Yes, after early minor dis­as­ters like for­get­ting the Blue Shirt that would iden­tify Avery as a Curie house mem­ber, and the school’s not let­ting her bring her pic­nic lunch to the park, Curie ral­lied and brought home the Sports Day tro­phy! It was a truly glo­ri­ous sum­mer day in Regent’s Park, per­fectly blue skies, the nice fresh green of June leaves before they’ve been robbed of their glory by traf­fic smog, here in our urban par­adise. I hadn’t real­ized the extent of the com­pet­i­tive spirit among the houses at King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School, nor the degree to which the fathers got involved. It was pretty funny to see them all in their proper busi­ness suits and ties, glued to their Black­ber­ries and tex­ting away, no doubt chang­ing the course of British com­merce as they did so, only to drop them on the grass and shout “Go Curie! Crush Nightin­gale! Send Franklin back where they came from!” when­ever their pre­cious sprouts in blue stepped up to the line. As you can see from Avery’s expres­sion, it was all about win­ning. Well, in fact she didn’t, but Jade’s father observed, “Not from lack of deter­mi­na­tion.” It was a great day, watch­ing the “ris­ing threes” run their tiny lit­tle race, look­ing oddly ran­dom out of their uni­forms, and the big Form Sixes throw­ing off their lordly big-kid atti­tudes to run their lit­tle hearts out. Mrs D moved regally among the crowds of par­ents, grand­par­ents, teach­ers and kids, unmis­tak­able in her suit of lovely pink flow­ers, admir­ing pic­nic items, chuck­ing lit­tle sib­lings under the chin. Becky and Susan and I spread out our tar­tan pic­nic rugs with the cool rub­berised back­ings, and every­one but Avery had lunch, hers repos­ing at school to be picked up later with Kate, the babysit­ter. I hate it when all my hard-won per­fect plans get ruined by some­one else!

Then I madly dashed to get to my last act­ing class (more on that later), then dashed home to meet up with Avery and Kate and show Kate all over the flat, giv­ing her a sense of how to make things work, and espe­cially how to take care of the kit­ties, when she hous­esits this sum­mer. Then we had the ulti­mate healthy, deli­cious and quick din­ner: lemon sole fil­lets dredged in herbed flour and sauteed, three min­utes per side, in olive oil. I start with the skin side down in really hot oil, and then when I flip it over, I can eas­ily remove the crispy skin that most peo­ple like, but sends shiv­ers down Avery’s spine. With rice it’s the per­fect, nearly instant din­ner, and since John was at a busi­ness do of some kind, fish was a possibility.

Other than that, my life has been taken up largely by try­ing to sort out Wimsey’s issues. I have a cat psy­chol­o­gist on retainer ONLINE, if you can imag­ine. We email back and forth about his behav­ior, our liv­ing con­di­tions, his sib­ling rela­tion­ships, you name it. So far her advice has been to pro­vide him with a lit­ter­box, food and water dishes, all his own. “How will he know they’re for him?” I won­dered, but appar­ently it’s all about offer­ing him the CHOICE. What­ever. If it keeps him happy… so this week­end we must acquire a new lit­ter­box. Where to put it? I have no idea. Then, let’s see, here was a bit of excite­ment: I real­ized that Avery’s library books were either over­due or about to be, so I gath­ered up the pile and headed out, down Dun­raven Street to Woods Mews and planned to make a right on Park Street. How­ever, at the end of the road there was a police tape block­ing off the street and a nice bobby man­ning it. “Sorry, love, you can’t cross this tape,” he said politely. “Why? What’s up?” I asked. “Oh, a bomb in an attache case under a car.” “EXCUSE ME?” I splut­tered, as a lady walked up with a tiny irri­tat­ing lit­tle dog on a lead. “I must get past here,” she said boss­ily, “I’m meant to be meet­ing a friend at 101 Park.” “Well, you can’t, lady, because that’s where the bomb is,” the bobby said patiently. She huffed and puffed. “But I came out with­out my mobile so I can’t tell my friend that I’m not com­ing,” she said petu­lantly. “Con­sid­er­ing the whole block is about to explode, I don’t think it’s an issue!” I said. I couldn’t be both­ered to take it too seri­ously, though, with over­due library books to con­sider, so I skirted the bar­rier and crossed Grosvenor Square, fig­ur­ing the Embassy was prob­a­bly the tar­get and they couldn’t get any closer. By the time I got out of the library, how­ever, the bar­rier was gone and all the excite­ment over. Oh, well, next time.

TGIF, TGIF. I’m bring­ing Anna home from school with Avery, for the last sleep­over of the term, before Anna heads to Scot­land next week and we go to Con­necti­cut. Today is the school­wide Singing Com­pe­ti­tion, with Nightin­gale heav­ily favored to bring home the tro­phy. Poor Franklin loses every­thing. So I’m sure our walk home will be spiced up with sto­ries of who for­got the words to what folk song, how strict Miss P is, what­ever hor­ror the offi­cial Com­mon­wealth Judge chose to wear. Speak­ing of clothes, oh, dear, the Fash­ion Show was last night. What do you get when you put 120 hys­ter­i­cal girls aged 3–11 in a room with all their par­ents and grand­par­ents and nan­nies and sib­lings and teach­ers, no air con­di­tion­ing, and parade them up and down in var­i­ous Vic­to­rian, hippy, flap­per and medieval cos­tumes? Did I men­tion no air con­di­tion­ing? I would rather have stuck hot nee­dles in my eye­balls, but by then I was pinned in the remotest cor­ner of the room, miles away from Avery, much too close to sev­eral par­ents who had appar­ently been very hot with no air con­di­tion­ing all day. Pretty grue­some. There were a few high­lights: Anna looked com­pletely the part of a glam­orous 1930s star­let in a fur wrap, with per­fect makeup. And of course the love of Avery’s life, Ellen looked dar­ling. The tiny Lower Kinder­garten­ers came out in night­gowns with their ted­dies, which if we hadn’t all been drip­ping with sweat and near­ing the end of our oxy­gen sup­ply would have been really dar­ling. Oh, well, the admis­sion charge goes to the British Red Cross. Next year maybe I’ll donate the whole sum anony­mously on the con­di­tion that there is NO MORE FASH­ION SHOW. Except when I said, “Next year let’s get here early to get seats together,” Avery objected, “But no, Mommy, next year I’ll be IN the fash­ion show, I HOPE.” Sigh.

On the way home, cool­ing off as we walked (con­tribut­ing to that sense of false clean­li­ness you get and then for­get to take a bath when you get home), stop­ping at the Wait­rose in the high street for gro­ceries. “Now, Avery,” I said sternly, “I know burg­ers aren’t your favorite thing, but I’ve been crav­ing them and Daddy likes them too.” “Awawah! They are dis­gust­ing!” she wailed. ““Be that as it may, your food tastes have been hijack­ing our din­ner menu for months and years now. It isn’t fair to have you dic­tate what we can and can­not have for din­ner, is it?” “Well, no, I guess not.” “Very well, then, let’s do our shop­ping,” I said, proud of myself for being so firm and rea­son­able. We got home with all our stuff and she went off to read her Amer­i­can Girl mag­a­zine, and then came into the kitchen to get her fruit bowl. “Look in the oven,” I said. And of course there was a roast of filet mignon, her absolute favorite since she was a tiny child. I remem­ber once she had been very sick with some­thing or other, a rar­ity, and hadn’t eaten prop­erly in 10 days or so. When she got her appetite back, I told her she could have any­thing, absolutely any­thing she wanted for din­ner. “Oh could I have that really bloody and expen­sive roast beast thingy?” I am such a sucker.

So I think as a reward for get­ting through an extremely busy week (stud­ded with vis­its to var­i­ous doc­tors to make sure I’m get­ting over this stom­ach thing; I’m much bet­ter), we’ll take Avery and Anna to “The Lucky Spot” for din­ner, get­ting home in time for the first match of the World Cup semi-final. It’s got­ten so pathetic, this new­found inter­est in foot­ball, that we actu­ally know how many yel­low cards the play­ers have, and what sub­sti­tu­tions might occur if so-and-so’s thigh strain isn’t bet­ter. Who would have thought! Eng­land play on Sat­ur­day, against Por­tu­gal. The gov­ern­ing body of the foot­ball teams are con­tem­plat­ing mak­ing a rul­ing that the play­ers can­not do their tra­di­tional shirt-swap on the pitch, but must wait till they get to their lock­ers to do it. Why? The sight of all those ripped abs, be still my heart, is con­sid­ered too risque for tele­vi­sion. Awww, no fair!

Lord have mercy, I have reached a new low in this town where money can seem like another mem­ber of the fam­ily: con­stantly dis­ap­pear­ing when it’s most needed, demand­ing, wor­ry­ing. For weeks, nay, months, Avery has been com­plain­ing that her sneak­ers (or as they are known in Eng­land, “train­ers”) were too flat, too small and just plain bad. I have received these fre­quent updates with a dis­tinct lack of enthu­si­asm, because every time we pop into a shoe store to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion, there are no white train­ers (uni­form rules apply even to footwear), or none in Avery’s size, or too many other peo­ple in line. Today, how­ever, instead of play­ing ten­nis, Form Four prac­ticed for Sports Day and Avery won one race and came in sec­ond in the other. Ham­pered as she was by low-performance equip­ment, this seemed impres­sive. So even though we had with us (in the pelt­ing rain) one bag con­tain­ing an enor­mous bot­tle of aloe vera juice for my del­i­cate con­di­tion, one school ruck­sack con­tain­ing the paper sup­ply for a small devel­op­ing nation, one gym bag con­tain­ing a rum­pled school uni­form and the offend­ing old shoes, one ten­nis racket, and one precariously-built model of a Viking ship cre­ated entirely from paper, it was deemed that a shop­ping trip to Sel­f­ridges was nec­es­sary. Oh, and an umbrella donated by my friend Susan at pickup to shel­ter said Viking ship. And a gro­cery bag full of ingre­di­ents for spaghetti and meatballs.

So off we went, stop­ping so Avery could have a snack at Patis­serie Valerie and have the fun of dump­ing all these belong­ings on the floor in a wet pile. Enter Sel­f­ridges. Which hap­pens to be hav­ing its semi-annual “Buy me, I will change your life” sale. These words are embla­zoned on every ver­ti­cal sur­face in the store, in the slant­ing black and white let­ters on gray made famous by the artist Bar­bara Kruger. Are they just copy­ing her? I must find out. We stood dis­con­so­lately in front of the enor­mous board pro­claim­ing on what floors var­i­ous items could be found. “There! Kids on 3!” Avery shouted. “If I stand here long enough, will it say ‘Kids on Ground Floor?” I asked. We fought our way up three flights of esca­la­tors, through the sale crowds, past end­less dis­plays of unnec­es­sary mate­ri­al­ist fod­der. Who were all these peo­ple? I began to have mis­an­thropic fan­tasies about throw­ing them all over the glass walls sur­round­ing the esca­la­tor shaft, to land in the Pink dis­play of tuxedo shirts. No mat­ter. We found the children’s area, also in sale hell, and dear read­ers, you will under­stand my cha­grin when I found that the ONLY pair of white sneak­ers left in Avery’s size was… Dolce e Gabbana.

Mind you, I don’t even own any­thing by Dolce e Gab­bana. The fact that Madonna’s daugh­ter is decked out from head to foot in cus­tom made gar­ments by this pair of Ital­ian fash­ion­istas (or is fash­ion­isto, if they’re men?) only adds to the glam­our. I remem­ber that Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gab­bana, who­ever they are in real life, caused rip­ples of fear and anx­i­ety through­out the world of peo­ple who spend money on clothes, when they broke up their love affair. But devo­tion to fash­ion knows no bounds, so they still design clothes together. And tiny children’s footwear too, appar­ently. I have to admit, they’re cute. And they look very well-made. Avery was extremely appre­cia­tive and feels that she might well win sev­eral races in them. And they WERE 40% off, after all. Which makes them only twice as much as you would pay under nor­mal cir­cum­stances. What ARE nor­mal cir­cum­stances? I don’t remem­ber. Wish her luck on Wednes­day morn­ing. And hey, guess what? At least the Prada train­ers were all sold out in her size.

Well, all right, here he looks pretty happy. At least he’s not clock­ing his sis­ter Keechie over the head. But in gen­eral, Wim­sey needs some ther­apy. He skulks about look­ing sin­is­ter, whack­ing his sib­lings around, look­ing sus­pi­ciously as if he’s scout­ing an alter­nate lit­ter box to the one I’ve planned for him. In gen­eral, our rela­tion­ship is fraught. So believe it or not I’m surf­ing this morn­ing for kitty ther­a­pists. So far I have honed in on a hilar­i­ous web­site called “Pets Behav­ing Badly,” and appar­ently par­rots are a high-risk pet, which I didn’t know. Lots of “rehom­ing issues.” Maybe that’s what ails Wim­sey; he’s an Anglo­phobe caught in a lux­ury Lon­don flat. Secretly he longs for the plains of Kansas, or even the smelly July streets of New York, eat­ing Friskies from a can instead of the high-protein health food we’re push­ing on him here. Maybe he wants to be an only cat. Unfor­tu­nately John is all too ready to make that hap­pen, so I keep telling Wim­sey he’s skat­ing on thin parental ice. So far he seems too sunk in his own psy­chodrama to pull up his socks (one of my favorite Eng­lish expres­sions for “get over it”) and move on with his life. Sigh. I’ve got to get this sorted before he’s the respon­si­bil­ity of our lovely hous­esit­ter, Kate, begin­ning July 12, when we arrive in Connecticut.

As if this were not enough stress in my del­i­cate con­di­tion, guess how I look as a red­head? No, it’s not Pho­to­shop we’re talk­ing here, it’s a REALLY bad color job. I wish I were mak­ing this up. Last week I decided I deserved a lit­tle pam­per­ing, plus I wanted to get back to my nice fake blonde high­lights with which I’ve been liv­ing for years, instead of the grown-out dirty blonde that is my nat­ural color. So against Avery’s and John’s wishes I booked myself an appoint­ment at a posh (so I thought) salon in Wig­more Street, that I pass every day on the way to and from school, and turned up at noon on Fri­day to become A More Beau­ti­ful Me. FOUR HOURS LATER I finally escaped, hav­ing been, in that time, a sort of watery straw­berry blonde hor­ror, a slightly darker insipid kind of beer color, and finally a red­dish ver­sion of what I went in as. And to cap it all off, it was done by a wretched girl who was intro­duced to me as some­thing pro­nounced like “Mahn-OO-ray,” but when I got her actual busi­ness card, yep, she’s Manure. I got my hair done by Poop Girl. It’s just awful. I get a lit­tle hor­rid shock every time I see myself, and John and Avery are silent in their con­dem­na­tion. What to do.

Well, in the mean­time was Avery’s school out­ing to York! She and all her lit­tle school chums met up at King’s Cross rail­way sta­tion (with their groggy moth­ers and overwhelmed-looking teach­ers) bright and early at 8 a.m. on Fri­day. They looked pretty dar­ling in their uni­forms, clutch­ing back­packs filled with read­ing mate­r­ial for the train, heavy-duty lunches and snacks and water bot­tles, dis­pos­able cam­eras, and ABSOLUTELY NO soft toys. Mrs Bick­ley got that one right. Can you imag­ine all 17 of them turn­ing up with their hun­dreds of Syl­va­ni­ans, those tiny lit­tle flocked ani­mals they all col­lect? The belea­guered teach­ers marched them off toward the train plat­form, look­ing slightly as if they ought to be scat­ter­ing bread crumbs behind them if we planned to see them ever again. But sure enough, six p.m. found John and me scan­ning the crowd for their lit­tle faces. Every­one appeared a bit rum­pled but oth­er­wise intact, and full of sto­ries about the archae­o­log­i­cal dig they went on (yield­ing the largest fos­silised poop ever found, what a treat), the bridge that had only one rail­ing and if you fell off it would be into a sting­ing net­tle patch, the creepy tombs with peo­ple on top fold­ing their hands, and of course most impor­tant, the gift shop. It may be the very first time that Avery’s been some­where we’ve never been, which is a mile­stone in its own way.

My week, before the hair dis­as­ter, was enlivened by a visit from my long­time New York friend Joan, here on a busi­ness trip with her hus­band who is the cura­tor of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! She was full of sto­ries about her Can­tor Fitzger­ald boss Howard Lut­nick, whose art col­lec­tion she man­ages (to my delight as gallery-owner; he was a fre­quent client), and her two lit­tle girls, and life in New York in gen­eral. They were sand­wich­ing in a visit to us between din­ners with The Clash, con­certs, and trips to see secret col­lec­tions of rock mem­o­ra­bilia. We had a lit­tle cock­tail party in the gar­den here at War­bur­ton House, with bli­nis topped with smoked salmon and sour cream, and my lat­est pack­ag­ing obses­sion: Marks and Spencers gin and ton­ics in a tiny lit­tle green can! All mixed up and ready to drink. Very pleasant.

The end of the school year is gear­ing up, rather than wind­ing down, with an exhaust­ing array of respon­si­bil­i­ties. The headmistress’s weekly let­ter on Fri­day ended with the suc­cinct obser­va­tion, “It will be a busy week, one feels.” One cer­tainly does. I live in the knowl­edge that I will for­get some­thing, some­time. I fig­ure as long as it’s not my child, left in a rail­way sta­tion, every­thing else can kind of go. Let’s see, there’s a pile of over­due library books that must be dealt with today, and the last skat­ing day tomor­row for which I did not suc­ceed in acquir­ing a fancy skat­ing out­fit for Avery, bad me. Then Sports Day on Wednes­day, in Regent’s Park, where the gulls all com­pete vocif­er­ously for House Points. Don’t know how Avery will fare. Mostly she is rejoic­ing at England’s World Cup progress to the quar­ter­fi­nals, after yesterday’s nail-biting win over Ecuador (David Beckham’s barf­ing on the side­lines notwith­stand­ing, ick). Avery’s house, Curie, owns Eng­land, so that’s good news, 20 points. Or do they have to make it to the semi-finals? I can’t keep track. Then Thurs­day is a visit to school by one of her favorite authors, who will read aloud and then sign books pro­vided by Daunt Book­shop, neces­si­tat­ing the pro­vi­sion of spend­ing money and much dis­cus­sion among the moth­ers about how much is rea­son­able. Thurs­day evening is the con­tro­ver­sial School Fash­ion Show, with ticket sales to ben­e­fit the Red Cross. Luck­ily Avery was not asked to par­tic­i­pate, because I would have been forced to take sides. So we’ll just turn up in the audi­ence and see what’s what. The social things these girls are going through defy descrip­tion. I think “ris­ing nines” are a very vul­ner­a­ble age. They are all try­ing to fig­ure out their peck­ing order, the best friends who must let in other chil­dren to their games, who dresses “cool” out­side school, etc. In dis­cussing one of the more trou­ble­some rela­tion­ships, Avery said, “It’s not that I don’t like her. It’s just that our friend­ship is quite volatile, and fickle.” As good a way to describe the tor­ments of pre-adolescence as any.

We’re really ready for school to be over. The lovely no-homework hia­tus of the pre-Joseph week, and the exam week, has given way to what will no doubt be com­pen­satory heavy loads this week. To think that Amer­i­can schools have been out for two weeks, some of them! We’ve got 10 days left till free­dom, and… Red Gate Farm!

What­ever that means! But it’s clearly good news for Eng­land. Isn’t this a gor­geous photo by Sam Taylor-Wood? We ended up in a draw with Swe­den last night, which was not as good as trounc­ing their lit­tle Scandy pants, but bet­ter than los­ing. All the com­men­ta­tors assured us solemnly that Eng­land haven’t beat Swe­den since 1966, inton­ing the year as if it were before elec­tric­ity, which con­sid­er­ing I was sit­ting up in my high chair at the time I found depress­ing. How­ever. Plus, you’ve got to get the lat­est issue of Grazia mag­a­zine, a sort of tack­ier Hello! but on really nice glossy paper which leads you to believe at first that it’s a nice mag­a­zine. But it’s really filled with things like a full-length fea­ture arti­cle on the WAGS (“Wives and Girl­friends”) of the Eng­lish foot­ballers, and their antics around the pool in Baden Baden at the World Cup. Hon­estly, the things I can con­vince myself to get inter­ested in, if I’m des­per­ate enough.

So that’s cool. Now we play Ecuador next. I can’t remem­ber when, but I’m sure I’m the only per­son in the coun­try who can’t.

It’s offi­cial: I feel well now! Thank good­ness. There’s noth­ing like a bout of real ill­ness that lasts a fairly long time, to give you an appre­ci­a­tion of just feel­ing nor­mal. It will be awhile before I am back to com­plain­ing that I won’t look great in a bathing suit this sum­mer, or that I hate my hair­cut, or any­thing else. I’m just glad to feel nor­mal. Maybe we’ll even mosey over to the Lucky Spot for din­ner this evening. I have my penul­ti­mate act­ing class this after­noon, while Avery pays homage to the lat­est guinea pig babies who were born at Anna’s house yes­ter­day. “They are so cute, Mommy! And you could feel their lit­tle parts under the mother’s skin, mov­ing around, before they were born.” “Gee, I remem­ber that before YOU were born,” I said. “Do you remem­ber any­thing from before you were born, Avery?” “Oh, yes, I remem­ber it was dark and crowded. That was the begin­ning of my claus­tro­pho­bia.” What a sweet, heart-warming thought. I’m so glad I asked.

Well, reports of my recov­ery were sadly pre­ma­ture: it’s tak­ing me longer to get over this tummy trou­ble than I would like. The down­side of this is that the fridge is basi­cally empty (I’m not up to drag­ging home heavy bags), and I’m a very bor­ing phone con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist for poor John who’s in New York, because absolutely noth­ing is hap­pen­ing to me, flat on my back. The upside of the sit­u­a­tion is that I have learned lots of inter­est­ing things by being stuck watch­ing tele­vi­sion and lis­ten­ing to Avery prat­tle about her life (much more event­ful than mine).

Let’s see: I could nat­ter on about the World Cup! Excite­ment is at a fever pitch in this coun­try, which is just insane for foot­ball. Being an avid reader of Hello! mag­a­zine all these years you’d think I’d be inter­ested in David Beck­ham, but I never have been until see­ing him play. Amaz­ing! So Eng­land had its first game on Sat­ur­day, and imme­di­ately after­ward the nation’s atten­tion turned to tomorrow’s game with… Trinidad and Tobago. Now how many of you knew that was ONE coun­try? I didn’t. In the mean­time I have, believe it or not, mar­tyred myself to the Brazil-Croatia match and the Korea-Togo match. Who knew Togo was a coun­try, and not just Nancy Drew’s dog? Since the motto of King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory school is some­thing along the lines of “Com­pete or Die,” the head­mistress has thought of a way to get the gulls involved with the World Cup. The school is divided, for var­i­ous com­pet­i­tive pur­poses, into four “houses,” as those of you famil­iar with Harry Pot­ter will know. In fact one house is “Pot­ter,” and then there are “Franklin,” for Ros­alind, and “Nightin­gale,” for obvi­ous rea­sons, and then Avery’s house, “Curie.” Nor­mally they com­pete for things like spelling words, speed in pack­ing up the ruck­sack neatly, net­ball suc­cesses, that sort of thing. But to encom­pass the World Cup, which you’d think could not touch a nine-year-old girl, they’ve ran­domly assigned 8 coun­tries to each house, and there is a Dra­con­ian and very amus­ing set of rules that gov­erns what earns house points for which house. I think if a coun­try in Curie’s house gets to the quarter-finals there is some point thingy assigned. So all is at a fever pitch.

Then, as you can see from the photo above, I have become quite con­cerned about the plight of the grey squir­rel, vic­tim of the much maligned red squir­rel. There is a pub­lic debate about offer­ing a bounty on the pelts of red squir­rels in Scot­land (I am not mak­ing this up), so as to pro­tect the grey squir­rels from their furry lit­tle clutches. I can just see your aver­age Eng­lish­man, dressed to the teeth in tweeds and armed with a nice Purdey rifle, stalk­ing a red squir­rel in Edin­burgh town cen­tre, for the 2 pound bounty that some sci­en­tist has deemed “rea­son­able for an indi­vid­ual pelt.” Then, of course, there is the oppo­si­tion. They claim that it’s a virus or some­thing that’s killing off the grey squir­rels. My favorite line from the whole debate is this, from one of the bounty-seekers: “To blame this sit­u­a­tion on a virus is merely PLAY­ING INTO THE HANDS of the red squir­rels.” Indeed!

If nei­ther of these top­ics is of inter­est to you, there’s always… Joseph. And his inter­minable, all-consuming, obses­sive Amaz­ing Tech­ni­color Dream­coat. What I do not know about the Hairy Ish­maelites and Joseph’s nasty slavery-loving broth­ers, not to men­tion the hot-to-trot Potiphar’s Wife and her unap­pre­cia­tive but clingy hus­band, is not worth know­ing. The rehearsals are tak­ing the place of many school activ­i­ties like any­thing that involves actual learn­ing, and Avery’s crush on Edwina, the Form Six girl who plays one of the leads, is tak­ing up a lot of the fam­ily energy. The actual per­for­mance is on Sat­ur­day, after which I think we will all col­lapse in a Lloyd-Webber-induced cata­tonic state. But they are very proud of what they’re about to per­form, and it will be won­der­ful to see it all come to a head, after such devoted preparation.

Well, I’m sorry to say that I’m ail­ing, so I shall go put my feet up with a nice iced green tea with a shot of pep­per­mint (go, Star­bucks!), and reach for… the clicker. I’ll let you know if there’s any news on the squirrels.

I’m sorry I’ve been so silent! A long-awaited visit from John’s par­ents, com­bined with a nasty bout of a stom­ach bug called ulcer­a­tive col­i­tis, have cur­tailed my com­mu­ni­ca­tions for a cou­ple of weeks. But the visit is, sadly, over, and the bug, not so sadly, on its last legs, so here I am.

Sec­ond men­tal note to self (after the one not to ruin very expen­sive dress shirts and school uni­forms with one flick of a pash­mina): don’t try to melt but­ter in a Pyrex dish directly on top of a scary ceramic stove. Why not? Because it freakin’ EXPLODED! There I was, inno­cently cook­ing din­ner last night, and the main dish was to be Mama Nel’s chicken, named after my dar­ling mother who invented it. It’s easy peasy, as Jamie Oliver would say: sim­ply pour some flour into a gro­cery bag, or some other bag, and add lots of herbs: rose­mary, thyme, paprika, gar­lic pow­der, basil, mar­jo­ram, what­ever you like. Then pour some veg­etable oil in a nice Pyrex dish and dip chicken pieces skin side down in the oil. Then shake them up in the herbed flour and lay again skin side down in the oiled pan. Bake for about 20 min­utes at 425, then turn over and bake skin side up for another 20 min­utes. You can do the last few min­utes on broil if you like crispy skin.

Any­way, I decided to com­bine the oil with a lit­tle but­ter, so I was herb­ing my flour and watch­ing the but­ter melt on top of the stove when KABOOM the whole thing sim­ply exploded into hun­dreds of tiny shrap­nel pieces. I’m lucky I didn’t put my eye out, or some kitty’s eye. My bleats of dis­may brought Avery and John, who looked on in hor­ror, and then John cut him­self try­ing to help. Finally it was all cleared up and din­ner on its way, only to find, as we ate the steamed bas­mati rice to go with the chicken, that glass frag­ments had found their way into the but­ter I put on top. A very effec­tive way to con­trol por­tions, it turns out. No one wanted to eat any­thing after that! What a night.

John’s par­ents’ visit was com­pletely won­der­ful. As you can see above, they went every­where with us! They accom­pa­nied us to the barn and met Cookie, and to school and met Mrs Davies, and to play­date dropoff where they met Becky and her fam­ily. It was school half term, so things like show­ing them Avery’s ice skat­ing had to hap­pen with just us, not the fun of the whole class, but still, I think they got a good feel for the way we live now. Let’s see, they treated us to a ruinously expen­sive after­noon tea at Brown’s Hotel (I’ve always wanted to go back since my own par­ents took us way back in 1990 or so). Since then of course we have acquired Avery who is a great fan of Agatha Christie, and in par­tic­u­lar the thinly-disguised ver­sion of Brown’s that appears in “At Bertram’s Hotel.” So I inno­cently booked us for one after­noon, not know­ing that by now it has climbed in price to the astro­nom­i­cal fee of 29 pounds per per­son! Hon­estly, even for Lon­don­ers that’s going some. Still, it was lovely.

We trekked out to the coun­try­side to see Lulling­stone Cas­tle, whose fam­ily for­tunes (or lack thereof) and ren­o­va­tion have been the sub­ject of a won­der­ful BBC doc­u­men­tary that we’re addicted to. We actu­ally got to meet Tom Dyke Hart, the son and heir, and inven­tor of the mar­velous gar­den that’s the cen­ter­piece of the new pub­lic areas of the house and grounds. John went around mum­bling, “I REALLY want that house…” Then we went to see the “Mouse­trap,” and John’s par­ents took my tick­ets to see “Cori­olanus” at the Globe (my act­ing class was study­ing it, I thought, but it turns out I was wrong and THEY were all at “Titus Andron­i­cus”!), we went to an incred­i­ble polo match at the Guards Polo Club in Wind­sor (Prince Philip’s own polo club, if you please). Did you know that at half­time, after the first three “chukkas”, the crowd are all asked to go out on to the field and stomp on the “divets”? So there we all were, find­ing all the places where the hooves and mal­lets had chewed up the polo lawn, and stomp­ing the sod back in place! Of course, only John Cur­ran could make this a com­pet­i­tive sport, so he was prac­ti­cally mow­ing Avery down try­ing to stomp on all the divets SHE found.

On the last day of the visit, after Avery’s rid­ing les­son in Wim­ble­don, we moseyed out to the McBs’ for Sun­day lunch in Stroud. Incred­i­bly all four chil­dren were there, so John’s par­ents got to see the tow­er­ing thing that is Nick (who I first met when he was four, sob), shortly to leave his row­ing days at Eton behind and con­quer Yale Uni­ver­sity, and Emma who’s off to Exeter, and Rose whose birth announce­ment I dis­cov­ered in a box of mem­o­ra­bilia last week, and Una who was not even born when we last lived in Lon­don. How have they all grown so old, and so accom­plished? Every time we see that fam­ily I feel that it’s best just to skip the fiery crash and give Avery to them now. They’re such professionals!

John’s dad per­formed his usual neigh­bor­hood mir­a­cle and found us a local restau­rant to patron­ize, the Lucky Spot, right on South Aud­ley Street, so we went twice in a row and were much made over. Their strac­ciatelli soup, lemony and eggy, was just what the doc­tor ordered for my frag­ile health. We dis­cov­ered many hereto­fore unknown bus routes and went to the Tower of Lon­don, the Por­to­bello farmer’s mar­ket, shop­ping in Oxford Street, and every­where else you can imag­ine. Through it all we ate: even with my sad stom­ach, we ATE. Susan’s orange and gin­ger chicken curry, roasted pork spareribs (their left­overs made a superb pic­nic for the polo match), avo­cado salad galore, cream of red pep­per soup with fresh thyme, you name it. And pink gaz­pa­cho, for which I must give you the recipe because it’s sin­fully sim­ple and inex­pen­sive, and aside from a cucum­ber and an avo­cado you can eas­ily have every­thing on hand in your pantry:

Jeanne Grieger’s Pink Sum­mer Gazpacho

1 cup sliv­ered almonds or pine nuts
2 pieces white or wheat bread or 1 cup bread­crumbs
2 cans plum toma­toes
1/2 long hydro­ponic cucum­ber, or two small kir­bys, sliced
1/2 cup veg­etable oil
1/2 cup cider vine­gar (you can use bal­samic but it will change the color of the soup)
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp chili pep­per or cayenne
salt and pep­per to taste
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup half and half
1 avo­cado, cut in small bite-size pieces

Pul­ver­ize the almonds or pine nuts in a Cuisi­nart, then whiz in the bread. Add the toma­toes, cucum­ber, oil and vine­gar and spices and pul­ver­ize until smooth. Pour into a very large bowl and add the chicken broth and half and half and blend well. Taste it and add more of what­ever spices or salt you think is needed. Chill thor­oughly and serve with a lit­tle group of avo­cado pieces mounded in the cen­ter. Deli­cious, and so good for you! If you like a more ele­gant soup, you can peel the cucum­ber first, or you can strain the soup. But I find the green bits and the nutty bits are very nice.

Sadly the inlaws have gone cal­lously home, leav­ing me with noth­ing more excit­ing to do than laun­dry. I caved to the pres­sure of my tiny wash­ing machine and yes­ter­day dropped off two huge bags of sheets, tow­els and John’s busi­ness shirts at a nice laun­dry in the Maryle­bone High Street. Sim­ply aban­doned it all.

So today I don’t get Avery back in my clutches until 5:30, due to the fever-pitch excite­ment of rehearsals for the school-wide pro­duc­tion of “Joseph and His Amaz­ing Tech­ni­color Dream­coat.” What I don’t know about Joseph’s 10 hap­less sib­lings, the many hues of the coat, and the end­less num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions of “AHA” isn’t worth know­ing. Andrew Lloyd Web­ber has a lot to answer for, in my hum­ble opin­ion, but I’m sure when it’s not just bur­bled at me in a taxi on the way to school or chor­tled at me as cook­ing imple­ments explode, it will be very charm­ing. The pro­duc­tion is on June 17 so we have a ways to go as far as expo­sure. Avery was astounded that her grand­par­ents did not imme­di­ately change their tick­ets and stay an extra twelve days in order to see the per­for­mance. They are such saints, I think they actu­ally con­sid­ered it. How we miss them. Now it’s time for MY par­ents to come! But I am afraid I have to wait until the fall for that delight.