I know I have just blogged a marathon entry, but I wanted to tell youabout a recipe of extreme sim­plic­ity (I have been work­ing so hard all­week on my cook­book, by the way!) that shrimp lovers will rel­ish. Youbuy a half pound or so per per­son of large raw shrimps with the shellsstill on (or frozen raw is fine, in fact most raw shrimp you see instores has been pre­vi­ously frozen and that’s fine as well), and with a lit­tle scis­sors cut the shell down the back, but leave it on (adds tremen­dous fla­vor). Chop a lot of gar­lic and gin­ger and sprin­kle it on the shrimp, which you’ve laid in a sin­gle layer on a plate. Sprin­kle on some sea salt and leave to mar­i­nate at least a half hour before you cook. Mean­while mix about a half cup of soy sauce with two good table­spoons of each of these: sesame oil, chili paste and rice wine vine­gar. Add one tea­spoon sugar and mix. Slice a bunch of green onions and add to sauce. Now heat peanut oil in a wok and saute the shrimp until they JUST turn pink. Don’t overdo. Take off heat and
put a cover on the wok and leave them to release their juices for five min­utes. Mean­while, put a cup of bas­mati rice and a cup and a half of
water in a saucepan and cover. Turn on a medium heat and watch it care­fully for spit­ting; it will take about 20 min­utes to cook.

When it’s done, take it off the heat and leave cov­ered. Pour your­self a nice icy vodka and add a slice of lemon. Squeeze the rest of the
lemon juice onto the shrimps, and then take them out of the wok. Put them in the bowl you plan to serve them in and set aside. Now heat
the wok again and pour in the sauce. Stir for about four min­utes until the onions start to wilt, then add shrimp. Turn up super high
to heat through, and you’re done! Serve on the rice with TONS of nap­kins, and a body plate for the shells. So you pick up each shrimp
and peel it, and eat it very mess­ily, scoop­ing up some rice for each bite. Heavenly!

And so funny: Eng­lish celebri­ties are con­stantly com­plain­ing about paparazzi har­rass­ment and I always thought they were being very whiny
about it. And prob­a­bly exag­ger­at­ing hugely. How­ever. As I walked down super-chic Sloane Street yes­ter­day, I came upon a huge crowd of
pho­tog­ra­phers with their zoom lenses pressed against a shop win­dow, Roberto Cav­alli, Vic­to­ria Beckham’s new design obses­sion. Won­der­ing
who was war­rant­ing all the fever­ish excite­ment, I wan­dered over and asked a guy, “Who’s in there?” He turned sort of lugubri­ous eyes on
me and said, “Some ran­dom footballer’s girl­friend. Not even a wife.

I don’t know what we’re doing here.”

!!!

What a week! A lot of it was spent look­ing after, and feel­ing sorry for, Sick Hus­band. This was a first in our 23-year rela­tion­ship. I have known him to stay in bed, on a week­end, if sick, or to take off part of a day, or come home really early, with flu or some­thing. But the boy was flat on his back from Fri­day after­noon until Mon­day after­noon, and even when he was able to get up with­out a ter­ri­ble cough, he actu­ally stayed home from work all day Mon­day, Tues­day and
Wednes­day. Much bet­ter by Thurs­day, and today, Sat­ur­day, he’s doing quite well. A really bad bug.

So Avery and I amused our­selves as best we could. On Tues­day she had her first babysit­ter out­ing with the lovely Katie, who took Avery and Anna (since it would have been so messy to sep­a­rate them now that they’re joined at the hip) to Regent’s Park Zoo, where they had an amaz­ing time and got very, very cold walk­ing home. I didn’t men­tion to Avery the awful story I heard once about the zookeep­ers putting down all the dan­ger­ous ani­mals dur­ing World War II, so as to avoid mass panic if a bomb hit the cages and the ani­mals got out.

Wednes­day morn­ing was the infor­mal “every­one gath­ers at Star­bucks” meet­ing of the moth­ers, where two or three of us sit down to start with, then as appoint­ments and errands and such claim one per­son, another per­son appears and takes her chair! I met three or four new lovely ladies, and then there were a cou­ple I knew already, through Becky, since it’s largely a Form One crowd, Anna’s younger sis­ter Eleanor being in that form. They’re my lit­tle kinder­gartener gull
group, so I am able to put a gull’s face and name with those of her mother and tell good sto­ries about their exploits. It’s a good way to get involved in the
con­ver­sa­tion quickly. To my left at one point was a lady called Gigi, who came up to about my armpit, and I realised she was the mother of one of my favorites, tiny lit­tle Chan­tal, and even tinier Lower Kinder­gart­ner Tatiana, so I offered lots of admi­ra­tion for the fam­ily in gen­eral. Would you believe Gigi is from Gibral­tar? I guess I never knew that any­one came from Gibral­tar! Mar­ried to a man who’s Greek-Egyptian-Lebanese, and the whole sit­u­a­tion is just impos­si­bly exotic and ele­gant. Then there was a nice mom who was a dead ringer for my old gallery direc­tor Erin Myers, tall and gor­geous and very breezy American-ish. I felt so much
like I was in my old haunts in Tribeca, hang­ing out with my friends. Such an improve­ment over my early, lonely days. We’ve been here two months.

After school we had a lengthy snack at Vil­landry, spin­ning out the gap between school and my parent-teacher con­fer­ence at 5. Avery had a lot to say about RE, their Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion class, that day. “Did you know it’s Ash Wednes­day, Mummy? And the begin­ning of Lent. You know, Jesus was a really nice per­son. What a shame he had to die.” “Yes,” I said, “it’s always a shame when bad things have to hap­pen.” “Well,” she con­sid­ered, “not really. It’s impor­tant for bad things to hap­pen, because then peo­ple real­ize that you can recover from bad things, and get over them. If noth­ing bad ever hap­pened, peo­ple would think you’d be destroyed if some­thing bad did hap­pen. We wouldn’t know that you can get bet­ter again.” I asked if any­thing bad had ever hap­pened to her. “Leav­ing Lady­bug behind.” “And has it come true, you can get bet­ter?” “Not yet, but that’s part of the les­son. It takes time.”

Some­times I really feel she has been around before.

So we went to school and gos­siped with Mrs D, wait­ing for my appoint­ment. She is awfully happy that Avery’s happy, and I was struck again, as I am always when I talk with her, that here is a woman who has found her mis­sion, her bliss. What a super­power. She and Miss C were very pleased to see Avery in the library, ankles neatly folded, work­ing hard on her cro­chet­ing. Mrs D said, “That is Aran wool, is it not, Avery? Lovely jumpers can be made with that, you know.” I went up to meet Mrs Bick­ley, and, dear read­ers, I know you will for­give me if I kvell a lit­tle. Avery is just doing amaz­ingly well. Aca­d­e­m­i­cally, socially, just blos­som­ing. She’s appar­ently a phe­nom at spelling, is doing just
fine (despite her drama­tisch com­plaints) in French, is thriv­ing at Latin, and has eas­ily made tons of friends. “She’s a com­plete joy and a real asset to our class­room, Mrs Cur­ran,” Mrs Bick­ley raved. Well done, Avery. I reported these find­ings to her and we walked home in a mood of mutual appre­ci­a­tion. Plus it snowed! Heav­enly cozy to walk through the flakes amid the street­lights’ glow.

But Thurs­day was my real adven­ture. In my pur­suit of all things
related to Matthew Mac­fadyen, my crush actor, I have deter­mined to see him in every sin­gle incar­na­tion avail­able. Unfor­tu­nately, due to my hav­ing an actual real life in New York at the time, I missed him onstage in “Henry IV,” Parts One and Two, late last sum­mer at the National The­atre, where we saw David Suchet last month. How­ever, my obses­sion stops for noth­ing, so I found out through var­i­ous inter­net sources that the National The­atre holds, in its film archives, a video­tape of one per­for­mance of every play they put on. Amaz­ing! So it was but the work of a moment to call up the archives, make an
appoint­ment, and head over to Ham­mer­smith for a pri­vate view­ing! I took a taxi since my pow­ers of get­ting lost defy descrip­tion, and was glad I did because the archives were in the back of beyond, past Hol­land Park, quite far away. I would never have found it on my own; I’d still be wan­der­ing around W14, pick­ing up odd meals and wish­ing my mobile phone bat­tery hadn’t died. As it was, I arrived in plenty of
time, went through the inner sanc­tum gates, and found myself with a secu­rity pass with a mag­netic strip, and a lit­tle gnome of an escort to lead me through the labyrinthine pas­sages deep into the build­ing, end­ing up at a very ordi­nary look­ing research room. I was duly processed and given the tape, and OH MY.

Granted, it was on a lit­tle tele­vi­sion screen, so it did not do him jus­tice, but that boy can act. The divine Sir Michael Gam­bon played Fal­staff, and an actor who I saw in “The Way We Live Now,” the BBC adap­ta­tion of the Anthony Trol­lope novel, played Henry IV. Our Matthew was really mes­meris­ing and it was well worth the four and a half hours I spent there! I plan to go back after research­ing other plays I have missed, includ­ing his maiden the­atre voy­age, “The Duchess of Malfi.” Can you imag­ine, for FREE! Before you all come to Lon­don you would do well to research some­thing you’d like to see. I’ve never met any­one who knows this place exists. What a find.

I emerged in a daze of Oedi­pal intrigue and polit­i­cal innunendo inspired by the play, into the foxy sun­shine of a Lon­don after­noon , and decided that since a ruinously expen­sive taxi had got me there, even I could retrace its path and get myself back. And sure enough, I walked all across Hol­land Park, all through Hyde Park, past our flat in Mar­ble Arch, and into the Maryle­bone High Street, where in total exhaus­tion I gro­cery shopped and then picked up Avery and Anna from school. Whew! I Mapquested my jour­ney and found I had walked nearly five and a half miles!

Yes­ter­day I had my first doctor’s appoint­ment in Lon­don (how did I get by for three years here before with­out a doc­tor, or am I just hav­ing a middle-age blank mem­ory moment?). Just to get some pre­scrip­tions filled (among them a refill of a face cream for John, I felt com­pletely guilty and duplic­i­tous answer­ing ques­tions about my “sen­si­tive skin,” ha). What is it about men and doc­tors, that they won’t go? A really lovely Amer­i­can woman, Dr Kate Haw­ley, mar­ried for 25 years to an Eng­lish­man. We com­mis­er­ated on the uni­ver­sal male­ness of men. She said, “I mean, really, he’s a genius, a com­puter genius, but if I ask him to fetch the milk from the fridge, he stands there and sim­ply PEERS and PEERS as if milk were quite a for­eign con­cept! And the symp­toms he gets up when he’s ill. Honestly!”

She sent me off to a lit­tle tiny, tiny chemist’s shop in Sloane Street where her office is (utterly galling to walk down this street, lined with Chris­t­ian Dior, Prada, Roberto Cavelli, Armani, Ver­sace and catch a glimpse of one’s blue-jeaned, dull, dull form). This chemist, she said, was called Nor­man and he would take care of me. “The shop is so small that the door has been set in diag­o­nally from the pave­ment!” she described, and sure enough, it was like enter­ing a place where every­thing had been scaled down to fit a box tur­tle, as my favorite nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win would say.

Nor­man was con­cealed by boxes and boxes of the most exotic medica­ment you can imag­ine, and my request was there­fore fielded by a lovely, com­fort­ably plump lady called Nicola. She passed the pre­scrip­tion sheet to Nor­man, and to while away the time I perused the shelves, absolutely sure there was some­thing besides bogus face cream that I needed. Before long, I could not con­tain my laugh­ter. “Stan­dard­ised Devil’s Claw Extract,” guar­an­teeed to dis­in­fect, or soothe, or heal, some­thing, I can’t remem­ber what. Nor­man and Nicola began to notice my smoth­ered laugh­ter, and feel­ing bad for mak­ing fun of them, I said lamely, “It’s just that there’s some­thing funny about its being ‘Stan­dard­ised.’ You cer­tainly wouldn’t want ‘Unstan­dard­ised Devil’s Claw Extract, would you?” And Nicola proved a ready ally. “Oh, then you’ve got to take a look at this,” she said imme­di­ately. “Bach Res­cue Rem­edy Spray to Com­fort and Reas­sure. And then there’s this Injection-Free Facial Relaxer, and oh, you need a jar of “Per­fect Pout.” It’s a hot red pep­per and cin­na­mon prepa­ra­tion that will guar­an­tee a Brigitte Bar­dot smile in just two applications!”

I dug deeper and found a bot­tle of Spray-On Nylons, which must have been a car­ry­over from rationing dur­ing the war, and Nicola emerged with a French con­coc­tion called “Email Dia­mant Den­ti­frice Rouge,” which trans­lates to some­thing like “Rare Dia­mond Red Tooth­paste.” It assured us that a rig­or­ous regime of its use would result in a “guar­an­teed embro­ca­tion.” Is that good or bad?

“Oh, no, here it is, here’s the one we’ve all been look­ing for,“
Nicola said, “wait for it: it’s a tin of ‘Cox’s Rose Petal Salve, guar­an­teed to soften lips, tame bushy lashes and brows, cure nappy rash, and impart that lit­tle shine you’ve been look­ing for.’” “Golly,” I said, “I don’t think I want a prod­uct that’s intended for use both on your lips and your baby’s rashy bottom.”

Nor­man emerged from his office with a bot­tle. “Here’s my per­sonal favorite. ‘Bug Off: Jun­gle For­mula Fam­ily Lotion.’ Lis­ten to the warn­ing labels: ‘keep out of reach of chil­dren, harm­ful if swal­lowed, con­sult physi­cian if rash devel­ops, not for pro­longed use.’ Not quite the happy fam­ily prod­uct we were look­ing for, now is it? But my favorite label is the sleep­ing med­ica­tion that warns, ‘may cause drowsiness.’”

Finally after decid­ing not to buy a Gen­uine South Sea Sponge for 155 pounds, I told them they had made my entire week, and went home.

Anna spent the night last night and now I’ve got to go col­lect Avery from HER house where they repaired after break­fast. John and I spent the after­noon walk­ing to Por­to­bello Mar­ket, for­get­ting that since we lived here last, sev­eral hun­dred movies have been filmed there, in Not­ting Hill Gate, and every tourist in Lon­don was there. How­ever it was still fun to poke our heads in
the shops, and I went to my favorite old butcher, “Kings­land: The Guardian Butcher”, and bought mince (ground beef to you Yanks) and fresh Toulouse sausage to make
shepherd’s pie for din­ner. I got up my courage to ask the burn­ing ques­tion: what is ham, and what is gam­mon? Well, it turns out that gam­mon is the name for the cut of meat that is cured, and if you cook it, it’s ham. So if it’s a raw ingre­di­ent you’re buy­ing to cook with, it’s gam­mon, but if it’s been cooked and you’re using it in a
sand­wich, it’s ham. Did I tell you that a request for ham salad will get you ham and… a salad? Ask for ham may­on­naise if you want to get what you want.

A trip down the long rows of fruit and veg stalls, com­ing away with the most gor­geous French leeks I have ever seen (des­tined for vichys­soise), and a flat of red cur­rants just because they are so pretty. We had a nice eggy brunch in a gor­geous place called The Gro­cer on Elgin, in Elgin Cres­cent. We debated what exactly is meant by the odd Eng­lish term “speck,” in a dish. It’s Ger­man for sim­ply “meat,” and there is a clas­sic Ital­ian dish called, in Lon­don, “Spaghetti with speck and rocket,” mean­ing beef bits and arugula. But with the eggs today I’m cer­tain it was a kind of pork thing, a supe­rior, very thin bacon. I’ll check it out more and report.