The race! It was the iconic I’m-a-mother-of-an-English-schoolchild expe­ri­ence. Remem­ber those pic­tures, some 15 years ago, of Princess Diana run­ning across a field par­tic­i­pat­ing in her sons’ school Sports Day? Everyone’s hair flut­ter­ing in the wind, school uni­forms, laugh­ing faces and the gray-blue Lon­don sky. That was it, on Fri­day. Of course King’s Col­lege came in a handy fourth out of four in all events, but it’s not all about win­ning, is it? Espe­cially when you don’t.

Such a per­fect after­noon. The race was to be in Bat­tersea Park, a place I was not awfully famil­iar with but had a feel­ing was too far to walk to. It turned out, after John did some research, that the Num­ber 137 red double-decker bus went directly from our cor­ner on Park Lane, straight to the Park. So I armed myself with my cam­era and hopped on. It’s by far the best way to get around. You climb up to the top, sit your­self down in the front if you can, and watch Lon­don go by from the most per­fect van­tage point. We skirted Hyde Park, swung per­ilously around the Duke of Wellling­ton Place, threaded our way along South Kens­ing­ton, down Sloane Street (pass­ing my doctor’s office and the cute lit­tle phar­macy on the way!) and con­tin­ued south to the Albert Bridge, a doll-like con­fec­tion of white, red and blue paint­work. And there I was. I walked through the park, unable as usual to deci­pher the extremely clear park maps that would direct me to the band­stand, when I came upon a huge gag­gle of small gulls in gray and red uni­forms. Instantly I knew that if I fol­lowed them I would end up at the race. They were from Kens­ing­ton Prep, and there were a LOT of them. And tall? Too tall. As I began to fol­low them, up pulled another coach and there was the King’s Col­lege con­tin­gent. I met the for­mi­da­ble Mrs King the gamesmistress of whom Avery had painted such an intim­i­dat­ing pic­ture. Nat­u­rally she’s about 30, jolly and a lot of fun. She and Mrs Bick­ley, Avery’s form teacher, and I walked along with the gulls and ended up on a huge foot­ball pitch, at the end of which were the Kens­ing­ton Prep kids. Shortly after, the Gar­den House kids showed up in their chic stand­out uni­forms of bright­est royal blue, and after that the group from Eaton Square School, also seem­ingly twice as large as our chil­dren and twice in num­ber, and with really cool uni­forms as well. Our gulls in their sim­ple navy sweats with lit­tle white polo shirts were a bit overshadowed.

At first the par­ents stood war­ily in each other’s com­pany, rec­og­niz­ing each other from dropoff and pickup but not want­ing to appear that most un-English of all things: friendly to some­one to whom you have not been prop­erly intro­duced and spent about a year gaz­ing at from afar before speak­ing. But grad­u­ally our shared indig­na­tion at the odds stacked against our lit­tle chil­dren drew us together, and we chat­ted in a desul­tory ran­dom way, each of us won­der­ing silently if it was all right to take pic­tures, or if the other par­ents would think we were stalk­ing their chil­dren. Pretty soon though we were all tak­ing pic­tures, because the scene was impos­si­bly cute. All of the gulls hud­dled in their school groups at first, talk­ing in muted tones, look­ing at the other groups under their lashes. But pretty soon they were loos­ened up by the sheer gor­geous­ness of the day, the pent-up excite­ment of the com­ing race, and most of all the pres­ence of a for­eign object: BOYS! From Eaton Square, I think they were. Chas­ing each other around and mud­dy­ing up their uni­forms, hit­ting each other over the heads with their back­packs, it was like being back at PS 234. Mrs Bick­ley at my elbow said ellip­ti­cally, “That I don’t miss.” But they were cute, for one afternoon.

All the chil­dren began to take the prac­tice walk around the pitch, the Form Three lit­tle ones going 900 metres, the Fours 1100 metres, and the big strong Fives went 1500 metres, all of them swing­ing their arms and look­ing inno­cent and ath­letic. Gar­den House gulls hand­ily won most of the top spots in each form, includ­ing Avery’s, but the other two schools did not do badly. Avery’s Form com­pletely spent them­selves run­ning encour­ag­ingly after the Form Three rac­ers who went before, so that by the time it was their turn to run their race, they were exhausted! Avery came in eighth out of per­haps 20, not bad, and by the end of the day she had cal­cu­lated that the had come best out of the King’s Col­lege rep­re­sen­ta­tives. As the prizes were announced, and the phrase “And in fourth place, King’s Col­lege,” was heard many times, Mrs Bick­ley said resignedly, “At least we’re con­sis­tent.” It turns out the other schools all have their own games pitches, whereas our chil­dren must walk to Regent’s Park to run. Well, then.

But the big excite­ment of the day was when I spot­ted who I was sure was the Crown Prince of Greece! I know, it’s pathetic to get so excited to see the heir to a non-existent throne, but he’s a sta­ple of Hello! mag­a­zine and I found it quite excit­ing. My sus­pi­cions were con­firmed when he was joined by his gor­geous, impos­si­bly chic wife, the for­mer Marie-Chantal Miller of the New York Millers. Unbe­liev­ably she was dressed in white Chanel trousers and jacket, on a foot­ball pitch! Prince Pavlov tow­ered above all the other fathers, at per­haps 6 feet 4, in per­fectly tai­lored, very Euro­pean clothes that set him apart from the rather scruffier Eng­lish dads. For sure there was no other Chanel on the pitch. Mrs King and Mrs Bick­ley thought I should take a pic­ture of them to sell to Hello!, but even my crass Amer­i­can man­ners told me I should leave them alone. I did get one pic­ture of them leav­ing, because of course they arrived just in time for their daughter’s race for Eaton Square, and left imme­di­ately after. Not for them the ride home with a sweet exhausted child on a red double-decker bus.

We all were “cheered off” as they say, with the first “hip hip HOORAY!” I have ever heard out­side a Win­nie the Pooh story. Home on the bus, where in Sloane Street, stuck in a traf­fic jam, I saw Roberto Cav­alli! The hot and hap­pen­ing designer, who now calls Vic­to­ria Beck­ham his muse. Ick. He was com­ing out of his own store, car­ry­ing one of his own bags. Now, what could he pos­si­bly have bought?

This week­end was a real food fest in our house. I had got myself in the mood with spaghetti and meat­balls on Wednes­day evening, while Stephanie, Anna and Avery were play­ing. It’s such a good, made-up recipe with cot­tage cheese and fresh thyme, and I usu­ally use a mix­ture of ground lamb, pork and beef, but dopey Marks and Sparks had only beef “mince,” and I was too ashamed to crawl over to Sel­f­ridges yet again, so I made do. Then a long-simmered sim­ple tomato sauce with red wine, and you saute the meat­balls in a skil­let and then pour the sauce over them and let them jig­gle for as long as they need, but at least half an hour to cook them through. Email me if you want the meat­ball recipe. Stephanie and Anna hung over the skil­let ask­ing to stay to din­ner! Stephanie’s dad came to pick her up and we were treated to a hilar­i­ous dance recital.

Want a com­pletely sim­ple, cooks-itself soup idea? Roughly chop up lots of gar­lic, an onion, and 8 bell pep­pers, any color but green. Throw them in a large pot with olive oil and saute briefly. Add a good splash of brandy or madeira, and cover them all with chicken broth, then sprin­kle on dried thyme, or fresh thyme leaves if you have them (not the stems, though). Sim­mer for­ever, at least an hour but as long as you like. Whizz with a hand-held blender (one of the most use­ful ktichen tools in my opin­ion, since you don’t have to cool the soup as you would before putting it through a reg­u­lar blender) and pour into another pot through a strainer to get the lit­tle pep­per skin bits out. Add as much cream as you like and check the sea­son­ings, then sim­mer till you want to eat it. Divine, and so extremely good for you with all those peppers.

Sat­ur­day we met up with Anna’s fam­ily (minus too-cool Ash­ley) to go to the St. John and St. Elizabeth’s Hos­pi­tal char­ity Easter Egg Hunt, in St. John’s Wood up north of the school. Impor­tantly it had been billed as includ­ing a pet­ting zoo, so Becky and I were flum­moxed to arrive and find not only no eggs, but no ani­mals. There was the weird­est sys­tem of egg-hunting: the vol­un­teers ran­domly threw empty plas­tic eggs around on the lawn (admit­tedly strewn with just-bloomed cro­cuses, gor­geous pur­ple and yel­low), and then the chil­dren ran­domly picked them up and turned them in at a table piled high with boxes of the ubiq­ui­tous Cadbury’s Cream Eggs. No real eggs! Noth­ing in the plas­tic ones! And no jelly beans, which means the real Easter Bunny had not been there. And scream­ing tod­dlers, every­where. The sky clouded over and we were all freez­ing! The girls were good sports, though, and just as we were despair­ing of sal­vaging the after­noon, the crea­tures showed up. A big goat, a pygmy goat, sev­eral rab­bits, ham­sters and guinea pigs, and a cou­ple of ferrets.

As we walked down the St. John’s Wood High Street after lunch, I had a long­ing for Thanks­giv­ing dress­ing, so I turned into the Kent and Sons Butcher (“You turned into the butcher, Mommy? How dis­gust­ing,” Avery would say, since she always loves it when Nancy Drew “turns into her dri­ve­way”) and bought out­ra­geously expen­sive pork and jalapeno sausages and chicken breasts for the main course. John was apoplec­tic at the cost, but I have to say that sausage was the best I have ever had, and it’s such an impor­tant ingre­di­ent in the dress­ing that it made a real dif­fer­ence. It smelled good even raw! With fresh sage, the torn-out insides of Ital­ian bread, plenty of gar­lic, mush­rooms, cel­ery, onions, chicken broth and cream, that is sim­ply the most divine dress­ing, if a lot of trouble.

Yes­ter­day was the spring time change, so in order to get to the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket before every­thing was sold, I was awak­ened at an uncon­sol­ingly early hour. Turned out it wasn’t nec­es­sary, as the mar­ket didn’t even open until 10, yippee for next week­end! We ran into my friend Diana who with her usual savoir-faire, told us which was the best of every­thing. “You have never tasted a car­rot until you buy some from this green­gro­cer,” she assured me, which might mat­ter if we ate car­rots in any way except drenched in but­ter and brown sugar and sauteed until every ounce of nutri­tion has been replaced with fat. Sorry, but there it is. I learned that recipe from my dar­ling Jeanne Grieger in Orange, New Jer­sey, and I will never look back. Avery acquired a tiny hyacinth plant and an even tinier some­thing else laven­der to raise on her bed­room win­dowsill. She and John quickly tired of the mar­ket, as nor­mal peo­ple will do after a cer­tain period of time, so they ran off the find a bar­ber for John and I stayed and put­tered around.

I bought a gor­geous leg of lamb, plan­ning to give Avery left­over chicken as she objects to lamb on cute­ness prin­ci­ples. Lis­ten to the butcher’s address: “Layer Mar­ney Lamb, Poul­try and Game, Thor­ring­ton, Layer Mar­ney, Colch­ester, Essex.” Whew! I bought sev­eral remark­able cheeses, and a just-pressed pat of but­ter from Simon Jones, the dairy man, and two lovely smoked her­rings from Simon Long, the fish­mon­ger. Gor­geous toma­toes from the Isle of Wight and some curi­ous pota­toes called Pink Fir Apples, only they’re pota­toes. Waxy and good for salad, the green­gro­cer said. I con­fess I bought them just for the fun of typ­ing “Pink Fir Apples,” but I imag­ine I can find some­thing to do with them. As for the lamb, oh my. Even Avery was con­verted! I seared it all over in olive oil with salt and pep­per on all sur­faces as I turned it, in a heavy oven-proof pot, then put it in a 450 degree oven for 20 min­utes. Mean­while I mixed a stick of but­ter with chopped gar­lic, a table­spoon each of Dijon mus­tard and soy sauce, and a table­spoon each of rose­mary and fen­nel seeds, pounded in a plas­tic bag (not very suc­cess­fully, a lit­tle spice grinder would have been bet­ter). Smeared half of this over the lamb, then turned the oven down to 350 for another 25-ish min­utes (a 2 1/2 pound leg, bone-in). I let it sit for 10 min­utes or so so all the juice wouldn’t run out when I sliced it, and melted the rest of the herb but­ter. I am a hor­ri­ble carver, so I know I don’t get the best pre­sen­ta­tion, but with the fen­nel and herb but­ter poured over the juicy pink lamb and left­over dress­ing on the side, it was sim­ply divine. Sauteed shred­ded brus­sells sprouts were my tiny ges­ture toward good health and austerity.

I’ve got our Scot­tish adven­ture planned! Avery and I shall take the Cale­don­ian Sleeper train Thurs­day evening, leav­ing exot­i­cally at nearly mid­night from Euston Sta­tion. We arrive first thing in the morn­ing in Edin­burgh, where we can get break­fast some­where and explore, then then we head out to our hotel, the Cas­tle Dal­housie just a few miles into the coun­try­side. I dare you to go on the Castle’s web­site and not be instantly deter­mined to go with us! We’ll stay until Mon­day after­noon and come home on the day train, so we can see the scenery go by. I am really look­ing for­ward to it. John leaves on Wednes­day of this week for his Hong Kong-Shanghai-Sydney-Tokyo trip and he would much rather be com­ing with us. We’ll be at home then Tues­day, Wednes­day and Thurs­day, and go to the show jump­ing event on Fri­day and Saturday!

Last but not least, tonight is John’s boss’s work din­ner party that’s been in the hop­per for months. I’m going to wear the gor­geous Vince black vel­vet jacket that my mother-in-law gave me, and I was going to wear with it a short black skirt. But guess what? I wound up going to Sel­f­ridges and up to the designer women’s wear sec­tion, and I bought a lit­tle pair of the fash­ion­able longish shorts that everyone’s wear­ing on the cat­walk. At its worst this style is a ter­ri­ble idea, but these are by Chloe, a nice sort of taupey-goldy really sub­tle tweed, just above knee length. The saleslady assures me that with my jacket, black tights and black high heels I will be the lat­est word in fash­ion. I doubt that, but it has to be cooler than all black. I also got some yummy face cream at a place called Bio­therm, and I finally replaced my empty bot­tle of Her­mes per­fume that has trav­eled sadly here with me from New York. I hope I will do John credit! I’ve never before been to a din­ner party where you’re pro­vided, via email, with resumes for all the guests. Except me of course. It’s a pretty heady mix of invest­ment bank­ing exec­u­tives, hedge fund man­agers, minor mem­bers of the British aris­toc­racy. And us. I can’t decide who I’m going as: for­mer gallery owner and pro­fes­sor, cook­book writer, or just plain at-home mother. To go as a for­mer self seems a bit depress­ing, but to go as some­thing you’re only plan­ning to be… that’s iffy as well. Prob­a­bly best to go with what I know. Too bad I can’t bring Avery in my pocket.

Well, today’s the big 900-metre Cross-Country Race for which the girls of Avery’s school have been prepar­ing for weeks. I might have men­tioned: there were try­outs, and the top five girls in each form were cho­sen to rep­re­sent King’s Col­lege in their best style against two schools: the dreaded Gar­den House School who so roundly trounced Avery’s net­ball team last month, and Kens­ing­ton Prep about whom noth­ing is really known. Well, Avery has a huge grudge against Gar­den House to begin with because when we were apply­ing to schools for her, Gar­den House wouldn’t even let her apply. Too full up with far cooler chil­dren, was the gen­eral atti­tude it seemed. So added to that was the per­ni­cious defeat in net­ball, and let me tell you, those girls had bet­ter watch out today.

Avery of course had no inter­est in rep­re­sent­ing her school; she merely ran as fast as she could and came in sixth. She was hugely relieved to find that she had missed being in the run­ning, so to speak, by just one gull. How­ever, one gull turned out not to be able to ful­fill her duties (naughty pic­tures of her found on the inter­net? we don’t know), and Avery had to step up, to her dis­may. So many a pickup at school has been punc­tu­ated with com­plaints about train­ing: how tired her legs are, how Miss King didn’t even run with them, she just walked across Regent’s Park as they ran all the way around, and met them on the other side. And she had candy! The injus­tice. Any­way, today’s the day, in Bat­tersea Park, so I and some other moth­ers shall go cheer them on. Of course it’s rain­ing. However.

Lovely play­date with Kelly and Anna here this week. Finally the gar­den got some use! And tomor­row is a big fes­tive early Easter party, to ben­e­fit a children’s char­ity, at a hos­pi­tal gar­den in St. John’s Wood, with a pet­ting zoo! Should be fun. I’ll bring my cam­era. I’ve been busy this week plan­ning Avery’s and my spring break trip to Sheffield, in York­shire, to see the British Open Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onships! Horses run­ning through rings of fire, peo­ple doing som­er­saults on their backs, who knows what else in addi­tion to the real event, the show jump­ing. Royal Girl Zara Phillips will be com­pet­ing! I’d love to see some­body I rec­og­nize from Hello! mag­a­zine. Then I’ve got to get hotel reser­va­tions and train tick­ets for our trip to Scot­land that week as well. We have to enter­tain our­selves while John vis­its every major Asian city, a real bum­mer in terms of tim­ing, of course. But the sleeper train to Edin­burgh! John and I did that 15 years ago, as new­ly­weds, on our mam­moth castle-hopping trip to Scot­land, and it will be fun to take Fifi with me this time… what fun! And I think it will be lamb­ing sea­son in the heath­ery hills.

Oh, it’s such fun to live here. I know I am tire­some on the sub­ject of Sel­f­ridges Food Hall, but it really is a mecca, a dream come true, and a Pandora’s box of temp­ta­tion all at the same time. There’s a sim­ile I’m think­ing of… it’s like when you go on an aus­ter­ity cam­paign and for a good two months or so, you buy only house brand tinned tuna. Canned tuna to you across the pond, sorry. Then, you find your­self in Fair­way, in good old Harlem (home­sick for a moment! think­ing of the incom­pa­ra­ble finds to be had there, not to men­tion an awfully nice view of New Jer­sey), and, lurk­ing in aisle 4, is a huge dis­play of “Tonna di Sicilia all’olio d’olive”, hey, it’s only $4 a can, and look at the pretty font! You’re doomed. Well, all it took was one inno­cent trip to buy my spareribs over the week­end and now, sud­denly, I sim­ply had to have a salt beef sand­wich from Sel­f­ridges for lunch. So off I went, armed with my copy of the laugh-out-loud cook­book by Simon Hop­kin­son and Lind­sey Bare­ham, “The Prawn Cock­tail Years,” and a hearty appetite. I mean, a girl has to eat.

I ordered my savoury and luscious-looking half sand­wich (so civ­i­lized, the half sand­wich, a per­fect solu­tion to a lack of din­ing com­pan­ion), with a com­pletely inad­e­quate coleslaw salad on the side, awful, sim­ply drenched in salad cream. Bet­ter just left in the bowl. How­ever, the salt beef is good enough to make “The Rail­way Bar” in the Food Hall a des­ti­na­tion. A lovely man called Calvin behind the counter said, hand­ing me my wine glass, “That’s a great cook­book, I used to work for him at Biben­dum.” “Did you? What was he like?” I asked, fas­ci­nated by the pos­si­bil­ity of food world gos­sip. “Oh, a lovely funny man, but after seven years I had had enough of shell­fish. I opened an aver­age of 7000 oys­ters a week.” Hav­ing tried, 15 years ago, to shuck enough oys­ters for one measly Christ­mas Eve stew, I was truly impressed. “My copy’s signed, though,” he said, and I quickly leafed through to find MY signed title page (the book was a Christ­mas gift from my foody Lon­don friend Carla years ago, and hid­ing in it was a note from her thank­ing me for the pic­ture books I sent her son!), so it was a stand­off. I sat down and was just tak­ing my first bite when a man­ager sort of per­son came round ask­ing if every­thing was all right, so I asked what I had always won­dered, “What is salt beef when it’s in Amer­ica?” We debated the pos­si­bil­ity that it was pas­trami, but no, The Rail­way Bar offers pas­trami as well. This nice man, Alex, brought me a sam­ple of it, and we decided that where pas­trami is pep­pered and pos­si­bil­ity cured in a vine­gar bath, salt beef is just that, salt-cured. Deli­cious with plenty of yel­low mus­tard and rye bread. Not quite Katz Deli on the Lower East Side of Man­hat­tan, but pretty good, and the best I’m going to get until I get up enough energy to go to Gold­ers Green on the North­ern Line (Alex drew me a map on my receipt) to the Jew­ish district.

I rang up the Press Office at Sel­f­ridges to get per­mis­sion to take a pic­ture of the salt beef, but “Roz” was away from her desk or on another line, so I gave up and took these pic­tures of the out­side. I’m not sure who the flowing-garmented fig­ure is, but it’s cer­tainly a land­mark in Oxford Street.

Hop­kin­son and Bare­ham are worth the price of admis­sion to their cook­books. Their first col­lab­o­ra­tion, “Roast Chicken and Other Sto­ries,” won every award known to the cook­ery world and is an absolute must-read on a grey Lon­don after­noon when you don’t know what to cook. But this one I read over lunch is really sub­tle, very appeal­ing. Their con­tention is that the British own a rare tal­ent for cre­at­ing a per­fectly good dish, mak­ing it a clas­sic, and then run­ning it into the ground. They begin, of course, with the sta­ple of all Eng­lish menus, the prawn cock­tail. Now, my sis­ter aside (who has a sad his­tory with prawns, but we needn’t go there) every right-minded per­son with­out a shell­fish allergy loves a good “shrimp” cock­tail. But they can be so BAD. “Freshly boiled prawns from the British sea­side are rare today, which is a pity, so the next best thing is whole cooked prawns. They will often have been frozen but their qual­ity, once shelled and decap­i­tated, is sur­pris­ingly good. Frankly, if you wish to use those taste­less, bulk-frozen lit­tle com­mas, then you have only your­self to blame.”

The recipe for beef con­somme, how­ever, reminds me why I dropped my obses­sion, some years ago, with con­somme. There’s some­thing about this sen­tence that just pricks my culi­nary bal­loon: “When the first signs of froth and scum appear, and the clar­i­fi­ca­tion mulch begins to solid­ify, a trickle of stock will appear through it.” This is where my “some­body gut this fish for me” ten­dency kicks into high gear and I want to go to McDon­alds. I guess there’s a rea­son I never went to cook­ing school. I do want to talk to some­one about pot­ted shrimp. Would you believe this cook­book actu­ally con­tains a recipe that involves boil­ing trot­ters for stock (yes, they’re actu­ally pigs’ feet, trot­ting along), and then pick­ing out the boiled meat and pot­ting it under aspic? It’s a won­der the Eng­lish have sur­vived this long.

So Avery is out with her beloved Katie right now, going to Madame Tussaud’s and the Lon­don Plan­e­tar­ium! They’re just a ten-minute walk from school and Katie will have her trusty Lon­don A to Z (the indis­pens­able map book of Lon­don, don’t for­get to say “zed” instead of the crass Amer­i­can “zee”). Avery’s friend Anna came over yes­ter­day and in the cab tak­ing her home, they invented a sur­pris­ingly intel­li­gent, if even­tu­ally mind-bendingly annoy­ing, game. They said every French word they could think of (I was amazed there were so many!) only they pro­nounced them with a pho­netic Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion. So poor “ven­dredi” came out sound­ing like an Indy 500 dri­ver, “ven-dretti”, and “je suis” was “gee soo-is”. I have to admit it was funny. Con­sid­er­ing that the King’s Col­lege chil­dren are taught by the felicitously-monikered but markedly NOT French lady “Made­moi­selle… Stan­way,” they’re not doing too badly. Hey, it beats study­ing with the Span­ish teacher, “Senorita…O’Malley.” I’m not mak­ing this up.

And in case you were won­der­ing what’s up with my find­ing an actual occu­pa­tion for myself, I’ve put my name out in an email to a film pro­duc­tion com­pany to intern for them! My erstwhile-acting friends Anne and David at Stillmeadow Farm in Con­necti­cut assure me this is the way to get my prover­bial foot in the door. The adver­tised post is for one full day, pos­si­bly more, a week, doing who knows what. I won­der if I could offer to come more days, but for fewer hours? Not sure how much babysit­ting help I want. It’s prob­a­bly eas­ier to get Avery an agent and become a stage mother. I’m sure I’m qual­i­fied for that.

Our week­end was bliss­fully unevent­ful. We had booked a new babysit­ter for Fri­day evening and my Lifestyle Con­sul­tant had got reser­va­tions for us at the Savoy Grill. How­ever. Dur­ing the course of Fri­day I did get my boiler fixed (the lame porter Iain even brought me flow­ers to apol­o­gize for my trauma) but not before I had a com­plete ner­vous break­down. Get this: John called me when he got to the office to see if the repair guys had come yet, and of course they had not, and I just absolutely lost it. Hon­estly I was near to tears, what with being cold and dirty, and for some rea­son my mobile phone wouldn’t charge and a DVD was stuck in the player so I couldn’t even lose myself in some fic­tional world. Well, I hung up tear­fully and went off to make beds, feel­ing sorry for myself. Some­time later I heard the front door slam. Scary! Who knows who has a key to my flat. I came upstairs stealth­ily, lurk­ing around cor­ners on tip­toe, when I saw John! “You did not sound like you wanted to spend the day alone,” the dear man said. “That’s what part­ners are for.” Well!

I real­ized I did not have the heart to go out for a killer din­ner; what a waste to pay a babysit­ter and swal­low a solid-gold din­ner when I was just too tired. So we can­celed every­thing, and I went to fetch Avery at her play­date with Jade. They looked angelic in their match­ing uni­forms and Nina, the Russ­ian nanny, reported that they had done their home­work and had din­ner. This is a very typ­i­cal setup, I have found, in the bet­ter fam­i­lies of Lon­don. The chil­dren are fed by the nanny at 5 o’clock or some such hour, and the par­ents come home and have their own din­ner sep­a­rately, the chil­dren being tucked up in bed with a nice seda­tive or what­ever so as not to cause any stress in the house­hold. As we walked home from Maryle­bone in the frosty twi­light, I said con­tent­edly, “Well, it looks like you had a nice time.” Silence. “Didn’t you?” “Well, Mummy, I just don’t think I’m sophis­ti­cated enough to play with Jade. She seems like a, sort of a teenager and I’m just a lit­tle nine year old.”

I said, “I think you’re sophis­ti­cated in your own way, but what about Jade seemed so old?” Avery hes­i­tated. “She… she… talked about… IT.” “It?” “You know, THAT sub­ject. She had Bar­bie and Ken doing some things that I know are def­i­nitely not appro­pri­ate for my age.” Oh dear! I diag­nosed some older step­sis­ters some­where in the back­ground. “Well, let’s have Jade to play at our house some­time, just as a return favor, and we’ll see what she gets up to when there aren’t any Bar­bies.” Although the prospect of their play­ing with Avery’s many horse mod­els does not inspire con­fi­dence, as far as hus­bandry (ani­mal or oth­er­wise) goes.

We got home to the most lus­cious pork spareribs in the world. I had gone all out and shopped at Selfridge’s Food Hall, a truly divine expe­ri­ence, and had bought a huge rack of Glouces­ter Old Pot (some­times called Old Spot, I don’t know which is truly cor­rect) ribs, a supe­rior, beyond organic type of pork that the butcher assured me was of even higher qual­ity than free range.

I mar­i­nated them in a mix­ture of ran­dom things pulled from the pantry shelf: molasses, honey, Lyle’s golden syrup, soy sauce, Japan­ese mirin (a sort of rice wine), and the left­overs of last night’s mus­tardy salad dress­ing. I mixed this all up in a bowl and poured it over the ribs, and then they slow-roasted in a low oven, per­haps 300 degrees, for nearly three hours, being turned twice and swirled around on the mari­nade in the dish. Don’t for­get to line your bak­ing dish with foil, and then you just ball it up and throw it away when you’re fin­ished, and the dish is clean under­neath (a must with these sticky mari­nades and long cook­ing times). With these ribs we had sin­fully rich mashed pota­toes (noth­ing beats a com­bi­na­tion of creme fraiche and sin­gle Eng­lish cream) and steamed arti­chokes. Have I ever in my life steamed arti­chokes with­out let­ting them boil dry and burn­ing the hell out of the bot­tom of the pan? I don’t think so. It never seems to hurt them but it makes cleanup really annoy­ing. But a deli­cious com­fort din­ner on a cold night, and it basi­cally cooked itself.

Sat­ur­day I was given a Day of Lux­ury! I slept late and was greeted with a plate of very per­fect scram­bled eggs with sour cream, the eggs hav­ing been a total indul­gence from my food frenzy at Selfridge’s. “Mabel Pearman’s Bur­ford Browns” they were, the brownest shells, embossed with some very Eng­lishy rear­ing grif­fin, the yolks as yel­low as the sun, all served up with toast sol­diers and a cup of tea. Plus some­thing to drink called Oranap­plgina which was Avery’s own inven­tion. It all came with a very impres­sive menu in a fancy font, which I have saved in my under­wear drawer, under my “smalls,” as the Eng­lish say. After break­fast we did noth­ing. Or rather I did laun­dry. Just before dinner-preparation time the phone rang and it was Anna, ask­ing Avery to come spend the night! So I got her through a lightning-fast shower and we sped to Harley House where I dumped her, protest­ing to Becky that she had enough on her plate with­out a sleep­over date, but she was on her way out to see “The Pro­duc­ers” with her house­guests. A whirl­wind of gaiety.

Yes­ter­day we saw “The Pink Pan­ther” and it was truly ridicu­lous, but we found our­selves laugh­ing any­way. Steve Mar­tin is just funny no mat­ter what he does, and Emily Mor­timer was adorable as his lit­tle French sec­re­tary. A long walk home via John Lewis depart­ment store where we bought very dull things like a food proces­sor and a coat rack and a spray bot­tle for long-suffering Dorrie’s iron­ing duties.

I’m going to spend the day hon­ing my new skill: adding hot links to this blog! As you may have noticed in this post, you can now click on var­i­ous words (just the col­ored ones, sorry) and be sent to excit­ing web­sites where you can vir­tu­ally visit our after-school snack haunts, read the menu of favorite restau­rants, see the hotel where Avery and I will spend our Scot­tish High­land spring break (that will have to wait till I know where we’re stay­ing!), even order book­shelves just like mine! Be sure to com­ment on the blog post, or email me, if you want me to add a link. This is get­ting seri­ous, this blog stuff.

So, don’t you think the answer to that ques­tion sim­ply defines peo­ple?  I always want the bad news first and then I can’t hear the good news by the time I get it, which tells you a lot about me.

Hmm, since I don’t know your answer I’ll go for my sys­tem: we have no heat or hot water!  No, your cur­sor didn’t acci­den­tally send you back to last week, or to last month.  Nope, it’s hap­pened again.  But let’s skip right from that and the fact that I am com­pletely sweaty and stinky from shelv­ing all my books, and Avery’s hands are beyond inky, but no one can take a bath.  Really, we’ll skip right from that to the good news which is… which is… see?  I can’t remem­ber.  No, now I do: my book­shelves are filled!  The flip side of that is the fact that there is still a box of my books to be shelved, plus four boxes of Avery’s books.  I think the only solu­tion is a quick trip to John Lewis over the week­end and see what we can just take home with us in the way of a piece of shelv­ing fur­ni­ture, if any­thing.  Lon­don fur­ni­ture stores delight in that dreaded phrase, “lead time.”  It could eas­ily be eight weeks, but let’s not think about that.

I found so many things I for­got I had!  Excel­lent mys­ter­ies, although I’m ashamed to say how many dupli­cate copies I have (“I really need to read ‘The 4:50 From Padding­ton’ and I can’t find my copy!  Quick one-click stop on Ama­zon”), a copy of my own dis­ser­ta­tion!  and other trea­sures. I cry every time I read “Under a Wing,” the Lind­bergh daugh­ter Reeve’s stun­ning mem­oir of her father), and then there were all my child­hood Nancy Drews.  Avery is right now run­ning up and down the stairs with piles of books she for­got she had, happy as a clam.

Lis­ten to what we’re hav­ing for din­ner and put it in your mem­ory for the night you can’t bear to go out to the gro­cery because it’s sleet­ing and you have no heat and hot water.  No, don’t put it under that nasty mem­ory.  It’s just totally easy.  Place a whole stick of but­ter in a heavy pot, throw in sev­eral sliced cloves of gar­lic and an onion that you’ve cut in half and sliced roughly.  Add two large cans (not the cans, I mean the con­tents) of peeled plum toma­toes, a splash of cheap red wine and a good two table­spoons of Ital­ian sea­son­ing.  Now put it on a sim­mer and go away.  Look at your filled book­shelves and gloat.  Come back every 15 min­utes or so to stir, and burst the toma­toes with your spoon.  After 45 min­utes it’s ready, but it can also sit there, for close to two hours, really low heat, if it needs to while your hus­band walks in and goes apoplec­tic over the non-existent boiler.  Grrr.  Boil some spaghetti dur­ing the last ten min­utes, make sure you’ve got some grated cheese, pecorino of parme­san, and you’re done. With this we’re hav­ing a vari­a­tion on the salad I talked about last, this one chunks of tomato and avo­cado, with a dress­ing I think is a pretty good imi­ta­tion of the weird steak­house one from yes­ter­day.  Three parts olive oil to one part any kind of vine­gar and one part dijon mus­tard, plus a quar­ter tea­spoon curry pow­der and a quar­ter tea­spoon ground cumin, plus some salt and pep­per.  And a blue­berry cof­fee cake of my own design, with a sunken gooey cen­ter that Avery loves.

I’m drop­ping with tiredness!

Have you ever gut­ted a lemon sole? It’s very off-putting and icky. How­ever, all the slav­ing did result in an incred­i­bly tasty dish that also marked a mile­stone in our domes­tic sphere: John ate fish! Next time, though, I will ask the fish­mon­ger to fil­let the lit­tle guys for me because I was really out of my depth. The recipe came from Mitchell Tonks’s fab­u­lous cook­book “The Fishmonger’s Cook­book,” so in all fair­ness I went to his fish shop (doesn’t he look incred­i­bly cheery?), “Fish­Works” in the Maryle­bone High Street where I had such a mem­o­rable lunch early on in our stay here, to get the fish. Unhap­pily I left this task until after I picked Avery up from school, so she had to come along, and she was not happy at the fishy smell, nor at the sight of the many dif­fer­ent whole fishes, a lit­tle too up close and per­sonal for her refined tastes.

So the recipe called for dredg­ing the fish in flour, shak­ing off the excess, and fry­ing it gen­tly in lots of but­ter, about 6 min­utes per side, then you take the fish out of the fry­ing pan, keep them warm, add more but­ter to the pan and some fresh pars­ley, and pour it over the fish. I chose lemon sole because it’s such a mild fla­vor that it couldn’t scare John too much. Absolutely drop-dead deli­cious, sim­ple, per­fectly fresh and light. The whole process was rather nerve-wracking, though, so fil­lets from now on.

I have book­shelves! The peo­ple FINALLY came today, after many missed phone calls, lost emails, inflated prices and other mishaps. I read with my gulls this morn­ing and came home to find a nice team of three elves work­ing away, and within two hours I had a whole wall of lovely, empty shelves that are remov­able and able to be mixed and matched in any way I like, wher­ever we move next (heaven for­fend). So now all I have to do (!) is move the 30-odd boxes of books from my study across the hall to the liv­ing room, and shelve them all, then break down the boxes for the recy­clers who con­ve­niently come on Thurs­day evening. I have gone so far as to empty two boxes and decided to skip alpha­bet­iz­ing for now, just to get them on the shelves. So far I’ve sep­a­rated non-fiction from fic­tion, and cook­books from every­thing else, and I think that will be the extent of my orga­ni­za­tion. You’ll
know I’ve gone over the edge when I dewey-decimal them all.

Yes­ter­day I col­lapsed after school dropoff and sim­ply took a nap, in the guest room, thank­fully tak­ing the pre­cau­tion of pulling down the win­dow shades, because I was awak­ened by the sound of the porter’s voice seem­ingly in my ear, and he was just out­side the win­dow attend­ing to some busi­ness of rub­bish, so I got up, and my friend Becky called to invite me to lunch at a really weird but strangely appeal­ing place in Maryle­bone Lane, Le Relais de Venise, where the only thing on the menu (so there really isn’t a menu, just a terse announce­ment of what you’re about to eat) is steak frites. That’s it. In “a secret sauce,” which I diag­nosed as a not-so-secret mus­tard vinai­grette with, I think, a hint of curry pow­der. And the same sauce as a salad dress­ing. Huge, unman­age­able por­tions, admit­tedly gor­geous frites, and we had fun.

It is really hard for me to believe that since then we have had Hal­loween in New York, a mam­moth last-gasp birth­day party for 60, Thanks­giv­ing at Red Gate Farm, John’s last work din­ner for 50-some, sold our apart­ment, had movers to dis­man­tle our lives, Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut, the move here, and have nearly com­pletely set­tled into entirely new lives. New house, new clean­ing lady, new babysit­ter, scores of friends, new doc­tor, school, office, book­shelves! What a whirl­wind it’s been. No won­der I needed a nap.

Well, boxes beckon, so I’m off. After school I’ve been dis­patched by John to an unbe­liev­able estab­lish­ment called The But­ton Queen, to replace the sev­eral hun­dred but­tons he’s miss­ing from var­i­ous suits. I’ll take my cam­era. Tomor­row night we have a date night, at the Savoy Grill where my Lifestyle Con­sul­tant has man­aged to book us a table. Oh, and her name turned out to be… Sarah Horn­buckle. I am not mak­ing that up.

I feel like I need a vaca­tion from my week­end! Yes­ter­day we walked over four miles after drop­ping Avery off just past Hol­land Park, at her new friend Sophia’s gor­geous house (more on that later), and then when I went to fetch her I decided to get on the phone to my mama and walk all the way there. Today if I were not sur­rounded by clean­ing lady and elec­tri­cian check­ing all our bits and pieces, I would be flat out on the sofa with a hot water bot­tle and a kitty. It could still hap­pen, when every­one aban­dons me.

And Avery’s been invited to play at Jade’s house on Fri­day! How nice. Her glam­ourous mum approached me at dropoff this morn­ing, never my favorite time of day to chat but oh well, and said, “How would Fri­day be? Right, good. Sorted. Lovely. Bye!” and I felt like I’d been hit by a steam­roller. Unlike at PS 234, no one here has yet learned that I should never be asked to make plans at 8:15 in the morn­ing because there’s such a sig­nif­i­cant chance that I will not remem­ber a thing I said I would do. But here, now I’ve a record of our plans. Don’t let me forget.

class=“mobile-post”>Made a salad last night that I want you all to try (except my mother who thinks avo­ca­dos taste like mod­el­ing clay). Very sim­ple and pretty, in fact pretty enough to post a pic­ture of it fin­ished on my kitchen counter last evening, before John demol­ished most of it even before din­ner began. I just man­aged to sal­vage a few mouth­fuls for myself. You run your knife all around an avo­cado, length­wise, and then twist it so as to sep­a­rate the two halves (one will con­tain the pit). Then run your knife down the inside of the non-pit half of the avo­cado, again
length­wise, in thin slices, and turn the avo­cado half inside out, like you would a mango if you’ve ever watched Her­cule Poirot pre­pare a mango. If you haven’t, just trust me, that’s how you do it. Pull off the slices, even if some of them break, and fan them out on a plate. Then slice a ball of moz­zarella nice and thick and inter­sperse with the avo­cado. Then halve tiny cherry toma­toes, and scat­ter them across the salad. Sprin­kle with bal­samic vine­gar and dot with spoons­ful of pesto, sprin­kle with salt, and you’re done. Hide from hus­band if you want any for yourself.

There was some sort of parade (or protest? they all look alike) that shut down Park Lane yes­ter­day morn­ing, thus effec­tively trap­ping us in May­fair, but alas we had to get to Kens­ing­ton to take Avery to Sophia’s, so we hopped in a taxi and for the price of a nice lunch out got her to her playdate.

Sophia’s mum Susan greeted us on the steps of their big, ele­gant house (inside a wrought-iron gate and across a court­yard, so civ­i­lized). The inner foyer is tiled in a sort of Ital­ianate, well-worn and col­or­ful pat­tern, and the walls lined with Susan’s col­lec­tion of mid-century mod­ern art, the man­tel­piece of the hall­way fire­place lined with invi­ta­tions to art exhi­bi­tions and wed­dings. One card said, just like you read in a book, some­thing like “Mrs Annabelle Wes­t­a­cott, At Home.” I’ve always wanted a card like that, just to announce that I’m At Home. High ceil­ings, lay­ered rugs, flower arrange­ments, the walls hung salon-style with art from floor to ceil­ing. An instal­la­tion of twelve Man Ray water­colours, “Evo­lu­tion of a Cac­tus,” which of course I have TAUGHT to peo­ple but never seen in per­son. Susan is a docent at the Royal Acad­emy of Art and clearly pas­sion­ate about her sub­ject in a way that I admire but don’t exactly share any­more, hav­ing made the colos­sal sym­bolic ges­ture of leav­ing all my art his­tory books in stor­age in New Jersey.

Avery imme­di­ately fol­lowed Sophia up the mam­moth stair­case, fol­lowed by their black labrador, Diva, so Susan gave us a tour of the five-storey house com­plete with two kitchens, a gar­den, a ter­race and a roof deck, book­shelves through­out (mak­ing me ter­ri­bly envi­ous and impa­tient for my own). At some point her hus­band Claus joined us, a some­what older Ger­man man with the inde­fin­able aura of the sophis­ti­cated Euro­pean financier: sort of pumpkin-colored cor­duroy trousers, a red sweater, blue shirt, and thin­ning hair float­ing across the top of his head, horn-rimmed spec­ta­cles and highly-polished loafers. He approached us and held out his hand, which John met with his own, HOW­EVER Claus reached right past him to ME in a ges­ture of old-world ele­gance that I found quite charm­ing! Then he allowed John to shake his hand, say­ing some­thing along the lines of, “I’m so sorry to have been delayed, mat­ters of con­sul­ta­tions about con­tem­po­rary Ger­man art, you know.” Not some­thing that nor­mally calls me to the phone on a given Sun­day after­noon, but there you have it. He and John imme­di­ately got down to the ever-popular game of “invest­ment bankers I have known,” set­tling down to one Arthur Winther, about whom I heard a lot in maybe 1988 but haven’t thought of since; he was enough to bond the two men in sto­ries of “swaps” and dis­cus­sions of var­i­ous cur­ren­cies and the old days of rogue bank­ing. John said, “I remem­ber when Gold­man Sachs was suf­fer­ing some bad num­bers and Arthur just couldn’t stand it, called a meet­ing and stood there, slam­ming his fists down on the table and shout­ing, “We must focus on… EVERY­THING!” This so took me back to the old heady days when Gold­man Sachs ruled the world, com­plete with its own emer­gency blood sup­ply in Moscow (I remem­ber my lit­tle access card in my wal­let, lo these many years ago).

Susan and I dis­cussed art his­tory, and the incred­i­bly tiny world that makes her the god­mother of the chil­dren of the cou­ple who devel­oped our loft build­ing on Franklin Street. Got that? The girls made a whirl­wind appear­ance to ask if 1) they could jump on Sophia’s bed, and 2) they could try on Susan’s shoes. Per­mis­sion was granted for both requests. We looked out at the beau­ti­ful, man­i­cured gar­den, graced with a tram­po­line, and I asked if they had nice neigh­bors, since they are, as they say in Lon­don real-estate-speak, “over­looked.” “Oh, they’re lovely,” Susan said, “even if the frogs from their pond do tend to make their way rather too fre­quently over our hedge. Yes­ter­day I had to fling two of them back over, and they were attached to each other at the time, in that way that crea­tures do when spring­time arrives, you know. But I had to
get to them before Diva did, you see.”

Susan her­self is absolutely beau­ti­ful in the way of a Ralph Lau­ren model, per­fect bone struc­ture, a loosely gath­ered pony­tail with ele­gant strands escap­ing, a sim­ple shawl-collared cash­mere cardi­gan, and dis­creet Rein­stein Ross jew­elry (another nice bond­ing point for us; shared jew­elry design­ers will do that for you). She ush­ered us out the door and we headed over to South Ken for lunch. Of course on the way we ran into one of John’s col­leagues, a gor­geous and ath­letic woman called Mary whom I was glad I hadn’t known existed until then: how does he work sur­rounded by these peo­ple? I refrained from ask­ing if she was going to be on his mam­moth Asian odyssey in a cou­ple of weeks. I don’t want to know.

We got a table at the Biben­dum Oys­ter Bar in our old haunt, the
Miche­lin Build­ing in the Ful­ham Road.

I don’t know why I love that place, I never really enjoy the food, but there you go. It’s the ambi­ence. We had cur­ried parsnip soup, good but too thick I thought, and then I suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion of a clas­sic Eng­lish dish I have always read about but never eaten: pot­ted shrimps. The idea is one of a very sort of Eng­lish con­fit, a way of pre­serv­ing food in the days before ade­quate refrig­er­a­tion. The shrimps (tiny tiny things, must ask at which point shrimps come to be called prawns; it seems to be a size thing, but I’ll have to find out) are placed in a lit­tle pot, hence the name, and then cov­ered with melted but­ter, which then, I hate to use the word, con­geals and forms a sort of seal. It never occurred to me, when read­ing about Lord Peter Wim­sey eat­ing pot­ted shrimps, that they actu­ally are served con­gealed. Now I know, and it’s one of those instances where the bad things peo­ple say about Eng­lish food are entirely deserved. What a weird thing to eat. Tra­di­tional gar­nishes of mar­i­nated cucum­bers, cor­ni­chons and toast points. Whew, it was hard going. John looked at me smugly over his per­fect bowl of Cae­sar salad and inquired how my shrimps were, declined to share and clearly had his own opin­ions of peo­ple who order things because they appear on the menus in mur­der mys­ter­ies writ­ten 70 years ago. Fair enough. But we shared a nice South African sauvi­gnon blanc, had a wan­der through the rug sec­tion of Conran’s, real­ized for the fif­teenth time that we have never mea­sured the liv­ing room and there­fore can­not buy a rug, and walked home. John took a nap and I had my mam­moth walk back to get Fifi.

Well, the elec­tri­cian has finally left. Can I jus­tify a quick lit­tle lie-down on the sofa? So tempting.

I can’t believe I for­got to tell you about her! My Lifestyle Con­sul­tant, yes you read cor­rectly. Would you believe I don’t even
know her name? She was merely intro­duced to me with the above title, by some chick from Grosvenor Estates, our face­less land­lord, yes­ter­day in the midst of all the chaos. Door­bell rings, I trip over var­i­ous plumb­ing items and nar­rowly miss knock­ing down the art installer walk­ing with screws in his mouth, and there, on my doorstep, are two very dressed-up Eng­lish ladies, one with a lit­tle cardy but­toned up over her lit­tle Peter Pan blouse and the other all muf­fled in one of those coats with the furry trim all around the col­lar and straight down to the hem. “Is this a bad time?” the Grosvenor lady asked, and I almost burst out laugh­ing. See­ing as how I prob­a­bly smelled bad from no hot water for a week, and had been out in the rain about twelve times and looked like a wet dog, not to men­tion the absolute mess the entire flat was in… “No! Of course not, come right in.”

“Well, Mrs Cur­ran, we are here merely to offer our Invi­ta­tion To An Eas­ier Life,” Furry Lady said, and her words vir­tu­ally hung in the air like a con­ver­sa­tion bal­loon; to punc­tu­ate her speech she held out a lit­tle cream-colored book­let bound with a green rib­bon bow and bear­ing those very words, along with “Be Inspired To Make the Most of Our Ser­vice.” “I sup­pose to get our con­ver­sa­tion started, I should ask you what pops into your head when you read this book­let, what lit­tle item, how­ever insignif­i­cant, presents itself as some­thing that would truly enhance your life, Mrs Cur­ran?” “Well, you could start with heat. Or hot water, either one,” I said, and they wilted vis­i­bly. So the Grosvenor Gady went off to solve all my plumb­ing prob­lems from her desk, while Concierge Lady and I sat on the sofa in the liv­ing room sur­rounded by all Mark’s para­pher­na­lia, and I tried to think of ways to Enhance My Life through a concierge ser­vice. Did you know that expert assis­tance with all aspects of life is only a phone call away? They are will­ing to “tai­lor a bespoke ser­vice” around me and my house­hold. All this with­out hot water! Amaz­ing. They can arrange to have beau­ti­ful flow­ers deliv­ered to your home weekly, find a reg­u­lar (not an irreg­u­lar, by any means) dog walker, and “source a coach for your golf swing, your ten­nis strokes, or your yoga poses.” But my per­sonal favorite has to be their earnest offer to “ensure the fridge is stocked when you return to Lon­don after a week­end away.” Now that’s ser­vice. How about the liquor cup­board? That’s what I really needed yes­ter­day, a nice stiff shot of aqua­vit and a jump in the snow.

Night nan­nies! Per­sonal shop­pers! They’ll book a mas­sage for your vis­it­ing mother-in-law! And the tes­ti­mo­ni­als in the lit­tle book­let. “Who would have thought that I would order my car like a pizza: a sin­gle phone call, a look at the options you sent, and a few days later the car is deliv­ered, fully insured and ready to go. How much eas­ier can life get?”

I racked my brains try­ing to think up stuff to get them to do. Aside from inform­ing them that “source” is not, has never been, and will never be, a VERB.

I do think I might take her up on the offer to get some­body to go
shop­ping with me for some­thing to wear to John’s boss’s upcom­ing din­ner party for twelve of his clos­est under­lings. Actu­ally I have no idea who else is going. All I know is his assis­tant emailed me a really warm and fuzzy query about food aller­gies, and I said, “Tongue.” But I do have to find some­thing to wear, and all the stores
scare me. Concierge Lady assures me that I don’t look any­where near 51 and it shouldn’t be hard to find some­thing suit­able, so maybe me and my shadow will mosey on over to Fenwick’s on Bond Street next week and pick up a lit­tle num­ber. And when I get home I expect a full fridge.

Oh, it’s ON! I can take a shower for the first time since Mon­day!! Cold soapy wash­cloths have not been very sat­is­fy­ing I must say, or is
that TMI? Would you believe that we suf­fer all week, then John walks in the door from New York and three hours later every­thing is fixed? I seem to remem­ber he was away the last time the boiler went? And the cook­top? Grrr. But how won­der­ful to take a shower this evening!

Yes­ter­day was entirely given over to the hang­ing of art. I had com­pletely for­got­ten what we brought with us, and had kind of got used to liv­ing with blank, imper­sonal walls. Even when I went around to the stacks of framed things piled against the liv­ing room walls and placed them where they should go, I did not get the lit­tle fris­son of “ah, I remem­ber you” that I got once every­thing was hung. The art installer was one Mark Williams, a con­cep­tual post-Pop artist (his words, not mine!) who is a friend of our would-be/will-be shelf elf, Tessa. Tessa, after fits of bill infla­tion and lost email replies, has come through, we think, and the shelv­ing for the liv­ing room Wall of Books is due to be installed on Thurs­day next. I am very, very excited for that, hav­ing com­pletely exhausted my capac­ity to reread even Mary Wesley’s deli­cious “Not That Sort of Girl” one more time.

Some­thing artsy about Tessa sug­gested to me that she might know an installer, and sure enough, Mark, whose kind of piti­ful but sweet invoice was headed “Dec­o­rat­ing Con­cepts,” arrived early this week to take stock of what he needed in the way of mate­ri­als, and then came
yes­ter­day and spent the entire day, 10–8, hang­ing art. I ran around after him hold­ing up the end of the mea­sur­ing tape, mak­ing lit­tle pen­cil marks at the tops of things, and stand­ing around a lot look­ing quizzi­cal and mak­ing judg­ments about the height of some­thing, “sight lines” as we used to say in the gallery busi­ness, and argu­ing with Mark about fem­i­nis­min the art world. Mean­while, a grand suc­ces­sion of lame elec­tri­cians, plumbers, porters and what­ever else paraded up and down the steps to the boiler room, scar­ing Keechie to death, track­ing in mud since of course it was p***ing rain all day on top of every­thing else. Every­thing else being my FACE which mys­te­ri­ously turned bright red and incred­i­bly itchy overnight! I can­not fathom what I’ve done to it, and I can’t say it’s bet­ter or worse today, but really odd. I think it’s fate get­ting back at me for pre­tend­ing that John’s face cream was mine so as to get the pre­scrip­tion renewed. I was trip­ping all over myself lying to the doc­tor when I called her to find out what she thought was wrong with me, had to call John in New York to find out what symp­toms “I” had that made “my” med­i­cine nec­es­sary. Really, it was one of those days.

By five o’clock when the last plumber announced that he could do no more for the patient and it would prob­a­bly be the mid­dle of next week when the water came back on, I was about ready to spit. In the mid­dle of all this I went to school pickup and fetched Avery and her new friend Sophia, tak­ing time to chat with Ava’s mother Jill about Avery’s horse­back rid­ing, since Jill wants to get her daugh­ter back in the sad­dle. After a few com­ments from me about Trent Park, Jill laughed and said, “I have to tell you you’re not sell­ing me on this con­cept.” I have got to get a bet­ter atti­tude about the whole endeavor, clearly. Sally and I chat­ted about our trav­el­ing hus­bands, and Amy com­mis­er­ated over my boiler, and I real­ized HEY! I have friends!
Pickup is, while not the social whirl­wind that PS 234 was, get­ting to be friendly and chatty. A big improve­ment, although it would be John’s worst night­mare. He always claims to be so shy and retir­ing, but no one really believes him.

I took the kids to Vil­landry, and sat with them lis­ten­ing to their inane con­ver­sa­tion, half in Eng­lish accents and half not. They had enor­mous help­ings of ice cream, served in big fluted crispy cookie bowls with a luscious-looking rasp­berry coulis driz­zled about, and topped with a spun-sugar sort of but­ter­fly wing, which of course they each had to drape over their shoul­ders, putting paid to their already-skanky Thurs­day uni­form cardi­gans. I con­fided in them about my face, and they each solemnly felt my cheeks and agreed that I was quite hot, but insisted that a very, very pink face was quite fashionable.

The sky, which had light­ened up for me to walk to school, sim­ply let loose dur­ing the cru­cial five min­utes when we waited for a cab to roll by, so we were com­pletely soaked by the time we got home. Mark was in full form, with lots to say about Janis Joplin, was she a genius for writ­ing that one great song or a loser for writ­ing 100 more songs that sounded just like it, and did I have Neil Diamond’s Great­est Hits CD, and he was going out for a fag and would come straight­away back. The boy rolls his own cig­a­rettes, yum.

Once at home Avery and Sophia ate their weight in pop­corn and at least four apples and then repaired to the lower level where I did not, unfor­tu­nately, fol­low them, until it was too late and the whole enor­mous box of dres­sup shoes and clothes that I hoped Avery would for­get about if I hid it under the guest bed, had emerged in all its glory. They did look really funny draped in scarves and Vic­to­rian hats, trip­ping along in lit­tle plas­tic stiletto heels. Susan came for Sophia at 6 and was pressed into ser­vice to judge the height of the
last instal­la­tion, the huge red Kate Teale. She also came up with the name and address of a framer, for the big Dus­ton Spear whose plexi split in ship­ping. Mark had, incred­i­bly, been able to repair the two
Amanda Guests that came loose from the threads they hung from. The lit­tle blue Makoto Fujimura, his lovely gift to me after his last show, hangs in the foyer, and the Michael Myers pho­togravure of the
Wool­worth Build­ing is over the din­ing table. The pair of small Kath­leen Kuckas hang by the win­dow over­look­ing the gar­den, and lots of Avery pho­tographs down­stairs. She was very happy to get her Ulfert Wilke draw­ing back up over her bed. That cal­li­graphic draw­ing was a gift from her Iowa grand­par­ents just after she was born, since she would stop cry­ing every time she saw their piece by that artist! A mag­i­cal baby-calmer, it has hung over her bed in all four of her homes.

Susan dragged Sophia out the door, over her protests, “You’re not my mummy, I want to live here,” only half in jest, and we arranged for Avery to go to them for Sun­day lunch. I can’t wait to see where they live, some gor­geous place in Kens­ing­ton, I think. When Sophia walked into our flat she looked around care­fully and said, “You have a lovely flat.” Can you imag­ine the com­po­sure? I hope Avery will remem­ber all her man­ners. Mark left, in a hail of post­cards invit­ing me to his
show, the mono­prints of brassieres dipped in ink (right up my street, as the Eng­lish would say). I’m just grate­ful he didn’t ask me to review the show. Although that could still be com­ing. Avery and I went around the cor­ner for a pizza and a salad, and unfor­tu­nately she brought along her lat­est obses­sion, lit­tle tiny flocked ani­mals called Syl­va­ni­ans. In Amer­ica I remem­ber they were called Cal­ico Crit­ters, but no mat­ter, the nomen­cla­ture can­not mask the cloy­ing cute­ness of these lit­tle things, all dressed inex­plic­a­bly in aprons and over­alls. I heard in mind-numbing detail over din­ner that you can get foxes, bad­gers, bun­nies, cats, and they come in twins or triplets, sit­ting or stand­ing, and some can even move their legs! Cal­gon take me away.

My reward at the end of the day was watch­ing the director’s com­men­tary (MY new obses­sion) of the BBC drama “Per­fect Strangers,” which aired in Amer­ica as “Almost Strangers.” Great fun, and the direc­tor Stephen Poli­akoff, a truly great dra­matic tal­ent, made the obser­va­tion that the Eng­lish are divided into two groups: those who try to hide every­thing, and those who try to seek out every­thing. An inter­est­ing possibility.

TGIF! A well hus­band returned from his trip, heat and hot water, a clean house since Dor­rie is just fin­ish­ing up, and a nice quiet week­end planned! We’re giv­ing Trent Park Eques­trian Cen­tre another try on Saturday.