This post has noth­ing to do with Matthew Mac­fadyen. But I’m going to upload (or is it down­load? I can never remem­ber which is which) one pic­ture of him per day until some­one reports back to me from the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val. So there.

What a day yes­ter­day at Avery’s school. I fran­ti­cally wrapped up my straw­berry cake and headed out to find a taxi. While I’m at it I’ll give you the recipe for this extra-fast, fool­proof dessert (believe me, I am a fool when it comes to bak­ing and even I can­not screw up this cake). Just for fun, I’m going to do this in cook­book style to see if I can. You all tell me how it turns out.

Avery’s Straw­berry Lemon Sour Cream Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. bak­ing soda
1/2 tsp. bak­ing pow­der
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 sticks but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
1 cup sugar
1 cup sour(ed) cream
2 tsps. vanilla extract
2 tsps. lemon extract
the grated peel of one lemon
2 large eggs
6 straw­ber­ries, coarsely chopped
3 tbsps. extra sugar

Stir together the flour, bak­ing soda, bak­ing pow­der and salt in a medium bowl. In another bowl, cream together the but­ter and sugar. Of course, at this point all recipes will tell you about what speed set­ting to use on your elec­tric beater. Well, try plug­ging an Amer­i­can beater into an Eng­lish socket, and once the smoke has cleared and you’ve replaced all the fuses in your flat, you can go back to stir­ring by hand like in the old days. It just doesn’t mat­ter. Just stir until the but­ter and sugar are glossy. Then add the sour cream, the extracts and the eggs and the lemon peel, which will smell glo­ri­ous. Stir really well until the bat­ter starts to come away from the bowl as you move the spoon. Dump in the flour mix­ture and stir very, very well. You’ll notice that a bit of bub­bli­ness appears from the bak­ing soda, when you’ve stirred enough. Gen­tly fold in the straw­ber­ries, tak­ing care not to mash them up. Tip into a pan that you’ve sprayed with Pam. I wish I had a Bundt pan but I do not. It would be very pretty like that. How­ever, it is much more Eng­lish to have a sim­ple square or round cake that will fit in one of the tins with lids, so de rigeur in the Eng­lish kitchen, to have on hand in the larder when some­one comes to tea.

Sprin­kle the extra sugar over the bat­ter and bake at about 350 for about 45 min­utes, or until the cen­ter does not jig­gle and a knife inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean. Yes­ter­day I burned mine, which was prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of not pay­ing atten­tion (hey, some­one has to blog!) and not really hav­ing a pre­cise han­dle on the rela­tion­ship between cel­sius and fahren­heit. Oh well, I’ll get it right before I pub­lish my cook­book! I guar­an­tee you it will not take longer than 10 min­utes to put this cake together, and other than the straw­ber­ries, you’ll have every­thing on your shelves already.

*****************************************

So I zipped up to school, rel­ish­ing NOT walk­ing for once, and made my way down to the base­ment of the school to the drama room (aka the din­ing room, and who knows what else in that space-constrained school) where the bab­ble of fem­i­nine voices told me a cake sale was hap­pen­ing. Most of the desserts on offer were store-bought, some extremely fancy from Paul, the ultra-authentic French patis­serie in the High Street, and some more obvi­ously your basic Wait­rose cook­ies and cakes. So when I arrived with my unglam­orous, square, but unde­ni­ably home­made and still-warm cake, I was the star of the show! Never mind that the edges were a bit too brown! They priced that baby at 15 pounds and it was snapped up imme­di­ately by a Form One mother, but she was made to leave it on the sale table until the end of the after­noon, because the smell of real, fresh cake was boost­ing sales. Take that, all of you at home who know I am a hope­less baker. All it took was a cap­tive audience.

So I sloped off down the pas­sage to the simul­ta­ne­ous second-hand uni­form sale, and imme­di­ately regret­ted every pound I had ever spent at John Lewis buy­ing these things new. Amaz­ing prices. I can’t imag­ine Avery’s clothes sur­viv­ing in such a con­di­tion as to be accept­able at some future sale, but per­haps these chil­dren have more than one set.

The con­ver­sa­tions I heard as I browsed around the tables were so… Eng­lish. “Have you plans for the Bank Hol­i­day, Ser­ena? We’ll be in the coun­try, if Angus can get away.” “Well, Iso­bel, now that Poppy is set­tled and ready to go to St. Mary’s in the autumn, how will your empty house feel?” Their voices all oper­ate at a half-octave higher pitch than Amer­i­can moth­ers, and their clothes all look dif­fer­ent: pat­terned scarves draped across their shoul­ders, lit­tle heels, dis­creet expen­sive belts and hand­bags. “I do think it’s hor­rid how these cardies shrink so in the laun­dry. This size 30 bears no resem­blance atall [all one word] to what it was when it was new.” And yet, as for­eign as parts of the after­noon felt, there was much the same gen­eral feel­ing as at Avery’s old preschool: the atten­tion of devoted moth­ers, the super­vi­sion of devoted staff, the shabby, slightly old-fashioned sur­round­ings. And tea tow­els draped all over the kitchen to dry: the King’s Col­lege annual fundrais­ing tea towel, with a self-portrait of each school­girl and her name below, some­how repro­duced onto a towel! By the time we arrived in Jan­u­ary they were all sold out, but I have high hopes for next Christmas.

The uni­form sale room opened out into the sweet lit­tle play­ground, home of the famous Wendy house (there were spi­ders, it’s true) and looked up into the win­dows of the flat whose occu­pants, it turns out, are the real bar­ri­cade between the girls and a proper out­door recess. Why on earth would peo­ple move into a flat whose ter­race looks out onto the yard of a girls’ school, and then com­plain about the noise? Very irritating.

Becky arrived and after we bought every­thing in sight and took a look at the depleted cake sale table, we went out­side to wait for the girls to come out. Sud­denly, up the pave­ment came a lady, although I use the word with some cau­tion, dressed in an out­landish span­gled, off the shoul­der, plung­ing neck­line dress, in ultra high heels with her hair teased a mile off the top of her head. She ran toward the school as fast as her hideous shoes would allow, and then stopped dead in front of the entrance, turn­ing toward the street. “Miles, Miles, park there, park there,” she screeched to a dri­ver stand­ing on the pave­ment. Behind him were two enor­mous white lim­ou­sines, dec­o­rated with pink rib­bon bows on their grilles, double-parked by the kerb (note Eng­lish spelling, please). Becky and I tried not to look at her. “If I ever, ever, even APPROACH look­ing any­thing like that, please stop me,” she said. We were both smoth­er­ing laugh­ing, and won­der­ing who on earth this could be. “Please let her clothes be in the line of duty,” Becky hissed. We decided she was a birth­day party enter­tainer. And sure enough, the lit­tle Form Three girls came fil­ing out of the build­ing, dressed, as they do for after school par­ties, in fes­tive non-uniform clothes, look­ing oddly ran­dom, clutch­ing their back­packs. They were packed up into the lim­ou­sines chat­ter­ing madly. I said to Becky, “No one at home would believe this if I told them.” Very un-PS 234!

Well, obvi­ously first things first: it’s time to put away those pesky heavy skirts and cardies and col­lared shirts and tights and go for the sum­mer uni­form. Isn’t this just about the sweet­est face you’ve ever seen? The gar­den is bloom­ing and lovely. I’ll try to get a pic­ture of Avery with her straw boater hat as well, but she’s get­ting sick of being doc­u­mented every minute of her life. Can’t blame her.

When I came home from my first act­ing class yes­ter­day, Avery was in the gar­den with her new babysit­ter, Erin, Katie’s room­mate. They were prac­tic­ing their cart­wheels and it was a truly beau­ti­ful spring day, a real rar­ity. Today of course the sun has seen the error of its ways, decided we’ve had enough of its pres­ence, and is in hid­ing once more.

My class was a huge suc­cess. It’s at an open uni­ver­sity called The City Lit­er­ary Col­lege, but it’s called City Lit by every­one. No entrance require­ments, and very inex­pen­sive if you are a res­i­dent of Lon­don. I am con­sid­ered, how­ever, tran­sient, hav­ing just arrived, so I am pay­ing for­eign­ers’ fees, but even so it’s a bar­gain. It felt so odd wait­ing out­side a class­room where I wasn’t going to be in charge. I haven’t been in a class­room where I wasn’t teach­ing in 19 years, and I must say it was a plea­sure to be on the receiv­ing end rather than the giv­ing end, of knowl­edge. All of us stood around out­side the closed door, look­ing furtively at one another and feel­ing self con­scious. After all, it’s not like we were lin­ing up for trigonom­e­try, this was going to be act­ing class and weren’t we all sup­posed to be sort of per­form­ers, or at least would-be per­form­ers? After a few min­utes, a gor­geous young girl came up to our hud­dled group and sim­ply reached out to the class­room door han­dle and pushed it open. “Clever think­ing,” I said, and every­one laughed, break­ing the ice.

Hon­estly, out­side the pages of “Mur­der on the Ori­ent Express” I have never heard of a more diverse group of peo­ple. Thir­teen stu­dents in all, and let’s see, I was the old­est, but not by as much as would have been embar­rass­ing. Then there was Colin the Eng­lish pub owner, Mar­cus the Brazil­ian hair­styl­ist, K (yes, she explained it all very fully, just the ini­tial K), an aspir­ing rap singer, Vicky the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Indian cook­ery book writer, and pos­si­bly our most col­or­ful cohort, Julian the self-confessed for­mer crack­head and prison inmate, father of four chil­dren, await­ing his court date for some undis­closed crime and for some rea­son cool­ing his heels in the mean­time in our “Intro­duc­tion to Act­ing” class. Do you sup­pose his parole offi­cer thought it would be good ther­apy? Any­way, then there was Tim, a six-foot-eight lanky fel­low with dread­locks, and Marte, a French girl who looked like she had raided Jackie Kennedy’s closet. All in all, every nation­al­ity you can imag­ine was rep­re­sented. I am the only Amer­i­can, and there were just I think three Eng­lish peo­ple. Our teacher came in, breezy and ener­getic, intro­duced her­self with the eco­nom­i­cal com­ment, “I’m Pip,” and we were off. Our first activ­ity was to play a game of tag where when you got caught, you stopped, raised your arm in the air and shouted, “I’m it! I’m Kris­ten!” And every­one else pointed at you and shouted, “You’re it! You’re Kris­ten!” So humil­i­at­ing but funny, and a good way to remem­ber names. Then later in the game you could save your­self from get­ting tagged by hug­ging the per­son clos­est to you. Pretty funny.

Next Pip assigned seven of us to stand in a cir­cle fac­ing out, and paired us up each with another stu­dent, fac­ing us. Then we were to intro­duce our­selves and say one thing about our­selves. “I’m Kris­ten and I for­got my bracelet today.” “I’m Renee and I love JayZ but I hate Bey­once.” Then we sat in a cir­cle and Pip would say, “That’s Kris­ten,” and every­one would say the thing I had to said to each of them. I won­dered pri­vately if any­one had lied, and I wanted to ask, but thought it might sound really odd, so I held my tongue. Then Pip talked about the essen­tial qual­ity for good act­ing: learn­ing to lis­ten. It’s sur­pris­ingly hard. Maybe I’m just more self-centered than most peo­ple, but I do find that I often carry on con­ver­sa­tions in which I can feel myself just wait­ing to say the next thing. Am I lis­ten­ing to the other per­son, really lis­ten­ing? As in, per­fectly open to the con­ver­sa­tion going in a direc­tion other than the one I intended? Not always. She asked us how the infor­ma­tion exchange had felt. Colin said, “I found it kind of awk­ward. I mean, I would really rather have had to talk to a lot of peo­ple about myself, rather than focus on just one per­son.” I thought about how the sit­u­a­tion would be John’s worst night­mare: a room full of strangers that, one by one, he would have to talk to, about him­self. Pip talked about the use­ful­ness of act­ing skills in daily life, not just on stage or screen. “Aren’t we all equipped with more than one self, under­neath? Maybe we don’t always bring them all out, or even think con­sciously about what we’re doing, but isn’t there one self who con­fronts the land­lord with prob­lems with the heat, and another who goes for cof­fee with a friend, and another who solves prob­lems at work? Really think, from now on, about what self you’re bring­ing out for situations.”

I thought about how, since mov­ing, I have had to rein­vent myself, or my selves, in every sit­u­a­tion. It’s get­ting less so, but every day there is at least one new per­son, and many days many peo­ple, who I’ve never met before, but have to form a rela­tion­ship with. Maybe it’s Kimia’s mother at pickup for Angelica’s birth­day party, or the drama teacher at Avery’s school, or a new babysit­ter, or now this act­ing class. I do think it’s use­ful to ana­lyze who I trot out as “myself” in these sit­u­a­tions. Of course it’s height­ened in our cur­rent life when I’m hav­ing to replace all the famil­iar peo­ple in my life (pedi­a­tri­cian, deli owner, best friend, school head, librar­ian) with strangers in their spots, stand­ing in their roles, ready to play for me the part that was played by some­one else in the last “per­for­mance” of my life. No inter­ac­tion is truly, effort­lessly nat­ural yet. But even out­side the sort of extra­or­di­nary level of role-playing that goes on in life in a new place, I think some amount of it takes place all the time. I noticed it when I spoke on the phone with my beloved grand­mother last night. I hadn’t played the part of grand­daugh­ter in a really long time! I felt myself becom­ing that self grad­u­ally as we talked, but some essen­tial part of “Mamoo’s eldest grand­daugh­ter and mother of her first grand­child” came out before I was really con­scious of hav­ing to remem­ber my lines.

I think what I will dis­cover is that, as my dad always says, per­son­al­ity traits run on a spec­trum. Peo­ple have more or less of a given qual­ity by nature, and then life impresses even more or less of that qual­ity on them as time goes on. I think I am prob­a­bly more given to the role-playing feel­ing than most peo­ple, but I bet a true actor has a really hard time fig­ur­ing out what the “real” self con­sists of. It was very inter­est­ing to have Pip say that, and then say, “Right now I have brought out the self who teaches my classes,” totally strip­ping the class­room sit­u­a­tion of any fake sense of “nor­mal­ity,” or trans­parency. Of course she was play­ing the part of teacher, just as I used to adore doing in my own class­room. It’s not as if it’s fak­ing: but it’s very instruc­tive to strip away one’s daily sense that peo­ple are “real”, and acknowl­edge that it’s all an accre­tion of parts we play.

Or, of course, I could be a dis­as­so­ci­ated nut­case with a per­son­al­ity disorder.

So then we were sent off in three­somes to plan and act out a famil­iar story, with just about ten min­utes to get it together. I was with Vicky and Marte, and we decided to do “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood.” It was funny to try to remem­ber the exact story, and how does it end? Does the wolf really eat BOTH the grand­mother and Lit­tle Red? We decided yes. Marte said she was really sleepy and would be happy to play the grand­mother who ulti­mately doesn’t do much besides get eaten. The plays seemed like silly lit­tle things, but Pip found real things to say about what we had done: had we really planned prop­erly where the audi­ence would be, and could they see all the action? Did we remem­ber to be con­sis­tent about what hap­pened to the fake teacup in our hands, and was the imag­i­nary door­way con­sis­tently in the same place through­out the play? Kather­ine, the super pretty girl who opened the class­room door for us, played Adam to Julian’s Eve in a “don’t eat the apple” sce­nario in which God and the ser­pent were played by a Turk­ish florist (I’m not mak­ing this up). But at the end, when they were meant to feel shame for the first time, Kather­ine for­got who she was and cov­ered her breasts!

I think the most cru­cial thing that Pip said was that the thrill of act­ing is in know­ing that the thoughts and expe­ri­ences of the audi­ence are in YOUR hands. That’s why, she said, most actors pre­fer stage to screen. There is a real-time, real-life effect you’re hav­ing on the peo­ple who have paid good money for you to play a part, and she described the incred­i­ble high of look­ing out into the audi­ence and see­ing every eye trained on you, and know­ing that your job is to do for them what they came for: play a part and change their lives, for the next two hours. “And pro­fes­sion­al­ism comes into it, too. You can’t change your mind halfway through the play and not fin­ish it, or not give it your all because you’re hun­gover or have a sick child at home. Any­more than a bus con­duc­tor can be hav­ing a bad day and decide that today, the Num­ber 137 bus will end at Oxford Cir­cus and not go on to Pic­cadilly. No, the bus jour­ney, and the the­atre jour­ney, must con­tinue until they are over, and that’s your job.”

It was an exhaust­ing three hours! Then I decided to walk home, and it’s a jolly long way from Covent Gar­den to May­fair, I can tell you. In high heels, no less. But I got to talk to John’s mom on the phone as I walked, and she’s such a good audi­ence that it went quickly.

Right now I have a straw­berry cake in the oven to take to Avery’s school cake sale (“not ‘bake sale,’ like in Amer­ica, it’s a ‘cake sale’ here, Mummy” she pointed out, the unspo­ken words “you dummy” hang­ing in the air like a con­ver­sa­tion bal­loon). There is also a hand-me-down uni­form sale, so per­haps I can pick up an extra cardie for her. I’m in denial that the down­side of the sum­mer uni­form is the neces­sity of yet more name-tape sewing. Avery’s play­ing at Anna’s house after school, and I am under great pres­sure to remem­ber to bring along her new Syl­van­ian ani­mal fam­ily as nece­sary items for “the game.” What, you’re not famil­iar with Syl­va­ni­ans? That must mean you don’t have a nine-year-old Eng­lish girl. They are these lit­tle flocked ani­mal fam­i­lies, with lit­tle out­fits and belong­ings and, if you’re super lucky with par­ents who aren’t ogres like we are, they have houses. With real lights that light up. It’s John’s night­mare, tiny lit­tle things all over the house with all their tiny lit­tle accou­trements. But they’re de rigeuer for the King’s Col­lege set, and I caved and took Avery to Ham­leys Toy Store in Regent Street this week and let her choose a fam­ily. The amount of Sylvanian-pertinent infor­ma­tion that flowed forth from Avery on the long, long walk home that day, Ham­leys bag clutched in her hot sticky lit­tle hands, was mind-boggling. Now you know what you can give her for her birth­day. If you want to earn John’s undy­ing enmity, that is.

Oh, and the wash­ing machine saga goes like this: the part has to be ordered from some medieval vil­lage in Ger­many, at which point it is appar­ently walked over land until it reaches the sea, and then migrat­ing fish swim it over to Eng­land where it under­goes some psy­cho­log­i­cal test­ing, even­tu­ally arriv­ing at my flat around the end of May. Or, alter­na­tively as they like to say here, I can get a new machine with a sim­i­larly tor­tured deliv­ery tale, around the mid­dle of May. I got this all from Bob the porter (who’s back! lame Iaian hav­ing got hired in the City, can’t imag­ine who would want him) as I strug­gled to free my straw­berry cake from its pan (of course I burned it while I wrote this post, so much for my future as a foodie). In the mean­time I have to say it was a real plea­sure to pack up all our dirty clothes into plas­tic bags and have some­one from Zoots Laun­dry Ser­vice come and col­lect it. It’s osten­si­bly to arrive all clean and dry and folded, this evening. “Did you sep­a­rate the whites from the col­ors?” Bob asked. “You’re such a trou­ble­maker,” I said. “Is a laun­dry ser­vice going to put blue jeans in with white shirts? Come on,” I scoffed. But now I can’t stop wor­ry­ing about it. Oh well, a cou­ple of hours sell­ing cakes to posh Eng­lish mums obsess­ing over their double-parked Range Rovers will dis­tract me, I’m sure.

This is so, so cruel. OK, so I spent 8 years in Tribeca, liv­ing a blame­less life, never pay­ing a bit of atten­tion to the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val hap­pen­ing just a block away.

Then last year, as you all know to your intense bore­dom, I get this uncon­trol­lable crush on Matthew Mac­fadyen, a dar­ling British actor. Then in Jan­u­ary I move to Lon­don where, hello, he lives. And where does he decide to go? Tribeca. His new film, “Mid­dle­town,” is a late choice for the Film Fes­ti­val, and he’s decided to go to the pre­miere and a ques­tion and answer ses­sion after! How could this hap­pen? Some­one who reads this must sim­ply buy a ticket to the April 28th screen­ing of the film and then go see His Lord­ship at the Q & A. I’m crushed.

I am get­ting excited for my act­ing class, which begins tomor­row after­noon. I have a new babysit­ter, Erin, col­lect­ing Avery at school after, coin­ci­den­tally, HER drama club that begins this week! Between the two of us, John will have a very chal­leng­ing home life now. Of course we’ll have to prac­tice our new skills at home.

OK, I’m off to sulk some more about Matthew and the Fes­ti­val. Some­body report back to me, please.

What a day we had Sat­ur­day! Bright, intensely blue skies, not a cloud in sight, and warm. A day that makes you real­ize that in gen­eral, we live in a grey, grey world here in Lon­don. John and I picked Avery up at Anna’s, feel­ing slightly sorry for her par­ents as they headed off to a foot­ball match in Man­ches­ter. It’s one of those activ­i­ties that is prob­a­bly really fun once you get there, and whether or not you like foot­ball it’s excit­ing, no doubt. But a long trip. It turns out, I heard from Becky today, that they arrived at half­time, which doesn’t sound so dis­ap­point­ing until you’re told that each half is only 45 min­utes long and no time outs! So you’ve missed a lot, at half time. And Liv­er­pool won, hap­pily for them since they were seated on the Liv­er­pool side. I had no idea it worked like that, being seated accord­ing to your alle­giance. That’s actu­ally how it was at the show-jumping polo match, must be a ref­er­ence to the foot­ball tradition.

After we picked Avery up we headed to Church Street, off Lis­son Grove, to the long row of antiques shops. Becky and I had checked it out first of all last week, and had found a lovely shop, Andrew Neb­bett, with sev­eral things I liked a lot. One of them was a long wide bench cov­ered in heavy dark leather, from maybe 1930, a gym­na­sium bench-pressing affair. “On hold” for some evil per­son, not that we have any­where to put it. But also from the gym­na­sium sale were sev­eral leather mats that Andrew had had sewn into rugs. Gor­geous! So we came away with a big one for the liv­ing room and a small one for the entry.

Home to put John down for a nap and I took Avery roller-blading in Hyde Park. The weather had held per­fectly, and every­one was out sun­ning them­selves in the lit­tle green-striped deck chairs (like the one Snoopy fights with in the Thanks­giv­ing Spe­cial, remem­ber that?), that you sit in and a Park Deckchair man comes round and charges you a pound fifty for each one. Seems rea­son­able! In New York of course some­one would come round in the night and put them all in vans and sell them on eBay. I shouldn’t be so cyn­i­cal about my native city, but there you go. We sat and recov­ered from her exploits with an iced lolly (always read about them in books but never quite real­ized that they are just pop­si­cles! much bet­ter to call them iced lol­lies), and a cup of milky tea for me. Every nation­al­ity and age and body type under the sun, all sacked out in the park on the green, green grass that doesn’t require spring­time to be green. Why is that? All year long, it’s green.

Avery was def­i­nitely wilt­ing at this point, so a long bath was in order, and then a high-protein blast of a cut of beef called “feather cut.” Don’t know how to define it and will do some research. It’s shaped like sir­loin tips, with a strong cen­tral sinew that was quite edi­ble, and CHEAP. The whole three-person serv­ing was not even 3 pounds total. I sauteed it gen­tly in but­ter and sliced it thin, but it could have been cooked even less. We all went to bed com­pletely worn out!

This morn­ing up hor­ri­bly early (OK, it was 7) to get to the barn in Wim­ble­don in time for a 9 a.m. les­son. Never again! I need my Sun­day rest! But wow, the les­son was amaz­ing. A pony called Bis­cuit, who is too tiny to be rid­den by any­one large enough to be any good! So she has been spend­ing years being trot­ted to and fro on a lead rope, with tiny chil­dren on her doing noth­ing. But when the train­ers saw how Avery was skilled and yet tiny, they decided it was a match made in heaven. So the moment Avery got on Biscuit’s back, and the rope came off, and the hack through Wim­ble­don Com­mon was over and the arena in sight, that pony went BERSERK! Gal­lop­ing like the wind, round and round, the adult rid­ers on their calm horses look­ing on in a mix­ture of hor­ror and admi­ra­tion! I can’t even say that Avery “hung on,” far from it, she rode that pony beau­ti­fully. Totally con­trolled, obvi­ously impressed with the speed that was hap­pen­ing. I remained calm, believe it or not, and John was thrilled. Car­o­line, her new trainer, was unflap­pable, and unmoved. Finally Avery calmed Bis­cuit down and joined the rest of the group, but still through­out the hour every time she got to be by her­self, it was tear­ing off hell bent for leather. Hilar­i­ous! So they’ve decided that if Bis­cuit gets exer­cised more this week she’ll be fine on Sun­day next. It feels ridicu­lously good to have a barn, a pony, a trainer, FRIENDS.

Our friend Jill and her hus­band picked Avery up in the rain out­side Edg­ware Sta­tion, with Anna already in the car, to go with Ava to the Chess­ing­ton Adven­ture Park or some such thing. Jill wailed, “I have a cold, I’m preg­nant, and it’s rain­ing! I don’t believe it.” Later she con­fessed that she made her hus­band drop her off at home and sent him off with the girls alone! John and I walked in the mist to a nice, anonymous-ish Leb­nese restau­rant called Fatoush, in Edg­ware Road, and had lovely fresh hum­mous, falafel, and lit­tle lamb meat­balls with tahini sauce. Sweet lit­tle honey and pis­ta­chio cook­ies after, and home for a nap. The per­fect day for it. We walked to col­lect Avery around 6, and the dad, Mylo, looked as wilted as a man of 6 foot 4 can look. “Did it rain?” John asked sym­pa­thet­i­cally. Mylo gave us a look. “Did it rain?” he repeated. “Did it RAIN.” So after chat­ting for a few min­utes about the mind-bendingly awful-sounding ride and prizes, John said, “Well, Mylo, at least it didn’t rain.”

Well, I’m about to drop dead this evening, hav­ing walked home from school, back again with Avery’s for­got­ten PE kit, back again home, back to school again with Ava’s birth­day present for her party after school, back home again, and back again to col­lect Avery at the party! There was a very scary magi­cian in a tur­ban try­ing to invei­gle the moth­ers into com­ing home with him, and some­how Ava had per­suaded the local ice cream truck to come to her party, so all the chil­dren were drip­ping with ice cream. It felt extremely lovely, and most wel­come, to have moth­ers I knew, to greet and be greeted by, and to have Avery included in a party with her new friends. John’s out at a busi­ness din­ner, so I think I’ll skulk into the kitchen, pour a restora­tive cock­tail, and try to con­vince Avery to watch the Food Chan­nel. How sophis­ti­cated are we?

Finally, a great les­son on a great pony! Wim­ble­don Vil­lage Sta­bles has been a suc­cess, for sure, but there hasn’t yet been that mag­i­cal expe­ri­ence where Avery felt like she was a real rider again. Until Moon­shine this week, in the quaint vil­lage of Stan­ton in the heart of the Cotswolds, Glouces­ter­shire. Last year when we were on our “shall we move” trip to Eng­land, we tracked down a highly-recommended trainer called Jill Carenza, out in the coun­try­side, who had taught the chil­dren of one of John’s old Gold­man Sachs friends, Andrea Ponti. Jill is a renowned trainer who really knows how to chal­lenge the stu­dents. She put Avery on Moon­shine, who while not exactly inspir­ing con­fi­dence with her sleepy expres­sion and tongue that wagged through­out the les­son, was nev­er­the­less quite a “mover,” as they say, and it was a great expe­ri­ence. So this week we found our­selves once more at Jill’s barn, and Avery jumped for the first time since Decem­ber. What fun to watch. And a high jump, as you can see, near the end of the course. She was com­pletely wiped out by the end of the hour and is now thor­oughly in the mood to ride over the week­end. It’s great for her to be back in the saddle.

We just had the most inter­est­ing house­guest, Kathryn Hillier, who arrived the night before we left for Worces­ter­shire and was able to spend six days here inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial spots to show her pho­tog­ra­phy. Check out her web­site, www.kathrynhillier.com, for some beau­ti­ful images of inte­ri­ors, and mys­te­ri­ous objects. She was on a short break from a res­i­dency in Paris, prepar­ing for her solo show at a gallery there to open next week. Kathryn is a friend of my for­mer gallery assis­tant Rebecca, and it was a plea­sure to have our first guest in our new home. We took her to see the Cab­i­net War Rooms, one of my favorite muse­ums in the city. It’s an under­ground bunker where Churchill and his staff spent the war, broad­cast­ing speeches, track­ing con­voys and gen­er­ally man­ag­ing the effort while stay­ing safe under the streets. When the war was over, the rooms were sim­ply closed up, many of them exactly as their occu­pants left them, so the whole place is like a moment in 1945 under glass. Really intriguing.

We also took her to Har­rods where she was able to gaze upon, in some dis­may, the extremely tacky devo­tional mon­u­ment to Princess Diana and her beloved Dodi (I think she declined to sign the memo­r­ial book, how­ever, more’s the pity). Avery acquired some roller blades at Har­rods and I imag­ine a fair bit of our week­end will be spent on the bike path in Hyde Park, just across the road here, work­ing on her new skills.

Well, I’m off for a spe­cial treat: an Indian head mas­sage! I have no idea what to expect, but I have been miss­ing my lit­tle $20–20 minute spe­cials at the Korean nail salon in Tribeca, so this is the next best thing. It’s at a spa called Calmia, in the Maryle­bone High Street, so I’ll be all relaxed for school pickup. It’s a fake pickup, how­ever, more like a hand­off, because Avery’s going to her friend Angelica’s house for a play­date, and from there to Anna’s house for a sleep­over. Life is a never-ending cycle of fun when you’re nine and a half and it’s spring­time in Lon­don. What should John and I do? He has dis­cov­ered a fab­u­lous, unpre­pos­sess­ing Chi­nese restau­rant unfe­lic­i­tously located across the road from the skat­ing rink where Avery’s school has lessons, a really ugly, street called Queensway. But this place, Man­darin Kitchen, is a real find. It got some­thing like a 4 out of 30 for decor in Zagat’s guide, but 26 for food, and was reputed to be the place where actual Chi­nese peo­ple go for great authen­tic dishes. This turned out to be true, because the day after we were there, one of my school-mother friends Amy, who is from Hong Kong, said, “Did I see you at Man­darin Kitchen last night, Kris­ten? How did you find that place? Next time, ask for Amy’s chili chicken. It’s not on the menu, but they know what I like.” We had a soft shell crab appe­tizer that was out of this world, with hot red chilis and green onions, and then a sticky, spicy duck dish with enor­mous slices of gin­ger, and crispy sea­weed. Gor­geous with a Tsing Tao beer or two. So per­haps we could go back there.

Or I could cook in. I invented a recipe over Easter break, which was born out of sheer lazi­ness. I wanted to call it “Han­bury Hall Chicken”, but John says the proper name is “I Want to Take a Bath Chicken.” Because that was the truth. I had bought ingre­di­ents to do a slightly elab­o­rate stir-fry dish that requires con­stant stand­ing at the stove, not to men­tion a lot of chop­ping and strain­ing. The orig­i­nal recipe called for minced gar­lic and onion sauteed in but­ter, then flam­beed cognac or brandy, reduced down, then chopped toma­toes, thyme leaves and sour cream, all sim­mered for ages and strained, and poured over sauteed chicken breasts. It sud­denly sounded like entirely too much trou­ble. I thought, “Didn’t peo­ple used to cook things called casseroles? The whole point being that the oven does the work?” So I melted some but­ter in a casse­role dish, roughly sliced some gar­lic and an onion and threw them in, put whole chicken breasts on top, poured over about three table­spoons of brandy, stirred together a can of whole toma­toes and a con­tainer of sour cream, poured that over the chicken and sprin­kled the whole thing with thyme and salt and pep­per, and… went to take a bath! After 45 min­utes I was clean and happy and the chicken was cooked to per­fec­tion. It had a kind of poached tex­ture, and the sauce was runny with but­ter and pink with toma­toes. Bliss! What could be eas­ier. And there were left­overs, which at John’s sug­ges­tion were poured on lin­guini the fol­low­ing evening. This pro­ce­dure fol­lows my beloved brother-in-law Joel’s mantra, “Cook once, eat twice.” So wise. Try it! I did add part of another can of toma­toes when I heated up the sauce, and I sliced the left­over chicken breast in bite-sized pieces. Avery and I came to the con­clu­sion that we didn’t love chicken with pasta, but luck­ily John did, and there was plenty of sauce. I also did an elab­o­rate chopped salad to go with the pasta, my cook’s heart feel­ing slightly guilty at my short­cut din­ner the night before. It’s per­fect for the anal-retentive chef. You chop all the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents into pre­cisely the same size bits: fresh cherry toma­toes, mush­rooms, cucum­ber, radishes, avo­cado, and red pep­pers. Toss this with a cou­ple of cloves of REALLY finely minced gar­lic (be sure to pull out any lit­tle green shoots which will make you taste like gar­lic for days to come), and very finely torn romaine let­tuce. Any dress­ing is good, but we had a Caesar-ish thing that was quite nice. Enjoy.

Do you sup­pose the Queen had such pretty Easter eggs last week­end? (I’d ask also if she had such a pretty lit­tle girl to spend Easter with, but that would be unkind). No, I know for cer­tain she did not have such pretty eggs, because one thing we dis­cov­ered this year is that the British do not color eggs. Well, actu­ally Avery reports that some very reli­gious peo­ple dye some eggs red to sym­bol­ize purity and blood (how cheer­ful). How did we find out that our cher­ished tra­di­tion was not observed here in our new home? Well, for one thing there was no dye in any of the shops. Any­where. I dis­cov­ered this too late to bleat help­lessly to Alyssa, my friend and source for all things Amer­i­can that we miss, like microwave pop­corn and Peo­ple mag­a­zine. Then, on our way to our National Trust hol­i­day, we stopped at an enor­mous gro­cery store to stock up, and… there are no white eggs in Great Britain. Can you dye brown eggs? With no dye? It turns out you can. Weirdly, the night before our trip I had a very vivid dream in which I dis­cov­ered a cache of food col­or­ing bot­tles on my top kitchen pantry shelf. And… sure enough, in the morn­ing there was a whole sec­tion of bot­tles from some bygone Tribeca crafty thing, moved here to my Lon­don kitchen. So the whole Easter egg dye racket is a scam, the idea that you need some­thing spe­cial to color eggs. So much for all the research I did online, find­ing creepy ovo-lacto veg­e­tar­ian tofu-obsessed web­sites that assured me a quick dip in boil­ing water and onion skins would make fine yel­low (never mind the smell, I guess) and that beet­root shreds would pro­duce red with­out all that pesky can­cer risk, and blue? I don’t remem­ber what they claimed would pro­duce blue. Because have you ever looked inside a blue­berry? It’s sort of a phlegmy white, cer­tainly not a hue we were aim­ing for in Easter eggs. And strong cof­fee for to get brown? For heaven’s sake, this is where we came in! The darn things ARE brown already. Any­way, my point is that plain old Dur­kee food col­or­ing in warm water makes per­fectly good dye, and the brown eggs took to their adven­ture like ducks to water, thrilled at their oppor­tu­nity to rise above their lesser brethren, des­tined only for egg cups across the British Isles, know­ing that theirs was a higher fate.

So all Eng­land is agog today for the royal 80th birth­day. Please promise me you’ll click on this link. She looks like an Amer­i­can Girl doll gone large I swear. I heard on the BBC this morn­ing that so far she has received over 20,000 cards. Today a huge self-congratulatory flag is being hoisted over Wind­sor Cas­tle (the BBC announcer said solemnly that it was “a much larger flag, indeed, than we’re used to see­ing fly­ing over the Cas­tle, isn’t it?”). She’s going to do a “walk­a­bout” in town to press the flesh, and receive posies, and 25 mem­bers of the inti­mate Royal Fam­ily will be at a din­ner hosted by Prince Charles this evening. What do you sup­pose she asked for to eat? When asked what she wanted for her birth­day, she said “a nice sun­shiny day.” Trust her to choose the one thing that doubt­less she can­not have, here in Eng­land, land of the per­pet­ual grey sky. And yes­ter­day she invited for tea at Buck­ing­ham Palace all the peo­ple who could prove that they turn 80 today as well. Kind of cute if you like that sort of thing. I’m not a huge fan of the Queen, I hes­i­tate to con­fess, but there is some­thing catch­ing about all the birth­day fever and we suc­cumbed last night and taped a show all about the ten most sig­nif­i­cant days in Queen Elizabeth’s life. Would you believe the show lasted an hour and a half? Must have been some ten days. Oh! Yes­ter­day out­side Marks and Spencer I saw Lady Helen Tay­lor, with her lit­tle girl Eloise. She was very pretty in per­son, but not in the Body of Armani way you’d expect, from all her pic­tures in Hello! mag­a­zine. Just trot­ting along in jeans and sneak­ers, hold­ing her lit­tle girl’s hand, not act­ing at all as if she’s 11th in line to the throne. Actu­ally I’m mak­ing that up; I can’t remem­ber how far away she is, but still! She’s a princess.

Speak­ing of the Queen, who is Avery’s school’s Patron, excit­ing news: Avery was cho­sen by the art teacher of King’s Col­lege to cre­ate a por­trait of the Queen for the school’s birth­day card to her! To be deliv­ered, Anna and Avery told me in breath­less excite­ment yes­ter­day, in “a spe­cial Queen’s birth­day taxi” to Wind­sor Cas­tle this after­noon. Well done.

And more news about Avery’s achieve­ments, if you can bear it. She won the Form Four Sto­ry­writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion! This was her great­est goal, and she poured her heart and soul into her story, writ­ten before break. Mrs Davies assured us in her pre-Easter head­mistress let­ter that all efforts would be made over vaca­tion to judge the entries and come up with a win­ner for each form. Our New Girl, can you imag­ine it, heard her name called out at assem­bly yes­ter­day and was the proud recip­i­ent of two really scary choco­late bun­nies, as a prize. As you can imag­ine we are all quite proud. Her story and her royal por­trait, all in one day. And the new sum­mer uni­forms have arrived at John Lewis Depart­ment Store, so I stopped off yes­ter­day for a ruinous shop­ping trip and came away with dresses and new white ankle socks, as well as a cute short coat. I shall have to get a good pic­ture of her in her new ging­ham dress. And boater hat, if she’ll put up with it. Lots of fun.

Finally! We spent a bliss­ful Easter hol­i­day at Han­bury Hall in Droitwich, Worces­ter­shire (ran out of sauce, decided to go to the source). It’s a gor­geous National Trust prop­erty, which means that the Ver­non fam­ily, after over 300 years, decided to call it a day as landown­ers and sold the house to the Trust, who now man­age it as a pub­lic prop­erty for peo­ple to visit, along with its incred­i­ble gar­dens and out­build­ings (an Orangery, a dairy, an ice­house, what else could one wish for), and then they have refur­bished a two-bedroom apart­ment inside the enor­mous house, to let out for hol­i­days. So we were the lucky fam­ily this Easter. Such a plea­sure to be all together, after our sep­a­rate Scot­tish, Asian and York­shire adven­tures this spring break. We sim­ply jumped in a rented car with roughly half our belong­ings and headed off. More on this soon, but right now I must find out why my wash­ing machine insists that there is one per­pet­ual minute left on its wash cycle, and there­fore will not relent and turn into a dryer. My laun­dry room floor is cov­ered with damp clothes rapidly reach­ing that sort of per­ma­nently wrin­kled crunchy state that bodes ill for our sar­to­r­ial future. Wish me luck.

Oof, I just had a painful expe­ri­ence. We had been pay­ing our rent here at War­bur­ton House via direct debit, which enables us to live here while blithely pre­tend­ing it isn’t cost­ing us the same as stay­ing in a really high class hotel every night. But some­thing went wrong with the debit this month and John just asked me to go round to the estate man­age­ment with a cheque. There was some­thing vaguely, oddly out of place in the whole sce­nario: I was met in the impos­si­bly chic and intim­i­dat­ing lobby of Grosvenor Estates by a young woman dressed in clothes much fancier than what I wore to John’s boss’s din­ner party, snootily lend­ing me her biro to make out my cheque, and there I was, soaked to the skin from the typ­i­cal April rain, wear­ing nasty jeans that are more famil­iar with the Bronx than with May­fair. Very odd.

Oh our trip to the British Open Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onship was SO COOL. Many of you may know that as lit­tle as a year ago, I was not exactly a horse per­son. But maybe it took absence to make my par­tic­u­lar heart fonder, because for what­ever rea­son, it was really touch­ing to see horses again! We arrived a bit late due to a train stop­page, and being taken to the wrong hotel in the taxi, but got to the arena in Sheffield just in time for the mas­sively enter­tain­ing, lightning-quick 4-minute polo matches. There was Jack Kidd, he of Hello! mag­a­zine fame, on the “blue team” and some other gor­geous Eng­lish­men in the “red team,” and the crowds all scream­ing and eat­ing nasty things like tuna on jacket pota­toes. That’s a sub­set of the Eng­lish obses­sion with mix­ing tuna up with odd stuff like sweet­corn: then they have to do some­thing with it, and one of the pecu­liar things they do is to pile it on a baked potato and wrap it in foil so peo­ple can try to bal­ance it on their knees at polo matches. That and chicken curry. On a potato, truly.

Polo is much more excit­ing than I would have thought, mostly because the ponies are so beau­ti­ful. And, too, there is absolutely no wasted time, the thing that makes most sports bor­ing to me. In fact, there’s a penalty for stand­ing still. So it’s con­stant flash­ing action, with the ponies seem­ingly as involved in the sport as the men. And cute uni­forms! After polo came… the phe­nom­e­non that is… Lorenzo. He’s this cute lit­tle French dude who appar­ently in his long ago and not at all mis­spent youth gath­ered more ponies on his farm than he could man­age to exer­cise per day, so he invented a sys­tem of stand­ing on the backs of two ponies while run­ning around with two more ponies on each side. White gor­geous crea­tures, per­fectly matched and with an obvi­ous ado­ra­tion of him. The per­for­mance (unhap­pily marred by a really scary poly­ester ruf­fled out­fit for Lorenzo, how un-chic and un-French, but I guess the sort of ice-skater men­tal­ity out­weighs his nat­ural cool­ness) pro­gressed from just can­ter­ing around man­ag­ing not to fall off the ponies’ backs, to actual jump­ing over rails and then he him­self jump­ing over poles to land per­fectly on their backs again. Totally entertaining.

After Lorenzo was the best thing of all, the show jump­ing itself. As I vaguely knew, but had never really stud­ied, the con­cept of show jump­ing is that it’s against the clock. Noth­ing mat­ters but speed, and not knock­ing over the fences. The first event was the Young Rid­ers’ Com­pe­ti­tion, which is the under-23 crowd. Both men and women, all slim, per­fectly turned out in white show breeches, red or black coats and fancy stocks at their throats, knee-length shiny boots and vel­vet hel­mets. These peo­ple and their horses man­aged to get over some­times 11 or 13 jumps, in a really arcane and pre­cise order, in under 70 sec­onds. Amaz­ing. There was one fam­ily whose reign over the sport was such that they war­ranted a whole page in the pro­gramme, devoted to their fam­ily tree. Avery was famil­iar with the young woman of the fam­ily, Ellen Whitaker, from her “Young Rider” and “Horse and Hound” mag­a­zines. I have always won­dered how there was enough to say to war­rant a monthly mag­a­zine, but now I am begin­ning to see the light. Unfor­tu­nately it was not poor Ellen’s day. Every time she came out the announcer made a huge fuss, shout­ing, “It’s the one, the only, Yorkshire’s own young eques­trian super­star, the newest mem­ber of the Whitaker dynasty… ELLEN WHITAKER!” And then she pro­ceeded to knock down all the fences and come in over the time limit. Appar­ently she was rid­ing a green­ish pony who’s not been ade­quately apprised of Ellen’s pub­lic image.

Then there were the adult show jumpers, whose aplomb was impres­sive. To my fem­i­nist cha­grin, I noticed a dis­turb­ing pat­tern. At Avery’s barn in New York, and in ever barn I have ever been in, it’s nearly all lit­tle girls. John is always say­ing that if he had known as a lit­tle boy what he knows now, he would have taken up rid­ing. It’s where all the cool girls hang out and NO BOYS. How­ever. You get to the level of the Young Rid­ers in show jump­ing and it’s per­haps half boys, half girls. The girls do well, mind you, but where did all these males come from? And then, at the top, just like in the food world, it’s vir­tu­ally all men. Avery and I were frus­trated by this to the degree that we didn’t know whether to cheer for an Eng­lish male rider (surely the patri­otic thing to do), or just ANY woman, no mat­ter her nation­al­ity. That makes me crazy. How many men pro­duce din­ner for their fam­i­lies every night, com­pared to how many women? And yet, when it comes to being famous for cook­ing and mak­ing lots of money at it, all the heavy hit­ters are guys. Enough rant­ing from me, but it was notice­able and I won­der what the expla­na­tion is. Can’t be pure ridicu­lous sex­ism, because the fact is it’s all judged by a clock.

Any­way, male mem­bers (I don’t mean that as it sounds!) of the Whitaker fam­ily scooped lots of events. There was so much excite­ment in the air over a tenth of a sec­ond here or there, and the tee­ter­ing of a fence — would it stay and be for­got­ten, or fall and cost the rider four points? — that I nearly did not notice when I could no longer breathe com­fort­ably. I had for­got­ten my inter­mit­tent allergy to horses, but indoors, with no fresh air, sur­rounded by horses, horse poop, horsey dirt, etc., it got really bad as the evening wore on. We emerged dur­ing one of the inter­vals to try to find first aid and see if they had anti­his­t­a­mines, which they did, and it helped after a bit, but not enough. By the time we left I was pretty mis­er­able. But it’s a mea­sure of how much fun it was that I didn’t insist we leave. By far the most excit­ing event was some­thing called the “accu­mu­la­tor,” in this instance as in most sport­ing events, named after its spon­sor, the “Eas­ibed” horse bed­ding mate­r­ial com­pany. So the “Eas­ibed accu­mu­la­tor” works like this: the first jump is worth one point, the sec­ond two points, and so on. Except that if you knock a fence over, you don’t get any points, and you’re back to what you would have earned on that one, on the next. Then at the end there’s a HUGE jump that’s called “the risk,” and you can either jump it suc­cess­fully and gain 25 points, or jump it unsuc­cess­fully and lose 25 points, or not risk it and stay neu­tral. It was won­der­ful to watch, and try to fol­low the addi­tion of points, because just when you got used to the point sys­tem when the rider didn’t knock any­thing over, some­one did knock some­thing over and all the scor­ing changed. Plus there was the roar of the crowd when the over­head mon­i­tors blared out “CLEAR ROUND,” mean­ing that no fences had been knocked over. So exciting!

We went back to the hotel in a haze of horses, points, rider names, and in my case, a com­pletely inabil­ity to breathe through my nose or stop cough­ing. But I loaded up with Benadryl, and after a dis­gust­ing room ser­vice pizza and a hor­ri­ble pack­aged fruit crum­ble for Avery (“there’s KIWI!” she moaned in revul­sion), we were out like lights.

Up first thing for the meal that even the most aver­age of Eng­lish cooks can con­sis­tently get right (sorry, adopted coun­try): break­fast. Scram­bled eggs, sausages, pota­toes rosti, bacon, grilled toma­toes, hot tea. Yum. We ate as much as we could, Avery adding pain au choco­lat and crois­sants, know­ing that it would a really long time before any­thing that wasn’t a jacket potato came our way. Off again to the arena, for another round of all the same stuff, and also a dis­play of dres­sage, which is sort of horse bal­let. This young girl had trained her horse not only to do tra­di­tional high-stepping, pre­cise dres­sage moves, but had set it all to music. The horse’s feet actu­ally stepped in time to music, and sev­eral dif­fer­ent songs. Very impres­sive. Our last event was one more per­fect polo match, and Jack Kidd was on our team. In the last few sec­onds he scored, and our team won, suit­ably, for our last day. I swear when he came gal­lop­ing by on his vic­tory round, he raised his hel­met to ME.

Home on the train in a lovely sun­set, and to John in May­fair! He brought our present after present from his trav­els, a gor­geous orange shoul­der bag for me, and a beau­ti­ful lux­u­ri­ous leather suit­case, and Chi­nese paja­mas for Avery, with one embroi­dered pat­tern on the out­side and a com­pletely dif­fer­ent pat­tern on the lin­ing. And Chi­nese can­dies! So good to have him home. He man­aged to stay up to a rea­son­able hour, and get back in synch with Lon­don time.

Sun­day after­noon found us on the train to Wim­ble­don Vil­lage Sta­bles, all in the horsey spirit, to try one more les­son at one more barn. The walk up the hill was a chal­lenge, and it was rest­ful to real­ize that it would be down­hill on the way home! An impromptu lunch at the Cafe Rouge in the Wim­ble­don High Street, watch­ing more babies in pushchairs (not called strollers here), and more preg­nant women walk by than we have seen since leav­ing zip­code 10013 in New York. Some baby boom. Gor­geous steak frites for John and Avery, and I had a lovely mesclun salad with goat cheese rounds on baguette toasts and roasted toma­toes. With some yummy Bel­gian straw­berry beer, more like a fruit soda than a drink.

To the sta­bles, where a huge mass of would-be rid­ers were even­tu­ally paired off with ponies, Avery being assigned to one “Rolo,” a lovely lit­tle guy. They headed off to Wim­ble­don Com­mon, and John stayed behind to read a book, while I cruised the High Street for din­ner sup­plies. An amaz­ing (and amaz­ingly expen­sive) deli called Bay­ley and Sage, where I wanted one of every­thing, but con­tented myself with sev­eral pun­nets (lit­tle con­tain­ers, don’t know where the word comes from) of straw­ber­ries to make Avery’s favorite straw­berry cake. A vil­lage with no fewer than three inde­pen­dent book­stores, lovely. Avery came in an hour later, talk­ing a mile a minute as always to her instruc­tor, and dis­mounted say­ing it had been “won­der­ful.” I’m cer­tainly will­ing to try it again, since the loca­tion beats a rainy field in the mid­dle of nowhere. So she’s booked for Thurs­day and we’ll see after that.

Yes­ter­day Avery’s friend Sophia came over, and it’s always enter­tain­ing to see two only, much-doted-on chil­dren work out who gets whose way. Never nasty, but a far cry from the peace that reigns when the com­pli­ant, easy­go­ing Anna comes over, mid­dle child of three! Sophia and Avery each know exactly what they want, and it doesn’t come easy to nego­ti­ate it all through. They waded through fish fin­gers, straw­berry cake and apple juice, and ate their weight in can­teloupe, and then pro­ceeded to com­pletely tear apart both my room and Avery’s, in search of dres­sup clothes. I wouldn’t have thought I had any­thing wor­thy of the cat­e­gory, but in the fash­ion show that ensued for Susan and me at pickup time, out came cloth­ing I for­got I had: Dolce e Gab­bana, Comme des Gar­cons, high heels, even my hon­ey­moon vin­tage silk night­dress in peach lace! Won­der­ful to watch them put out­fits together with more of an eye than I cer­tainly ever had, hold­ing up waist­bands with long cos­tume jew­elry gold bead neck­laces. I had decided to give Susan a real cream tea as a treat, so we had tiny crust­less turkey and ched­dar sand­wiches, and tomato sand­wiches with gar­lic but­ter, and my favorite, shrimp but­ter. That is a divine and wicked spread made by pul­ver­iz­ing, in a Cuisi­nart, tiny canned shrimp with cream cheese, may­on­naise, lemon juice, minced onion and Tabasco sauce, and of course a huge amount of but­ter. It’s one of John’s mother’s stand­bys for enter­tain­ing, and always a win­ner, hard not just to eat it with a spoon. With these we had, for the girls, scones with clot­ted cream and hedgerow pre­serves. Heav­enly, and such fun to gos­sip with Susan who always has an excel­lent New York or Lon­don gos­sip story or two. Yes­ter­day her big rev­e­la­tion was a report of their din­ner party with Lord and Lady Some­body or Other, the Lady hav­ing been the inspi­ra­tion for Antoine de St. Exupery’s “The Lit­tle Prince.” Can you imag­ine? She has all the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions framed on her walls, what an irre­place­able thing. Her hus­band told Susan and her hus­band a hilar­i­ous story from Oxford Uni­ver­sity in the days before World War II. He and his friends came up with an idea for a cock­tail party: why not invite every­one they could think of whose named ended in “Bot­tom”? A very com­mon suf­fix to upper-class names in British soci­ety, as it hap­pens. So they sent out invi­ta­tions, and then when the time for the party came around, they sim­ply slipped away, so that all the guests had to intro­duce them­selves to each other, and everyone’s name was “Bot­tom.” Only in England!

Today I have a bit of a cold, mixed with the rem­nants of all that pony dust, so we have been quiet and peace­ful, emerg­ing in the rain only to take the bus to “Rid­ers and Squires,” a gor­geous shop for all things eques­trian, in South Kens­ing­ton in Thack­eray Street. A lovely, atten­tu­ated, ele­gant young man helped us find new boots for Avery, as well as a warm and fleecy vest, gloves and a crop. Now she’s ready for her next les­son. Unless she gets side­tracked by her new accom­plish­ment: gar­gling. Her ever-helpful father taught her this use­ful skill last night, and she imme­di­ately came in to my bed­room where I was read­ing, to demon­strate. “Can you gar­gle, Mommy?” So I had to demon­strate as well, and it was one of those lovely moments of child­hood where you’d just as soon they stayed nine-going-on-ten for­ever. “Daddy, Daddy, Mommy is really GOOD at gargling…”

Lastly, I have made a lit­er­ary dis­cov­ery, some­one you may all know already but I just found out about: Carol Shields. Her lat­est, and as it turns out last (she died in 2003) novel is called “Unless,” and if you are up for a ter­ri­bly sad, sear­ingly hon­est story about moth­er­hood and watch­ing your chil­dren grow away from you, it is a mar­velous read. One of her ear­lier nov­els won the Pulitzer Prize for fic­tion, so obvi­ously I am behind in this appre­ci­a­tion. Beau­ti­fully writ­ten, occa­sion­ally very funny, but with pas­sages that make you say out loud, “Exactly!” and real­ize that you have often had a ker­nel of her wise idea, but haven’t taken the trou­ble to artic­u­late it, and there it is for you. One of the bits that sticks with me today is her account of the main character’s inter­view with a jour­nal­ist about her lat­est novel. “And, Ms. Win­ters, can you tell me, what is the worst thing that has ever hap­pened to you?” She stops in her tracks and real­izes that, what­ever it is, it hasn’t hap­pened yet. I love that, not in a cheer­ful way, but in recog­ni­tion of one of the basic truths of par­ent­hood, at least for me. If, at the end of the day, one’s child is safe in bed, healthy and safe and happy, all is right with the world. And the flip side is, once your child has been born, you know in your heart of hearts what the worst thing in the world would be. You can’t say specif­i­cally, but it would be some­thing that hap­pened to your child, not to you. A life-changing moment. Get “Unless” and tell me what you think.

Library cards! We saun­tered today past the nasty Amer­i­can Embassy to pass Mount Street (whose sort of secret gar­dens fea­tured in a “Spooks” episode star­ring my dar­ling crush actor, be still my heart), and into the lovely May­fair Pub­lic Library. I brought along my tick­ets to the National The­atre actor dis­cus­sion evenings, which had been posted to me, as proof of our res­i­dence. It’s the tini­est lit­tle place, with about enough books to get Avery through our trip to Sheffield tomor­row and POS­SI­BLY back again, but pos­si­bly not. Still, it felt lovely to get a library card avail­able only to those lucky enough to live within the city of West­min­ster. We came away with stacks of books, among them a cou­ple of audio books I could never get either at home or find in print here, so we were both happy. Stopped to get a sand­wich for me (since Avery had devoured her weight in home­made lemon blue­berry cake before we left home), and the lady behind the counter came out to ask “lovey” what she was read­ing. “Oh, I do love a good detec­tive story, although mind you, I often read the last page first,” she con­fessed. “So do I!” exclaimed Avery in the per­fect Eng­lish accent that comes out when she really wants to fit in. “I often do it if some­thing sad hap­pens in the book, to make sure that it gets itself worked out hap­pily before the end.”

So we stopped to read and eat in Grosvenor Square, firmly fac­ing toward the embassy but pre­fer­ring to con­cen­trate on the entirely spu­ri­ous but impres­sive stand­ing bronze sculp­ture of FDR. It was a warm, spring­like day and the Square was peo­pled by babies and their care­tak­ers, ladies and their small dogs, and heart­warm­ingly many of them seemed to know each other. My dear friend Alyssa called and I got caught up on gos­sip, real estate and oth­er­wise, occu­py­ing our dear for­mer home. I also got an email today from a PS 234 mother who offers the stun­ning news that Avery’s for­mer prin­ci­pal, the for­mi­da­ble Sandy Bridges, has a bun in the oven! And con­ve­niently to go with it, a new hus­band over the Christ­mas hol­i­days. Via email, John remarked that this sce­nario flies with much greater elan and suc­cess than a sim­i­lar story would at King’s Col­lege, Lon­don! After my phone call, and ascer­tain­ing that a lovely young cou­ple in the square with two adorable chil­dren were in fact father and nanny, I felt the time had come to appre­ci­ate prop­erly my small sprout, so in the sun­shine she sat on my lap and let me squeeze her while she read her library book over my shoul­der, and I felt that all the parts of the world were in the proper places, to have such a kind small per­son to call my own, on a sunny day in Lon­don. Some­day all too soon she’ll be moan­ing, “Oh, MOTHER,” when I want a bit of a cud­dle, so I have to enjoy it while I can.

A quiet after­noon and then din­ner out at ASK, our local pizza and salad place, and a lovely din­ner con­ver­sa­tion just the two of us, my true favorite. Home to tuck her in, and where was her tiny lady­bug, she of the dis­ap­pear­ing act in the cor­po­rate flat? “Oh, sorry, I unwit­tingly took her upstairs this morn­ing,” Avery apol­o­gised. She can do almost any­thing, if she explains it as “unwit­tingly.” I’m such a sucker for vocab­u­lary. Tomor­row to see horses galore, and we’ll let you know how it goes.