I for­got how nice it is to have a lit­tle girl spend the night with Avery!  The sound of lit­tle voices say­ing, “now let’s pre­tend…” and a com­pletely torn-apart bed­room because secretly they’ve arranged their sleep­ing quar­ters on the floor of the guest room, and the com­plex arrange­ments of spe­cial bears, blan­kets, being bul­lied to brush their teeth.  Now they’ve been tucked in and sung to and kissed good­night and we can still hear them chat­ter­ing away.  John says that as he passed their room he heard, “Shh, my daddy’s com­ing.”  Who knows.

And I for­got to say that when I put my chicken in the oven, I sur­rounded it with lit­tle cherry toma­toes and wedges of fen­nel.  Because then, all you have to do after you eat your lus­cious roast chicken is to throw the entire con­tents (which means all the parts of the chicken you didn’t carve for din­ner, plus the juices and toma­toes, and every­thing) of the foil-lined dish into a stock­pot, cover it with water, and sim­mer high for a good two hours.  Again, you do noth­ing!  Just wait.  If you pass by and the lit­tle bones are stick­ing up out of the water, add water.  I have always loved the Lau­rie Col­win (my favorite writer of all time) story of a boyfriend who, while cook­ing together, asked her what to do with the soup next. When she told him to ‘add water to cover,’ he asked, “What cover?”  Just goes to show, one person’s basic bit of knowl­edge is another person’s coded mes­sage.  So I just put the stock­pot out the door of our lit­tle gar­den entrance, smelling like absolute ambrosia.  Tomor­row morn­ing I can skim the fat off, heat it again, pour it through a sieve into another pot, add rice, and have dinner.

OK, the girls are slow­ing down and so am I.  Good night.

Before I tell you about our sojourn in Rome, which already feels like a dream, I have to report the ulti­mate com­fort food din­ner.  And it’s EASY.  Allow 2 1/2 hours start to fin­ish, and the beauty of it is, most of the time you don’t have to do anything!

First, get a good large roast­ing chicken, around 4–5 pounds.  Buy four or so good big boil­ing pota­toes, a bunch of broc­coli, two lemons, a head of gar­lic and two large onions (this is for two adults and a child, you can imag­ine why my pro­por­tions are such).  A bunch of rose­mary, some grated parme­san cheese, about six strips of bacon, some rough salt, some not-great white wine, a half pint of half and half and two sticks of but­ter.  Make sure you have some olive oil, and enough alu­minum (or alu­minium, as they say here) foil to cover two oven-proof dishes.  Pre­heat your oven to 425.

Now is the easy part.  You line a dish big enough for your chicken with foil.  Lay down some sprigs of rose­mary.  Put the chicken on top and sprin­kle lib­er­ally with salt.  Drape with the bacon.  Cut the lemons in quar­ters and stuff one whole lemon into the chicken.  Pour some white wine around the chicken and stick it in the oven.  It’s done for 2 solid hours, noth­ing to do with it AT ALL.  While it’s cook­ing, peel your pota­toes and put them in salted water on the stove.  Cut the broc­coli in flo­rets and throw them in a skil­let with olive oil and salt.  Don’t turn it on.  Now, cut the top half off your two onions.  Peel off the skin from the tops and chop the onion bits.  Chop three cloves of gar­lic too and saute the two chopped bits in some olive oil.  Add some chopped rose­mary.  When they’re soft, add maybe a third of a cup of half and half, and a good hand­ful of parme­san cheese and let them melt.  Take it off the stove, and with a spoon scoop out most of the insides of the onions.  Save for some­thing else.  Spoon the cheesy stuff into the onions and put them in a dish lined with foil.  Now you have a good hour and a half or so to watch curl­ing on the Olympics and hope your child’s col­lege edu­ca­tion results in some­thing a bit less… absurd.

Half an hour before the chicken’s done, turn on the pota­toes and put the onions in the oven.  While they cook, saute the broc­coli really slowly.  Melt a good stick of but­ter with hot milk.  Now you need some­body to help you.  While you mash the pota­toes, the helper can take the chicken out of the oven and carve it up.  You can be stir­ring the broc­coli.  As every­thing else is on the table, take the onions out, which will be bub­bly and brown.  IMPOR­TANT: eat at least one bite of EVERY­THING together.  A bite of chicken, a bite of broc­coli, spear­ing some cheesy onion and dip­ping it all in mashed potato as you go.

HEAVEN.

We had this tonight with some really awful red wine, sorry, while Avery’s friend Anna was here spend­ing the night.  We decided to spare them the wine.  Last I saw they were play­ing some elab­o­rate game that involved Avery crawl­ing on all fours with a long scarf around her neck as a leash, bark­ing.  The cats are intrigued to say the least.

Rome.  What to say?  We arrived around dusk, Avery had her first enor­mous gelato, a creme caramel, and was an instant con­vert.  Fueled by sugar, we decided to walk to the Vat­i­can, since we could see it from the river’s edge so close to our lit­tle albergo.  It was quite a walk!  Close to two miles, I’d say, but it set the tone for what Avery feels was our Marathon Trip to Rome, since we walked prob­a­bly six miles a day each day.  The Vat­i­can was only tan­ta­liz­ing in the dark­ness, albeit lit up, so we deter­mined to go back the next day and went back to our cute lit­tle neigh­bor­hood, Campo dei Fiori, to get a per­fectly ade­quate but aver­age pasta din­ner out and be grate­ful for food.  Avery got super tired and I made the colos­sal error of believ­ing that she could find the way home, so we left John to set­tle the bill with what­ever the waiter’s equiv­a­lent oppo­site of “eyes in the back of his head” is, as in, he could see noth­ing of our attempts to get the bill!  She and I ven­tured out and promptly had no idea where we were, so we clung to each other like babes in the for­est, finally ask­ing direc­tions from a nice taxi guy, just as John walked up to us resignedly, know­ing we had got com­pletely lost.  Incred­i­ble but true.

Thurs­day we had a lovely break­fast at the hotel, and then we did every­thing!  It was alter­nately rain­ing a lot, and rain­ing a lit­tle, but since we’re from Lon­don this seemed per­fectly nor­mal, so we per­se­vered.  We were absolutely deter­mined, after the evening before, to go to the Vat­i­can and see what all the fuss was about, so off we went.  A sur­pris­ingly quick very long queue, and then to the Basil­ica, about which I knew embar­rass­ingly lit­tle con­sid­er­ing that only 15 years ago I was deep in a PhD in art his­tory, a good part of which was to be on the Ital­ian Renais­sance.  I excuse myself on the grounds that every­thing I knew about Michelan­gelo has been replaced by an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of children’s pic­ture books and cook­ery prin­ci­ples.  We took the lift (so funny, the ticket spec­i­fied “round trip”!!) and then walked the sup­ple­men­tary 320 steps after that.  I think the warn­ing that peo­ple with heart con­di­tions should “con­sider” whether they want to make the trip is com­pletely inad­e­quate!  Any­one not really, really fit and THIN would be chal­lenged by the teeny tiny wind­ing stair­case that leaned pre­cip­i­tously toward what I real­ized, with huge fright, was the inside of the DOME itself.  Eeek!  We made it to the top and Avery’s claus­tro­pho­bia and my fear of heights were con­quered by the lus­cious view of Rome.  Stun­ning.  Avery was amused to see the backs of the sculp­tures we had seen from the ground, com­plete with a pigeon on every head.  Lovely.

We were gut­ted, as the Eng­lish would say, to find that the Sis­tine Chapel was “chiuso” on Thurs­days, but the upshot of my excel­lent Ital­ian accent was that the rest of the guard’s expla­na­tion was com­pletely a mys­tery.  Pos­si­bly it will open again some­day in the future, but his com­ments were far too exten­sive to be of any help.  I should have been flat­tered that he thought I could under­stand.  Whew.  From there, we headed close to home for more gelato for Avery and a nap for John.  I real­ized I was peck­ish myself, and ven­tured for a snack I had seen from the win­dow of a cute wine bar: tiny lit­tle tartlets filled with every­thing under the sun, each for a euro!  I chose a crab­meat with lemon and may­on­naise, and a lan­gous­tine with aioli and pars­ley.  Heav­enly, could have eaten twenty of them, with caviar (OK, maybe not that), egg­plant, roasted red pep­pers, sun­dried toma­toes, prawns in lemon mous­se­line.  MMM­mmm!  We went back and woke up John and headed out to try to find two major sights, both from “Roman Hol­i­day” and on the must-see list from my mother and sis­ter.  We found the Trevi Foun­tain with­out too much trou­ble, and it was worth the trip.  A grey, heavy, leaden sky, with the mar­ble horses rear­ing and the mist from the foun­tain soak­ing the tourists, of whom there were a sur­pris­ing num­ber given the sea­son and the rain.  Lovely.  Then to the Span­ish Steps, YAWN!  So much smaller than I expected!  But we got a pic­ture of Avery to rival any­thing Audrey Hep­burn had to offer, and decided to call it a day.  How­ever, on the way home we stum­bled on the Pan­theon, which set off all sorts of exam­i­na­tion alarms in my post-graduate head, and the glo­ri­ous Piazza Navonna, such gor­geous foun­tains.  The find of the day: a leather good store where for about 25 dol­lars, John got his birth­day present, a black wal­let of but­tery soft­ness with his ini­tials stamped on it, and I got a black belt with a sil­ver buckle, and Avery got a tiny lit­tle back­pack to clip onto her back­pack from school, as all the girls do.  I com­mit­ted my usual error of fig­ur­ing out how to ask a really com­plex ques­tion, and then not hav­ing the lan­guage skills to under­stand the answer!  “Should we wait for the engrav­ing, or come back for it?” I asked, all full of myself and my lin­guisitic aplomb.  “Blah blah blah blah!” was the response, only in Ital­ian, and I was lost!

After a wel­come cock­tail and hot water bot­tle break at the hotel, we dashed out to meet my friend Michele Bam­bling and her fam­ily at their apart­ment near the Colos­seum.  Her hus­band Bill is the Wall Street Jour­nal bureau chief for Europe and Africa and was full of alarm­ing and enter­tain­ing sto­ries about his work.  Their two chil­dren, Jack­son and Adele, are just younger than Avery and she was happy to relax in a Roman apart­ment and play doll­house while we adults had a drink and caught up.  Michele and I used to talk “nihonga,” a Japan­ese paint­ing tech­nique that she was study­ing for her PhD and which was the lynch­pin of my won­der­ful gallery painter Makoto Fujimura’s style.  We repaired to a pizze­ria that sim­ply defies descrip­tion in any Amer­i­can con­text.  Filled to capac­ity with Roman natives, it was warm and spicy on a rainy night.  We set­tled for a selec­tion of four piz­zas and pounced on them all, as the chil­dren had basic margher­i­tas (tomato and moz­zarella).  Our choices were all piled on the thinnest and crispi­est of crusts.  We had funghi and porcini with pro­volone, car­ciofini (the tiny Roman baby arti­chokes), beef carpac­cio (although I think it was aged rather than sim­ply raw) with argula and parme­san, and my per­sonal favorite, a very unusual com­bi­na­tion of radic­chio, anchovy cream and shaved grana padano (a supe­rior parme­san).  Quite eas­ily the most stim­u­lat­ing and enjoy­able com­bi­na­tion of tastes I have ever had.  Glo­ri­ous!  Lots of fun to catch up with the fam­ily and imag­ine what’s hap­pen­ing in Tribeca, which feels a mil­lion miles away.  Dropoff and pickup at PS 234 together is like a dream that hap­pened to some­one else.  Their apart­ment is a glory of sim­plic­ity: old, old tiles on the floor, carved plas­ter mould­ings on the ceil­ing, floor to ceil­ing win­dows.  It’s tempt­ing to chuck it all here and join them.  Home exhausted!

Fri­day we decided to tackle the Colos­seum, but we had asked Bill the night before to point out on a map how to find my sister’s other must-do, the “Mouth of Truth.”  It took some doing to find under scaf­fold­ing, but we found it.  John was dis­be­liev­ing that we were going to brave the enor­mous tourist line to put out hands in a dumb stone mouth, but we were adamant.  My sin­gle favorite pho­to­graph of my mother is of her about to do just that, at age 20 or so, so sweet.  So we waited, and in the end, the sight of Avery fak­ing her bitten-off hand inside her sweater cuff is the best photo of the trip.  Hilar­i­ous!  From there to the Colos­seum, which just amazed us all with its scale, of course.  Avery was quite able to regale us with the com­plete story of Romu­lus and Remus, and lots of other Roman trivia.  And thank good­ness, there were KIT­TIES.  Jill told us there would be!

We were all wilt­ing, so we repaired after some wrong turns to the restau­rant Michele had wanted to take us to but was full: the Trat­to­ria La Domenica, a tucked-away glory no one would find with­out know­ing, where the menu was entirely in Ital­ian as was the staff, so Avery went for safety and ordered fet­tucine alla ragu, I con­vinced John to go for some­thing alla cala­maretti, which I was pretty sure was baby cala­mari, and I myself ordered some­thing bear­ing the word “vitello”, and since noth­ing with veal can be bad, I felt pretty secure.  Luck­ily, I like liver, because it was that of a calf!  Lovely, though, grilled with lemon.  Such fun to find a lit­tle unknown neigh­bor­hood place.  Across the street was the glo­ri­ous Basil­ica San Clemente, where you can descend, if you’re brave enough, deep, DEEP into the ground to see early Roman fres­coes and columns and fresh water springs.   A bit of a diver­sion, in its cold damp­ness, to the hot sun­shine outside.

From there, we headed across the river to the lit­tle neigh­bor­hood of Trasta­vere, where I had thought our hotel was to be, to find a dar­ling book­store Avery des­per­ately needed, the Almost Cor­ner Book­shop, for sup­plies to get her though the trip home.  This place is an ivy-covered oasis in the twist­ing, mossy, slightly men­ac­ing but tempt­ing streets of this artsy area, owned by a man of inde­ter­mi­nate accent (maybe South African?  maybe New Zealand?) who told us who he had come upon the shop six years ago and fallen in love with it.  Shortly after his visit, back home in Saudi Ara­bia (?) he received a phone call that the owner wanted to sell.  Can you imag­ine sim­ply lift­ing up your life and mov­ing to Rome to run a book­store?  I have to remind myself that this is a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion.  Avery came away with a huge pile of books, and then we vis­ited the gor­geous church, Santa Maria in Traste­vere, and sat in the piazza lis­ten­ing to a gui­tarist and tam­bourine player, and then real­ized we needed to head to the airport.

What a whirl­wind.  We walked, talked (I so enjoyed air­ing my bad Ital­ian!), ate our heads off, enjoyed each other’s com­pany enor­mously, and real­ized that we’ve got to do this a lot while we’re here.  Within a two-hour radius by plane we can hear 10 lan­guages at least being spo­ken, and I for one would like to join them, how­ever badly.

Pre­pare your­selves for a long mes­sage from me today! Maybe read half, make your­self a cup of tea, and come back later. So much has been hap­pen­ing here and there in our lives.

Last week­end we had the excite­ment of a day out across the river, and an evening at the National The­atre. Since see­ing it in sev­eral movies and tele­vi­sion shows, I was really hot to cross the Mil­le­nium Bridge, a foot-traffic-only slim­line affair cross­ing just past the Black­fri­ars Bridge. So we col­lected Avery from her sleep­over with Anna, and got our­selves bun­dled up to go out for our adven­ture. We took a long tube ride to the near­est spot on our side of the Thames to the bridge, and then walked toward it, being totally sur­prised to find our­selves face to face with the enor­mous spec­ta­cle of St. Paul’s Cathe­dral. Part of it is under refur­bish­ment, so in the typ­i­cally clever Eng­lish way, they have painted an exact archi­tec­tural replica of the Cathe­dral on the can­vas sheet­ing cov­er­ing the scaf­fold­ing! Odd, really, kind of sur­real. Avery was ter­ri­fied of the bridge, for some strange rea­son, although it does bear a sort of insub­stan­tial del­i­cacy. You can see for­ever from it, to Tower Bridge on one side and nearly to the Houses of Par­lia­ment on the other. We descended finally, and I broke my vow of No Art and we all went to see the exquis­ite and mas­sive Rachel Whiteread instal­la­tion called “Unilever”, a series of piled up plas­tic casts (as she always casts the inside of a neg­a­tive space) reach­ing nearly to the ceil­ing in places, of this for­mer power sta­tion, known as the New Tate Mod­ern. Really impres­sive and fun to chase each other around the piles, some ran­dom, some very pre­cise and sym­met­ri­cal. It reminded me of the divine Tara Dono­van show of some years ago at Apex Art on Sev­enth Avenue in New York. Never for­got her rooms full of tar paper, tiny pen­cil cities, and drink­ing straws. Loved it.

Then really super pizza and salad at a warm, cozy spot called, with a sin­gu­lar lack of felic­ity, The Gourmet Pizza Com­pany, on the river as well. We ended up at a book­sellers’ just clos­ing up and snapped up a copy of the his­tory of King’s Col­lege, Avery’s sis­ter senior school! Thence to the the­atre, for “Once in a Life­time,” the famed David Suchet vehi­cle I had been hear­ing so much about. Since we all love him as Agatha Christie’s “Poirot,” and John and I had fond mem­o­ries of see­ing him onstage in “Timon of Athens” our last life­time in Lon­don, it was really some­thing to anci­ti­pate. The play itself, from the 30s by George Kauf­man, was over the top ridicu­lous with hilar­i­ous gags and extrav­a­gant cos­tumes, but Suchet was worth the whole price of admis­sion. Gone was Poirot’s pre­ci­sion and ele­gance, replaced with a sort of Anthony Trollope-ish wheel­ing and deal­ing busi­ness man, only set to music! Loved it.

Then a short cou­ple of days of vaca­tion, spent mostly watch­ing the Olympics and one day­time adven­ture, a skat­ing trip at the out­door ring in Canary Wharf, the new devel­op­ment across the Thames where Reuters is based. It alter­nated foxy bril­liant skies and rain­drops, but hey: we were ice skat­ing out­doors in Lon­don, so what could we expect? Amaz­ingly John was able to take out an hour of his busy day and join us, and after­ward for hands-down the worst lunch I have ever tried to eat: hot tuna and sweet­corn in some poi­so­nous bread. UURGH! Go there for the skat­ing, by all means, but skip the tuna panini!

Home to make microwave pop­corn (thank you Alyssa!) and watch the incom­pa­ra­ble Audrey Hep­burn in “Roman Hol­i­day,” in prepa­ra­tion for our trip! Avery loved the film as I knew she would.

So crack of dawn Wednes­day we were up in the dark to get to Liv­er­pool Sta­tion for the train to Stansted air­port. Never heard of it? Nei­ther had I, but it houses a lot of the new bud­get air­lines, one of which we were fly­ing, Ryanair. I was slightly dis­turbed to read big head­lines the day before where Ryanair refused to com­ment on under­cover inves­ti­ga­tions of their appalling treat­ment of staff and crew… but since I have so bravely got over my fear of fly­ing, I threw cau­tion to the winds. Well, we get to the sta­tion, huff and puff our way onto the express train, feel­ing quite smug, only to real­ize that we had no… pass­ports. Oh, John had his, the expe­ri­enced busi­ness trav­eller. But it never occurred to me to fer­ret out Avery’s and mine! A last ves­tige of the baby wife, I sup­pose. Noth­ing for it than to go home, put them in our bag, and wait till the next flight, hop­ing we could get on it. Back out, on the train, and sure enough, with a lit­tle penalty we were OFF!

Can you imag­ine that in less time than it takes for my par­ents to fly from Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut to Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana, we were in ROME? I couldn’t believe it. A very racy ride from the lit­tle Ciampino air­port (where scary incom­pe­tent air­lines are forced to land, what fun), to our hotel in cen­tral Rome, in the via del Mascherone, just off the Campo dei Fiori. And there our adven­ture began. We are about to land right now (on our way home, com­pletely knack­ered!), so more tomor­row after a good night’s sleep in our own beds! Buona notte…

Avery had two red let­ter mile­stones this week: she was awarded the
cov­eted Pen License from her beloved Mrs. Bick­ley, which puts her in
the cat­e­gory of gulls allowed to use pen instead of pen­cil, with all
the rights and priv­i­leges thereto! The License itself must still be
lam­i­nated, but the priv­i­leges have been extended already.

Fur­ther­more, she received her Level One skat­ing badge, the one she
earned last week on her sick day, unfor­tu­nately, miss­ing hear­ing her
name read out at assem­bly. The actual badge is red and impres­sive,
and needs to be attached to some­thing. Appar­ently some of her
col­leagues attach them to their back­packs, but in that case it had
bet­ter be iron-on so I don’t per­fo­rate my fin­ger try­ing to get through
lay­ers of bal­lis­tic nylon. I think bet­ter is to sew it on her games
jer­sey. We’ll work out the finer points over the week­end, at which
time I must also sew a miss­ing but­ton on her over­coat, a task that
occurs to me pre­cisely once per day: as I’m but­ton­ing her up in the
morn­ing. Then I don’t think about it again till the next morning.

I just got off the phone with my fam­ily in Con­necti­cut, every­one
gath­ered together (except Joel, the hedo­nis­tic boy, hav­ing a mas­sage!)
to enjoy Jane’s exploits. How we miss them all.

It seems a uni­ver­sally accepted truth: lunch at school does not count as food. OK, it’s ham­pered from the get-go by the sad fact that the street where the school is located, has some arcane pro­hi­bi­tion against food prepa­ra­tion in
com­mer­cial, non-residential spaces. So Avery’s poor school gets its food from its big sis­ter senior school in Harley Street. I already think it’s tempt­ing fate to cook in the great med­ical street of Lon­don (you know how in sto­ries someone’s always
say­ing lugubri­ously, “I’ll go up to town and see if some­one in Harley Street can do any­thing to help me”). So the “food” is placed in a van, although I like to exag­ger­ate and say it’s wheeled along on a white enamel trol­ley along­side ster­ilised med­ical instru­ments, and taken all the way around the cor­ner to Avery’s school, which does not have even reheat­ing capac­ity. You can imagine.

Mon­day is gen­er­ally what Avery calls “bendy chicken,” point­ing out that chicken in its usual forms does not bend. Then Tues­day could be shepherd’s pie, that won­der­ful con­coc­tion, when done prop­erly, of a sort of bolog­nese sauce cov­ered with mashed pota­toes and baked. At school it’s appar­ently not quite of that descrip­tion. “There’s some­thing slimy and red all over it and it MOVES,” Avery asserts. Then Wednes­day might be pasta, just penne, with no salt or sauce or any­thing else. Thurs­day could be lamb, Avery says sliced super thin and it’s grey. Oh, speak­ing of slic­ing, I read the fun­ni­est joke in one of the tabloids yes­ter­day. “How many men does it take to wall­pa­per a house? Four, but they must be sliced very, very thin.” Mmmm.

Fri­day is fish, of course, being a nice Church of Eng­land school. Then there’s allegedly only warm, dirty water to drink, with a fly float­ing in it once, and never for­got­ten. Appar­ently early on in the school’s his­tory my friend Emily app­proached Mrs D about, er, um, the food, and the fact that no one at ALL eats any­thing for lunch. Mrs D was com­pletely taken aback and said, “But my dear, the food is deli­cious!” We have a problem.

So yes­ter­day over a con­sol­ing slice of apple pie after school, Avery was telling me all about the three times a day they pray. She demon­strated her pose with her lit­tle hands clasped in front of her and an unbe­liev­ably inno­cent look on her face. “First we pray at assem­bly, then before lunch, then after lunch. Before lunch we say, ‘for what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly
thank­ful.” “But Avery,” I said, “don’t you feel a bit odd, hop­ing to be thank­ful for such awful food that you never eat?” “You know, I DO! But I have to say it. It’s just a white lie.” “Well, maybe you could say, ‘for what Lily is about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thank­ful,’ because you say Lily actu­ally likes the food.”

“Yes,” she said, warm­ing to the theme, “or I could say, sort of under my breath, ‘for what I’m about to put in my mouth because Miss Clarke makes me, but then I’ll spit it in my nap­kin, may the Lord make us truly thank­ful.” We finally decided she can be thank­ful for hav­ing been offered food. That works.

Fully half the teach­ers were ill this week (maybe they ate lunch one day). So appar­ently some con­trolled chaos reigned. I went to read with my kinder­garten­ers and the Upper Kinder­garten assis­tant teacher was clearly not in her ele­ment with­out trusty col­league by her side. “I’m fly­ing solo today, so I’m AWFULLY glad you’re here!”

Well! I just got off the phone with my friend Becky, and Avery is hav­ing her first Lon­don sleep­over! It was half day today for the start of the win­ter break, and Becky and I took the girls to Vil­landry for some ruinously expen­sive far­falle bolog­nese (have to say it was really good, though), and then Avery went home with Anna to play. Becky says they’re hav­ing the time of their lives, laugh­ing their heads off (it really reminds me of the way Avery plays with Cici, totally goofy and out of con­trol), and could she stay. So she’ll stop by here on her way to pick her youngest at a play­date and get Avery’s beloved Bumper with­out whom she’d rather not sleep, and per­haps Abby Bear and Chest­nut the Pony. And John and I can finally have my birth­day din­ner by our­selves! Peking duck with­out hav­ing to feed Avery ahead of time, since she is a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor to duck, on
cute­ness prin­ci­ples. What a nice surprise!

Just to keep things con­sis­tent here, the washer had an adven­ture today. I saw that the cycle had stopped and there was an error mes­sage flash­ing, so I looked it up in the main­te­nance man­ual and the
instruc­tions said, “The drain pump has become blocked. Place a shal­low dish under the pump, open the lid and drain the water out, tak­ing care to mop up any extra water with a towel promptly.” This last phrase should have clued me in. Maybe if the shal­low dish had the square footage of Water­loo, Iowa, I could have taken care of the
sit­u­a­tion, but as it was I held a dish under the pump, opened the lid, and let me tell you, Nia­gara Falls was no rival. Hon­estly, gal­l­lons and gal­lons onto the laun­dry floor where it slid slyly under the boiler, who’s already been through enough. I shoved the lid shut and mopped fran­ti­cally with all the dirty laun­dry on top of the washer, but to no avail. I began to have visions of elec­tro­cut­ing myself on the boiler, so I just shut the door and left. When I got back from cof­fee, I decided that since the boiler was stand­ing on lit­tle feet, maybe it would be OK, and most of the water seemed to have got­ten soaked in one thing or another. Urrrrggh. The prob­lem, though, seems to have righted itself with­out any fur­ther inter­ven­tion (prob­a­bly the thing block­ing the pump is now under the boiler), so dis­as­ter averted.

I’ll let you know how the sleep­over goes!

A sunny day! The first in ages. The British, who are famous for
being per­pet­u­ally aston­ished by the weather every day, were well and
truly stunned today to see the sun.
Spent the day walk­ing, walk­ing, walk­ing, as I decided to see “The
Con­stant Gar­dener”, with my old crush Ralph Fiennes before he was
sup­planted, and GEE! Much too scary. Really vio­lent. But a good
plot, and he was lovely, but really too scary for mushy me. Tried to
walk home but got hope­lessly lost and saw Buck­ing­ham Palace from fully
three dif­fer­ent sides, sev­eral times! Hailed a taxi and told the cab
dri­ver it was time to put my case in the hands of the pro­fes­sion­als.
He sym­pa­thized and said that it had taken him three years to “do the
knowl­edge,” the incred­i­bly pre­cise train­ing Lon­don cab­bies do so they
know places like Dun­raven Street, a cool two blocks long, when a New
York dri­ver could eas­ily ask you how to get to Broad­way and Spring and
MEAN IT. Becky brought Avery home from her play­date, with gor­geous
flow­ers for my birth­day! And a really sweet note. She is truly a
good friend, even though both Anna and Avery lost their home­work,
about a “papil­lon” that I heard a lot about at din­ner, feel­ing good
that unlike with maths home­work, I actu­ally enjoy remem­ber­ing French.

Avery has a new babysit­ter! The gor­geous Katie from Chicago, here on
a Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame schol­ar­ship for finance, shar­ing a flat
with three girls in the Edg­ware Road, tall, sophis­ti­cated, lovely and
friendly. So shock­ing to find she’s turn­ing 21 this week­end. I am
try­ing to remem­ber 21 and fail­ing! To think she could be my child
quite eas­ily. She will pick Avery up each Tues­day at school and
they’ll have some adven­ture. Guess what the first adven­ture is Avery
has planned? To come home and meet the cats. I think the strain of
mov­ing and adjust­ing comes out in funny places with Avery. Every once
in awhile she reveals how hard it has been, but not directly. “Anna
has not had trou­ble putting her ear­rings in every week­end, like I
have, but then she has not had to unpack.” As though Avery has done a
thing to unpack since about day two. But she must be absorb­ing the
strain. If only through her earlobes.

Our two big pieces of news: we are going to see David Suchet in a
play, “Once in a Life­time,” at the National The­atre on Sat­ur­day! And
two, we’re going to Rome for Avery’s half term break next Wednes­day.
Today dropoff was rife with dis­cus­sions of des­ti­na­tions: Zer­matt,
Tener­ife, the Sey­chelles. Ah, the drama!

I have to say how much my pack­age full of microwave pop­corn from
Alyssa meant… reminded me that no mat­ter how cos­mopoli­tan a city,
you need your friends when you need your friends. And a Peo­ple
mag­a­zine! How I miss her… Had a long talk with my Uncle Kenny,
stay­ing with my par­ents this evening, and must try to get ahold of
some of that Reuters’ guy’s tea for him, he’s such a tea buff. They
all seem far, far away tonight…

Before I for­get, here on my desk is a framed poem from Avery, that she wrote for me on New Year’s Eve, John says com­pletely unprompted. Of course it made me cry.

Dear Mommy
Good­byes
A year has passed,
A lot has hap­pened,
Let’s say some last
Good­byes
New York, the barn,
Things that have knit­ted together,
Loosely, with yarn/
There’s some­thing to say.
It’s Good­bye.
But be happy, don’t cry!
Hello to Eng­land,
Oh my, oh my!
Lasso our life,
It’s wild!
And don’t for­get, adven­ture and hap­pi­ness are man and wife.

I real­lly like that lit­tle girl… I hope she’s feel­ing bet­ter at school and can enjoy her skat­ing les­son this afternoon.

Where to begin?  John is at an “off-site” in Sus­sex for a cou­ple of days, even though I keep remind­ing him that “off-site” is not a des­ti­na­tion.  Avery is at school, some­what reluc­tantly still not feel­ing quite her best after her weekend’s bout with fever, and I?  I am sit­ting at my desk sur­rounded by boxes of books, unpaid bills from increas­ingly impa­tient Amer­i­can cred­i­tors who don’t seem to real­ize I don’t care about them any­more (but of course I’ll be good and set­tle up Ladybug’s vet tab and the Con­necti­cut phone bill, etc.).  Mostly, how­ever, my func­tion today is what it has been since Fri­day, that is to answer the door­bell con­stantly and let in one after another alleged repair­man to “take a look” at the stove.  Call it a cooker, call it a hob, it just doesn’t work.  And last night after Avery woke up from a very odd nap after school, all hot and sweaty, I went down to her bath­room to draw her a nice, refresh­ing bath, only… there was no hot water.  I real­ized as well that it was quite cold through­out the flat.  With a sense of sink­ing inevitabil­ity, I went to look at the boiler, and yep, gone.  Dead as a door­nail.  I called up the landlord’s office, the mys­te­ri­ous Grosvenor Estates who hold us in such expen­sive thrall, and the young man on the other end even­tu­ally came back to me and said a repair guy would be there around 11.  ” P.M.??” I gasped.  “Well, you see, it is quite late now [six o’clock] and it will take awhile for him to get there.”  Where was this guy, Paris?  I said absolutely not and was there a super­vi­sor I could talk to.  “Not at the moment, you see, everyone’s left.”  But me, his sad lit­tle voice implied.  “Well, keep the work order in for FIRST THING in the morn­ing, then,” I huffed.  “It’s just as well, then, that I can’t cook din­ner, because I also couldn’t clean it up,” I said sulk­ily and on that bit­ing exit line I hung up, won­der­ing what else could go wrong.

An hour or so later, just after John turned up, the repair guy showed up at the door.  Much beringed and spiky-haired, Gavin did not impart con­fi­dence.  Sure enough, after an hour or so bang­ing around in the boiler room, he gave up.  “The dis­play panel is on, and then blower is work­ing like crack­ers, but there doesn’t seem to be a flame.”  The flame being the essen­tial part to any heat­ing source, we were a bit frus­trated.  But the crown­ing blow: he said, “You know, I should really not have been muck­ing about under the lid of that thing, not being licensed prop­erly, really.”  !!!!

We got Avery set­tled in her bed any­way, and since her room was freez­ing, I went to get her an HWB (hot water bot­tle, of course), but then remem­bered there was no HW to go in it.  Boiled water in the elec­tric tea ket­tle, grate­ful for the first time for what I have always thought was a pecu­liar obses­sion with the Eng­lish, their elec­tric ket­tles.  Ah well, we set­tled down to watch a hilar­i­ous show on BBC1, “Balder­dash and Pif­fle,” where a pre­sen­ter hunts down the mean­ing of an obscure word, usu­ally some­thing new and culturally-inspired, and then tries to con­vince an unbe­liev­ably solemn team from the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary to put the word in the next edi­tion.  Last night’s words were “balti,” a Pakistani-inspired way to sautee­ing meats in a deep-bottomed pan, and “bingo.”  Only in Eng­land could such a pro­gramme fly in prime time.

AH!!!  Tony is the man!  This lovely bloke just fixed my boiler!  It was the rare but vicious “inter­nal fuse.”  I have now had a com­plete course in how boil­ers work, as well as ther­mostats and timers.  He seemed amazed that I could take it all in, being a dumb Amer­i­can, so I bran­dished my PhD.  I coaxed him to take a look at the cooker, but as the Eng­lish say, we had no joy.  Iain, the sweet but lame replace­ment for my beloved Bob, has gone away dis­con­so­lately to order a new cooker from Siemens who are drag­ging their feet about the war­ranty.  Grrr.

But I was sup­posed to start with the “good”, wasn’t I?  Pes­simistic Scandy that I am, I for­got.  I was just feel­ing sorry for myself yes­ter­day, sad­dled with laun­dry, sort­ing sweaters and field­ing repair­men, when it was time to pick Avery up, and although she said she didn’t feel very good, this news was over­shad­owed by the offi­cial report from the Eng­lish Speak­ing Board, they of the dreaded exam last week, and she earned a “Merit”!  The grades begin with, obvi­ously, “Fail,” then go up to “Pass,” “Good Pass,” “Merit,” “High Merit,” and the cov­eted “Dis­tinc­tion.”  Of the four cat­e­gories on the exam, she scored two “Good Passes,” a “Merit” and a “Dis­tinc­tion,” the last being in the spon­ta­neous ques­tion and answer period in which the exam­iner found her to be “lively, well-informed and artic­u­late.”  She is very, very proud.  Added to that, she was men­tioned (in her absence) at assem­bly on Fri­day for hav­ing passed her skat­ing test, for which she will get a cool lit­tle badge to put on her cardie.  Very impres­sive.  What a trouper.  We had ice cream and cau­li­fower soup at Vil­landry, her favorite snack spot, and the lovely French server asked, “How did your exam go, pet?”  I felt we had passed a mile marker!  We have been remem­bered and treated like real peo­ple.  So Avery showed her the report, and the nice lady brought her two choco­late lady­bugs.  Sweet.

Her home­work last night was such a rev­e­la­tion, of what she’s con­tend­ing with in the way of cul­tural adjust­ment.  “Mummy, this does not make sense at all.  I’m meant to look at these dif­fer­ent words and say how they each have dif­fer­ent mean­ings though they sound the same.  But they don’t.”  There were sev­eral groups of words:

raw/roar
flaw/floor
paw/pour/poor

Of course in Eng­lish Eng­lish they DO sound the same!  She laughed and laughed.  “Coco has the most, most, most POSH accent and I can just hear how these words would sound the same if she said them, in that haughty way she has.  The homo­phones that aren’t homo­phones to me!”

On the cul­tural side for me, I’ve dis­cov­ered an excel­lent minis­eries on DVD, because of course it stars my crush actor Matthew Mac­fadyen, but it’s well worth see­ing for the rest of the stel­lar cast as well.  It’s called “Per­fect Strangers,” but not to be con­fused with that awful 1980s sit­com with Bron­son Pin­chot.  It’s the tale of a fam­ily reunion where most of the fam­ily mem­bers have not ever met, and one par­tic­u­lar fam­ily who’s been ostra­cized, we know not why for a long time.  We see the secrets unfold through the expe­ri­ences of the main char­ac­ter, Daniel, and it’s very com­plex, reward­ing and unex­pected.  I haven’t seen the end yet because of my host­ess duties regard­ing repair­men and porters, but I shall at lunchtime I think.  Then, I’ve dis­cov­ered a very impor­tant writer whose name I’ve always heard but never got around to read­ing: Nancy Mit­ford.  I sup­pose she prob­a­bly got a redis­cov­ery boost from the film ver­sion of “Love in a Cold Cli­mate,” which now I want to see.  But I started out with “The Pur­suit of Love,” and it’s laugh-out-loud funny.  Go get it from the library, do.

Then yes­ter­day as I was run­ning to Boots, the chemist, to get a spray bot­tle for Dor­rie to sprin­kle John’s shirts (I came away with a teeny tiny travel-sized per­fume sprayer!  I don’t think she thought it as funny as I did, so I’ll have to track down a real one this week), I real­ized all the crowds were look­ing in the same direc­tion and peo­ple were whip­ping out cell-phone cam­eras.  I turned in that direc­tion and there, com­ing down Oxford Street and turn­ing into Port­man Street, were per­haps 60 or 80 horses with sol­diers in full uni­form!  Glo­ri­ous!  At the risk of look­ing like a tourist I turned to an obvi­ously native Lon­doner next to me and said, “OK, I’ll bite.  What’s going on?”  “Oh, every once in awhile the Queen just sends out her horses, to show that she has them.  It’s a sort of defence thing, in the old days, for for­eign vis­i­tors.”  I love this place.

Poor Avery. I picked her up at school yes­ter­day, after feel­ing rather off-colour, as they say, myself all day, sort of sore-throaty, and the poor thing was pos­i­tively grey. Which is much worse than “gray”. I was chat­ting with another mother and she just hung there till I finally looked at her prop­erly and felt quite sure that all was not well. We walked along to get a snack. I’m sorry to con­fess we went to Star­bucks. “Miss Clarke was so sweet,” she said as we trudged along. Miss Clarke is a most mag­nif­i­cent, gen­tle, age­less per­son about whom every­one you men­tion King’s Col­lege to says, “Oh, is Miss Clarke still there?” A per­son shaped sort of like a jacket potato as they call baked pota­toes here, and solid and kindly but severe. It didn’t really sur­prise me that she had taken a sick Avery under her capa­cious wing. “She told me just to go ahead and lie down,” Avery relayed, and I said, “Oh, is there an infir­mary and a nurse?” with pic­tures of old boarding-school nov­els I have read pass­ing through my mind. “Well, no, actu­ally, the King’s Col­lege ver­sion of lying down is sort of putting your head down on your desk.” Oh.

So she ate an enor­mous piece of choco­late cake and had hot choco­late and I was telling myself she was just tired, but when I came back from get­ting my pep­per­mint tea put into a cup to take away, she was lying on the cush­iony chair look­ing like I don’t know what, some­thing one of the cats dragged in, if they were in a posi­tion to drag things in. We went home and both of us felt sort of pathetic, so I put the chicken in the oven to roast, wrapped in streaky bacon, lying on a bed of rose­mary (doesn’t that sound like part of that poem, “The Lady of Shalott”) and we had hot water bot­tles on our feet and read our books with a purring Tacy. Avery slept for a bit as the dusk turned into dark in our gar­den and when she woke up she was hot as any­thing. John came in shortly after and I sent him straight­away back out for some med­i­cine, which she downed with con­sid­er­able drama, shiv­er­ing and buck­ing. John and I sat down to din­ner, but it wasn’t very yummy with poor Avery lying doggo on the sofa across the room. We repaired to our beds and I’m glad to report she slept through the night and today is very, very thirsty but cheer­ful. John went off to a pre­sen­ta­tion in front of the CEO, the CFO and just about every­one in the civ­i­lized world, quite calm I thought. I hope it goes well.

Our new sheets are odd. Not enough elas­tic, so they sort of migrate around the bed. I shall put them in the washer and hope more elas­tic appears. The sizes just made me laugh. I must get some­one offi­cial to put me in the pic­ture about how they size things, because the Marks and Sparks lady seemed utterly bemused by my ques­tions. First of all, Avery has what I would call a dou­ble bed. That is, between a twin and a queen, right? Well, here they seem to call that a sin­gle, but the sheets are mea­sured in feet and inches. Hmm, could you say right off
the bat how many feet and inches make up a dou­ble, sorry, sin­gle bed? I couldn’t. But it turns out to be 4 feet, six inches. Or maybe cen­time­ters. I have no idea. Then what we call queen is called king here! Or rather, it’s labeled “5 feet” but it’s called “king” by the saleslady. Then they have a “queen” size that’s labeled “6 feet.”

Now. Do you sup­pose this des­ig­na­tion shifts with the reign­ing monarch? That is, if it’s King Edward, the largest size sheet is a King? But now that it’s Queen Eliz­a­beth the largest size is a Queen? I could not say, but in this cul­ture gov­erned at turns by his­tory and by whim­sey, it’s entirely pos­si­ble. TGIF.

And Happy Birth­day to my niece, Baby Jane! I won­der how she’s
doing… We gave her a really cute boxed set of four of the Bram­b­ley Hedge books by Jill Barklem, a truly dar­ling series of books about voles, field mice and other peo­ple who live in Eng­lish hedges and fall in love and find secret cup­boards and such. Plus at the gro­cery store I found a box of baby-sized gin­ger­bread men, and a jar of some­thing called “puree of William Christ pear” which sounded so Eng­lish I couldn’t resist. I hope she has a great day. Lots of love from Lon­don, Jane. We miss you.