Note to self: in future, prob­a­bly best not to wash a bright-red, brand-new pash­mina scarf in the same load as husband’s busi­ness shirts.

I’m in the dog­house. A bit.

You see, Avery went off to her school friend Alice’s birth­day party on Sat­ur­day, which was billed as a “disco and fash­ion show.” Intox­i­cated at the oppor­tu­nity to wear not only NOT a school uni­form, but not even jeans or khaki pants, Avery went nuts. She rum­maged through her closet until she found a dress that my sis­ter Jill and brother-in-law Joel will rec­og­nize from the Christ­mas they gave her, as a joke, a whole pile of out­ra­geously crazy, glit­tery, slinky clothes and watched my reac­tion to see if they were for real. I think my sis­ter had a client with a kids’ cloth­ing store, and they were sam­ples? The details elude me. In any case, this dress is the last rem­nant of that haul, which served Avery and her lit­tle Tribeca friends very well as dress-up clothes for years. This par­tic­u­lar item is laven­der, at the bot­tom, and then sort of morphs into a mauvey-ish pinky grey at the top, with spaghetti straps and sequins and beads and I don’t know what all. Lined in silk, and at this point quite, quite short. It might have fit her prop­erly four years ago. So she put this on, and did her hair up in a series of scary lit­tle puffs, held in place with glit­tery clips for whose prove­nance I can­not pos­si­bly vouch. They have all the ear­marks of party favors. Any­way, to top this ensem­ble she threw her beloved red pash­mina around her shoul­ders, added a pair of shiny maroon Mary Janes that I remem­ber clearly pay­ing $4.99 for at the Dan­bury, Con­necti­cut Wal­mart, in a pour­ing rain­storm. Gee, this is like word association.

Any­way, there she was. I did not get to see the fin­ished prod­uct as I was attend­ing my “Auto­bi­og­ra­phy Into Fic­tion” work­shop at CityLit, but I heard reports that Avery looked quite stun­ning. The upshot, how­ever, was that the pash­mina got choco­late all over it, and with­out think­ing I just stuck it in the wash­ing machine blithely with every­thing else that was in it, includ­ing John’s two favorite shirts (of course, they WOULD be) from Thomas Pink. Dou­bly unfor­tu­nate, he hap­pened to go in the laun­dry room to get paper tow­els or some­thing and saw the pathetic lit­tle streaky corpses where I had bun­dled them up on top of the machine. He bleated, “What on earth hap­pened to my SHIRTS??” I had had every inten­tion of high-tailing it over to Pink and replac­ing them before he saw the dread­ful evi­dence, since Dor­rie, the clean­ing lady extra­or­di­naire, says there is no way on earth they can be res­ur­rected. She came in this morn­ing, took one look and asked suc­cinctly, “He knows?” All women are famil­iar with this sit­u­a­tion. The pash­mina itself, smug in its new clean­li­ness, is hang­ing over the kitchen door to dry, a reminder of my iniquity.

Ah well, John’s off to New York and I shall swan off myself to Pink. I don’t sup­pose it will do any good to take the poor things with me to match, since they bear no resem­blance to their for­mer selves. Sigh.

But all has not been domes­tic embar­rass­ment. For exam­ple, last week I was in an episode of “Who Wants to Use her PhD?”, the little-known spin­off from that show you all watch and just won’t admit it. There was a meet­ing Fri­day up in Not­ting Hill, for the “UK Friends of the NMWA,” which means the Lon­don con­tin­gent that is gath­er­ing sup­port for a visit from the founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. This lady, a Mrs. Wil­helmina Hol­la­day (yep, she calls her­self Bil­lie) is 85 years old, started her museum of works by women artists in 1987, and for some bizarre rea­son (at least I’ve always thought it bizarre) decided to call it the “National” Museum of Women in the Arts. How “National”? It’s a pri­vate col­lec­tion. Just because it’s in Wash­ing­ton does not mean it reflects any­thing “national,” to my mind, and it gets no pub­lic fund­ing. Don’t get me started on this, as I’ve spent more hours than it would take to paint the Tower Bridge, debat­ing the odd­ness of this whole insti­tu­tion. But here in Lon­don, all such com­pli­ca­tions have been laid aside to cel­e­brate the fact that some 50 years ago, the Hol­la­days decided to buy art only by women, and when they dis­cov­ered that they could not do any research into what they’d bought because no one had writ­ten any­thing about these artists, they decided to open their col­lec­tion to the pub­lic and hope it spawned (always a good word to use if you get the chance) some schol­arly inter­est. Which it did, but by then fem­i­nist art his­tory had got well and truly underway.

Any­way, a cer­tain seg­ment of the Lon­don expat com­mu­nity, namely a large num­ber of Har­vard Busi­ness School female grad­u­ates who are chomp­ing at the bit to use their brains for some­thing grander than home­work super­vi­sion, has mobilised itself to bring Mrs. Hol­la­day here in the autumn and fete her. I won­der if she has the strength to with­stand the amount of fete-ing that is being planned. I tell you, these women have ENERGY. So I’ve been drafted in, first just as a per­son with a some­what murky rep­u­ta­tion for being “inter­ested in the arts” (I’ve told almost no one about the gallery or any­thing else for fear of being in just the posi­tion I’m now in with this group), but the truth leaked out. So I’m going to try to have a con­ver­sa­tion with my old friend — neme­sis — col­league Susan Fisher Ster­ling, who’s the Chief Cura­tor at the NMWA, about ways we might get the Lon­don group and the Wash­ing­ton group together. Recep­tions at the Amer­i­can Ambassador’s house, lec­tures at the Royal Acad­emy, an offi­cial web­site mar­ry­ing our two cul­tures which have such a “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” to one another. That phrase is almost a code here in Lon­don: the “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” between Amer­ica and Great Britain that has landed them, as they see it, in quite a diplo­matic pickle these days.

The meet­ing was actu­ally quite inter­est­ing, and I admire so much the kind of women who can go from an MBA to run­ning a house­hold, to no doubt being the pil­lars of their children’s school com­mu­ni­ties, to dress­ing up in their Jean Muir dresses and Manolo Blah­nik mules and sashay­ing forth in the name of right­ing the sex­ist wrongs of the art world. More power to them. One thing I did find instruc­tive and pro­foundly depress­ing: no one is using the word “fem­i­nist” ever EVER in these dis­cus­sions. In fact one woman said, “When I told some friends about this meet­ing, one of them said, ‘Isn’t it ghet­toiz­ing women artists to have projects where the only thing they have in com­mon is that they’re women?’ What do you all think of that?” I could hardly speak for hav­ing so much to say. It’s such a nasty, spe­cious lit­tle argu­ment but its appeal is unde­ni­able: that way everyone’s off the hook for acknowl­edg­ing inequity, because it would be sex­ist to try to right it! I merely said, with admirable restraint I think, “No more ghet­toiz­ing than an exhi­bi­tion of ‘just’ pho­tog­ra­phers. Does every show have to include paint­ing too?” I know women worry about paint­ing them­selves as vic­tims, if they acknowl­edge, or even posit, that their sex might make a dif­fer­ence in how they’re per­ceived or treated. But I think it can be dis­cussed with­out its being about vic­tim­iza­tion. I do think I got three book sales out of the dis­cus­sion, so now we can retire with my next roy­alty check.

I hate to say it, but I enjoyed my post-meeting jaunt around Por­to­bello Road even more than the meet­ing itself! I’ve found out that the # 23 bus goes right from my cor­ner of Oxford Street to the exact road I like best in Not­ting Hill, Elgin Cres­cent. And just around the cor­ner in Blenheim Cres­cent is pos­si­bly the most won­der­ful book­store in the world, “Books For Cooks.” I wanted one of every­thing! And there’s a cafe, but I didn’t sam­ple any­thing this visit. Next time. I came away ter­ri­bly intim­i­dated by the accom­plish­ments of peo­ple who can write really won­der­ful cook­books. I did indulge myself and pick up a copy of “I Am Almost Always Hun­gry,” by Lora Zaru­bin. The intro­duc­tion by Jay McIn­er­ney (of “Bright Lights, Big City” fame and almost no other kind of fame, poor boy) is pretty lame, in my opin­ion, being more about his impres­sions of Lora than the impor­tance of the book itself, but the recipes look divine. Every dish you can think of under the sun is rep­re­sented, from the sim­plest pos­si­ble sand­wich of toasted moz­zarella and tomato con­fit, to “fil­let of salmon cooked on a bed of sea salt in parch­ment with aro­matic spices.” And how about a lit­tle “roasted peaches with car­damom sugar and mas­car­pone sauce” to fin­ish it off? Beau­ti­fully illus­trated with pho­tographs by Tessa Traeger, just com­pletely intim­i­dat­ing. I con­soled myself by look­ing at the photo of the author on the dust jacket, hold­ing… her Jack Rus­sell ter­rier, who we are solemnly informed is called Bessie. OK, maybe I could churn out an incred­i­bly impres­sive cook­book of 198 pages if I weren’t also fol­low­ing around a small per­son of slightly more demand­ing needs than your aver­age ter­rier. Or maybe not. Too bad!

I also bought MFK Fisher’s clas­sic “How To Cook a Wolf,” which is pos­si­bly the best bed­time read­ing there is. You can’t go wrong with chap­ters like “How to Catch the Wolf,” “How To Have a Sleek Pelt,” and “How Not To Be An Earth­worm.” I love her obser­va­tion, “Prob­a­bly one of the most pri­vate things in the world is an egg before it is bro­ken.” I also bought Julian Barnes’s “The Pedant in the Kitchen,” which looks enter­tain­ing but I’ve never read it before. It’s prac­ti­cally against my reli­gion to buy a book I haven’t read yet. It’s almost as scary as adopt­ing a new kit­ten. Sure, I guess you could find a way to dis­pose of it if you got it home and you, gulp, didn’t like it. But it would make me really uncom­fort­able. So I choose my kit­tens and new books with care. The bit that sold me was, “The sole lib­erty I take with a recipe is to increase the quan­tity of an ingre­di­ent of which I par­tic­u­larly approve. That this is not an infal­li­ble pre­cept was con­firmed by an epi­cally filthy dish I once made involv­ing mack­erel, Mar­tini and bread­crumbs: the guests were more drunk than sated.”

I wan­dered around through the excel­lent farm­ers’ mar­ket in the Por­to­bello Road and bought so many veg­eta­bles that I spent the entire week­end devis­ing ways to stuff them down my family’s throats. Huge, bloomy arti­chokes, pos­si­bly 300 tiny, tiny toma­toes, a half dozen red pep­pers, avo­ca­does (I am addicted lately, and have con­vinced myself I have a potas­sium defi­ciency that can be addressed only with copi­ous amounts of sliced avo­cado, driz­zled with lemon juice and sprin­kled with really expen­sive salt), and most inter­est­ingly, two dif­fer­ent vari­eties of aspara­gus. Did you know that the aspara­gus sea­son in Great Britain is only five weeks long? Here, in the days of Lord Peter Wim­sey, they called it “Eng­lish grass,” and it could be served only in the fol­low­ing man­ner: lightly steamed just until it begins to smell like aspara­gus (since raw aspara­gus smells like noth­ing at all), and slathered with melted but­ter. The thing that intrigued me with the aspara­gus at the mar­ket was that some was fat and some was thin. Bunches of each, not mixed together. So being a dumb Amer­i­can I could ask the farmer why. After his ini­tial shock at being asked to pro­duce more ver­biage than the usual “that’ll be two pounds, my love” he came forth with the infor­ma­tion that the skinny ones are the ear­li­est stalks, and they’ve been har­vested in order to thin the rows. The fat ones are the ones that were left behind. So I bought some of each, got my allot­ted “my love,” and came home to see how they tasted dif­fer­ently. And they did. Avery and John and I agreed that while the “bite”, the feel, of the big stalks is nicer, the lit­tle ones had more fla­vor. So take your pick!

Today after I’ve found replace­ment shirts and paid my penance, I have absolutely noth­ing press­ing to do. I want to save a cou­ple of errands for John’s mom’s arrival, like going to the Royal Acad­emy Framers’ to get some glass replaced on a piece that broke some­where over the Atlantic Ocean. I think that will be a cool place. But wait a minute: I could take it now, and col­lect it with her. I think it’s just around the cor­ner from Pink, so I can kill two birds with one pashmina.

Doesn’t he look happy to you? Of course at the time he and his sis­ters were com­pletely maxed out on cat­nip, Avery’s gift from the vet as a reward for his good behav­ior. She also dis­cov­ered yes­ter­day that while you can’t hide a kitty Prozac in tuna, or smoked salmon, or cream cheese, you CAN hide it in broad day­light crushed in the palm of her hand mixed with cat­nip. Hon­estly, after all our sub­terfuge and John’s attempt at brute force (he has the bloody scratches to prove it), Avery sim­ply held the stuff out to him and he ate it. What cheek. We can but hope now that he calms down. I’ve been like the medieval plague mas­ters, run­ning around spray­ing every sur­face I can think of with happy-making pher­e­mones, like sin­is­ter incense at an exor­cism. I feel an utter fool, but there you go: the things we do for our children.

I was so impressed at Avery’s skat­ing les­son yes­ter­day! Her instruc­tor Zoia has taught her all sorts of tricks, with names like “lemons” and “uppy uppy uppy.” She ended up stay­ing a really long time, watch­ing Coco’s and Angelica’s pri­vate lessons, and then when they were over, the three girls acted as if they’d been let out of prison and just went around and around (being enjoined sev­eral times by the “rink min­ders” to go only “anti-clockwise,” not ran­domly run­ning into peo­ple), hold­ing hands and gen­er­ally act­ing as a sort of benign men­ace to the rest of the skaters. I hung out with Angelica’s babysit­ter Fati and Coco’s mum Alli­son, and we traded sto­ries about our com­pletely remark­able chil­dren. When we all emerged, it was pour­ing down rain and Avery and I ran to the skate store to get a skate bag, to find it inex­plic­a­bly closed. What sort of vaca­tion day is Tues­day? Dis­con­so­lately onto a bus and home, wet and cranky, but a nice cosy evening at home with but­ter tomato pasta sauce and a baguette. We’ve been watch­ing a really enter­tain­ing tele­vi­sion show called “The Great British Menu,” where pairs of chefs from the var­i­ous cor­ners of Great Britain get together and com­pete in front of judges with an appe­tiser, a fish course, a main course and a pud­ding. So you end up with a Welsh win­ner, an North­ern Ire­land win­ner, and so on. Then they will com­pete to dis­cover who is awarded the chance to cook the Queen’s “offi­cial” birth­day lunch in June. Yes, just like famous dead peo­ple who need their birth­days to fall on a Mon­day to cre­ate a long week­end, the Queen has a real birth­day and an offi­cial one. The menus are unbe­liev­ably com­plex, intend­ing to reflect local ingre­di­ents and tra­di­tions. Last night’s involved one chef’s crouch­ing over a rainy, nasty beach some­where in North Wales, pick­ing slimy sea­weed to cook down and mix with oats and pars­ley and deep fry. Eeew. The poor Queen! Any­way, watch it if you get a chance. When the judges are forced to down por­tions of cock­les in a rasp­berry broth accom­pa­nied by lamb carpac­cio in a lime and liver sauce on a bed of sea­weed, you’ll be grate­ful for your plate of pasta.

Finally the rib­bons have come back! These were such a fix­ture of Avery’s room in New York, proudly added to each week­end upon return­ing from a show. But they’ve spent the last four months crowded on a bul­letin board stuffed in a cor­ner of the never-frequented guest room, a low pri­or­ity com­pared to fig­ur­ing out book­shelves, cloth­ing stor­age, how to keep Wim­sey from using her pil­low as a sec­ond lit­ter box. Then yes­ter­day John, in a des­per­ate bid to keep life worth liv­ing even if he couldn’t go to India, had the brain­wave that if we strung a nice rib­bon around her bed­posts, it would give her a place to dis­play her beloved “rosettes,” as they’re known here. And did you know that in Eng­land, red is first place? Nei­ther did I. So yes­ter­day while John and Avery were munch­ing on a “gour­man­dise” from Paul Patis­serie in the High Street (it’s a cus­tardy ver­sion of pain au choco­lat, if you can imag­ine the indul­gence), I was at Les Rouleaux across the road, a shop devoted entirely to… rib­bons. Of every descrip­tion you can pos­si­bly imag­ine. Oh, there’s the occa­sional pom-pom or bit of vel­vet rop­ing, but mostly it’s rib­bons as far as the eye can see. A favorite haunt of Avery’s, even though any­thing but plain green is ver­boten at King’s Col­lege. I bought what I thought would be a bit too much red rib­bon, hav­ing esti­mated how much was needed by get­ting John to test the bed length against his con­sid­er­able wingspan. (What a treat to have him around for pickup, I must say, as well.)

At home I strung the rib­bon along and while I cooked din­ner Avery arranged her rosettes, in a com­plex order of event, impor­tance of event, level of achieve­ment, etc. Plus on each side she hung one of her birth­day party favor rosettes that says “Avery’s 9th Birth­day Party, NYC 2005″. John thought it so funny that she arranged them fac­ing in, toward her! “Well,” she defended her­self, “it gets really bor­ing in bed, try­ing to get to sleep. Now I have some­thing to look at.” So cosy! I love this pic­ture because you can see all the things that make her room her room: all the books, dolls, horsey fig­ures, and a view of the gar­den. Plus if you look closely, a Tacy facey down low.

Wim­sey sur­vived his visit to the Hyde Park Vet­eri­nary Clinic quite well and it’s been deter­mined that along with the what­ever waft­ing out of the elec­tri­cal out­lets, he also needs, dare I say it, kitty prozac. Well, try stuff­ing a pill down this manic cat’s throat. It didn’t hap­pen yes­ter­day and I can’t imag­ine it will hap­pen today. But he seems bet­ter with the plug-ins, so we’ll hope for the best.

Today I shall meet up with Avery’s class at the Queensway Skat­ing Cen­tre, because appar­ently if I do, she can stay after­wards and skate more. It turns out that Ava and Clio have been doing this all year and I never knew. Or Avery never cared until today. But it will make a lit­tle change of pace and I’ll see if I can get a good pic­ture of the three girls.

Yes, Lord Peter Wim­sey has slipped into recidi­vism over the week­end and is show­ing signs of a decline into ner­vous agi­ta­tion once more. He has anger issues with his sib­lings, appar­ently, and every­one has come under fire, even the nor­mally imper­vi­ous Hermione. So it’s back to the vet late this after­noon, after pickup. Avery can come along and hold his hand. Per­haps it’s time to drop the cosy aro­mather­apy and move into some­thing really effec­tive, like scotch.

And I have an extra hus­band at home today. He was meant to be in India, but for rea­sons lost in the mists of offi­cial­dom, his visa never came through, so he’s perched dis­con­so­lately on the sofa, look­ing oddly out of place on a Mon­day, mut­ter­ing under his breath and feel­ing ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed. Then I came into my study and here is a sad lit­tle arti­cle sit­ting in the printer, all about Ban­ga­lore. Poor guy. But Avery was thrilled to have him here this morn­ing to come with us to school. She was swing­ing her new ten­nis racket and look­ing men­ac­ingly at the sky, dar­ing it to rain and spoil her first les­son at school. Last Mon­day it didn’t so much rain as look as if it COULD all day, so who­ever was in charge can­celled the les­son and boy was she unpop­u­lar for the rest of the week. We have to hope for bet­ter things today.

My agenda today is sin­gu­larly dull: I must put all your names on our change of address card envelopes, not that you’re pant­ing to mail some­thing to me in this day of elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but you never know. Then I have scads of pho­tos to put in my album to bring it up to date after Avery’s birth­day party in Novem­ber. I do this purely for John’s mother, who loves noth­ing more than sit­ting on the floor of the liv­ing room and leaf­ing through album after album, look­ing earnestly at pic­tures she’s seen a thou­sand times, not to men­tion that she took most of them! But this time it will be more fun, because we’ve taken them all and it will all be new. His par­ents are due to arrive in 10 days or so for a long-awaited visit, which will be a spe­cial treat. Fun to show them around our lives. But in the mean­time, these tasks make for rather a limp­ing sort of admin­is­tra­tive day, punc­tu­ated only by laun­dry, whooppee!

But to fin­ish about the horse show. The names of the horses are like music: Cortaflex Amber du Mon­toix, Sodexco Van Essen, Saffier, Van Der Brand Kleek, Roal Von Raphael. We actu­ally rec­og­nized lots of horses and rid­ers from the Sheffield Show, and I can imag­ine you’d eas­ily develop alle­giances if you went to a series of events. And the shop­ping oppor­tu­ni­ties were unbe­liev­able: on either side of sev­eral long grassy avenues were white can­vas tents filled with STUFF. It was very like the Hamp­tons Clas­sic in that way. Had we been in the mar­ket we could have bought Avery an entire hunt habit, com­plete with silk-lined jacket with vel­vet pip­ing. There were sad­dle shops from France, bri­dle com­pa­nies from Italy, every kind of horsey cloth­ing (I mean for peo­ple), jew­elry, car­ry­ing case, boot, you name it, that you could pos­si­bly want. And the hats! You could go to Ascot straight from the show. My favorite item how­ever is the “ship­ping fuzzy.” I want to have a pony and a trailer just so I can buy some ship­ping fuzzies, which are squishy sheepskin-like pads you attach to the pony’s bri­dle so that her face does not get scratched dur­ing the jour­ney in the box to the show. And the peo­ple! There were spe­cial shiny badges that denoted one as “Groom,” “Rider,” “Press,” and most cov­eted prob­a­bly, “Owner.” Some bor­der­line smack­able peo­ple just ooz­ing lux­ury with too much jew­elry and spoiled chil­dren. Lots of tweed and vel­vet and high shiny boots. And tiny, tiny lit­tle girls in reg­u­la­tion yel­low jodh­purs and stubby plaits show­ing under their vel­vet hel­mets, end­ing in lit­tle red rib­bon bows. Appar­ently all rib­bons must be red and sub­dued, unlike the vari­ety and size of the bows at Amer­i­can shows. Very sweet.

The best event was last, the Young Rider Accu­mu­la­tor Show Jump­ing. I remem­bered it from the British Open in Sheffield, the event where each jump is worth pro­gres­sively more than the last and at the end there is a ridicu­lously high jump that can gar­ner the rider 20 points if she’s suc­cess­ful, and get 20 points taken away if she’s not. The drama! There’s noth­ing more excit­ing than a rider who gets all the way through all ten jumps with­out knock­ing any­thing over (and it’s against the clock, which makes it even more nail-biting), and then the announcer won­ders over the loud­speaker, “Will Gemma take the risk? Is the Joker going to make or break this course?” and then we all hang in breath­less silence to see if she goes for the high one, and… a per­fect score! Once again, nearly all girls, and then one won­ders where they all go in the tran­si­tion from Young to Mature rider. A mys­tery to me. And where are all the men train­ing? There aren’t any at Avery’s barn in Wim­ble­don! I mean there are men, but no boys. Some­one must explain it to me someday.

Just at the end of the Accu­mu­la­tor, a light rain began to fall and in the sky above the arena was an enor­mous rain­bow! A fit­ting end to a really excit­ing day. I sped off to the food tent with pock­ets full of money and came away with a sub­limely mature ched­dar cheese wedge, a lit­tle jar of amaz­ing tiny balls of Saint Mar­wenne goat’s cheese sus­pended in spicy sun­flower oil, from the Neet Foods peo­ple at Tre­lay Farm, Marham­church, Bude, Corn­wall. I love addresses like that. The brochure for the Cor­nish farm reveals, “Dur­ing the Cru­sade the Duke of Corn­wall was kid­napped and duly held for ran­som by the Sara­cens. The Sara­cens ran­som demands were met by the peo­ple of Corn­wall who paid for his release with 15 cir­cu­lar Gold Bezant coins. To this day the Cross of Corn­wall depicts 15 cir­cu­lar Gold Bezant coins for this trans­ac­tion. For our Saint Mar­wenne cir­cu­lar balls of cream cheese, we demand noth­ing in return except your plea­sure and appre­ci­a­tion of their dis­tinc­tive taste.”

Well, that and two pounds fifty pence per jar, but who’s being picky now.

Also I picked up a big round sour­dough bread from Dayles­ford Organic, and some beau­ti­ful Scot­tish smoked salmon from The Organic Smoke­house, Clun­bury Hall, Clun­bury, Craven Arms, Shrop­shire. Now why can’t we have addresses like that in Amer­ica? I’m sure it makes the food taste bet­ter. The Smoke­house peo­ple, Michael and Deb­bie Leviseur, were lovely, ask­ing how the jump­ing was going, had the Queen looked to be hav­ing a good day out? “She were here yes­ter­day, which was a treat,” the lady said as she wrapped my salmon. “Sur­rounded by secu­rity she were, and the reporters! You couldn’t shake a stick at them, they were so thick around her.” And the man piped up, “‘Twere a great plea­sure to see her, wasn’t it Deb­bie? You feel as if you know her, don’t you, from all them pic­tures you see in the mag­a­zines. And there is she is, as per­fect as can be. Now Prince Philip, he were here later that after­noon. Just in a tweed cap as I might be myself, all alone. No one noticed him a bit.”

I whee­dled a closed farm­stand into part­ing with a bunch of per­fect toma­toes on the vine, and then they didn’t let me pay for them! The sweet owner, one C.J. Shel­drake of Beau­mont Farm, Priest Hill, Old Wind­sor, Berk­shire, averred, “No, it’s a plea­sure, and a proper end to the day. You enjoy, now.” We trudged rather wearily past the wisteria-covered walls sur­round­ing the cas­tle grounds, and caught the train to Water­loo, then the bus to Mar­ble Arch where we col­lapsed with our pic­nic din­ner and an early bed.

Oh, what fun we had! First of all, Wind­sor is a beau­ti­ful spot. John and I had been there years ago as new­ly­weds, but I didn’t remem­ber much about it beyond that the Royal Stan­dard flies above if the Queen is in res­i­dence, and the Union Jack if she is away. Well, the flag was fly­ing yes­ter­day, and as you can see from the tiny, tiny yel­low blob in the pic­ture above, she was at the show! Never an ardent Roy­al­ist, I must nev­er­the­less con­fess to a def­i­nite thrill at being 75 yards away from the monarch.

I was espe­cially pleased at the day because it com­bined Avery’s and John’s favorite thing (horses) with my favorite thing (food). This year was the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Royal Wind­sor Food and Drink Fes­ti­val, a cel­e­bra­tion of all things organic and local, in a nod to the Prince of Wales’ obses­sion with healthy, nat­ural food in which I com­pletely am in agree­ment. I had to make a men­tal note, how­ever, not to be an igno­rant ass and ask for avo­ca­dos to go with the excel­lent local toma­toes, or a lemon for my Lon­don gin. Such is the global super­mar­ket mind­set into which I have lazily fallen.

We started out with a beef­burger from the incom­pa­ra­ble Dayles­ford Organic farmshop, unfor­tu­nately well done for all those tire­some peo­ple who go weak at the knees at what they think is dan­ger­ously under­cooked beef, but there you go. It was tasty any­way, served with real mustard-seed mus­tard (labelled in an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally French-tolerating way, “moutarde”) and fried onions, in a floury bap, which is a nice soft British roll not to be men­tioned in the same breath as their awful spongy Amer­i­can com­pan­ions, sorry to be a snob. Then we strolled over to the Cas­tle Arena to catch the very tail end of the Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onship in which our favorite from Sheffield, Robert Smith, won hand­ily. Sweet 17-year-old Han­nah Paul came in sec­ond, which must surely bode very well for her future. Then John couldn’t resist any longer: the whole event was spon­sored by Land Rover, and his radar was already out in full flow, hav­ing spot­ted at least three thou­sand Defend­ers on the short walk from the train to the show. So we mean­dered over to some­thing called “The Land Rover Expe­ri­ence,” where really goofy peo­ple as enthu­si­as­tic as John (there were sur­pris­ingly enough to make quite a long queue!) got to sit next to a pro­fes­sional dri­ver on a closed course (you always hear that in car things, don’t you) and go up and down and around and hang nearly side­wise and do all the other mag­nif­i­cent things that only a Land Rover can do. The poor boy who wouldn’t ordi­nar­ily queue to be given a thou­sand pounds had no prob­lem stand­ing in the hot sun, sand­wiched in between a smok­ing teenager and a cou­ple who clearly should have sim­ply got a room. What did they think they were going to be able to do in the Land Rover with the pro­fes­sional dri­ver along for the ride? Avery opted to wait with John while I did a quick spin through the foodie hall, and it was mag­nif­i­cent! I sam­pled so many things that my stom­ach was wail­ing in protest. Chilli crack­ers, smoked mack­erel pate, native Ched­dar cheese, Wilt­shire ham, straw­ber­ries and cream, smoked salmon and cream cheese, gin­ger snaps! I drew the line, how­ever, at ale, wine or cham­pagne. Com­pletely over­whelmed by sheer choice and want­ing to buy some of every­thing, I wad­dled back to where the two were still in the queue and we agreed that John would ring me on my mobile when he was close to the front and Avery and I would come back from wher­ever we were.

We ended up at the Shet­land Pony Grand Nation­als, which is the most hilar­i­ous, seem­ingly out of con­trol event. Dozens of tiny Shet­land ponies with their fluffy feet all line up at a start­ing spot, rid­den by small chil­dren, and then the gun goes off and they ALL race together over jumps, around the arena, fast as light­ning. This event was open to all of Great Britain, so there were Irish, North­ern Irish, Welsh, Scot­tish and Eng­lish lit­tle rid­ers. You would not believe the speed, and at such a low level! Just on Avery’s sight line. Pretty thrilling, I must say, and the chil­dren were so proud. Just as it ended John called, and we raced back to Land Rover World, to find that he had been plucked from the line as the one sin­gle per­son and was already in a car, with some ran­dom fam­ily, about to tip over and be squashed like a bee­tle. But no, all was well, and he was beam­ing from ear to ear when he got out.

Then the three of us piled over to the arena where Her Majesty the Queen’s Chal­lenge Cup For Ser­vices Team Jump­ing (what a mouth­ful!) was to have its com­pe­ti­tion. An amaz­ing sight: three by three horses and rid­ers, each team rep­re­sent­ing some spe­cific branch of “all serv­ing Offi­cers and Other Ranks from any Unit, Hunt, Polo, Rid­ing, or Sad­dle Club of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army, Royal Air Force, and Mounted Police, and the Aux­il­iary mem­bers of those Ser­vices… to be rid­den in uni­form.” It was absolutely glo­ri­ous. Phases one and two of the com­pe­ti­tion had already hap­pened, so we were left on Sat­ur­day with the final com­pe­ti­tion in which just one rep­re­sen­ta­tive of each team went the course of jumps. But first, oh my. All the team mem­bers came majes­ti­cally into the arena, warm­ing up, all in their mag­nif­i­cent uni­forms, some com­plete with truly funny hats, all sad­dle pads marked with the team name. And women! Since 1996 they’ve been allowed. Part­way through the warmup, there was a hush. “Ladies and Gen­tle­man, Her Majesty the Queen has gra­ciously entered the arena.” Every­thing stopped and “God Save the Queen” began to play on the loud­speaker and it was really excit­ing to lean down and tell Avery to put her hands to her sides and stand straight and tall. Even the elderly pen­sioner cou­ple behind me who had clev­erly brought fold­ing chairs rose solemnly and stood at atten­tion. Finally the song was over and the Queen sat down, and every­one else who had a seat sat down, and the com­pe­ti­tion began. Great jump­ing, really high and scary. After that was the com­pletely silly and time-wasting “House­hold Cav­alry Best Turned Out Trooper,” which is in effect a horse beauty con­test. No actual high heels and bathing suits were pro­duced, but all the com­peti­tors did was walk toward the Queen’s Box in an orderly fash­ion, turn towards her and… stand there, look­ing nicely “turned out.” Believe you me, they were all fancy. No unto­ward poop­ing as so many of Avery’s ponies have done in com­pe­ti­tion, all fluffy manes and tails, superbly glossy coats and the rid­ers had swords!

OK, I must go tend to my pork chops (pur­chased at the Fes­ti­val from Dayles­ford!), aspara­gus and fes­tive hol­i­day dress­ing, although there is no hol­i­day. Wait, wait, it’s Mother’s Day! It isn’t any such thing here, so I must remem­ber to call my two dar­ling moth­ers and say “We love you.” I have a spe­cial present for each on order, but the Royal Mail deliv­ers for no Amer­i­can hol­i­day, so I must be late. More on the show tomorrow.

I couldn’t resist post­ing this pic­ture, although it’s not a great photo per se. But the hat is so cute. You should just see about 20 of the lit­tle gulls run­ning along with their hats, swing­ing their ruck­sacks (do not even think about call­ing them back­packs, you Amer­i­can ninnies).

I’m at my desk in com­plete denial that my func­tion for the day is meant to be installing the indi­vid­ual shelves in my book­cases in my study, and fill­ing them with the mys­te­ri­ous con­tents of all the boxes still on my floor. I just don’t feel like it! Avery and I felt that our morn­ing cud­dle this morn­ing was quite a nice lit­tle cocoon from which it was entirely unnec­es­sary to emerge to go to school. How­ever. This evening her beloved babysit­ter Erin (a dead ringer for Katie Couric, which is quite odd, right down to the gig­gle) will come and do cart­wheels with her and eat fish fin­gers, while John and I go off to the King’s Col­lege Form Four admin­is­tra­tive meet­ing, at which no doubt major deci­sions regard­ing Avery’s future will be announced. Mostly I think the staff are befud­dled as to what to do with a child whose ver­bal skills are off the chart, but who shows no marked bril­liance at any­thing else. A mys­tery. But all the par­ents are going and so shall we.

OK, no more excuses. The shelves beckon and so off I go.

Don’t say any­thing. Come on.

Last time, I promise. Give me a break, it’s a pic­ture of him in Tribeca. Just one lit­tle pic­ture and I promise I’m finished.

OK, that’s over. On to the sub­ject line of this post: a com­pletely new one for me! Sit­ting in the taxi com­ing back from tak­ing Anna home, I heard the radio announcer talk­ing about the World Cup this sum­mer. “Sven Goren-Erikkson has named his team for this summer’s effort in the World Cup. After the break, we’ll give you the list. Who is over the moon, and who’s sick as a parrot?”

OK, as silly as “over the moon” sounds to a novice in Eng­land, at least it’s jolly famil­iar non­sense lan­guage for “really happy.” There­fore, one assumes that to be “sick as a par­rot” means really, really dis­ap­pointed, but… from where can this expres­sion derive? Are par­rots par­tic­u­larly sick, when they’re sick? Very odd.

I feel bad, now, that I gave you two such dif­fi­cult recipes. So to make up for it, here’s a super easy entire din­ner that we had over the week­end, thus pro­vid­ing me with left­over pork for the fried rice the next evening (and more than enough for pork sand­wiches in between, if you can bear that much pork two days in a row — I cer­tainly can).

Pork Roast with Pota­toes Anna and Roast Beet­root

1 2 lb fil­let of pork
1 bunch beets (usu­ally 4)
four large white pota­toes (not bak­ing, though)
1 bunch rose­mary
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 tbsps olive oil
salt and pep­per
1 stick but­ter
3 tbsps bal­samic vinegar

An hour and a half before you want to eat, cut the tops off each beet and wrap them as a group in foil. Put them in a hot, hot oven (425).

Then get a cou­ple of gro­cery bags you’ve been sav­ing for when you scoop out the lit­ter box and put one inside the other (bags, I mean, not the lit­ter box). Then put in the pork roast, the rose­mary, the olive oil and gar­lic, salt and pep­per in the bag and shake and squeeze until you’re sure the roast is coated. Leave until the beets have 45 min­utes left to cook.

At the 45-minute moment, put your roast in a foil-lined pan (then when you’re clean­ing up you just ball up the foil and throw it away, and put the dish on its blame­less shelf wher­ever) and put it in the oven, tak­ing care to put the bunch of rose­mary under­neath it. Then quickly peel and thinly slice your pota­toes, or hap­pily run them through a slic­ing blade on your cuisi­nart (my OCD self delights in the hand-slicing, which is sav­ing me thou­sands of dol­lars in ther­apy). Then melt the but­ter in a heavy skil­let and arrange the potato slices in as even a fanned series of lay­ers as you can. Salt and pep­per them and put them over a low flame. LEAVE THEM. Do not suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion to stir, poke, turn or in any other way inter­fere with their lives at this point. You can just sit around in the kitchen read­ing your book for about 20 minutes.

Then, put a plate over the skil­let and turn the pota­toes out upside down. Then slide them back into the skil­let to cook on the other side. Again, resist the temp­ta­tion to play with them! The point is to give your­self a break while also let­ting them cook undis­turbed so they’ll come out all nice and intact and crispy.

Finally, when the beets are done, take them and the roast out of the oven. Let the roast rest while you peel the beets and cut them up, and splash them with bal­samic vine­gar. Then carve the roast and slide the pota­toes onto the plate again.

Done. It’s easy peasy, as they say here, and com­pletely com­fort­ing and GOOD for you. Well, there is that stick of but­ter, but don’t be picky, please.

That’s one of Avery’s and my favorite lines from the Lau­rie Col­win book “Fam­ily Hap­pi­ness.” Two Euro­pean immi­grants are shar­ing child­hood songs, in Ger­man, and trans­lat­ing them for their fam­i­lies. After one par­tic­u­larly silly song, though, Klaro says, “There is no trans­la­tion for this song. It is merely some inco­her­ent rav­ings about food.”

So I have had a very foody few days, and have been work­ing hard on both my own cook­book and the edit­ing job I’m meant to be doing for Gladys Taber’s work, for her grand­daugh­ter Anne Colby in Con­necti­cut. I thought that in addi­tion to keep­ing you up to date on how rid­ing is going in Wim­ble­don, and how we spent our week­end, it might be nice to give you a cou­ple of excel­lent recipes that my friend Susan and I have been shar­ing and com­ment­ing on. That’s the beauty of food. Some­one invites you for lunch and you love what she serves, so you ask for the recipe. Then you get to nat­ter on in your email exchange about not just the recipe, but what’s hap­pen­ing in Form Four at King’s Col­lege, and what I might say at the Royal Acad­emy where Susan works, when I lec­ture on my sculp­tor. We also get to trade hus­band sto­ries and go off on tan­gents about odd peo­ple we know in com­mon. Then you invite her to din­ner and she likes what you made, and it all gets started again. It’s so much more than just eat­ing. And every time I make this curry dish, or she makes my fried rice, we will tell the peo­ple we’re feed­ing all about each other, and for the moment I’ll be in Susan’s kitchen with her, and she’ll be in mine. I love that about food.

I’m not going to lie to you: both of these recipes require that you like mess­ing about with food. They’re not short­cuts and they’re not labor-free. They also have two other things in com­mon: once you’ve made them, you’ll never want to have the takeaway/order-out ver­sions of either of them again. And they’re great for left­overs, which helps with the effort you’re putting in. These are recipes for a day when you have some time early on, per­haps, and then a chunk of time when you can’t be in the kitchen, and then some time right before you want to eat.

Susan’s Moroc­can Chicken Curry

2 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps but­ter
2 onions, chopped
4 car­rots, chopped or grated
3 bone­less whole chicken breasts, well trimmed and cut into bite-size chunks
2 apples, coarsely chopped
4 oranges, squeezed and pulp included, but no seeds
1 large chunk of fresh gin­ger, peeled & grated
1 tsp gin­ger pow­der
4 tbsps sweet curry pow­der, not hot
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup white wine
2 cups sin­gle cream

In a large, deep saucepan, melt the but­ter with the olive oil. Add the onions, then the car­rots and let them cook/soften a bit (as for a risotto). Then add the chicken chunks, stir and brown a bit. Then add the apple, the orange juice, the gin­ger, the curry, the stock and the wine. Sim­mer for about 10 min­utes, then add the cream. In total, for this to be prop­erly cooked, it should gen­tly sim­mer for about 45 min­utes. You can then re-heat it before eat­ing, or once cooled, put it away in the fridge until the next day.

This is a very flex­i­ble recipe – you can vary how fine or coarse every­thing gets chopped, and you can vary the fla­vors accord­ing to taste (more orange, spicier curry, etc.) Some­times I have also used some plain yogurt in addi­tion to cream. Serve with Bas­mati Rice (always steamed in one and a half times the amount of water as rice).

Kristen’s Fes­tive Fried Rice

An Unde­ter­mined Amount of Peanut Oil
1 red onion, diced
three cloves gar­lic, diced
1 big chunk gin­ger, peeled and chopped
2 cups of left­over pork, chicken, beef or prawns, cut in bite-size pieces (more than one of these if you like)

1 cup each: chopped broc­coli, car­rots, red pep­pers, sugar snap peas, green beans (diced small)
1 bunch green or “salad” onions, sliced thin
1 hand­ful bean sprouts

three eggs, beaten thor­oughly
dash sesame oil
soy sauce to taste

2 cups bas­mati rice

First, put the rice to cook with three cups water and salt. Then, in a hot wok, cover the bot­tom with peanut oil and saute the gar­lic, gin­ger, onion and meat until hot through, and the gar­lic, etc. are nicely soft­ened, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a really big bowl. Then saute the broc­coli, car­rots, pep­per, sugar snap peas and green beans until just cooked, and remove also with slot­ted spoon to join the meat. Add more peanut oil to the wok if needed, and a dash of sesame oil. Then saute the salad onions till soft, and just briefly toss in the bean sprouts, then remove all to the big bowl. Take this chance to check the rice, which will cook in about 20 min­utes. Fluff it up and keep the lid off to encour­age extra steam to escape and dry the rice up a bit.

Heat the oil again and throw in the eggs, scram­bling very quickly and keep­ing them mov­ing con­stantly until they are bro­ken up. Now, toss in every­thing from the big bowl, and the rice, and fluff all until hot through.

Serve with plenty of soy sauce.

So there you have it! Two really good things to eat. If you leave out the meat from the rice dish, it’s an absolutely guilt-free, nearly fat-free veg­e­tar­ian option, good for when you’re feel­ing guilty from… all that creamy chicken curry!

As you can see from the above photo, Avery did not ride the wacky Bis­cuit on Thurs­day; instead as a sort of vaca­tion she rode Cookie (yes, there’s an after-school-snack theme in the names, I agree). But that sim­ple sen­tence masks the sheer hell­ish annoy­ance that was get­ting to Wim­ble­don on a Thurs­day after­noon after school, when tem­per­a­tures in Lon­don had risen to an unholy 80 degrees with no warn­ing, and half the tube lines shut down because some­thing essen­tial was threat­en­ing to melt. I picked Avery up at school where she began what was to be a recur­ring lament about how tired she was. Not con­ducive to a pleas­ant trip to do some­thing I had absolutely no inter­est in to begin with, with sweat pour­ing down our faces as we strug­gled with half of the Lon­don com­muters in exis­tence. Why did every­one want to go to Wim­ble­don? And of course on the way back there was an equal num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling to get to Cen­tral Lon­don. I wanted to wave my magic wand and tell all the peo­ple on both ends of the mis­er­able jour­ney to stay where they were for heaven’s sake. One of those days when one’s inter­est in humanity’s con­tin­u­ing wanes.

We got there finally and she rode off across the Com­mon, alas with­out me since her usual instruc­tor who gives us a ride to the arena was not there and I didn’t have the energy to walk the three or so miles to fol­low her. Instead I wan­dered around Bay­ley and Sage spend­ing money on things like tape­nade, porcini-stuffed tortellini and other things you buy when you’re a) killing time and b) starv­ing. The out­door beer gar­den of the Dog and Fox pub adja­cent to the sta­ble filled with unap­peal­ing youngish white Eng­lish­men with pasty faces and badly-cut suits. Ick. The barn staff pre­pared for a “train­ing din­ner” that was to con­sist of any­thing and every­thing thrown on the bar­bie, so I was smoked out from the bench where I had been try­ing to read my tacky tabloid news­pa­per (learn­ing that a sin­gu­larly hideous Picasso had sold for $52 mil­lion at Sotheby’s. The sec­ond most pricey paint­ing by that Span­ish lout was “reputed” to have been bought by Las Vegas hote­lier Steve Wynn, and I was in the slightly cool posi­tion of know­ing that he had bought it, because in the hey­day of my gallery when I sold him an enor­mous Miriam Schapiro can­vas he indi­cated his ulti­mate goal of pos­sess­ing said Picasso paint­ing no mat­ter what the cost).

Finally Avery returned, and far from hav­ing had a lovely relax­ing ride on a not-insane pony, she had been forced to con­trol a rabid Cookie when she was attacked and bit­ten by an off-lead dog on the trail. Can it never be calm! We sweated our way home on one bus, one train, another bus. John came out of the house to meet us on the pave­ment and in answer to his cheery cocktail-in-hand greet­ing, “So how was it?” I merely handed Avery and all her clob­ber to him and said, “Don’t ask, here is your child.” Mean­ing the sweaty, exhausted, filthy, cranky one, as opposed to my child, who is always charming.

So much for the Thurs­day after­noon expe­ri­ence. Once a week, on the week­end, WITH her father, is quite enough barn, I opined.

I’ve gone shop­ping! I bought a tiny lit­tle pair of sort of full­ish shorts, that look like a skirt when they’re on. Dark gray blue, all the rage. And a lit­tle brown peas­anty top, and a pair of black “foot­less tights,” which sim­ply scream 1986 to me, but hey, they worked back then and they work now. They will be so cute under a longish tunic that I have been sav­ing for just such a devel­op­ment. I went to the French Con­nec­tion UK, whose acronym in adver­tise­ments always causes Avery to screw her eyes shut and say “bad word, bad word.” Avery spent Fri­day night at Anna’s house, in advance of the big birth­day party the next day, so John and I had quite the most divine Indian din­ner out EVER. A lovely, swelle­gant place around the cor­ner called Deya. A lit­tle com­pli­men­tary starter of a teacup-sized por­tion of lentil soup, with a tem­pura mush­room sus­pended over the top from a tooth­pick laid across! Very clever. Then onto a crab fried rice with sweet­corn (no! it was good!), black truf­fles and corian­der, then a chicken dish that was good but not crazy good, and creamed spinach and saf­fron pota­toes. I asked so many ques­tions of the waiter that finally he and his maitre d’ were hud­dled by the kitchen look­ing at me as if I were Gael Greene come to Lon­don, and after that we got star treat­ment! I must be a famous restau­rant critic in heavy dis­guise! What fun. And so nice to have a Date.

Sat­ur­day we bit the bul­let and assem­bled the sup­ple­men­tary book­shelves from John Lewis. My lack of both man­ual dex­ter­ity and spa­tial rela­tions stunned even my hus­band, who must be used to it by now. But tomor­row I plan to spend the day fill­ing the two in my study and thus emp­ty­ing the last of the hor­rid mov­ing boxes. Then I can hang pic­tures on my wall and be all fin­ished with the “I just arrived” look I’ve got so sick of. Every­thing has to be nice for the Fri­day Form Four cof­fee morn­ing here. I’m quite nervous!

I almost for­got my best story of all. Last night Avery and I were watch­ing one of my favorite movies ever, “Strong Poi­son” by Dorothy L. Say­ers. Part of the plot involved a fake medium pre­tend­ing to speak to those who have “crossed over,” and those “wait­ing for the Great Change.” “What Great Change is that?” Avery asked. “Well, some peo­ple believe that when die, you don’t just die, but you pass over into another realm. Some of these peo­ple think it’s Heaven, and some peo­ple think you move into another body,” I explained. “Oh, right. Do you believe in heaven, Mommy?” I said, “I would cer­tainly like to think that when you die, you don’t just stop exist­ing at all, but I’m not too sure what hap­pens. What do you think?” Avery pon­dered a moment. “I think that you live a life of per­pet­ual thought. Just think­ing, end­lessly.” I objected, “But wouldn’t you get awfully hun­gry, and then you wouldn’t be able to con­cen­trate?” “No, you wouldn’t have any body needs, because I don’t think you would keep your body.”

“You know what,” I mused, “Mamoo used to won­der what would hap­pen when she got to heaven and had to choose between Grandpa, who died so long ago, and Lon, who she’s been so hap­pily mar­ried to for so long.” Avery was uncon­cerned. “I am pretty sure that if there is a heaven, it’s not nearly so strict about things like that. I don’t think there’s any rule about bigamy in heaven.”

To try to keep up with my daughter’s intel­lect, I have been try­ing to open my mind to some great British play­wrights, so I started with a screen­writer for “Spooks” called Howard Bren­ton. His com­men­tary on the DVDs was ter­ri­bly eru­dite but also funny, and for such an intel­lec­tual pow­er­house (with over 40 plays under his belt) I thought he didn’t take him­self too seri­ously. So I ordered “The Romans in Britain,” in a col­lec­tion of his early work, and boy am I out of prac­tice as far as stretch­ing my thoughts. Very dark, very intense, but worth a try. Pip says that I will enjoy it more if I read it aloud, but I think that might just mark my descent from the merely odd to the truly loony. Any­way, give it a try.