Well, okay, no actual goose. But duck! It was the best dish, so I’m giv­ing you the “recipe”, although the salad base can be what­ever you wish.

Pan-seared Duck with Crunchy Salad
(serves four easily)

2 bone­less duck breasts (these usu­ally come vacuum-packed)
sea salt
2 cups tightly packed baby spinach leaves
1 small pur­ple cab­bage
1 small white cab­bage
2 red bell pep­pers
1 avo­cado
1 dozen small toma­toes
hand­ful chives
dress­ing: juice and pulp of a lemon, 1 clove gar­lic, finely chopped, 1/4 cup olive oil, dah bal­samic vine­gar, tasp Dijon mus­tard, sea salt

Place the duck breasts on a cut­ting board (NOT the one you will later use for prepar­ing the salad; always use sep­a­rate boards for raw meat and veg­gies). Score the skin in four hor­i­zon­tal slices, till you can just see the meat beneath. Sprin­kle the skin with sea salt.

Heat a large skil­let till nearly smok­ing, then put in duck breasts skin side down and sprin­kle with sea salt. You would be wise at this point to cover the skil­let with one of those grease screens, since duck is very fatty and you (and your price­less Armani jacket) will get splat­tered. Turn heat down to medium and let duck cook for 8 min­utes. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with it, poke it, and above all DO NOT pierce it.

Mean­while, pile the spinach on a large plat­ter. Shred the cab­bages finely (I cut them in quar­ters first to make small shreds) and slice the red pep­per into small strips. Halve the toma­toes. Chop the chives. Scat­ter all this over the spinach. It will be so pretty you’ll be tempted to take a picture.

Now, lift the grease screen and turn over the duck breasts. They will siz­zle madly, so quickly put the screen back on, and pre­pare to wait another 8 min­utes. Com­bine all dress­ing ingre­di­ents and whisk enthus­ti­as­ti­cally, but know that you will have to whisk again just before dress­ing the salad.

Remove the skil­let from the heat and, using tongs so as not to pierce the meat, lift the duck breasts from the skil­let and place on a plate. Pour off the fat and reserve in case you plan to fry eggs or hash browns any time soon (you can always throw it away later if you don’t use it). Wipe the skil­let with paper tow­els and place the duck breasts back in skin side down, then return to heat. Let the breasts siz­zle for about two min­utes, then lift them out of the fat and remove them to a fresh cut­ting board, where they can rest while you pour wine (or in our case, milk) and whisk the dress­ing one more time.

Now, you have a choice to make. Are you going to eat the delec­table skin and com­pletely ruin your res­o­lu­tion to eat less fat, or are you going to remove the skin and have a truly guilt-free din­ner? Your choice. I did remove the skin, and let me tell you, we didn’t feel deprived. Slice the duck thinly or thickly, whichever you like, and lay the slices over the salad. Whisk the dress­ing one more time and pour over the duck.

There is some­thing about the rich, ten­der, pink duck with a bite of crunchy, tangy cab­bage and tomato, and silky avo­cado, and vir­tu­ous spinach, that makes this dish just deli­cious. And so good for you!

Then, the next night we had com­pletely bor­ing, for­get­table fancy fresh ravi­oli from Sel­f­ridges. How­ever. With it I made an acci­den­tal sauce that turned out to be sub­lime. It hap­pened out of sheer neglect.

Sage and But­ter Sauce
(good for any pasta, but also pork chops, veal scallopini?)

1 stick but­ter
12 sage leaves
1 tsp sea salt
1 clove gar­lic, finely chopped

Melt the but­ter in a small skil­let and then add the sage, salt and gar­lic. Shake till nicely dis­persed over low-medium heat, then walk away, check your email, fold the laun­dry, what­ever. The point is, totally for­get about the fact that you have melted but­ter sit­ting over heat. Come back in five min­utes or so and find that you have slightly browned but­ter, and CRISPY sage leaves! I had been plan­ning to lift the leaves out, and have just fla­vored but­ter, but no! They were crispy, like potato chips, and so good. The ravi­oli were just vehi­cles for the sauce. Some warm baguette rounds were per­fect to soak it up.

OK, enough about food. How about that Thai mil­i­tary rev­o­lu­tion? I swear, the lead­ers gave a press con­fer­ence that the BBC broad­cast and trans­lated, and the head guy said, “We apol­o­gize for any incon­ve­nience this coup may have caused you.” What? I love that. Coups can be so annoy­ing.

Avery’s rid­ing is going from strength to strength. Here is her lit­tle back, rid­ing away on Sir­ius, the star pony belong­ing to Ross Nye’s daugh­ter Kirsty, who runs the sta­ble. I love this shot for the per­fect Eng­lish­ness of the set­ting. She has a new babysit­ter pick­ing her up today, a girl called Chrisa who stayed here with our hous­esit­ter over the sum­mer. I’ll be at the first meet­ing of my screen­writ­ing class, which should be great fun. In a minute I’m going to lie down on the sofa and read “Screen­play: The Foun­da­tions of Screen­writ­ing” by Syd Field, which is said to be the bible for this sort of thing. There are sev­eral nov­els, both for chil­dren and for adults, that I think would make excel­lent movies, and I’d like to get my feet wet fig­ur­ing out how one does that. How does one get the rights to the novel, and then what are the mechan­ics of turn­ing writ­ing into speak­ing? I find that often the weak­est part of a movie made from a book is the part where the writer had just been exposit­ing about some­thing in omni­scient writer-voice, but not hav­ing a char­ac­ter speak the words. Then when it’s a movie script, where do you put that infor­ma­tion? The writer hasn’t given you any direc­tion about who could speak it. This is true espe­cially of Jane Austen, I think, whose “Pride and Prej­u­dice” is filled with page after page of nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion about how the char­ac­ters feel, yet no one speaks it, it’s merely given to you by the author. So when it’s made into a movie, all that expos­i­tory con­tent gets lost and you end up watch­ing the char­ac­ters do things that aren’t shored up by dia­logue explain­ing why they feel the way they feel. I’d like to explore how to do that better.

Then I’ll meet up with the babysit­ter and Avery at rid­ing, and then I have a rare din­ner out, all by myself, at the house of a lady inter­ested in art his­tory. Either I will be com­pletely intim­i­dated by all these arty peo­ple she has invited, and their rich phil­an­thropist hus­bands, or I won’t.

Oh, and a huge tri­umph for Avery! She got 96 out of 100 spelling words right, on a ter­rif­i­cally impor­tant spelling test at school yes­ter­day. She was sim­ply beam­ing from ear to ear with pride when I picked her up yes­ter­day. “That’s never hap­pened before,” Mrs D told her. “Appar­ently I’m an aver­age 14 1/2 year old,” Avery told me, try­ing for non­cha­lance but not get­ting any­where near it. She’s so proud of her­self, and so are we. Now if she can just get that sev­ens times table down…

Let’s see, Avery’s play­date with Jamie started out at the ice skat­ing rink, went on into din­ner at the Lucky Spot, and cul­mi­nated in a sleep­over! I am very glad for Avery to have a new friend, who was last week just a class­mate. But Avery admires Jamie, and as far as I can see there’s every rea­son to. The child just started chat­ting casu­ally with the wait­ress at the restau­rant, in ITAL­IAN. Flu­ent. And she can speak French! And is the least pre­ten­tious gull you can imag­ine. Really lovely. For some rea­son they decided to dress alike, so Avery’s closet was ran­sacked and this is what they came up with. I think if we’d gone to a French restau­rant they would have been made to wait tables. I was glad to see them have such a good time, although it’s a close con­test which gets bor­ing more quickly: watch­ing gulls ride ponies around and around, or skate around and around! I seem to spend an inor­di­nate amount of time doing both.

Then I just wanted to show you this salad to inspire you to do the same. There’s no recipe. But the cook­ing show “Celebrity Mas­terchef,” on the BBC had a guy on last week who did a ver­sion of this salad, and topped it with sauteed duck breast. I think I will do that tonight. Avery will have to have left­over tomato sauce and noo­dles, since she is anti-duck. Or rather, I’m sure she’d point out, she’s actu­ally PRO-duck, and anti-eating-duck. What­ever. What you want is a num­ber of crunchy veg­eta­bles, and a really sharp dress­ing. I sliced up pur­ple cab­bage, white cab­bage, red bell pep­pers, and chives. Deli­cious and so good for you.

Finally, read­ers, I have a con­fes­sion. Many of you knew me way back when, when I was either busily teach­ing art his­tory, writ­ing about art his­tory, or sell­ing actual art. What hap­pened to me? It’s almost like all that knowl­edge and enthu­si­asm and exper­tise was in some reser­voir that’s been drained. The excep­tional expe­ri­ences are just that, excep­tions. There was the out­stand­ing Carl Andre show I saw here last year, at Sadie Coles Gallery. That was sim­ply stun­ning, black cubes in an ever-decreasing grid, or ever-increasing depend­ing on which direc­tion you looked in. Superb. I made a com­plete fool of myself, lying on the ground look­ing at it from a flat per­spec­tive. Then there was the Eva Hesse show in New York at the Jew­ish Museum this sum­mer. But these are excep­tions. In gen­eral I don’t seem to have the where­withal to go to a gallery or a museum, or once I get there to stir up much enthu­si­asm for what I’m see­ing. The Kandin­sky show, for example.

I don’t even know what sorts of reviews it has been get­ting, so I can­not say if my reac­tion is typ­i­cal. But Avery and John and I were out and about this week­end, try­ing to find some­thing called the Thames Fes­ti­val, which had been much hyped (sort of redun­tant, that, sorry) in the “what to do” sec­tions of every­thing. Well, we got caught up in some ran­dom, sort of scary parade of sad-loooking indi­vid­u­als appar­ently from some Fire Brigade club, or some­thing. Peo­ple of all shapes and sizes, wear­ing var­i­ous ratty uni­forms indi­cat­ing their loy­alty to some­thing weird, and play­ing lots of shrill pic­co­los and mas­sive drums, stop­ping up traf­fic and in gen­eral being like a freak show. I have no idea. Any­way, it ran all along the Embank­ment, as the Fes­ti­val alleged to do, so we ran­domly fol­lowed it, with Avery cov­er­ing her ears in dis­may at the din, and me wor­ry­ing about get­ting my wal­let stolen. Finally we gave up, and John and Avery decided to see “Pirates of the Caribbean.” I had actual neg­a­tive inter­est in see­ing it, would rather stick hot nee­dles in my eyes, so I begged off and we parted at some bridge or other, which made me think, “Gee, maybe the festival’s on THAT side of the river,” so I crossed. Let me tell you now: do not ever try to go to the Thames Fes­ti­val. Thou­sands of peo­ple, griz­zling chil­dren, over­whelmed par­ents, dis­af­fected youths, nasty pen­sion­ers, just awful. And the fes­ti­val? Just craft tables try­ing to get me to buy bird­feed­ers from Uganda, tie-dyed t-shrits from Por­tu­gal, or to have my tarot read. And ter­ri­ble food smells. Although I did have a good pork and leek sausage, car­ry­ing from my bangers and mash obsession.

Finally I thought, “You know what you need? A break from all that is hor­ri­ble and mas­sively crowded and smelly. You need a moment in the Life of the Higher Mind.” And there I was, in front of the Tate Mod­ern. Well, actu­ally I could see the Tate Mod­ern through a haze of bill­boards tout­ing Insect Cir­cuses, Trapeze Shows, and “If just 10% of all Britons turned the water off while brush­ing their teeth we could fill three gatril­lion swim­ming pools in Ibiza,” or some such right­eous mes­sage. I have no idea what that was doing there. I remem­bered then that Jamie’s mother, who takes life extremely seri­ously, had told me of her con­cern that she might not get to the Kandin­sky show at the Tate. And there I was, just a mechan­i­cal bull away from the entrance to the show. So I went.

Now mind you, I used to be a kind of minor non-expert expert on Kandin­sky. See­ing his gor­geous paint­ings in the Art Insti­tute in Chicago, the big-city cul­tural mecca of my col­lege years, I was inspired. Truly, they inspired me to major in art his­toy and even to spe­cial­ize in teach­ing 1900–1940. But the Kandin­sky show left me quite chilly. I don’t know if it is because so many of the paint­ings were under glass, old glass, so that all I saw was the crowds behind me? Or were my favorites not there? But I could not feel much enthu­si­asm or warmth toward the show.

Mostly I wan­dered through the rooms, lost in a sort of mem­ory show, about how happy I was in those far­away teach­ing days, preach­ing to my besot­ted stu­dents at Hunter Col­lege, stand­ing on my soap­box extolling the evils of patri­ar­chal sys­tems of teach­ing art his­tory, forg­ing new paths in fem­i­nist the­ory. And at the gallery, too, I was uber-passionate. I could have worked 25 hours a day, choos­ing artists, curat­ing shows, going on stu­dio vis­its, writ­ing essays, meet­ing with clients. Where has it all gone? Over the sum­mer, going through my boxes of books in the barn, when I came upon one that was art his­tory books I felt very dis­con­nected. There had been a pos­si­bilty that I would give a lec­ture at the Royal Acad­emy on Camille Claudel, this autumn, to coin­cide with their Rodin show. The per­son who was meant to make the deci­sion about the lec­ture series quit, or got fired, and my resume got lost among all the details, and now it’s not clear whether I’ll give the lec­ture or not. And I think I should care more than I do! I’ll really be wor­ried if I get to the Rodin show and I don’t get excited. After all, I was excited in Rome to see the Michelan­ge­los. Maybe I should just remem­ber that I’m a three-dimensional gal, not a paint­ing per­son, in general.

I’ve been invited to a din­ner party Thurs­day night with some of the “Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts UK” group. Not a name that rolls trip­pingly off the tongue, but if you use the acronym NMWA most peo­ple are in the dark. Any­way, some Amer­i­cans here in Lon­don are try­ing to get a UK branch to evolve, and this din­ner on Thurs­day is bring­ing a bunch of them together. The organ­iser has even sent around an email detail­ing who the guests will be! Like that party at John’s boss’s house, where we got vir­tual resumes from every­one in advance. There are peo­ple whose occu­pa­tions are listed as “supp­porter of opera,” and “sup­porter of the­atre,” plus an expert in Russ­ian expres­sion­ism, so per­haps I can get her to re-invigorate my art passion.

Or maybe all my art pas­sion got replaced with food pas­sion? Cer­tainly my cook­books came along with me to Lon­don, where their poor art his­tory con­fr­eres are left stag­nat­ing in a barn. Here’s the rub, how­ever. Many of my feminist-ish mother friends and I have often dis­cussed the dif­fi­culty of find­ing, much less indulging, one’s life pas­sion when it will have to end every week­day at 3:30. And not hap­pen at all if your child wakes up with a fever. So per­haps it’s all right for my Avery pas­sion to get the lion’s share of oxy­gen for the time being. After all, she’s awfully nice.

What on earth, you might ask? Is that really an Angli­can priest on horse­back? It sounds like a third ver­sion of those won­der­ful old-fashioned appe­tiz­ers, “Angels on Horse­back”, which are oys­ters wrapped in bacon and grilled, or “Dev­ils on Horse­back,” the same thing only I think kid­neys instead of oys­ters? What­ever, no, the pho­to­graph above isn’t a tasty treat, but it was a treat nonethe­less. I’ll explain.

So Avery has been rid­ing at her sta­ble this week, the won­der­ful Ross Nye Sta­ble, meet­ing lots of new peo­ple and horses and gen­er­ally hav­ing the time of her life. They are a com­bi­na­tion of relaxed and intense, relaxed in terms of sched­ul­ing, cloth­ing, etc., but very pre­cise as far as train­ing goes. So I got to see her on Thurs­day in the ring in Hyde Park just below the Bayswa­ter Road, and met a nice mother called Dana whose lit­tle girl Syrie was hav­ing a les­son at the same time. It’s always a bit nerve-wracking walk­ing from the sta­ble in the mews to the ring in the park, because the road is extremely busy with those typ­i­cal Eng­lish dri­vers who would be as polite as any­thing if you run over their feet with your trol­ley in Marks and Spencers, but would as soon flat­ten you in the road as look at you. I think it’s the enforced stop­ping for pedes­tri­ans in zebra cross­ings that makes them so aggres­sive absolutely every­where else. I always tor­ment myself by won­der­ing what would hap­pen if the pony Avery was rid­ing spooked at some­thing and just decided to go some­where else, rather than fol­low­ing the other ponies in a nice orderly group to the park. Any­way, after her les­son, Alexa the trainer men­tioned that there would be a lit­tle get-together on Sun­day, and did we want to come? She gave me a lit­tle card announc­ing “Horseman’s Sun­day: a unique local insti­tu­tion cel­e­brat­ing the life and work of horses sta­bled in Cen­tral Lon­don.” Appar­ently in the 1960s, to protest the threat­ened clo­sure of the sta­bles, Mr Ross Nye (who is per­haps 80 years old now) began to take his horses over to the nearby church, St John’s Hyde Park, and ask the vicar to bless them. Truly, I am not mak­ing this up. Well, over the 39 years it’s been going on (Mr Nye is AWFULLY excited about the 40th anniver­sary next year) the event has grown enor­mously both in size and in elab­o­rate­ness. Alexa explained that Avery should turn up at 10:30 on Sun­day and they would walk the horses over to the church, have the bless­ing, and then go to the park for a “gymkhana.”

I have always won­dered, from all my Eng­lish books, what a “gymkhana” is and why on earth it is called that. Well, now was my chance to find out. It turns out that the term refers to the Urdu word for “racket court,” and was orig­i­nally used to mean any organ­ised sport­ing event. But in Eng­land it has come to be applied only to eques­trian events, and espe­cially those high­light­ing children’s par­tic­i­pa­tion. So as in so many Eng­lish things, it’s impor­tant to be up on your Indian terms. Like jodh­purs. An odd word, I always thought, but I never knew until now that it was the cap­i­tal city of an Indian state, and the inhab­i­tants wear tight-fitting breeches suit­able for rid­ing. So there you go!

We took Avery to the sta­ble, then, yes­ter­day morn­ing where she was pressed into ser­vice groom­ing the horses. At times she finds it a bit awk­ward to be thrust into yet another barn with unfa­mil­iar chil­dren and train­ers, and not know­ing exactly what’s expected of her. I don’t blame her. Luck­ily Emily was there! So she guided her around and before you knew it Avery had a curry comb in her hand and was busily tak­ing care of some pony. The plan was that the chil­dren would draw names from a hat to see who was lucky enough to ride to the church, and who would merely walk along help­ing out. Up came a dap­per elderly fel­low wear­ing immac­u­late jacket and trouses, and a HAT, and he imme­di­ately enjoined her to tie back her hair. Did you know it was the law in Eng­land that peo­ple han­dling live­stock can­not have loose hair? “Easy enough for us blokes, mind you,” he said cheer­ily, “but you young ladies must keep neat and tidy.” This was, it turned out, Ross Nye him­self. It was clear that John and I were entirely unnec­es­sary to the pro­ceed­ings, so we headed off to find the church and wait for her there.

It was just a cou­ple of blocks away and prepa­ra­tions were under­way. Local busi­nesses had set up odd lit­tle tables with favors and infor­ma­tion about them­selves. There was a young lady sell­ing draw­ings of horses, and she would draw your horse if you wanted her to. I spied one chap who looked ter­ri­bly famil­iar but I couldn’t think why: was he an actor? No, I realised, it was my vet! There pro­mot­ing his clinic. There was a church ser­vice going on, and choral music float­ing out into the cool Sep­tem­ber air. When it was over, two vic­ars came out in their long black soutanes, which they quickly cov­ered up with bright green embroi­dered robes. Then, believe it or not, came the sound of hooves. Many, many hooves. Eight of the hooves belonged to two horses that were des­tined to be the vic­ars’ mounts, so with some really awk­ward help from lit­tle Pony Club peo­ple, they climbed onto the sad­dles and sat there, look­ing com­pletely odd! Up the square came the Ross Nye con­tin­gent, and there was Avery on a pony! The lucky girl. He was called Win­ston, and he looked ter­ri­fied. So many horses! And carts, and car­riages and fancy out­fits. There was one fel­low in a blue vel­vet jacket and pink jodh­purs, with spiky white hair, and a lady (it took me a long time to dis­cover that she WAS a lady!) in proper tar­tan tweeds and knee-high boots. And many, many lit­tle girls (includ­ing Avery) in the tra­di­tional blue button-up shirt of the Pony Club.

The church bells rang for noon, and the horses all gath­ered around the fore­court of the church for the prayers and hymns, and Ross Nye’s speech about the impor­tance of horses through­out his­tory and their mean­ing in all our lives. Let me tell you, hun­dreds of horses all crowded together lis­ten­ing to prayers and speeches get real excited when peo­ple applaud. I thought there would be a mass revolt, but the rid­ers got their mounts under con­trol (although Avery reported later that Win­ston was scared to death). Then they were all marched out, around the block, and then back, one at a time, up to the front of the church for Ross Nye to offer the rider a rosette, say a few words about who owned the horse, and pass them along to the vicar (in a bright green robe ON A HORSE, too odd!) who made the “father, son and the holy spirit” ges­ture with his hand and blessed the horse! Hon­estly. And then they all trot­ted away, back where they had come from, some from as far away as Oxford­shire. Just to be blessed.

Back at the sta­ble it took some time to estab­lish that we had time for lunch (which some peo­ple had been smart enough to bring as a pic­nic) and then we’d head to the park for the gymkhana. So we found a pub and had cot­tage pie and fish and chips, and John went home to take a nap, hav­ing just come in the day before from New York. Some of the girls rode ponies to the park, but they ran out, so sev­eral includ­ing Avery rode over in Mr Nye’s car, which she reports he dri­ves VERY slowly. I bet. Another mother and I walked over, doggedly fol­low­ing the ponies all the way around the park instead of cut­ting across. I was already tired from hav­ing walked all the way to the Tate Mod­ern yes­ter­day, to see the Kandin­sky exhibit (more on that later) while Avery and John saw “Pirates of the Caribbean.” So by the time we reached the enclo­sure I was worn out! Just as I got there, my mobile phone voice­mail called me, and there was a mes­sage from friends that they were at the ring, and so was my daugh­ter, and where was I? We met up and watched the girls play lots of pony games, rid­ing around cones, try­ing to grab flags as they passed by, and finally some jump­ing. It was a gor­geous day, per­fect to be out and about. And you know what? The horses all looked, well, blessed.

It’s an odd life, in a way, that can be encap­su­lated by these two pho­tographs. Actu­ally yes­ter­day was a very pro­duc­tive day in ret­ro­spect, although at the time it felt that all I was doing was retrac­ing my steps over and over, acquir­ing more shop­ping bags each time. Let’s see, after dropoff I climbed ALL the stairs at King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School to reach Form Three, in time for my first day read­ing with the gulls. A lit­tle sprout called Brynne read from “Stan­ley, Flat Again,” to which I asked, “Have you already read ‘Flat Stan­ley’ then?” “Oh, yes, now he’s flat again,” she explained. “What hap­pened this time?” I asked. “I know the first time a bul­letin board fell on him, but then of course his brother could pump him up with the bicy­cle pump.” Silence. “Really, how did he get flat AGAIN?” I per­sisted. Finally, Brynne explained, “Oh, you know, he just… did. He just… got flat. You know how it is.” After­ward Miss King, the PE teacher (who had been at the com­puter along­side us at the time) said, “That’s what I love about lit­tle girls. He can just GET FLAT and that’s the way it is.”

So I headed off to John Lewis to buy big­ger ver­sions of Avery’s PE kit and cardies, since she’s grown expo­nen­tially this sum­mer. The new ones looked enor­mous at the shop, but when she tried them on after wash­ing and dry­ing, fright­en­ingly they fit. Sigh. I also acquired at John Lewis the items you see here: “Learn­ing with Lady­bird!” Avery is not lov­ing her times tables and the pre­vail­ing wis­dom is that set­ting them to song will help. “I just don’t know my sixes or sev­ens, and PS 234 seemed to think that learn­ing up to the tens was enough, so I thought I knew my twelves, but only up to times ten!” The pres­sure is enor­mous. Her maths home­work the other night made me shiver. John needs to come home.

Then a spon­ta­neous hair­cut! I have been long­ing to get rid of all this awful colour, so I just popped in to a salon in the High Street, and was out again in 40 min­utes, a whole new me. Although Avery called me a muskrat, because it is really short. “But I like muskrats!” was her belated apol­ogy. Then I rushed home, stop­ping at the Body Shop for some new­fan­gled olive-flavoured shower soap John’s inter­ested in. I dropped every­thing off at home, did laun­dry and chose a pho­to­graph for Avery’s birth­day party invi­ta­tion. It’s to be a Hal­loween birth­day, since Eng­lish Hal­loween cel­e­bra­tions are, we have heard, muted to say the best. I’ve already ordered all sorts of Amer­i­can candy and dec­o­ra­tions that poor John will be lug­ging home in his suit­case on Sat­ur­day, bless his heart. So I rushed out again to the But­ton Queen to find black but­tons we can glue on cards to sur­round with eight Sharpy legs and have, voila, a spi­der. While wait­ing at the But­ton Queen as a lady painstak­ingly chose six but­tons for a blouse she was wanted to wear dur­ing the hol­i­days (noth­ing like plan­ning ahead), I looked out the win­dow to see that across the road was a shop devoted entirely to sausages. Yes, sausages. “Big­gles Gourmet Sausages,” it said, with a logo of a fly­ing pig wear­ing pilot’s gog­gles and a jaunty scarf. So after acquir­ing my but­tons I crossed over to the shop and the SMELL! Can I just say how good the siz­zling sausages they were fit­ting into long crispy rolls smelled. I decided then and there that we were hav­ing bangers and mash for din­ner, some­thing I have never put together but is a clas­sic Eng­lish dish of course. I bought four “Maryle­bone Pork” bangers, described in the shop lit­er­a­ture as “An old, res­ur­rected tra­di­tional Lon­don recipe sea­soned with mace, gin­ger and sage.” Mace is, of course, the hard outer shell of a nut­meg that, when grated, is a lovely del­i­cate flavour.

Then to the photo shop to drop off the pho­to­graph for dupli­ca­tion, then to the sta­tionery store for cards and envelopes. Then to col­lapse at Marco Polo in the Maryle­bone High Street for the best hum­mous I have ever had. Is it the pars­ley and tomato driz­zled with olive oil on top that makes it so good? I don’t know, but it was lovely.

At pickup Avery announced that she really needed a new ruler AND a mechan­i­cal eraser (or “rub­ber” as she says since she’s Eng­lish now) so we were back to the stationer’s. Finally a stop at Marks and Spencer for fruit and salad ingre­di­ents to off­set the com­pletely fatty din­ner I was plan­ning, and finally HOME. Sigh. Read a note from school about emer­gency mea­sures in place for “Ter­ror­ist or other attack in Cen­tral Lon­don.” How reas­sur­ing to know that the school has “suf­fi­cient stock of basic emer­gency pro­vi­sions for sus­te­nance for forty-eight hours.” I can rest easy now.

I had the cosiest toes-up on the sofa, Tacy on lap, while Avery did her home­work nearby. What lux­ury to be able to spend the day doing things just to take care of us! I some­times won­der where I found the ambi­tion to run my gallery, when in real­ity I’m often per­fectly happy just tak­ing care of us. I think the answer is that the gallery was the right thing to do when it hap­pened, but I’m not a busi­ness owner at heart.

So bangers and mash. There are sev­eral schools of thought on this topic. Some peo­ple swear by bak­ing the sausages for half an hour in a slow oven (isn’t it funny to describe an oven in terms of speed, instead of tem­per­a­ture?). I myself love the sound of sausages in a skil­let, so that’s what I did. Then, too, some peo­ple feel that gravy is essen­tial to the dish, but I hap­pen to live with a child who thinks gravy is the scourge of God, so no tak­ers there. Then, too, I have read of recipes that call for mash­ing the pota­toes with a tea­spoon of but­ter, and milk. I’m sorry. But­ter doesn’t come in TEA­SPOONS. Unless it’s being rationed. So what I cooked for us was this:

Bangers and Mash
(serves four, since I sim­ply can­not cook for two, or even three)

4 large pork sausages
3 large King Edward or other mash­ing potato
1/2 stick soft­ened but­ter
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
skim mik (to thin)
2 tsps sea salt
fresh ground pep­per to taste

Peel pota­toes and quar­ter them, then put in large saucepan and add water to cover (I love Lau­rie Colwin’s story of a boyfriend who, when given this direc­tion, asked in con­ster­na­tion, “what cover?”). Boil for 30 minutes.

Mean­while, place sausages in a skil­let over medium heat and cover with a splat­ter screen. Turn them fre­quently as they cook to make sure that all sur­faces are nicely siz­zled. The sausages will feel stiff to the poke when they are done, per­haps ten min­utes in all.

Drain the pota­toes. Mash with but­ter and cream, and some milk if they are too thick, then add salt and pep­per to taste.

With this, to salve my con­science, we had sugar snap peas sauteed in olive oil, and a nice salad of spinach, toma­toes and avo­cado. Yum. The per­fect cosy din­ner for a thun­der­stormy Lon­don night.

Well, silly me I for­got to take my cam­era to the rid­ing les­son at the new barn today, so I shall have to wait to post a pic­ture of the dar­ling new pony, Rowan, until Thurs­day when Avery has her next les­son. Suf­fice to say it was suc­cess­ful! And read­ers, let me tell you of my sat­is­fac­tion upon mak­ing the jour­ney to the sta­ble: it was but a 5-pound cab ride away from school! Ross Nye Sta­bles, in Bathurst Mews, with lessons across the Bayswa­ter Road in Hyde Park. Now, why did it take us so long to go there? Ah well, we’re there now. The mews itself is gor­geous, cob­ble­stoned as they all are, and sim­ply over­flow­ing with win­dow­boxes full of pan­sies and vio­lets, and trail­ing vines and ivy. I say this with spu­ri­ous author­ity since I can­not really iden­tify any flow­ers except marigolds, which my mother made me enter into every Flower Show at School 77 (for which I earned a pathetic Hon­or­able Men­tion every year, so sad). My point is, it’s a very flow­ery mews. So they put Avery on sweet Rowan, who is rather Scout-like in his size and demeanor, and since my loy­al­ties have always stayed with Scout, I felt good. She and two instruc­tors headed off toward the park and for some idi­otic rea­son I fol­lowed them, only to be aban­doned for The Mile, the path around the entire park. So I spent the hour on a ruinous phone call to my mother-in-law (how do we man­age to talk for an hour? I can eas­ily do that with my mother, too).

Home to exchange via email din­ner plans with the Divine Sarah Webb, with whom we’re plan­ning our Paris trip. You sim­ply must go on Sarah’s web­site and see her art­work. Her show, “Fat and Blood and How To Make Them” was one of the high­lights of the life of my gallery in New York. Can I boast for a moment and say that Edward Albee bought one of her pieces? That was beyond thrilling.

But I digress. Did I tell you that the for­mi­da­ble Mrs Davies, head­mistress of King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School, invited me by let­ter over the sum­mer to teach a Book Club after school this year? Her let­ter was a mar­velous piece of Eng­lish lan­guage engi­neer­ing, beg­ging my kind for­give­ness should her invi­ta­tion strike me as a “cheeky” one. On the con­trary, I was thrilled. I have missed the Book Clubs of Avery’s lit­tle girl­hood, with a host of chil­dren sit­ting on the gray felt rug that zipped around the col­umn in our Tribeca loft, read­ing to the lit­tle sprouts and hav­ing snack. I think I did it for five years! So this was great. Except for the sti­fling unsea­son­able heat and the fact that the school seems aller­gic to hav­ing the win­dows open. It was a hor­ri­ble flash­back to the Fash­ion Show.

The Club was assigned to Mrs Miekle’s sixth-form class­room, which dou­bles as the Eng­lish Room. The sixth-form girls were busily pack­ing up their ruck­sacks, com­plain­ing about the amount of home­work given that day, the incred­i­ble mean­ness of var­i­ous teach­ers, chang­ing into dance leo­tards, shar­ing water bot­tles. Their pip­ing Eng­lish voices and sort of awk­ward pre-adolescent demeanor was sim­ply adorable. Then they departed, to be replaced by Avery and Anna, and the New Girl Eliz­a­beth, who Avery had press-ganged into sign­ing up for Book Club. And then, four gulls that, in typ­i­cal nine-year-old fash­ion, did not iden­tify them­selves and sim­ply plopped down on the floor. So I opened “Betsy-Tacy,” asked if any­one knew what an auto­bi­og­ra­phy was, got a resound­ing silence for my pains, then Avery said yes, it was a per­son telling the story of her own life, so I explained that this book was a fic­tion­al­ized auto­bi­og­ra­phy. It was the author writ­ing down the sto­ries of her child­hood but giv­ing all the char­ac­ters dif­fer­ent names. I read the first three chap­ters, and there was rapt atten­tion from the girls, who grad­u­ally sank down with their heads on their back­packs, star­ing at the cover illus­tra­tion and occa­sion­ally ask­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion as to which girl on the front was which char­ac­ter. I had wor­ried a bit because the story starts out about five-year-olds, but there was no prob­lem. They loved it. If any of you have lit­tle girls who do not know Betsy-Tacy, run, don’t walk to your near­est real or vir­tual book­store and snap it up.

Home sweat­ing to death, via Vil­landry where Avery wolfed down, I’m ashamed to say, both ice cream and a pain au choco­lat. I really must bring a health­ier snack to pickup!

Friends saun­tered in for din­ner, the truly lus­cious chicken curry with oranges and apples, and a salad of lamb’s let­tuce (it is also called mache) with a vinai­grette of my own inven­tion. It is not for the faint of heart.

Gar­lic Lemon Vinaigrette

1 lemon
2 cloves gar­lic
sea salt
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp bal­samic vine­gar
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Here’s the fun part, if you’re at all OCD. You roll the lemon around on the counter, which for some rea­son makes it give more juice. Then with a sharp par­ing knife, peel it all round, leav­ing no pith (I just can’t stand that word. But it’s not as bad as “moist”.) Then very care­fully sec­tion the lemon, tak­ing care to dis­card seeds. The sec­tions will look like tiny pale man­darin orange sec­tions as you get in a can.

Peel the gar­lic and chop it right with the lemon sec­tions which you have sprin­kled with salt. It will become a kind of liq­uidy paste finally. Scoop this with the flat of your knife into a nice small bowl. Grad­u­ally whisk in the olive oil and watch it emul­sify. Then whisk in the vine­gar and mus­tard. Dress the lamb’s let­tuce just at the last moment before eat­ing, because the leaves are so del­i­cate and will absorb the dress­ing right away.

For dessert we had Eng­lish straw­ber­ries (red all the way through, such a delight after their Amer­i­can cousins that look like straw­ber­ries and bark like straw­ber­ries but smell like noth­ing but their plas­tic con­tain­ers and are white and hard inside. Ick.) sprin­kled with Amaretto and tossed with a tiny bit of sugar. I wanted to sprin­kle them with Coin­treau but I didn’t have any and was too lazy to go back out. One of the things I love about my friend (and there are so many) is that she was quite fine with her chil­dren hav­ing a bit of Amaretto with their fruit. Although Avery, no child of her spirits-loving par­ents, wrin­kled up her nose and said, “Eew, what’s wrong with the straw­ber­ries?” Ah, youth.

I’m so pleased to go to bed tonight with a suc­cess­ful Book Club under my belt, and a new pony and barn. Now all we need is for John to come home and start shop­ping seri­ously for our Mini, and the autumn will be look­ing quite bright indeed.

Five years ago, of course, was that ter­ri­ble day. It feels so odd to be away from New York on the anniver­sary, almost like I aban­doned it. So I thought I would think a lit­tle bit about where we were then, and then maybe it would be eas­ier to think about where we are now.

When I took Avery to school this morn­ing, it was hard to look at the girl with almost two num­bers in her age and remem­ber the lit­tle nearly-five-year-old, small enough to carry, going to school on the sec­ond day of kinder­garten, when the unthink­able hap­pened. It was only years later that she told me, “I was the last one in the big red door,” mean­ing the door in the school yard at PS 234, min­utes before the first plane hit the build­ing just four blocks away. I asked her yes­ter­day what she remem­bered of that day, and there is very lit­tle. Which is so good. My mother sug­gested that of course it will always be some­thing that hap­pened to her, some­thing she will always be part of. But thank good­ness she wasn’t nearly ten on that day, when we tried so hard to make her not part of it.

It was such a famously crispy blue-sky day of course, and I sup­pose the time might come some day in the future when there can be a crispy blue-sky Sep­tem­ber morn­ing that doesn’t feel ter­ri­bly wrong. And a tiny, tiny part of every school dropoff remains rooted in that morn­ing, when leav­ing her at school was fol­lowed almost instantly by such fear and inde­ci­sion, haste and worry. But the other side of that coin is how glad I am at every school pickup that it’s all gone fine, there she is, all’s well. And I’m not sure I would have been smart enough to feel that way with­out that day, so per­haps it’s a sil­ver lin­ing of sorts.

John is there today, prob­a­bly just wak­ing up in his tacky hotel room in mid­town, shortly to walk over to Times Square and start his work day. It is the first anniver­sary that we haven’t been together, and the first I have spent out­side New York. I remem­ber spend­ing the first anniver­sary at my new art gallery, on a street that was cor­doned off for months after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, with so many vis­i­tors com­ing in to be glad the gallery was there, glad the street was open, that the chil­dren were back in their school on the cor­ner that had been closed until Feb­ru­ary. That’s what Avery remem­bers. “It was awful hav­ing to move schools.” But she remem­bers that in much the same way that she remem­bers the hated “cor­po­rate flat” where we stayed here in Lon­don for the first few weeks. A place not of our choos­ing, filled with tem­po­rary things, know­ing you didn’t belong. And how good to get to a place where you did belong, and could put down roots.

I remem­ber that the school’s web­site, oth­er­wise com­pletely upbeat, pos­i­tive, forward-looking even in the dark days of not know­ing where we would relo­cate to, had one pho­to­graph that seemed to acknowl­edge what had hap­pened to us: a pic­ture of the school cal­en­dar, hang­ing slightly askew in the principal’s office, with yel­low smi­ley faces mark­ing off the days of Sep­tem­ber, and stop­ping abruptly at Sep­tem­ber 10. I won­der who posted that pic­ture? It seemed to me to rep­re­sent all that had been lost.

Five years on, in another time zone, another apart­ment, another school, even with four com­pletely new cats! In a strange way it’s odd to have feline com­pan­ions that weren’t with us in those dark days, but only a totally crazy per­son like me would think of some­thing like that. I thought this morn­ing that Dor­rie would come to clean today, not dear Car­men who I met at the police bar­rier at Canal Street on what­ever day after Sep­tem­ber 11th, sad and devoted. When I cleaned out Avery’s closet this spring, finally purg­ing it of years of out­grown clothes, I found the lit­tle skirt she was wear­ing that day, a lit­tle orange two-layered skirt with pink gauzy flow­ers sewn to it. I remem­ber I put it on her the next day, too, think­ing in some dogged, crazy way that then it wouldn’t be “what she was wear­ing on that day.” Of course it stayed “what she was wear­ing on that day” for­ever after that, no mat­ter how many times she put it on.

Tonight friends will come for din­ner, since it seemed as if we should be with other New York­ers. And then tomor­row won’t be the anniver­sary of any­thing, which will be good. I have to remem­ber how for­tu­nate we are that no one we knew died, that we’re together. How much worse it could have been, and was for so many peo­ple. My sin­cere plan is to become a big­ger per­son for whom it isn’t always all about me. To all of you in New York, we’re think­ing about you.

Is that it’s hard to fit him into a Mini Cooper! But we’re going to try. We’ve been car­less for too long, we’ve decided, so yes­ter­day we started on the road to offi­cial adop­tion of an orphaned Mini and test drove a model at Park Lane BMW. One of the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tions of liv­ing in May­fair is that within three blocks of our flat, one can pur­chase an Astin Mar­tin, a BMW, a Bent­ley, or… a Mini. It’s the cutest car ever. But very tiny, so John had to fold him­self up like a clown in a phone booth to get in. At first, the saleslady Anita was very skep­ti­cal (or “scep­ti­cal” as they insist on spelling it here), watch­ing his head graze the roof, his knees tucked under his chin, and poor Avery com­pletely squashed in the back when he pushed the driver’s seat back to its fullest extent. But life, includ­ing car pur­chases, involves com­pro­mise, so I sat back in my comfy pas­sen­ger seat and watched as John and Avery nego­ti­ated who got what amount of room. He started off with the sug­ges­tion that she merely ride at all times with her legs crossed on the seat, which was greeted with a guf­faw and the coun­ter­sug­ges­tion that we get a con­vert­ible so he can put his legs out the top and drive with his hands. Finally seats were adjusted to everyone’s sat­is­fac­tion and we took turns dri­ving around Hyde Park, mar­veling at how it turns on a dime, or a six­pence, the sur­pris­ing amount of engine power for such a teeny lit­tle vehi­cle. And Anita, whose accent sug­gests her ori­gins in some­place end­ing in a “stan,” assured us of its remark­able “safe­ty­ness,” which is reas­sur­ing, and sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing all the other cars on the road top it by sev­eral if not many inches.

So John is headed off to New York for the week this after­noon, and when he gets back on Sat­ur­day we’re going to look seri­ously for a nice used Mini for our very own. I actu­ally felt quite com­fort­able dri­ving, which is aston­ish­ing since my last remem­bered dri­ving expe­ri­ence in Lon­don ended in my being hit by a tour bus full of vis­it­ing Finns, then ric­o­chet­ing into a Jeep owned by a Greek diplo­mat. The poor bobby who attended the scene said he felt like he was stuck in a NATO meet­ing. The poor car was totalled, or rather 100 pounds shy of being totalled which meant we had to get it fixed. I was fine, but it has left me (and the British dri­ving com­mu­nity) a bit hes­i­tant about my tak­ing the wheel again. I think some nice dri­ving lessons would be good.

Other that, I con­fess to a bit of bore­dom. None of the tasks star­ing me in the face seems inter­est­ing: sewing on more name tapes, fold­ing laun­dry, glu­ing pho­tos in the album, gro­cery shop­ping. I need an adven­ture. Wait, I’m going to have one! I almost for­got. The sec­ond week­end in Octo­ber, Avery and I are going to jour­ney off to Paris, to stay in a dar­ling lit­tle hotel with my dear friend Sarah and her daugh­ter Eve. It’s Eve’s tenth birth­day present, and it will be a nice time for the two girls to par­lay their long-distance, mother-motivated friend­ship into a real time friend­ship. You see, Sarah and I met ten years ago when I was plan­ning a con­fer­ence ses­sion at the Col­lege Art Asso­ci­a­tion annual meet­ing, and one of the papers I accepted for the panel was Sarah’s, on the Eng­lish painter Gwen John. It later turned out that Sarah had been liv­ing right in my neigh­bor­hood the last time we were in Lon­don, and tak­ing a course at Christie’s and doing all her research right smack where I was doing mine, at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum library. We are con­vinced that we imprinted on each other with­out ever meet­ing, which accounts for our incred­i­bly close friend­ship as soon as we met. Imme­di­ately we cor­re­sponded by email sev­eral times a day, with let­ters that were equal parts art his­tory, preg­nancy, and food. Years went by when, as she reminded me recently, we each knew what the other was hav­ing for din­ner every sin­gle night! By the time the con­fer­ence took place lo these many years ago, Eve was nine months old and Avery three. It was very con­ve­nient to have Sarah in my life, because at the other end of a key­board was a faith­ful report on exactly what to expect Avery to do, eat or say in six months’ time.

Then we decided to turn the panel dis­cus­sion into a book, which sounded very sim­ple but actu­ally took for­ever and a day to accom­plish. We used to joke that our chil­dren would be able to read the darn thing by the time we finally pub­lished it. And it was TRUE. And they weren’t par­tic­u­larly early read­ers, either. Our hus­bands refer to this work as our “get rich quick scheme.” I recently got a bi-annual roy­alty report from the pub­lisher assur­ing me that as soon as my roy­al­ties for the last half-year reach $50, they will issue me a check. Ah, well, what price friend­ship. And do you know what? By googling Sarah I got to an Ama­zon page that solemnly informed me of the fol­low­ing facts: in our book you get 3,133 words per dol­lar and even more impor­tant, 4,837 words per ounce. I think that’s a bar­gain. And only 24% of books avail­able on Ama­zon con­tain a higher fre­quency of com­plex words than our book con­tains. Again, so much bang for the buck.

But seri­ously, Octo­ber 14 will find the four of us hap­pily eat­ing our way through Paris, watch­ing the pup­pet shows in the Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens, show­ing the girls all the mag­nif­i­cent art­works that inspired us to be art writ­ers and cura­tors, and one of us a fab­u­lous artist her­self. Even more impor­tant, it will give Eve and Avery a chance to dis­cuss what col­lege they want to go to (my money’s on Bryn Mawr Col­lege, where I got my incred­i­bly use­ful and lucra­tive PhD). Because we’re plan­ning that they’ll be roommates.

Poor lit­tle bunny. Avery woke up Thurs­day morn­ing feel­ing just gen­er­ally off-colour, as they say, a lit­tle fever and a sore throat. We made the joint exec­u­tive deci­sion that she should stay home for the day. Luck­ily she had Hat, which is tech­ni­cally a hat, but is more impor­tantly a cru­cial sleep­time item and home to many of the smaller fry among her bed­time ani­mals. Hat was made lov­ingly for her by Judy, our dear farmer friend and neigh­bor in Con­necti­cut, with wool from sheep that Avery had fed milk to as lambs. I sup­pose in the inter­ven­ing year or so it has been actu­ally worn, but really it pre­sides over bed­time. Most comforting.

So we spent a very quiet day, Avery mostly hor­i­zon­tal, but rous­ing her­self to root around in her doll cloth­ing and change all the Amer­i­can Girl dolls’ out­fits plus hair­styles. Among her things she found a lace doily given to her by the artist Miriam Schapiro, who used to show at my gallery, and it turned out that the doily made a very good hat for Tacy (per­haps not in Tacy’s opin­ion). All of us curled up on Avery’s bed and I read aloud from Betsy and Tacy Go Down­town, and we drank count­less glasses of Sprite and apple juice, and then I real­ized I had a pot of chicken stock in the refrig­er­a­tor, or rather a pot of chicken bones that had sim­mered in salted water and only needed to be made into soup. This is piti­fully sim­ple to do, prac­ti­cally free, and there is noth­ing more com­fort­ing. After sim­mer­ing, the bones in their water can sit in the fridge overnight, and then the layer of fat that solid­i­fies on top can be skimmed off, the water brought to a boil again, poured through a strainer into another pot, and any good chicken bits left in the strainer returned to the broth. Check to see if it needs salt (it will), and voila. Home­made chicken soup. Of course, to this sim­ple soup you could add car­rots, onions, turnips, pars­ley, almost any­thing. But Avery likes her soup plain. Believe you me, it perked her up con­sid­er­ably. But not enough to allow her to go to Anna’s for the planned after­noon and evening, dur­ing which John and I were meant to go to school for the Early Year Meet­ing of Form V par­ents with Mrs D, so he stayed home with her and I headed to school for another of those ses­sions that makes me feel entirely inad­e­quate as a parent.

Hon­estly, the level of seri­ous­ness that is applied to these girls and their edu­ca­tion (or more to the point, their achieve­ment on the all-important senior school admis­sions exam next Jan­u­ary) bog­gles the mind. I really am a slacker mother at heart, and luck­ily have been blessed with an almost entirely self-motivated child, because I have a really hard time buck­ling down to the impor­tance of home­work, the cen­tral­ity of the PE kit, and most awful, the even­tu­al­ity of leav­ing King’s Col­lege for some­place even more achieve­ment– ori­en­tated (I love how the Eng­lish add that extra “ated” to the word). I remem­ber my own edu­ca­tion as a rather lowkey affair, and cer­tainly not involv­ing my par­ents to a great degree, although I could be wrong about that. Of course my mother drove me to swim prac­tice, they attended musi­cals in which I had some lame part, had my friends over for sleep­overs, read my report cards (“Kris­ten is a nice lit­tle girl but she talks too much”). As far as I can remem­ber, my par­ents’ inter­ac­tion with peo­ple in author­ity was entirely lim­ited to a visit by my father to the prin­ci­pal of my 5th grade, when I was caught swing­ing on the girls’ bath­room door bars when I was sup­posed to be in French class. But I don’t recall a lot of thought or plan­ning going into my edu­ca­tion as a process. I think we just went to school. It’s a whole dif­fer­ent ball game here.

All of us par­ents crowded into the music room at school, had glasses of wine or water pressed into our ner­vous hands, and made small talk while wait­ing for Mrs D to be ready. She and the Form Teacher, a divine lady called Miss L, quickly got us in line and the meet­ing began. Such mat­ters were dis­cussed as the impor­tance of our chil­dren learn­ing the 24-hour clock, drilling the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables, pars­ing sen­tences at the speed of light, and most cru­cial, buck­ling down to home­work. No more mid-week play­dates. These gulls will be sent home with home­work on at least two sub­jects per day, some­times three, and my word, the super­vi­sion it’s meant to require amazes me! Cur­rently my super­vi­sion of Avery’s home­work con­sists of try­ing to make sure Tacy doesn’t eat it, given her pro­cliv­ity towards ingest­ing any and all bits of paper around the house. But Mrs D is very con­cerned that the gulls not be allowed to “faff about” when they’re meant to be mem­o­riz­ing 9 times 9 and where North­ern Ire­land is on the map. It never occurred to me that Avery would be inclined to faff! I don’t think she is. But I’ve got to take this mother thing more seri­ously. I imme­di­ately feel about 9 years old myself in sit­u­a­tions that involve women in authority.

All the lan­guage is so dif­fer­ent, as well. We are at the begin­ning of the “Michael­mas” term, a word I’d always asso­ci­ated with daisies (why? I have no idea) which turns out to refer to the fes­ti­val day of St. Michael on Sep­tem­ber 29, and has been gen­er­ally extended in the aca­d­e­mic sphere to mean “autumn”. Much was made of the divi­sion of class into the “A” group and the “Alpha” group, sep­a­rat­ing the chil­dren into faster-learning and slower-learning groups, and how impor­tant it was not to turn this into a value judg­ment. I won­der what the gulls them­selves make of the dis­tinc­tion, and what hap­pens to chil­dren like Avery who can spell any­thing under the sun but can’t remem­ber from one day to the next how much is 9 times 9. Poor child, inher­it­ing my com­pletely skewed abil­i­ties. Also appar­ently there is some­thing called “study skills” that will require some hired out­side expert to explain to the chil­dren. This has not hap­pened yet, and we par­ents are not to worry about it… yet. What can these skills be, if the kids haven’t learned them already? We were warned off the notion of hir­ing what in Amer­ica would be called a tutor but here is called a coach, which is sort of a relief because I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Avery told me that she had to work on her “rest­ing smile,” because Miss L wants them to look cheer­ful as they work. Left to her own devices, Avery’s rest­ing expres­sion looks like she is about to be run through with a sharp object, or has been already and is in shock from loss of blood. She looks very, very seri­ous. We call it her “pony face,” a look of utter con­cen­tra­tion. Under Miss L’s tute­lage, how­ever, a more friendly expres­sion is to be desired. “She explained it like this: would she rather look out at us and see happy chil­dren, or gloomy chil­dren?” I can’t imag­ine any­one less gloomy than Miss L, but this does not trans­late into light-hearted at all. Rather, she has the demeanor of some­one in her ele­ment, some­one who has a very clear notion of what life is about and is per­fectly capa­ble of trans­fer­ring this knowl­edge to a bunch of 9-year-olds. It should be an inter­est­ing year.

In May they will all go for five days to the Isle of Wight! Prop­erly chap­er­oned of course, for a sort of Out­ward Bound expe­ri­ence called PGL, named for the founder’s three ini­tials, but the gulls call it “Par­ents Get Lost.” This is intended to help them bond as a class, I sup­pose to coun­ter­act the real­ity that they are all com­pet­ing for what sounds like about four spots in all these posh senior schools. Ah well, a good atti­tude is what’s impor­tant, no?

I came home in the bloomy twi­light, feel­ing over­whelmed. But John seems to feel every­thing is under con­trol. Our next move is to have a meet­ing with Mrs D her­self, in her intim­i­dat­ing Pri­vate Study, to assess what sort of school would be right for Avery. I think she’ll lose inter­est in us when it turns out we’re not con­sid­er­ing board­ing school! The three schools that sound like pos­si­bil­i­ties are Godol­phin and Latymer, where one of Erin’s girls goes, City of Lon­don School for Girls, and St. Paul’s School for Girls. Miss Leslie told me that St. Paul’s has a cur­ricu­lum like a uni­ver­sity, for 11-year-olds. Does that sound like Avery? I can’t decide. Maybe home school­ing is best. Sigh.

I admit it: I’ve always felt a bit smug about Christ­mas Eve. About not wait­ing to shop until then, I mean. My pack­ages are always under the tree and I’m hap­pily mak­ing oys­ter stew, while other, pre­sum­ably less organ­ised, peo­ple are fran­ti­cally mak­ing their way to the shops for last-minute gift items. There is some­thing of des­per­a­tion in their quest, and they know they have only them­selves to blame.

Yes­ter­day was my comeuppance.

Avery dis­cov­ered late Sun­day evening that her school shoes, the lovely navy blue Mary Jane Start-Rites that were her pride and joy in Jan­u­ary, are too small. For some rea­son this announce­ment did not fill me with hor­ror as it should have. I merely said, “Oh, we’ll pick some up tomor­row.” As in First Day of School Eve. What was I think­ing? I col­lected her from her play­date with Anna, and Becky inti­mated that there might con­ceiv­ably be a prob­lem with find­ing shoes at the last minute. “You know, I heard John Lewis is com­pletely out of any­thing between a size 13 and a 2. Amy did call me though to say she had seen some at Trot­ters, or maybe in the Kings Road.” It had come to this. REPORTED SIGHT­INGS of shoes. Pure gos­sip. So I thought, let’s just head to John Lewis any­way, school uni­form nir­vana, and at least order a pair. At least we can find out exactly what size she is and then even go online. Sure.

We made our way through the hot and even (for Eng­lish peo­ple) rude crowds up to the 4th Floor, past the toys, infantwear, School­wear, what­ever, into the Children’s Shoe Depart­ment, where all hell had appar­ently offi­cially bro­ken loose. There were untold num­bers of chil­dren, dis­grun­tled at the end of their school hol­i­days, their intractable younger sib­lings all melt­ing into what­ever hap­pens to younger sib­lings at 5 o’clock in the after­noon, their har­rassed and sweaty moth­ers los­ing tem­pers and tak­ing away pre­cious play­things as pun­ish­ment. There were hun­dreds of mate­less shoes, mostly of the black and blue descrip­tion, all plainly des­tined to accom­pany school uni­forms the NEXT DAY. And there wasn’t even that bit of excite­ment in the air that might be there on Christ­mas Eve. All these moth­ers were spend­ing all this money on stuff their kids didn’t want, for school that no one wanted to have begin!

So we queued up for the awful Judgment-Day sort of machine into which you enter your needs and then wait for a piece of paper to spit out on which is spec­i­fied how long it will take to have your needs ful­filled. There was a Dra­con­ian fas­ci­na­tion to the process, though: how many chil­dren, male or female, how many pairs of shoes, spe­cial widths? We were told that it would take 58 min­utes for our num­ber, “93J,” to be reached, and for some­one to help us. It sounded like the knell of doom. And then the lady behind me said, “You know, the shop shuts at 6.” NO! That was a bald-faced lie, it turned out, but worth a good two min­utes’ agony. So we sat. And watched the chaos. I began to count the num­ber of min­utes it would take Avery to have a bath when we got home, and to cal­cu­late the like­li­hood that I could also get din­ner ready in that period of time. Many chil­dren tried to climb over those lit­tle hilly pieces of car­peted fur­ni­ture where the feet being mea­sured are meant to go, and fell off, result­ing in tears, blame, more sib­ling rage. And the num­ber­ing sys­tem! When I heard “95J” bel­lowed out I got all incensed, think­ing we had been passed over, but it turned out that before “95J” was “44N,” and after that was “23Y.” What? You couldn’t even get your­self excited to watch the num­bers count down like at the DMV. It was all com­pletely ran­dom, and as such com­pletely infuriating.

I amused myself with the var­i­ous speech pat­terns and accents of the sales­peo­ple who called out the num­bers. One lady whis­pered her num­bers in a tone that only dogs can hear, and was vis­i­bly heart­ened every time she said, “Last Call, 61P,” or what­ever, and no one answered. Then she could go on to the next num­ber. I never saw her help any­one. Then there was the guy from Dick­ens who kept repeat­ing, “Furty-free haitch, furty-free haitch,” and I thought I would explode. Finally it was our turn. I sur­ren­dered my hot sweaty lit­tle scrap of proof that I was in fact “93J.” Avery had nearly fallen asleep on my lap. The sales­man mea­sured her lit­tle feet labo­ri­ously, announc­ing with sin­is­ter delight that her left foot was slightly larger than her right. “We will go with the larger size,” he intoned. What a strat­egy. He crept off and we held hands like chil­dren in a for­est. What would he bring out? He came out of a far­away closet stag­ger­ing under a huge pile of boxes. What riches! We would even have a choice! But box after box was opened to reveal shoes with pur­ple flow­ers, with pink heels, black shoes, shoes in the wrong size. Noth­ing was right. There was not a size 1 1/2, width F, Navy Blue Rumba Mary Jane to be had. Other moth­ers were snatch­ing away the rejected shoes, ready to com­pro­mise on any­thing just to get out of the store. We con­soled our­selves that we had at least achieved that one thing: her size. We can still hope.

Maybe they’ll be in her stock­ing tomor­row morning?

But the first day of Form Five went swim­mingly! Despite the awful­ness of short shoes and the wrong color hair thingys, she was accepted at the door of King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School and went in with her friends. Lots of parental kiss­ing out­side the door and exchanges of high-pitched reports on sum­mer hol­i­days. Now, nor­mally I try to achieve a com­pletely anti-social, silent, creep­away sort of dropoff, but not today. I am actu­ally so glad to have friends, real friends, that I didn’t mind that they expected to be talked to at 8:15 a.m. I won­der what I said?