Hmmm. I knew that at some point dur­ing this process the phrase “what was I think­ing” would come in handy; it was too good to be true that we got through the nasty con­flu­ence of 1) an inter­na­tional move with three peo­ple and four cats, 2) Christ­mas, and 3) a tran­sit strike in BOTH the city we were leav­ing and the one we were going to, with­out some­thing going mildly wrong. We thought it remark­able that we haven’t as yet bit each other’s heads off, deter­mined that a nice
board­ing school would have been a lovely choice for Avery, or vis­ited the local branch of the RSPCA with any or all of the cats.

How­ever.

Why did I pack only two sweaters, three pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes for myself. How unselfish is that? OK, I also for­got to pack more than one suit for John, and Avery I don’t have to worry about too much because of that handy uni­form. So I admit I was look­ing for­ward to the “air ship­ment” which came today, con­tain­ing all the things we allegedly could not live with­out until the “sea ship­ment” comes, date unknown. Was there ANY­THING in it for me? There were eleven pairs of shoes for Avery, five suits and eight shirts for John, and unac­count­ably an elec­tric fan. But for me, was there so much as a pair of socks? Of course not. I am stuck with these five items of cloth­ing (luck­ily also suf­fi­cient foun­da­tion gar­ments, but still, where’s the glam­our in that?) for another ten days, two weeks? I seem to have put my cloth­ing needs on a par with, say, our panini maker, in terms of urgency.

Ah well, as of tomor­row John will be hap­pily clad in a glo­ri­ous fresh suit, Avery can rush home from school and put on any of three dozen out­fits, but I will be wear­ing either my favorite black turtle­neck or my sec­ond favorite black turtle­neck for the fore­see­able future. Some­what damp­en­ing. I have to hope I don’t run into my major crush, the lovely Matthew Mac­fadyen of “Pride and Prej­u­dice” fame, until I
have on at least a grey turtle­neck, fresh from the pack­ing materials.

Dur­ing my bout with a 24-hour bug over the week­end, I con­soled myself with an Eng­lish copy of Hazel Holt’s “The Silent Killer,” a per­fect cozy mur­der mys­tery for a rainy day, as well as a nice Eng­lish copy of Dorothy L. Say­ers’ “Gaudy Night,” which made vis­it­ing Oxford a high pri­or­ity for Avery and me. After all, we have a cat named Lord Peter Wim­sey. Of course any book by these two authors is won­der­ful. John con­tented him­self with perus­ing “Your Guide to Land Rovers, things that look like Land Rovers, and other things that your wife will think look just like Land Rovers.” It was a really recent issue, thank­fully. Avery, what was she read­ing? The sequel to “Chil­dren of the Lamp,” what­ever it is called, but it was good enough that she read it while brush­ing her teeth, and tak­ing out her ear­rings before they could be con­fis­cated by Head­mistress Davies this morn­ing. We feasted on home­made chicken soup a la John, a nice gift for my illness.

Our hous­ing inde­ci­sion con­tin­ues. Tonight we will see for the sec­ond time the lovely per­fect place with the gar­den but too expen­sive and far from school, and the sort of com­pro­mise place with lovely appoint­ments but no per­son­al­ity, cheaper and closer to school. The trou­bling third choice is the madly charm­ing in its period details but HOR­RI­BLE kitchen, known as Ham­p­den House, whose main attrac­tion is its extreme prox­im­ity to Avery’s school, namely a block. How to decide?? Then we’ll repair to one of three restau­rant choices I’ve gleaned from the incom­pa­ra­ble Egon Ronay Lon­don Restau­rant Guide, an upscale pub, a fancy Ital­ian,
or a sort of pan-fusion-mixy-uppy place. Will keep you posted.

Two absolutely lovely lan­guage sto­ries to tell, if you like that sort of thing. Our hilar­i­ous estate agent (real­tor, to you Yanks) Jane was regal­ing us with all sorts of accents, impen­e­tra­ble Eng­lishisms, and finally upon my request, sto­ries of mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tions. Ever since my dad told sto­ries about a client of his who fre­quented the Indi­anapo­lis Sym­pa­thy Orches­tra I have loved such things. Appar­ently Jane’s real estate office in Wim­ble­don is graced, dur­ing the hol­i­days, with Christ­mas trees sus­pended above their awning. Lovely, but after New Year’s she really wanted them taken down, and called the local coun­cil office to see how she could get that done. The girl who answered the phone seemed totally flum­moxed. “They’re where, did you say miss? I see, the… the… Above the, what did you say, miss?” Finally Jane real­ized the girl needed the word spelled but before she could the girl began, “Ok, that’s O-R-N-I-N-G, right?”

Then, a story about a lady who went to the ticket booth at Padding­ton Sta­tion ask­ing for a round-trip ticket to Torquay, the sea­side resort famous for, among other things, being Agatha Christie’s home­town. Well, either she didn’t pro­nounce “Tor­kee” prop­erly, or the ticket agent thought she needed some­thing a lit­tle more exotic, because before she knew it, the lady was in a taxi bound for Heathrow and a plane to… Turkey. In the nick of time the mixup was sorted out. I imag­ine she just went home at that point and had a cup of tea. Must make sure to speak clearly if I want to go to the World’s End tube sta­tion in the King’s Road, lest I go an awful lot fur­ther than just a tube stop.

So yes­ter­day (ear­lier today, what to call the day, have mas­sive insom­nia right now), saw 22 apart­ments. Can’t say flats in the usual
way because let’s see, some were houses, some were flats, some were duplexes, some were maisonettes (sup­posed to be French for “small house” but there are eso­teric require­ments for the use of the word here whose intri­ca­cies I can’t fathom right now). No semi-detached houses, sadly, since that has long been my mother’s and my favorite real estate des­ig­na­tion. But two dia­met­ri­cally opposed places stand out at 4 a.m.: one a neglected but com­pletely gor­geous and charm­ing flat a block from Avery’s school, hor­ri­ble kitchen and bath­rooms, grotty car­pet through­out, but POCKET doors between the two (!) par­lors and bow win­dows… all the orig­i­nal plas­ter mould­ings. John imme­di­ately asked if it were for sale; we could both envi­sion bring­ing it back to life. Well, no, in fact the owner owns the whole build­ing
(a listed thing of decay­ing beauty in Maryle­bone). He needs to be shot or else take care of it.

The sec­ond pos­si­bil­ity is on an excru­ci­at­ingly tidy and per­fect block of May­fair (kept expect­ing to see Lord Peter Wim­sey and Bunter around the cor­ner), with rights to a com­mu­nal gar­den so tiny and exquis­ite it’s like it’s all under glass. A gray, dwin­dling glass since it’s Lon­don in Jan­u­ary, but still. A very sort of (as Lon­don­ers would say, one of my favorite expres­sions) mod­ern but cozy house, with a sur­feit of bath­rooms and too much over­head light­ing, but… double-glazed CURVED win­dows look­ing out onto the garden.

So then our mar­vel­lous estate agent Jane (army colonel’s daugh­ter, raised in India, great Oxbridge sort of voice and a won­der­ful mimic at
any­thing else) threaded her way through the crowded Lon­don streets and we col­lected a wet but tri­umphant Avery from school hav­ing just had swim­ming. Clio is show­ing feet of clay: ““Sarah says she is always super nice to new girls [must pro­nounce this as if it were birds perched on a roof in Maine, “gulls”], and then…” I advise cau­tion
and judg­ing both girls on their mer­its. Another gull, Jana, plays the gui­tar which is an obvi­ous draw, as well as attempt­ing an Amer­i­can accent which Avery says sounds like Texas. How would she know?

A very funny thing before I for­get. John went to the wine store with a request from me to find some exotic drink I couldn’t get in Amer­ica, per­haps some fancy vodka steeped in some­thing. All this a throw­back to old Moscow days where we mar­i­nated any­thing and every­thing (gin­ger, gar­lic, water­melon) in the stuff and made peo­ple drink it. He came back with a bot­tle of plain vodka and said, “Sorry, noth­ing exotic. But I could fix you a cock­tail with just vodka and say, a slice of apple in it?” Avery pipes up and says, “That sounds so deli­cious. Just hold the cock­tail, please.”

Oh dear!

More soon…

It’s start­ing to feel real here now. John back at work, wak­ing up every morn­ing and it’s still Lon­don. Avery’s first day of school today. Now all we need is some­thing to keep ME out of trouble.

After a very fit­ful sleep for John and me but the sleep of the just and inno­cent for Avery, we got up in the dark, heard lots of lovely reports of the com­ing bird flu pan­demic on the BBC with our break­fast. We took her to school, heart­break­ingly excited and scared, and so cute in her uni­form. Her lit­tle wrists looked so vul­ner­a­ble with­out any of her beloved leather and brass pony-name bracelets, her sea glass bracelet from Maine, her inevitable hair thingys. And no ear­rings! But with cold knees in the morn­ing mist, with those tiny lit­tle turn-down white ankle socks. She was greeted very nicely by Toby the sec­re­tary, and Mrs D the head­mistress, and given a King’s Col­lege back­pack (“not so very fash­ion­able, lovey, but it will do the trick and hold all those pesky text­books, now won’t it?”), then she was turned over to an impos­si­bly poised lit­tle girl and she was gone. Mrs D assured me, “We always find it’s bet­ter just to send them off quickly, much eas­ier all round.” I guess she was afraid I was going to fol­low her.

Can’t wait to hear how it all went in a cou­ple of hours! I spent my morn­ing at the depart­ment store John Lewis, order­ing a big­ger uni­form shirt for Fifi who claimed she couldn’t put her arms down in the size 26 she has on (“but then again, maybe I won’t have to put my arms down
too much on just the first day,” she rea­soned). Then buy­ing var­i­ous things like a minute sewing kit in a plaid case (!), and wish­ing I had a need for some of the but­tons they have, just so I could take the lit­tle glass tube they’re stored in to the cashier and get my but­ton from inside, and then put the tube back. I would also like to need some boiled knicker elas­tic just so I could say it out loud to the
clerk. But I don’t think I need any.

Then a bliss­ful half hour at the Wait­rose gro­cery store, ana­lyz­ing the seven or eight sorts of mar­malade and being quite unsuc­cess­ful at fer­ret­ing out the dif­fer­ences among them, surely a native tal­ent, and long­ing des­per­ately for a real kitchen so I could acquire some of their ingre­di­ents in gor­geous pack­ag­ing with labels like “A Gen­er­ous Amount of Tomato Pas­sata,” or “A Pinch of Organic Saf­fron, “Just Enough Bou­quet Garni for A Pot of Soup.” Then another glo­ri­ous hour at the Talk­ing Book­shop in Wig­more Street, ALL AUDIO BOOKS! Things you’d never find in the US, like full-cast BBC drama­ti­sa­tions (note the cool British “s” there) of Lord Peter Wim­sey sto­ries. So happy.

Lunch alone, and now I’m back in the flat mer­ci­fully cleaned by the hard­work­ing Maria. Cats not fond of her appar­ently, and so are invisible.

Tonight I’m mak­ing mac­a­roni and cheese from five British cheeses
includ­ing Welsh Ched­dar, some­thing called Cheshire which although it sounds so famous I’ve never had, a Dou­ble Glouces­ter, a Devon­shire, and hmm, the last escapes me. I always do this, all these fancy cheese, many dif­fer­ent sorts, and guess what? It always tastes the same. I know the last cheese, I’m feel­ing dis­loyal hav­ing bought it. Gruyere. Although it could be Swiss which would be bet­ter than French from where I sit now. That with Old Fash­ioned Grand Duchy sausages, and a baby spinach and rocket salad with a dress­ing made specif­i­cally from a recipe requested by the Prince of Wales no less. Are you impressed?