce book which I had given her but she hadn’t read, and we agreed on the fail­ing we both have of lit­er­ally judg­ing a book by its cover, or at least its blurbs, which were unim­pres­sive.  But the play was mag­nif­i­cent and we are both hop­ing to go back together.  Then we ended up in the Daunt Book­shop up the road from the cafe, and if you ever get to Lon­don you MUST make a jour­ney to this book­shop.  So exten­sive, so quixotic in its choices, and the staff are orig­i­nal book­worms with moth­e­aten jumpers (sweaters to you Yanks), ironic eye­brow motions and help­ful com­ments.  I wanted all Jamie Oliver’s cook­books, but set­tled on ask­ing for them for my birth­day.  I did peruse a cook­ery book all about fab­u­lous food stores around the world, which was very enjoy­able.  There was one cov­ered that is in Glouces­ter­shire near the famed National Trust House called Chastle­ton, that John and I stum­bled on, derelict, 15 years ago, and then saw being slowly done up dur­ing our trip here when Avery was two, and is now fin­ished.  The food store, and farm asso­ci­ated with it, are called Dayles­ford; the Cur­rans and we shopped there by hap­pen­stance over spring break and I have never spent so much money on food in my life.  Rather, I have never asked John’s dad to spend so much money on food in his life, since I lost the usual bat­tle for the bill.  Organic every­thing, in a fab­u­lous archi­tec­tural set­ting and much top­i­ary in the gardens.

Yes­ter­day we went skat­ing at the rink behind Som­er­set House, home of many happy mem­o­ries for me at the Cour­tauld Insti­tute Gal­leries in my art his­to­rian days.  The rink is sim­ply lux­u­ri­ous, but I thought it would have been even nicer at night, because it’s both lit and heated by enor­mous burn­ing torches that in the dark must be truly gor­geous.  But we had fun.  Then a far too long walk, start­ing out hap­pily in Trafal­gar Square like com­pleat tourists, with Avery climb­ing on the lions, but degen­er­at­ing into a point­less walk to Conran’s for fur­ni­ture, noth­ing in stock, and spi­ral­ing fur­ther down­ward to Peter Lewis in Sloane Square, also point­less, noth­ing in stock.  In total annoy­ance we got a taxi home, none the wiser than a bet­ter pair of gog­gles for Avery’s swim class.  Hence my des­per­ate nap.

So this week will be more search­ing for con­tain­ers for all our stuff, and peo­ple to come take the other stuff we can’t live with.  Tonight will be fet­tucine with aspara­gus and gam­mon steak (ham to you at home), in a lemon cream sauce.  For com­fort.  Oh, and we’ve been watch­ing the hilar­i­ous com­pe­ti­tion pro­gramme on tele­vi­sion, “Danc­ing on Ice,” where they pair a real live skater with a semi-celebrity who has a month to learn how to skate for a com­pe­ti­tion.  Very sooth­ing.  Every­one is always “com­pletely gob­s­macked” at win­ning, and “chuffed to bits” at pro­ceed­ing to the next level.  Then they’re “gut­ted” when they’re elim­i­nated.  And they say we speak the same language!

Happy Birth­day, Janie…

Now, if you’re liv­ing in May­fair, lah-di-dah, and your child is a Form Four stu­dent at King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School, you owe it to your hus­band to have his shirts done at the Buck­ing­ham Dry Clean­ers and Laun­der­ers of Dis­tinc­tion. It was truly hilar­i­ous; I asked our beloved porter Bob Jack­son where the near­est cleaner’s was, and he pointed me in the right direc­tion, but since my sense of direc­tion belies the inte­gral word “sense,” I was soon quite lost. Have no fear: a quick call to John and he was on the inter­net for “dry clean­ers May­fair” and talked me through it like long-distance emer­gency surgery. My own per­sonal GPS sys­tem! Any­way, I found the cleaner’s finally, and I have to say, I love the place. Would you have a sin­glet you need cleaned? Don’t know what a sin­glet is, but it’ll cost you 2 pounds. There’s also a Day Dress listed. Hmmm, was I sup­posed to change at 4 p.m. upon arriv­ing home from school pickup, for my Late After­noon Dress? Any­way, it would cost 12 pounds 50 pence, so I don’t think I can afford the elegance.

So I am in enor­mous crush con­flict. There’s my orig­i­nal crush, to whom I feel a lot of loy­alty, Matthew Mac­fadyen. He is lovely of course, I’ve resisted find­ing where he actu­ally lives so as not to stalk him as I did John Malkovich in our first Lon­don sojourn, where by God if he was buy­ing sausages in the Ful­ham Road so was I, day after day. No, this crush was going to stay much more head-in-the-clouds. Until I saw “In My Father’s Den,” Matthew’s lat­est cin­e­matic effort, which I would hugely rec­om­mend. Tiny no-budget New Zealand film, gor­geous emo­tional range, really well-cast, sad fam­ily rela­tion­ships. So I was in major crush renewal mode until… our porter came on the scene. Porter mean­ing super in New York, the guy who will be here to meet your British Tele­com guy, the guy who tells you there’s no prob­lem with sev­en­teen bags of garbage. He’s my dream, is Bob Jack­son. Love him. Took chicken soup to his office today but there was no one there, so I left it on the doorstep. Do you sup­pose he ate it? Or the wan­der­ing bobby giv­ing out park­ing tickets?

Avery today said just about the cutest thing. She was con­cerned about not doing well in French, although frankly (hee hee) she got 10 out of
12 cor­rect on her exam, so who’s com­plain­ing. She said, “I sup­pose I can’t be good at every­thing. I was learn­ing today in sci­ence about elec­tri­cal cir­cuits. It turns out if one bulb can’t work, but the cir­cuit is still func­tional, the remain­ing bulbs get stronger. So I won­der if maybe I’m bet­ter at Latin because I just am not good at French. The bulbs get brighter.”

She’s thriv­ing. John’s thriv­ing. I’m get­ting bored being at home with boxes, where my biggest chal­lenge is to get the vac­uum cleaner to hook up prop­erly, or to con­vince the kit­ties that the new lit­ter­box and its new loca­tion is just as appeal­ing as the old box and the old loca­tion. Tired of it! I’m also really know­ing I’ll hugely miss being able to chat on the phone with John’s mom and dad who are in St Barths after tomor­row (one place where you really do not have to have your mobile phone with you at all times), and I’ve got to send my dar­ling niece Jane her first birth­day present, can it be a year since Feb­ru­ary 3…

OK, to sleep on a wel­come Thurs­day night, because tomor­row morn­ing I can…nap.

Some­how I for­got that mov­ing to Lon­don meant I was MOV­ING to Lon­don. You know the cliche about how mov­ing is the most stress­ful thing next to the death of a spouse, divorce, or find­ing out it’s more than three blocks to the near­est Star­bucks. Well, I keep remind­ing myself that thank good­ness I’m not mov­ing BECAUSE I’m get­ting divorced, because I’m not happy right now! Here’s what hap­pened. We kid­ded our­selves that we didn’t have all that much stuff, because remem­ber how min­i­mal­ist our apart­ment on Jay Street looked? Really neat and tidy and emp­ty­ish. Well, it turns out that we require mas­sive amounts of empty space that can be closed off and ignored, in order to look tidy. There is no stor­age space to speak of at our lovely new glam­orous flat. No phone yet, and don’t even get me started on how tired I am of British Tele­com and their lame rep­re­sen­ta­tives. I know phone ser­vice is always a pain, and I also know that I am the worst cus­tomer in the world because as soon as they ask me a ques­tion, they can see from my pathetic expres­sion that I don’t have the answer. Broad­band? Cat5? Bull­dog? I don’t know. Any­way, no phone yet.

So stuff. So much STUFF. I have found bits of china and glass that pre­date our mar­riage, I have found Avery’s baby spoons and cups, I have found cof­fee mugs from grad­u­ate school, along with such trea­sure­sas a mug embla­zoned with the leg­end, “On March 16, 2003, I was in Tribeca at Elliot Sadoff’s 1st Birth­day Party!” Actu­ally I have two of those. And I miss Elliot’s mother Alyssa so much that I don’t even mind hav­ing two cof­fee mugs that I have no idea what to do with. I don’t even drink cof­fee! But that’s beside the point. I am actu­ally trea­sur­ing my Elliot mugs, reliv­ing happy days in Tribeca when I had a friend who had a child to have a first birth­day party for.

Any­way, I am madly throw­ing stuff away, putting things aside to give to Oxfam, the Eng­lish ver­sion of Sal­va­tion Army, kick­ing myself that I didn’t do this state­side, but also inves­ti­gat­ing the super-cool shelv­ing com­pany Vit­soe, in Wig­more Street (on my healthy-heart three– times-daily walk to or from Avery’s school). Per­haps with some shelves in the kitchen, some shelves in the liv­ing room for the 800 boxes of books in the study, and some shelves in Avery’s room, I can with­stand my tremen­dous urge to set fire to every­thing we own…

But other than that, life is grand. The neigh­bor­hood is ultra quiet, amaz­ingly since it’s sit­u­ated per­ilously close to the Amer­i­can Embassy, and just a block from the Mar­ble Arch, which they are plan­ning to MOVE! I mean, seri­ously! How they can imag­ine mov­ing the Mar­ble Arch, if for no other rea­son than that there’s a tube sta­tion with its name on it… Next thing you know they’ll black­top Regent’s Park. Hon­estly. But yes, it’s a lovely neigh­bor­hood, just two blocks from a great Marks and Sparks (the local name for Marks and Spencer) Food Hall, my favourite haunt, and a Selfridge’s where I can’t afford any­thing but I go just to look at the foie gras. The kit­ties are safely here, scat­ter­ing lit­ter every­where, and scared silly of the tele­phone men. And guess what? Keep­ing the tra­di­tion of ridicu­lous host­ess behav­ior that was started when we had din­ner guests the first night we brought Avery home from the hos­pi­tal, we had a din­ner guest the evening we moved in! I cleared enough space to roast an amaz­ing Eng­lish Angus beef joint, and suc­cumbed to mov­ing pres­sure to serve with it a glo­ri­ous pre-made dish of scal­loped pota­toes from Marks and Sparks! Added to that was sauteed baby
broc­col­ini, here called “ten­der­stems,” with olive oil and but­ter. And a Bram­ley apple crum­ble. Our guest was the divine David from Water­loo, Iowa, here work­ing on travel agency busi­ness. So book early now, and be here for the next seating.

I’m off to buy a vac­uum cleaner, hun­dreds of rub­ber stop­pers to keep all our doors open (the British love to close a door!), a big kitchen garbage can, and what else? A chicken to roast for our third night in our new home. Avery will be full of sto­ries of Latin class, net­ball, and what­ever hor­ror she’s given for lunch, and John will be in his usual state of excite­ment at spend­ing the day at his posh office in Canary Wharf. Think of me, please, as I unpack… poor me!

Truly! I for­got to say. My friend Emily, on Sun­day, had just been bemoan­ing the can­cel­la­tion of the hunt in Eng­land, say­ing it was the work of a bunch of dopey Lib­er­als who weren’t even aware that the peo­ple they hurt were the Lit­tle Peo­ple in the coun­try who set up the hunts, not the landed gen­try who hunted. “Hon­estly, we need the hunt. Emma and I saw a fox in Ham­mer­smith the other day, in broad day­light.” “Oh, Emily, come on, I’m the Queen of Writer’s Embell­ish­ment, but you can’t get even me to believe you saw a FOX in cen­tral Lon­don. It must have been a large dog of some kind,” I protested. “Seri­ously,” she said.

So we’re dri­ving home and John’s just nav­i­gat­ing the last few
annoy­ing one-way streets to our flat, when in front of the car flashes… a FOX. Sorry, Emily, you were right. A FOX!

Then this after­noon in a crowded pizze­ria I’m read­ing Avery’s school notes for par­ents, catch­ing up on what’s hap­pen­ing. Remem­ber the Turks and Chi­nese com­plain­ing about the back­yard noise? Well, Mrs D was announc­ing the offi­cial mea­sure­ment of noise pro­duced, AKA the acoustic sur­vey, and I men­tioned this to Avery as she man­han­dled her ten­drils of moz­zarella. “So there’s to be an acoustic sur­vey,” I said, and she looked puz­zled and said, “What would they ask, just things like, do you have a glue stick? Or what do you use it for, your glue stick?” “Not a GLUE STICK sur­vey, an ACOUSTIC sur­vey,” I said, and then we both laughed so hard we could hardly breathe. My fam­ily will under­stand the sub­ject line of this post! Never end­ing fun, con­ver­sa­tions with children.

John is off to Vienna tomor­row for his first busi­ness trip since we arrived. I asked for some tiny sausages in a can and Siggy’s siggy. We’ll see.

I’ve been think­ing about the unvar­nished nature of Eng­lish Eng­lish. Both in the pro­nun­ci­a­tion and the actual choice of words. Any­thing that’s taken from the French, never the most beloved of peo­ples here, is Eng­lishized with­out mercy. There’s a “t” in “fil­let” of beef, and don’t for­get the “h” in “herbal” tea. And then there’s the absolute lit­er­al­ness of ter­mi­nol­ogy: you don’t ride a sub­way, you ride an UNDER­GROUND. There is a sub­way, but it’s an under­ground side­walk (sorry, pave­ment). Eng­lish bacon is like Cana­dian bacon, and if you want Amer­i­can bacon you ask for “streaky bacon.” Why streaky? Because it is. And while you’re at it, you can ask for a can of mushy peas, because, pre­sum­ably, they are. These should be steamed with a lit­tle slightly salted but­ter, not lightly, SLIGHTLY. And “soured” cream, which bald impli­ca­tion of the process involved makes it a bit less appeal­ing, I’d say. All washed down with a glass of… cloudy apple juice. We might say apple cider, but truly, it’s cloudy apple juice.

Ah well, I’m just mark­ing time because until the new flat (fin­gers crossed that all gets signed and deliv­ered) gets emp­tied out of its designer togs, our much less glam­orous belong­ings can­not be deliv­ered, and we can’t set­tle in. Morn­ings are crammed with get­ting Avery in her per­fect uni­form, a real break­fast inside her to help her cope with the demands of Latin, maths, net­ball in Regent’s Park, spelling tests and drama (not that she needs lessons in THAT), home­work packed up, a track suit for games, or skat­ing today, per­mis­sion slips for a trip to the Lon­don Museum, then we’re out the door. I’ve decided that a taxi is OK in the morn­ing because we’re nei­ther of us up for strug­gling through rush hour crowds in the under­ground, and I don’t really feel like sort­ing out the bus route from here when we will, one hopes, be leav­ing soon. Then I drop her off with all her per­fect lit­tle com­pa­tri­ots, give her a kiss, and…six hours of wait­ing for her to come home! Per­haps I should be sight­see­ing. But that feels weird when I live here. But I could do with a dose of West­min­ster, per­haps. Then I walk to pick her up, which is a nice half-hour of stiff exer­cise, and we’ve devel­oped a lit­tle snack habit, or two. We could walk down Wey­mouth Street to the lovely Vil­landry, a sort of Lon­don ver­sion of Bazz­ini, our old haunt in Tribeca, and have ice cream for her and a pot of pep­per­mint tea, my new obses­sion, for me. Or head to the Patis­serie Valerie in the Maryle­bone High Street for a deca­dent slice of sponge cake and mixed berries for her, and… pep­per­mint tea for me. Then we walk home in the dusky sort of twi­lighty light. Yes­ter­day we stopped at the dry cleaner’s to ran­som John’s shirts (4 pounds 50 p a shirt! I nearly died), and the vet’s for equally ruinous food for the kit­ties, eaves­drop­ping on the incred­i­bly Eng­lish exchanges between the vet’s nurse in starchy white and the elderly patients with their elderly own­ers, all look­ing like each other. By the time we get home, Avery is exhausted. I guess it’s the strain of just fit­ting in, although from the out­side it looks pretty effort­less on her part. She came top in spelling yes­ter­day, in the cov­eted Willy Wonka group level with just three other girls. And she won the net­ball race home, but for the bla­tant cheat­ing of another lit­tle girl, she reports. The
chil­dren were appar­ently evicted from their out­door gar­den two years ago on the whiny com­plaints of, from the north, the Turk­ish Embassy, and from the south the Chi­nese embassy. Who could object to the voices of lit­tle girls? Turks and Chi­nese, appar­ently. So they’ve installed a noise meter of all things, and the girls are being let out, cau­tiously, in small harm­less groups, to play qui­etly and to see if they can qual­ify for out­door play on a reg­u­lar basis. There is a Wendy House! I’ve always read about them, but I never got to see one. Avery described its minute pro­por­tions in detail, but, “Mummy, there are spi­ders and cob­webs and we are afraid to go IN!”

Last night I returned to a favorite Eng­lish culi­nary mem­ory: the crack­ling leg pork roast. There’s just noth­ing like British pork, driz­zled with olive oil and salt, sur­rounded by fat gar­lic cloves and quar­tered onions. With it I had mashed pota­toes, also seem­ingly so much yum­mier than Amer­i­can pota­toes! And roast beet­root, and a sauce inspired by one of the UKTV Food shows I saw, a nice reduc­tion of chicken broth and white wine (a hor­ror with a screw­top lid, although John tells me there’s a grow­ing num­ber of accept­able wines with screw­tops), shal­lot and gar­lic, fresh thyme and heav­enly Eng­lish sin­gle cream. A really lovely, com­fort food meal for a damp and chilly Jan­u­ary night.

It was bound to hap­pen: and you know when it’s not just the things that are hap­pen­ing, but your own rot­ten atti­tude that is fol­low­ing you about as things get screwed up?  It started last night at Avery’s bed­time when her beloved knit­ted lady­bug went miss­ing from the 200 or so items essen­tial for a cozy sleep.  She already misses her pony Lady­bug ter­ri­bly, and Lady­bug antic­i­pated this by giv­ing her the toy as a Christ­mas gift, so thought­ful, to remem­ber her by.  The whole comfort-item logic car­ries in it, how­ever, the seeds of its own destruc­tion when said item dis­ap­pears.  Did the clean­ing lady carry it away in the dirty bed linens?  Did she carry away bed linens at all, come to think of it, or did she do the laun­dry here?  See­ing as how I was busy avoid­ing her all day, I can’t say for cer­tain.  I promise avery I’ll deal with it in the morning.

Morn­ing, how­ever, brings its own issues as the *&^%$ Eng­lish wash­ing machine decided dur­ing the night not to drain, and when I open its sorry #$% to do a load of laun­dry, roughly 40 gal­lons of water gushed onto the kitchen floor.  I called the land­lord imme­di­ately who basi­cally said, I’ll see your flooded kitchen and I’ll raise you a scratch I saw on the circa 1974 nau­gahyde sofa, so you can whis­tle for your repair­man.  I then basi­cally said, I’ll see your lame damage-deposit threat and I’ll raise you a miss­ing lady­bug from my daughter’s bed.  We reached an impasse so I hung up and told Avery it was time for school, where­upon we dis­cover that her school scarf is miss­ing as well.  How it dis­ap­peared between walk­ing in the door last night from school and get­ting dressed this morn­ing is not for us to say.  By then we were in that state of edgy, snarky gloom that afflicts not-morning peo­ple when ANY­THING unto­ward hap­pens at 7:30 a.m.  Off to school in a mutual state of dis­sat­is­fac­tion, and Avery said, “I’ll try to have a good school report at the end of the day to make you hap­pier.”  Insert steak knife to heart, twist three times clockwise.

Home to a surly repair­man who after much huff­ing and com­plain­ing, approached me to say the thing was fixed, hold­ing out a nasty lit­tle bit of burnt wire.  “‘ere’s the cul­prit, plain as day in the pump,” he growled accus­ingly.  I swear, like I put it there!  That’s what I do for fun on a Thurs­day evening, play hell with the pump on my wash­ing machine.  This encounter was topped by my phone call to the landlord’s sec­re­tary ask­ing her to query the clean­ing lady about the lady­bug.  “It’s a small black and red knit­ted insect about the size of an egg,” I said, rel­ish­ing as always the chance to use a sen­tence that has prob­a­bly never been uttered before.  “A what?”  “A lady­bug, you know, the fly­ing sort of beet­ley thing,” I elu­ci­dated, think­ing, what do you mean, a what?  “I’m sorry, I don’t fol­low,” she insisted, and then the penny dropped.  “A lady­BIRD,” I cor­rected myself and all was clear.  OK, I love the Eng­lish, but that’s tak­ing time-honored lin­guis­tic dis­tinc­tions to an absurd extreme.  The next thing you know, if I’m even think­ing the word “ele­va­tor” the lift won’t work.

Ah well, no wor­ries by pickup time at school.  There just is noth­ing more com­pletely adorable, I assure you, than see­ing 30 or so nine-year-old girls in black watch plaid, plaits fly­ing, run­ning around the cor­ner of the school laugh­ing and swing­ing their swim bags.  I mean, if the impli­ca­tion of tons and tons of impe­r­ial and oth­er­wise cor­rupt money being spent on these priv­i­leged lit­tle scraps of human­ity doesn’t dis­turb you, which as a card-carrying lib­eral I feel it should.  But what the hell, I paid my dues as a New York City Pub­lic School class mother.  And as sweet as King’s Col­lege is, in my heart of hearts, I’m find­ing myself very glad that Avery’s first years of school were spent in the end­less vari­ety, obstreper­ous­ness , food fights, play­ground jun­gle and sheer vol­ume of noise that was PS 234.

Avery reports that she suc­ceeded in putting together more French sen­tences than any­one else in her form today!  Not bad for a lit­tle girl whose French to date was lim­ited to menu items like steak frites.  And her maths are com­ing along well!  And she could spell “mis­cel­la­neous” for the gen­eral staff which silenced even their gen­eral atti­tude that Amer­i­cans are lucky if they don’t dis­grace them­selves every wak­ing moment.

Still await­ing word from John on the sta­tus of the lease, but I assume all is well unless I hear dif­fer­ently.  If so, we could move as early as Wednes­day!  We’ll keep you posted.  I can’t wait to tell you the address.  It’s SO English!