It’s a first: fund-raising on Kris­ten in Lon­don! But as I was munch­ing my lunch in front of the BBC mid­day news today, I saw a story that made me sit up and stop chew­ing. The Berk­shire, Buck­ing­hamshire and Oxford­shire Wildlife Trust are appeal­ing for dona­tions to help them buy 72 acres of land in Berk­shire, land and a river that inspired Ken­neth Gra­hame to write the iconic Wind in the Wil­lows. Appar­ently this area is home to all the Rat­tys, Toads (and pre­sum­ably their Toad Halls), Mole and all their friends. How I remem­ber the hours and hours spent read­ing that book aloud to Avery when she was tiny, and then watch­ing the hilar­i­ous films. It took the devoted atten­tion of both John and me singly to get through that long book the first time, and I imag­ine that expe­ri­ence is one that taught Avery the ben­e­fits of a long atten­tion span. Not for her the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of Archie comics! Oh, wait, that’s one of her favorites as well. I sup­pose it’s the eclec­tic life that pleases. Oh, and if you need a little-child present there is almost noth­ing nicer than the Jill Barklem set of sto­ries called “Bram­bly Hedge,” where you get not only your voles, but your basic set of other hedge inhab­i­tants as well, mostly mice as I recall. I bet you if I offered to read aloud from “Bram­bly Hedge” at bed­time, Avery would still be happy to listen.

Any­way, my point is this: hav­ing spent many happy hours with “Wind in the Wil­lows”, and almost as many happy hours lis­ten­ing to our Con­necti­cut friend Anne talk about her work with the South­bury Land Trust, I can tell you that sup­port­ing a land or wildlife pre­serve is a good thing to do. There are 80% fewer water voles (i.e Ratty) now than there were just 20 years ago, poor things. But help­ing to buy this tract of land will ensure that Rat­tys can come and go as they please and no McMan­sions will be built. Why, it was only this sum­mer that Avery was feed­ing Young Rollie’s goats on the farm for­merly known as the Lov­dal Farm down the road from our house, recently acquired by the South­bury Land Trust. What if 40 houses had been built on that land? Well, in any case it’s food for thought. There you go, now I’ll step off my soap­box and store it under my desk for the next cause that takes my fancy.

Other than that bit of news, it’s a grey, rainy day here in May­fair, per­fect for pick­ing up my bedrag­gled child­hood copy of “Ammie, Come Home,” the won­der­ful George­town ghost story that I read every Novem­ber, for cozi­ness sake. The rain means also, how­ever, no top down on Emmy when I go pick up Avery and drive her to the sta­ble. It’s always the first thing she says when she approaches the car: “Top down, top down!” I read with my Form Three gulls this morn­ing and had the plea­sure of hear­ing about four pages of Harry Pot­ter with the amaz­ing Vic­to­ria. It’s so much fun just to watch these gulls’ lit­tle Eng­lish mouths form the words. Next week is the Book Fair, and at the gro­cery store yes­ter­day I was forced to pause in the cat food aisle and take an urgent mobile call from the Librar­ian, Mrs Palmer, ask­ing for my assis­tance. Absolutely! This is actu­ally Book Fair week at PS 234 in New York, so it comes at the right time.

Yes­ter­day I spent most of the day order­ing tick­ets for us to see “A Christ­mas Carol” at the Shaw The­atre, and a tra­di­tional choral con­cert of Christ­mas songs at the dreaded Bar­bi­can. I’d bet­ter bring my walk­ing stick with the com­pass in the head and a flask of brandy slung around my neck. Then a long ses­sion dis­cussing the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of home­work for Avery, over a bowl of (I’m ashamed to say) glo­ri­ously crunchy and salty french fries at Patis­serie Valerie. I know I should be giv­ing her gra­nola bars or some­thing, but it’s hard to resist those fries. Plus she needed all the strength she could get to cope with Eng­lish revi­sions, sci­ence ques­tions, maths timesta­bles, French mem­o­riza­tion. As usual we cracked up over the word for “lawyer” and “avo­cado” being the same. “Je suis un avo­cat,” “I am an avo­cado.” Juve­nile bilin­gual humor always gets me. Luck­ily for both of us and our appetites, spaghetti and meat­balls were in store for our din­ner. Now, my meat­ball recipe is flex­i­ble in the extreme, unlike the quite, quite per­fect recipe made by John’s assis­tant Olimpia. I can­not com­pete. Her name ends in a vowel, she was born in Italy, enough said. Maybe if I called mine Nor­we­gian meat­balls the bar would be lower. But Avery likes mine well enough, and I sus­pect Olimpia of leav­ing out some cru­cial secret step, rub­bing her hands together and know­ing that I will never ever be able to achieve her suc­cess. No, she’s too sweet for that. But any­way, mine are easy and you don’t have to worry about their stick­ing together prop­erly and look­ing nice, because they end up their cook­ing being braised in the tomato sauce. That way all flaws are hid­den, an impor­tant ingre­di­ent in my non-perfectionistic cook­ing style.

First you want to start your tomato sauce so it can cook down while you play with the meat­balls. It’s the eas­i­est sauce in the world and smells heav­enly as it cooks.

Kristen’s Tomato Sauce
(serves four)

3 tbsps olive oil
3 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 soup-size cans whole peeled plum toma­toes
1 cup red wine
3 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
salt and pep­per to taste

In a wide saucepan, saute gar­lic and onions in the olive oil, till soft. Then add all the other ingre­di­ents and pre­pare to wait. And stir. And wait, and stir some more. You can also break up the whole toma­toes with the back of your spoon. I advise against start­ing with chopped toma­toes because they just cook down into a mush. This way, you end up with nice rec­og­niz­able and beau­ti­ful bites of tomato and a rich sauce.

Spaghetti and Meat­balls
(serves four, or two peo­ple two nights in a row, in my life)

good splash olive oil
1 medium red onion finely chopped
3 cloves gar­lic, finely chopped

1 lb ground beef, lamb, pork or my combo of all three
one hand­ful pars­ley, finely chopped
3 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 tsp dried basil
1/3 cup home­made bread crumbs
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated parme­san cheese
1 egg, beaten

First, in a large skil­let saute the gar­lic and onions in the olive oil and let cool off the stove. Then mix all the other ingre­di­ents together. When gar­lic and onions are cool enough to touch, add them and mix, using your hands (sorry to say) at the end. Form into balls that fit in the palm of your hand (you should get about six). Heat more olive oil in the skil­let you used for the gar­lic and onions and place the meat­balls in a sin­gle layer. Fry on one side for about three min­utes, then gen­tly turn them over and fry on the other for three min­utes. Gen­tly remove the meat­balls one by one with a tongs, and place in your tomato sauce. This can sim­mer indef­i­nitely, at a very low sim­mer, while you make your salad and cor­rect your child’s geog­ra­phy home­work and boil your spaghetti. To serve, place a tongs-full of spaghetti on a plate, add two meat­balls, and ladle over sauce. Top with grated parmesan.

It was so funny last night, though: first, I dis­cov­ered I was out of but­ter, a com­plete cat­a­stro­phe in my fat-laden house­hold (I usu­ally add a pat to my tomato sauce at the last minute, but it isn’t nec­es­sary). Then I found I was out of lemons for my Abso­lut Cit­ron cock­tail as well as to sprin­kle on the avo­cado I insist on eat­ing every night as I cook din­ner. Just sliced, with lemon juice and Mal­don salt that my mother in law and I are obsessed with (I have to add here that if you go on the Mal­don web­site, by click­ing the hot link, you can down­load a movie called, I am not mak­ing this up, “The Magic of Salt.” So far even I do not have THAT much time on my hands). So then I dis­cov­ered I was out of salt! And I had no milk. Finally, I asked Avery in des­per­a­tion, “What is, in your opin­ion, the main ingre­di­ent in spaghetti and meat­balls?” “The meat­balls,” she answered promptly. “Oh, thank good­ness,” I breathed in relief, “because we’re out of spaghetti.”

(Lin­guini worked fine.)

But first, before I tell you about my after­noon in heaven, I must give credit to the owner of my pho­to­graph of sushi, in my pre­vi­ous post. At first I didn’t feel the need to credit her because her copy­right water­mark, “La Petite Chi­noise,” is on the photo. I just found it by googling images of sushi, not hav­ing one of my own! But then I found myself read­ing her blog, and it’s really quite inter­est­ing. She lives in Paris, but hap­pened to be vis­it­ing Lon­don, where she found not only Nobu Lon­don, but also “Books for Cooks” in Not­ting Hill, two of my favorite places in the world. So visit her blog, do.

Also, I must say that I am work­ing on how to make the hotlinks to other posts in my own blog go right to the sec­tion that talks about the thing I’m refer­ring to, not just to the whole post. I can see that it might be quite irri­tat­ing to click on “Books for Cooks” and get sent to a post that is about a lot of other things before it gets to the men­tion of the book­store. I’m on it! There must be a way. In the mean­time, I hope you enjoy mean­der­ing through the var­i­ous point­less things I have to say before I get to the point­less thing you thought you wanted to read. It’s all such a challenge.

Speak­ing of chal­lenges, I drummed up my courage this morn­ing and… drove! To the sta­ble to drop Avery off for her day of muck­ing out and such, and then to the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket. I really got myself scared of dri­ving, since my hor­rific acci­dent when I lived here last (don’t worry, nobody got hurt except the car). But not dri­ving is one of those things that lim­its me, makes me even more timid than I nor­mally am, which is say­ing some­thing. I don’t like the idea that as life goes on, I do fewer things. I want to do more things! So John had encour­aged me to drive, and I had demurred. But that’s ridicu­lous. You can’t just shrink into a per­son who either walks or lets some­one else drive her around, whether it’s in a bus or a tube or a cab. So I took key in hand, reas­sured a dubi­ous Avery that all would be well (“not only ‘can’ you drive, Mommy, but ‘should’ you drive?”), and got in the car. I should have known Emmy would not let me down. All was well! And as my reward I got to shop to my heart’s con­tent, know­ing that there was a nice car seat wait­ing for the ridicu­lously heavy bag when I was fin­ished. And a handy car park dou­bles as the mar­ket any­way, so I just parked her and was off.

I sam­pled so many things that it was silly to think I had to have lunch as well. Let’s see, I had fresh pesto with a lit­tle bread stick, and a slice of Red William pear, and a bit of goat’s cheese on a lit­tle bis­cuit, and some apple juice! Then, how­ever, I hap­pened upon the fish­mon­ger, one Mal­don Oys­ter & Seafood Com­pany , located at Birch­wood Farm, Cock Clarks, Chelms­ford, Essex. Their con­cern at the mar­ket con­sists of a sort of ele­vated truck whose side opens out, with three won­der­ful blokes behind the full-to-overflowing iced counter. One fel­low helped me, and I was about ready to marry him by the time I was fin­ished. “My lit­tle girl likes lemon sole, and Dover sole,” I said. “But I’d like to have money left over after din­ner to send her to uni­ver­sity, as well, so what would you rec­om­mend?” He put his griz­zled head to one side, con­sid­ered me, looked over his wares and said, “Time was when peo­ple asked spe­cial for whit­ing for the kid­dies,” he said. He pulled a fil­let from its bed of ice and laid it before me rev­er­en­tially. “Take a look at that, my love. That’s a del­i­cate fish, that is. I’ve never seen one that size, off the West Coun­try, that is.” So I suc­cumbed. He wrapped it up, shout­ing to one of his mates, “Don’t for­get the brill, now, everything’s for sale except the staff,” and to another cus­tomer, “I’ll tell you the ‘erring’s lovely today, just lovely. Would you like it with the ‘ard roe, or the soft roe?” To me he said, “This whit­ing, now, to get it any fresher you’d have to get a sight wet. What else can I get for you, my love?” So I said as how I’d have a nice dressed crab, which is such a lux­ury con­sid­er­ing the hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence I had once try­ing to get any usable quan­tity of crab from its shell. He sifted through the piles and came up with the best.

But then came the piece de resis­tance. I had noticed a Frenchy-looking girl queue­ing up at the side of the truck, wait­ing in front of a low table to the edge of which was a chalk­board pro­claim­ing “1 pound per shucked oys­ter”. Now, I was intro­duced to raw oys­ters late in life, and have never been a huge devo­tee although I like them, and I will eat them if I trust the source. Also I adore oys­ter stew, for which I will give you a per­fect recipe nearer to Christ­mas time. But one sum­mer I found myself in, of all places, Water­loo, Iowa with my parents-in-law and they took me to a seafood fes­ti­val at their beloved coun­try club, Sun­ny­side. I know what you’re think­ing: a seafood fes­ti­val in a state that embod­ies “land-locked”? I thought the same thing. But I was a guest, and they were going, and I will do almost any­thing for my parents-in-law. I was seated next to one of my favorite peo­ple in the world, their friend Hugh, whose wife Janey gave me my first cook­ing les­son, lo these (eek) 23 years ago. Gosh, that’s scary. She’s a true French chef and I was in love right away, with her, her adorable and racy hus­band, with Iowa and life in gen­eral. So Hugh poked me in the ribs and said, “Gonna have some oys­ters, Kris­ten?” “You know, Hugh, they’re not my favorite thing. Plus you know what they say about oys­ters…” I said. “Oh, now, come on,” Hugh teased me mer­ci­lessly. “You can’t say you’re writ­ing a cook­book, you can’t say you even care about food, if you don’t like oys­ters on the half shell. And these will be the best you’ve ever had. The fresh­est, any­way.” I closed my lips upon my skep­ti­cism on this point, and decided to take the bait, so to speak. Well, it was a rev­e­la­tion. As a fish chef once told me at the great Mitchell’s Fish Mar­ket in Indi­anapo­lis once told me, “We have to break the mold on fresh­ness because the fish comes from so far away. You coastal peo­ple can get lazy, think­ing it’s right there.” And obvi­ously it held true for Water­loo, Iowa, that glo­ri­ous July night. Thank you, Hugh.

So today I was in such a good mood, and such a food mood, that I thought I’d have one. The beefy guy in his wet and bloody apron laid the oys­ter from the Black­wa­ter River in Essex on a well-worn wooden block with an oyster-shell-shaped inden­ta­tion in the cen­ter, and advanced on it with a proper oys­ter knife, split it open, slid his knife around under the oys­ter, and placed it on a lit­tle plate piled with crushed ice. “There you are, now,” he said as he ten­dered it. There was a lit­tle plate of lemon wedges, a dish of salt, a dish of chopped shal­lots in red wine vine­gar and a bot­tle of Tabasco. I squeezed on some lemon juice, added a drip of vine­gar and slurped it down. Ahhh! Icy, icy cold, fresh, briny, just sub­limely fresh and per­fect. “I’m going to have to have another of those, if you please,” I said, hand­ing over another pound coin. “Oh, make it two more.” He looked on, smil­ing slightly with plea­sure at my plea­sure. So guess where I’m going for my Christ­mas stew oys­ters? Some­thing to look for­ward to.

I came home with my laden L.L. Bean can­vas bag (I’m try­ing valiantly to stop the inva­sion of plas­tic car­rier bags in my home), and a slight case of indi­ges­tion at so many dif­fer­ent foods! I thought of the won­der­ful poem by Egon Ronay, the Hun­gar­ian restau­rant critic whose food guides have been bibles in my two Lon­don homes. It starts out like this…

A Food Inspector’s Lament

Spare a thought for the bloke in the cor­ner
With the news­pa­per, note­book and pen
He put away four courses at lunchtime
And this evening he’s at it again

Before the black pud­ding (with scal­lops)
Came veloute of but­ter­nut squash
’Com­pli­ments of the kitchen,’ how charm­ing
(And veloute make soup awfully posh!)

And after­wards, sea bass ‘n’ pesto
Risotto and Shaved Parme­san too
With buck­ets of oil and bal­samic,
What hap­pened to old-fashioned stew?

…

So spare a thought for the bloke in the cor­ner
With the heart attack lying in wait,
And if he seems a bit down in the mouth, well,
He’s got rather a lot on his plate.

Now, to get the 12 stan­zas in between, you’ll either have to buy the food guide, or… come to my house and bor­row it.

Pssst. Want a hot, secret nugget of wis­dom about the Tate Gallery here in Lon­don? Go on, you know that’s why you read “Kris­ten in Lon­don,” it’s for the hot, secret nuggets of wis­dom about just about any­thing in our fair city, stuff you can’t get from a guide­book. Well, here’s today’s lit­tle trea­sure: if you don’t have to cross the Thames to GET TO the Tate, you shouldn’t cross the Thames to GO BACK HOME.

That’s right, I man­aged to top yesterday’s Bar­bi­can Blun­der, and we got on a Num­ber 88 bus to come home from the museum and got all the way to bleed­ing Brix­ton. Went in the bloody wrong direc­tion! Just hap­pily rid­ing along, both Avery and I exclaim­ing over the lovely lights on the river, “Hey, the Lon­don Eye is red! Must be for Christ­mas,” never once think­ing that it was odd to have to cross the river to get to… May­fair. From the Tate. Mind you, I’ve been to the Tate that is on the other side of the river. I can offer no expla­na­tion for my extreme stu­pid­ity. Be sure and say that with the proper posh Eng­lish “shtew-pidity” pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Avery said today, “It makes me slightly crazy the way the Eng­lish say Tues­day as if they were talk­ing about eat­ing. Chews-day.” Well, at least they don’t spend an hour and a half get­ting home from a major landmark.

Seri­ously!

Any­way, we had fun. I needed a bit of cultcha because last night I made a real stab at see­ing an actual film in a the­atre, for some cultcha, and when I got there, they had mys­te­ri­ously decided to sub­sti­tute the film I wanted to see with a Latin Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val. What? No one seemed very inter­ested in my whingey protes­ta­tions about accu­racy on one’s web­site about what one is offer­ing to the inno­cent film-viewing pub­lic, so I slunk out. By then the driz­zle had turned to a real soaker, so I quickly decided I needed to go indoors and would you believe it? The clos­est place I could find was… Nobu. Okay, not the clos­est, but the clos­est place that served yel­low­tail with jalapeno and cilantro in a ponzu sauce. Always makes me a bit home­sick, Nobu. I have no idea why they seated me, in ratty jeans and soak­ing wet and in an orange pash­mina that smelled like a wet labrador, but they did. Bliss. A dou­ble order of the yel­low­tail, a nice chat with a Por­tuguese fel­low sit­ting next to me at the sushi bar who was miss­ing his kids back in Sao Paolo. Not for me the flir­ta­tious chat with some­one lonely on a busi­ness trip. No, we talked about our chil­dren. Sigh. That is so rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my life.

Home and to bed early, miss­ing my fam­ily. I was glad to run out to Kens­ing­ton this morn­ing and pick up Fifi from her friend Julia’s house. What an incred­i­bly eru­dite fam­ily Julia’s is. Her mother is Ital­ian, her father Pol­ish, and their house com­pletely beau­ti­ful, filled with Ital­ian con­tem­po­rary paint­ings and gor­geous piles of impres­sive art his­tory books on their (yes) cof­fee table, reminded me of the gatril­lions of equally lovely books that I own, now pro­vid­ing hours of edu­ca­tional enter­tain­ment to the bats and mice in the barn in Con­necti­cut. Some deci­sions I make are just shtew-pid.

So Avery was hot to see the Hol­bein showbecause of their study­ing the Tudors and the Renais­sance at school. And it was worth see­ing. We each got the audio guide because I know next to noth­ing about Hol­bein and Avery, while extremely knowl­edge­able, allowed as how she might learn some­thing from an actual museum expert. It was fun to wan­der around and enter num­bers into the guide and have the nice Eng­lish lady tell us lots of things we did not know about Sir Thomas More, Jane Sey­mour and the like. I wish I had had my cam­era with me, because Avery’s out­fit was amaz­ing and she got lots of admir­ing looks from the other museum-goers: robin’s egg blue tights, a fuzzy caramel-colored short skirt, a sequined pink vin­tage cardie, and a grey felt beret with the sil­hou­ette of a jackrab­bit on the bit that hung over her eye (the rab­bit had a crys­tal eye, just so you know). But John has the cam­era in Con­necti­cut, and I’m ashamed to say Avery actu­ally said she was relieved to have a moment in her life go undocumented.

She was a lit­tle melan­choly on the ride home, totally uncon­nected to the fact that we saw most of greater Lon­don on the bus ride. “Mommy, this is my first Christ­mas not at home. I mean, we are at home, but not… at home. And I know there are peo­ple who spend Christ­mas abroad. But we’re not that kind of peo­ple! And yet we are! Spend­ing Christ­mas abroad. And yet at home.” She sighed. “It’s very con­fus­ing.” Poor dear. She is also con­cerned that the famous Oxford Street Christ­mas lights are num­ber one, waste­ful of elec­tric­ity in these envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive times, and num­ber two, really tacky. At least she has her pri­or­i­ties straight.

Whew. Michael­mas Fair over, and may I just say that our class mother says we set a record: we sold every last skanky toy. It turns out that if you remove, say, a well-loved Spiro­graph set from its tired old box, wipe it up with a dia­per wipe, wrap it in shiny cel­lo­phane and tie the top with raf­fia, you can charge a pound for it and it flies off the table. Just before the big rush, a hilar­i­ous ex-New Yorker mother that I had just met asked if I wanted to grab a sand­wich at Vil­landry, so we headed out, exchang­ing sto­ries madly along the way. Wendy said, “You real­ize that our school is rare in that they have estab­lished a no-scans admis­sions pol­icy.” “No scans?” I said. “OK, I’ll bite. What do you mean, no scans?” “Well,” Wendy said, “in order to make sure their chil­dren will have a place at some of the other girls’ schools in the city, preg­nant women are going in with their ultra­sound scans, and an esti­mated due date, and putting them down.” “Oh, stop, Wendy,” I said, “you mean unborn chil­dren are being signed up for prepara­tory schools?” “Yep,” she said, “only not our school. Absolutely no in-vitro admissions.”

The feel­ing in the air by 2 o’clock was an exact replica of the atmos­phere at PS 234 for Win­ter Fair, or the Spring Auc­tion. Kids out of their minds with excite­ment, damp money clutched in their hands, filled with sugar and des­per­ate to buy some­thing, any­thing. I tried to remem­ber the feel­ing, not just imag­ine how they felt but really remem­ber it, that Friday-afternoon, autum­nal, special-occasion, no-worries mood, run­ning around with my friends, my mother behind a table look­ing help­ful and wel­com­ing (lord knows I came by my school-mother mar­tyr­dom hon­estly), but I couldn’t, really, recap­ture the sense of utter bliss and cel­e­bra­tion. What hap­pens to that feel­ing when you grow up? Maybe some peo­ple are bet­ter at hold­ing onto it than I am, but at least I could enjoy look­ing in on my child feel­ing that way. There were all the tra­di­tional Eng­lish fair things I had always read about (except no teas! darn): the Toy Tombola, the Lucky Dip (oh, the excite­ment of not know­ing what might come up!), the sweets stall, Father Christ­mas in his grotto! My favorite moment of the day: Annabelle comes run­ning up to her mother to show her what she bought and her mum wails, “But Annabelle: we DONATED that!” The impos­si­bil­ity of bring­ing some­thing you have been want­ing to get out of the house for ages, because your child will find it and buy it back.

Oh, and also a won­der­ful story about a visit to a pop­u­lar choice of senior schools among our set. One of class moth­ers reports that she was led around by a charm­ing young teenager, full of enthu­si­asm, and when she asked about the food, the girl said firmly, “It’s really quite good. My mum absolutely put her foot down about it. She’s quite keen on food.” Some­thing prompted the mother to look at the child’s name tag. Mimi Lawson-Diamond. Yes, well, with the Domes­tic God­dess Nigella Law­son as your mum, it might hold more weight than my opin­ion does at our school.

Finally all was gone, with Amy’s exu­ber­ant mum Kelly shout­ing at the end, “Fine! Fifty p will do! Just take it!” then, aside, “Can you tell I’m in retail?”

We emerged into the late-afternoon sun­shine to find a taxi and high­tailed it to the sta­ble, where Avery had the enor­mous respon­si­bil­ity of grab­bing the bri­dle of a smaller gull’s pony and lead­ing her all the way across the Bayswa­ter Road (Alexa fol­low­ing at a safe dis­tance, of course), to the ring where Avery’s own pony was already wait­ing. My mind’s eye saw her crushed in the road when the pony balked and a lorry ran over her, but no, all was fine. I sim­ply froze as I watched, sus­pended in that limbo of bore­dom that is the les­son time. Around and around, Alexa scream­ing cease­lessly at the chil­dren: “change your lead at ‘haitch’ [the tacked-up let­ters around the ring to help guide the chil­dren] and go large, Avery, and Rosie, you’re on the wrong diag­o­nal, sit two beats…” On and on. The uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence of a rid­ing les­son, plus freez­ing cold. I find it amus­ing that Avery com­pletely believes that I love her lessons. What I do love is get­ting to see her improve at some­thing, and be so deter­mined. But the les­son? Please. Back at the sta­ble, Mr Ross Nye was in atten­dance, drop­ping a gnarled hand on a small head and ask­ing, “How was that can­ter today, young Emma?” I wished him Happy Anniver­sary, he and his wife hav­ing cel­e­brated 50 years this week. “Thank you, my dear, and what’s more, they have been happy years.”

This morn­ing found me on the tube try­ing to get to The City of Lon­don School for Girls, and since I didn’t know how long it would take me, I allowed a whole hour. Well, typ­i­cal me, the tube ride took all of 15 min­utes, but I man­aged to take advan­tage of the full 45 min­utes that were left to get utterly lost. Well, not lost exactly, just stuck inside the hideous com­plex that is the Bar­bi­can the­atre and music mecca, walk­ing in cir­cles look­ing for the school. Just hope­less. Finally I called the school in shame and cha­grin, and ended up expe­ri­enc­ing the lost-person’s equiv­a­lent of deliv­er­ing a baby while on the phone to 911: I kept that lady who answered on that *&^% phone until I was at the bloody door of the school. “Now, sweet­heart, if you see the music shop on your left you’re going the wrong direc­tion. Pass the pub on your right…” So embar­rass­ing. I slunk inside the school in case she was behind the front desk and I had a big red L for “loser” on my fore­head. Any­way, I went on the tour with two slightly lame lit­tle 12-year-olds who kept look­ing at each other and gig­gling at every ques­tion they were asked, and hav­ing pre­cious lit­tle to say to enlighten us. And the phys­i­cal plant? Let me put it this way: the school and I were both built in 1965 and we both could do with a lit­tle lick of fresh paint and some new car­pet. And actu­ally, I think 1965 was a bet­ter year for humans than for insti­tu­tional archi­tec­ture, so I may be ahead in the race. Any­way, UGLY, can I tell you. Poured con­crete and tired bricks.

How­ever, the class­rooms looked exactly like class­rooms every­where, the gulls in gen­eral looked happy and ener­getic (and since school was actu­ally run­ning, unlike at St Paul’s and Godolphin’s night­time tours, they can’t just have locked up the odd chil­dren, unless they put them all in the locker rooms). The head­mistress was very impres­sive, but just about the sec­ond sen­tence of her speech was, “I am retir­ing in the sum­mer.” So much for that bea­con of guid­ance. I don’t know. I wish John had been there too. It’s very com­pet­i­tive, though, and very hardy and edgy, I’d say. A lot of energy. We stopped in a sci­ence class­room and watched 20 gulls in red jumpers and red skirts, eyes trained on their teacher, who was attempt­ing to explain elec­tri­cal cir­cuits to them. I’m afraid we hap­pened in at an inaus­pi­cious moment, how­ever, because he had just asked, “And what is the force called that pushes the elec­trons along?” and about ten girls called out “Dura­cell!” He just sighed.

I raced home in a com­bi­na­tion of tube and long walk down the Edg­ware Road, hav­ing to buy a sin­gle ticket since my Oys­ter card seemed to have been pinched by one of the 600 peo­ple I asked for direc­tions at the Bar­bi­can, or else I dropped it at the school when get­ting my Chap­stick out. Who knows. So I was on foot. Home, gave a pat to my posh going-out clothes and was off again. Oh, posh clothes: you will chuckle. The skinny black sort of faille pants were pur­chased at the San Fran­cisco Cloth­ing Com­pany on Lex­ing­ton Avenue in 1992, to cel­e­brate my first job at Hunter Col­lege (gotta wear black when you’re an art his­tory pro­fes­sor in New York), and the Rod­ney Telford jacket was bought the week after Avery was born, to reas­sure myself that I would once again, some­day, be a size 6. And the boots? Black ankle length high-heeled Varda, my absolute favorite last, pur­chased at least three apart­ments before we left the city. Proves one of my most trea­sured adages: if it’s black and you save it long enough, it will come back in style.

I ended up tak­ing a ruinous taxi to the Savoy to have lunch with my friend Susan, since I was fresh from my humil­i­at­ing direc­tions defeat at the Bar­bi­can. Finally I unbur­dened myself to the dri­ver, and he was all sym­pa­thy. “Why, love, we taxi dri­vers do the Knowl­edge to learn our routes, and we all dread the days when it’s the Bar­bi­can!” We had a nice dis­cus­sion of why the leaves are still on the trees, com­ing to the con­clu­sion that like every­thing else, it’s global warm­ing. Except that it was freez­ing cold! John had reported last night that every sin­gle leaf has fallen from the Red Gate Farm trees, and… had been swept up, raked, blown, hoovered or oth­er­wise wafted from our prop­erty by forces unknown. Those lawn guys! Hon­estly, why do they keep com­ing and work­ing for us with no money com­ing in? Still, why com­plain. One year with­out rak­ing will not kill us. I remem­ber last year we waited so long that we were shov­el­ing leaves. Under SNOW.

To the per­fect, iconic entrance of the Savoy, where I gath­ered up Avery’s overnight bag and skate bag for her sleep­over with Jamie (always arrive at one of the world’s posh­est hotels in style, is my motto) and went into the lobby, look­ing for the Savoy Grill where I had booked us. Before I went in, I looked at the menu propped up on a mar­ble table out­side the door. Eeek, a 55-pound three course lunch. On top of the taxi! I just couldn’t do it. I swal­lowed my pride and the awk­ward­ness of hav­ing to change things around, and went up to the desk and arranged to have our reser­va­tions switched to the much lower-key menu and atmos­phere of the Ban­quette, still run by Mar­cus Ware­ing and so, promis­ing an excel­lent lunch. That ordeal over, I sank down with all my clob­ber in a plush vel­vet chair, and a nice dap­per lit­tle waiter-ish man caught my eye and glided over. Just then I noticed a sign say­ing, “Reserved” sit­ting on the table beside me. Posh places always make me feel so awk­ward! “I’m so ter­ri­bly sorry,” I said. “Who is the table reserved for?” And that lit­tle man bowed deeply and said, “For you, madam.” Now that is just sweet. So I ordered a glass of cham­pagne and sat back to wait for Susan. She came in, her usual ele­gant self in a gor­geous autum­nal sweater with fringey cuffs. She is the sort of per­son who keeps her read­ing glasses in a lit­tle pouch hand-knitted for her by her daugh­ter Sophia. I would like to be that sort of person.

We had a lovely lunch. Susan had a pear and stil­ton salad with crispy bacon, and “gou­jons” of plaice (a gou­jon being the Eng­lish word for what we’d call “fin­gers,” you know all those foods that don’t have fin­gers except when they’re fried, like chick­ens and fishes) with home­made tartare sauce. I really could not say where the word “gou­jon” comes from. I know it is a real kind of fish, a sort of cat­fishy fish, but then it couldn’t be made of plaice. And he was a 16th cen­tury French sculp­tor, but that’s a stretch. Could some­one in France five hun­dreds years ago have inspired a term for Eng­lish junk food? Prob­a­bly not.

I prob­a­bly ordered wrong because both dishes were so heavy and rich, but they were so good that I’m not sorry. I started with duck spring rolls and a sweet chili dip­ping sauce, and then braised pork belly with black pud­ding mashed pota­toes, parsnips and grain mus­tard sauce. To die for. The only flaw? No left­over con­tain­ers. So I watched sadly as the por­tion of pork belly and pota­toes went away not nearly depleted enough. To have John there! He can always fin­ish any­thing. We had enor­mous fun gos­sip­ing, talk­ing school choices, catch­ing up on each other’s lives the way you do when you have both the present and the past to talk about. She has had a fas­ci­nat­ing life filled with friend­ships whose glam­our and crazi­ness make excel­lent lunch con­ver­sa­tion. How lucky I am to be in a town that con­tains Becky and Susan, the Savoy, King’s Col­lege. I could do with­out the Bar­bi­can, though.

Rush­ing off to meet Avery, Jamie and her mother at the skat­ing rink, where we traded off belong­ings: I gave away skates and overnight bag, and got back­pack and gym bag in return. A kiss and good­bye. What shall I do with myself this evening, all by myself? I know, I know, just don’t get lost.

Not that we have can­dles burn­ing in the hydrangea tree at all times of the year (OK, only on Christ­mas Eve if you have to know, buzz kill), but I am think­ing of John at Red Gate Farm today and am feel­ing nos­tal­gic. He emailed late last night to report that the stream is nearly flooded from the tor­ren­tial East Coast rains yes­ter­day and that every­thing is peace­ful and lovely there. Sigh. I bet it is.

Now then. I have barely ever read any­one else’s blog, because please remem­ber that I am extremely self-centered. How­ever, in my recent quest to get more read­ers, I googled some blogs, about Lon­don, about food, I think that’s as far as I got. Mostly because I got side­tracked by one extremely well-written blog about being a mum (or rather a per­son who is a mum) in Lon­don, “Lar­a­land.” She has kindly posted about my blog, so I shall return the favor. If you do noth­ing else today, go on her blog and click “pho­tos”, then click “May.” I’m not pro­vid­ing a hot link here because I think you will enjoy going to the whole blog. But that one photo is worth the whole price of admis­sion (bear with me, it’s free, but you know what I mean). Her pho­tographs make me sick with envy, but then a per­son who posts a pic­ture of her cam­era prob­a­bly has more invested in her pho­to­graphic skill than I have I, who has none. She men­tions, so I will too, that it is funny to think of our pass­ing each other in the Wait­rose in the high street, or sip­ping cof­fee next to each other at Patis­serie Valerie. It is a very small town, after all.

I can’t dilly-dally another minute. Got to go slave away at the Michael­mas Fair. See you later.

Avery! Of the (drum­roll please) Lord Howard de Walden Christ­mas card design com­pe­ti­tion! Out of all the Lon­don girls’ schools that com­peted, city­wide, her design has been cho­sen as the win­ner. Now, tomor­row we will find out more, after the school assem­bly where it’s announced. But today at pickup, where I was admit­tedly feel­ing a bit blue, not to say melan­choly for no good rea­son, Avery came out all pink-faced from her run in Regent’s Park, and there on her heels was Mrs D, the head­mistress. “She actu­ally CAME OUT of the school!” I hissed later, as we walked away. “I know, like a tur­tle out of its shell,” Avery said. “Or a her­mit crab out of its shell, or…” “I get you,” I said. The point being that Mrs D is always in the school. So she came sail­ing majes­ti­cally out the door and down the step and right to us as we stood there, Avery munch­ing a lemon bis­cuit and look­ing sweaty.

“Mrs C? Mrs C, has this child been good today?” Well, I didn’t know, did I? “I, uh, think so,” I said. “Well, I can tell you she HAS. Who do you think has had her design cho­sen out of all the gulls from all the schools par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Howard de Walden Christ­mas card com­pe­ti­tion? Well, it’s this gull right here.” Heav­ens above! “I just got the let­ter in the post this after­noon,” she con­tin­ued. “It will be announced at assem­bly tomor­row, as well as the prize given to her. I do not know what the prize is as of now, but we will all find out tomor­row. Well done, Avery!” and with a final pat on the head she went back into her shell, I mean school.

So! I have been doing a bit of research on old Howard de Walden now. Of course, last year on Prize Day when Avery got the Howard de Walden essay con­test prize, I felt a brief fris­son of inter­est in the fel­low. But now that I know our rela­tion­ship is going to be deeper than just one prize, I have wikipedia-ed his fam­ily. And found a very good peer­age web­site descrip­tion as well. He was born in 1880 and passed along his lord­ship, or what­ever you call it, to his son, who died in 1999 aged 86. Some­where along the line the father, the one the prize is named after, mar­ried, as all savvy chaps do, a woman whose dowry was 92 acres of prime Lon­don real estate, namely that which is Maryle­bone today. So there you go! And would you believe that this bust of him was sculpted in 1906 by… Rodin! The con­nec­tions just go on and on. Unfor­tu­nately there was no son to inherit from the Howard de Walden who died in 1999, so the title is in “abeyance,” which means there’s no heir to google to fix up with Avery. I guess we’ll hang onto the Duke of West­min­ster who owns May­fair. Or who­ever. Gee, all these titles and dowries get confusing.

She’s very proud. We think the upshot is that her card design will be made into a real card and sold in large num­bers (bought by me, mostly, I imag­ine) for char­ity. Tomor­row after­noon is the Michael­mas Fair, so it’s going to be pretty excit­ing for Avery to have had her big announce­ment at assem­bly before­hand. I’ll let you know what the prize is! Good on you, Aves.

Remem­ber I men­tioned “A Most Uncom­mon Degree of Pop­u­lar­ity” to you? Well, halfway through it, it was just a charm­ing book. Very funny about a group of women who get really, really invested in their daugh­ters’ lives, wor­ry­ing over their social sta­tus, their clothes, their his­tory essays, their car­pools. It all rang true to me, espe­cially the part where the main char­ac­ter, Lydia, explains that “When we moms are talk­ing about the Spring Fair or cotton-fleece draw­string shorts, we’re talk­ing shop. In some ways it isn’t any dif­fer­ent from when the men talk about how their firms are billing. We are talk­ing about our jobs, too…” That is so true! From the out­side look­ing in, it would seem that hav­ing cof­fee with other moth­ers is just social life, and in a way of course it is. But it’s also part of our jobs: to build rela­tion­ships with the moth­ers of our children’s friends, so you’re speak­ing the same lan­guage when it comes to dis­ci­pline, home­work, what is accept­able for your chil­dren to say to you, what sorts of presents you bring to birth­day par­ties. It’s all part of build­ing a lit­tle world within which your child can func­tion in lots of dif­fer­ent set­tings because the pro­fes­sion­als in charge (the moms) have made it all con­sis­tent, and safe, and life-enhancing. In this world, what is one person’s gos­sip is another person’s (a mother’s) essen­tial due diligence.

That was all a lot of fun to read about. The author, Kath­leen Gilles Sei­del, has a funny caus­tic wit, and the char­ac­ter has a great deal of strength, tenac­ity and hon­esty, but also some­where between the author and the char­ac­ter I sus­pect a lot of over­lap has taken place, and that adds to the authen­tic­ity of the story.

But then at the end it became all about my life! It has been so won­der­ful see­ing Avery so happy at school that I haven’t spent much time think­ing about what we left behind. And every­one has been so ready to wel­come me as another mother at school that I have cer­tainly not felt left out, not at all. But when Lydia real­izes that the school she has cho­sen for her chil­dren and been part of for so many years, since they were really tiny, is no longer best for them and she needs to move them to another school, it all felt just like hav­ing to leave P.S. 234 in New York for our school here.

“Liv­ing in a small town teaches you a lot, but one thing it doesn’t teach you is how to say good­bye. Fam­i­lies don’t move away as much as they do in D.C., and even when you do, you don’t say good­bye because your par­ents are still there and you will be com­ing back… This time I was going to say good­bye, bid farewell to the first place I had felt so com­pletely a part of, so com­pletely at home.

What pre­cious, pre­cious mem­o­ries I had — the Hal­loween parades with the masses of lit­tle witches, Indi­ans and princesses; Erin and her friends wear­ing their Brownie uni­forms for the first time, both Erin and Thomas being so excited about read­ing their first ‘chap­ter’ book; and that funny, won­der­ful moment when Erin was in first grade and one of her friends saw me and chirped, “Hi, Mrs. Erin’s Mom.”…

I wasn’t just say­ing good­bye to the school; I was say­ing good­bye to my chil­dren being young.”

It’s hard to leave behind a place where your child was born, and then was the talk­a­tive baby that all the door­men and gro­cery store check­out girls learned to know by name, and then was the best cus­tomer at the ridicu­lously expen­sive children’s cloth­ing shop (when they gave Avery a doll with “Happy 5th Birth­day, Avery” embroi­dered on it, John said sus­pi­ciously, “How much are you spend­ing there?”). She was lit­tle there. There’s no deny­ing that by the time we arrived in Lon­don, she was a bit of a young lady, and all the more so since we’ve been here. I guess part of what touched me about this book was how impor­tant it is to notice when you’re leav­ing one part of your child’s life behind, how good it has been, and then to notice again when the new life is heart­warm­ing and lovely as well. We’ve been very lucky. Thank you Becky, for loan­ing me the book! Among other things.

Yes­ter­day at school pickup when I intro­duced Avery to a mother friend of mine, she shook hands and curt­syed! Eeek, what hap­pened to my rough and tum­ble child who once clocked a class­mate over the head with a broom han­dle? Of course, the other child started it.

John is off to New York, or rather to Red Gate Farm, for a week, where we have a sink­ing feel­ing we packed up ALL the bed­li­nens, tow­els, and other tiny details that make life pos­si­ble, in boxes in the base­ment in case our real­tor found a renter (which she didn’t: her emailed assur­ance that she would “sus­pend all show­ings” while John was there fell on slightly deaf ear: I couldn’t imag­ine that she was lead­ing swarms of peo­ple through the place when he wasn’t there). He hasn’t been away since the first week in Sep­tem­ber, so Avery and I are a bit flus­tered con­tem­plat­ing life as just the two of us. I sus­pect that Emmy will spend more time parked on Green Street, as I am still not wholly com­fort­able dri­ving here. John promises to report all news from Con­necti­cut, where the fall foliage is no doubt a bit more spec­tac­u­lar than it is here. But this morn­ing when I opened my win­dow shade, there was a shower of golden leaves flut­ter­ing to the ground in the gar­den: a rather muted, but still lovely, sign of autumn.

OK, this title is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing because the first step is: be really self-centered to begin with. If you are not, you must add this step.

THEN.

You write a blog, say about mov­ing to Lon­don. This way, every­thing you do is expe­ri­enced not only by you, but by inno­cent peo­ple who hap­pen upon your blog.

THEN.

Start try­ing to find new peo­ple to read your blog, by search­ing for other self-centered peo­ple who write blogs and send­ing them the link to your blog. Seri­ously, this is how piti­ful I have become. You would be sur­prised at how many scary web­sites there are claim­ing to be about, for exam­ple, “Expats Liv­ing Abroad.” Or even “Expat Moth­ers Liv­ing Abroad.” Except that both of those par­tic­u­lar web­sites were heav­ily pop­u­lated by peo­ple who titled their posts things like “XXX Hot Fuzzy Girl in Lon­don,” and “Mil­i­tary Girl Look­ing for Fun,” which at least sounded poten­tially more enter­tain­ing than “Attach­ment Par­ent­ing in Lon­don.” I remem­ber “attach­ment par­ent­ing” from when Avery was a baby and var­i­ous peo­ple tried to get me to read books about being a mother, and one of them sug­gested that the “24-hour cure” for trou­ble­some nurs­ing was plac­ing the mother and baby in bed together and not let­ting them come out for 24 hours. It was sur­mised that by the end of that time period, the nec­es­sary amount of bond­ing would have taken place and all would be well. My idea of a “24-hour cure” was a night at the Tribeca Grand while some­body else took care of the baby. Not that I ever did that, but it always seemed like an option.

But I digress. My point is, I have now reached the point of… blog­ging about blog­ging. It’s just that pathetic. Seri­ously, though, I found one good site, and that’s expat-blog, full of other peo­ple who have been sent to, dragged to, oth­er­wise forced to move to for­eign lands. There are lot of peo­ple liv­ing in Lon­don, but I think there’s a sig­nif­i­cant risk that some of them may be as self-centered as me, in which case there is not room for more than one of us.

Mean­while, let’s see, it’s a typ­i­cal grey Lon­don morn­ing. In a rare early-morning social encounter, we stopped off at Avery’s friend Angelica’s house before school dropoff in order to receive a birth­day present too large to be brought to school! Oh my. When Angelica’s mother arranged this with me last night, I was of course wide awake and it sounded like a per­fectly rea­son­able thing to do: just set the alarm half an hour early and stop off to chat while Avery opened her present (what on earth could be too large to bring to school? Avery guessed a pony). How­ever, I for­got that I’m really not at my best at 8 a.m. I tend not to be able to think of any­thing to say, and if I do think of some­thing, I don’t remem­ber after­ward that I’ve said it. John is this way late at night, but some­how life seems to embrace his approach, where every­one expects me to be chirpy and respon­sive when I first wake up. At any rate, 8 o’clock found us in Angelica’s warm, homey kitchen, with a lovely house­keeper mak­ing crepes and Jill hold­ing the new baby. I promptly woke up enough to ask to hold her, and she spent the next few min­utes chew­ing on the shoul­der of my cardi­gan, the dear lit­tle thing. Avery opened her present, and it was, amaz­ingly, the largest of all the Syl­van­ian houses. She is in com­plete heaven. Now her beloved ani­mals have an even larger place to live than then dar­ling cot­tage her friend Anna gave her. For sure, these chil­dren know each other very well. We sat down with the par­ents while the girls oohed and aahed, and chat­ted about the elec­tions in Amer­ica today. I won­der what will hap­pen. Eng­land is, unusu­ally, very inter­ested this year because they think it will affect British troops in Iraq, so there is a sur­pris­ing amount of cov­er­age here. I’ll have to pay attention.

In the few moments avail­able to me yes­ter­day not to be self-centered, I spent time sort­ing toys and wrap­ping presents for Thursday’s Michael­mas Fair at school. It was the exact replica of the hun­dreds of other morn­ings I have spent at Wash­ing­ton Mar­ket School or P.S. 234 in New York: granted, the women had ele­gant Eng­lish names like Geral­dine and Josephine instead of peppy Amer­i­can names like Alyssa and Hali, but still, the atmos­phere was the same. The same joy in con­tribut­ing to our children’s lives, the same petty argu­ing over who was in charge of pric­ing the puz­zles. “If you don’t MIND, I could use those scis­sors,” and “Well, Ara­bella told me yes­ter­day that at the birth­day party on Sun­day, Hen­ri­etta said…” Just in Eng­lish accents. Moth­ers across the world are pretty much indis­tin­guish­able. After school Becky and I wan­dered around John Lewis look­ing for stuff to buy, namely a sewing kit so I can sew yet more *&^% name tapes on Avery’s rid­ing gloves, so that at least the next time she loses them there is a hope that some­one could return them to her. Also I found a dar­ling lit­tle “pinny” for Baby Jane. What is a pinny, you ask? Well, so did I, and it’s short for “pinafore.” I am always obscurely relieved to find time-honoured national Britishisms (like putting an unnec­es­sary “u” in “hon­our”) that still hold sway. Jane will grow up to call her pinny a jumper, which of course in Eng­land would get her a sweater.

Oh, and a book you might like! Becky gave it to me say­ing, “This will remind you of our lives,” which of course at times is not what I would call a ring­ing endorse­ment for a piece of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, but hey, I gave it a try. An Uncom­mon Degree of Pop­u­lar­ity, by Kath­leen Gilles Sei­del. About a group of sixth-grade girls and their moth­ers, all try­ing to cope with the social real­i­ties of being pop­u­lar or not. John and I have dis­cussed this a num­ber of times with Avery, since we were both rather un-cool as pre-teens and teenagers, and never got any cooler, but for some rea­son were always pretty warmly accepted by the kids who were cool. Look­ing back I think it was a nice place to sit: no pres­sure, but plenty of friends. I’m about halfway through and it’s a clever read.

Well, enough about some­thing besides me. I think I’ll google myself…

Ah, Avery’s at the sta­ble with the remains of her birth­day cake and seven forks, so my time is my own, for the fol­low­ing hour and sev­en­teen min­utes. As the last gasp of birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, we took Avery and Anna to the hot-needles-in-eyeballs expe­ri­ence that is “Build-a-Bear” in Covent Gar­den. Truly not a thing a ratio­nal adult wants to do, where the child chooses a flat ani­mal (why they don’t mind the flat­ness, I don’t know, but they don’t) and then get it stuffed by an enor­mous stuff­ing mach­ing. Which was bro­ken. So the poor lit­tle lame employ­ees, enjoined by their cor­po­rate bet­ters to SMILE SMILE SMILE, had to stuff them by hand. Sort of defeats the pur­pose of buy­ing a flat ani­mal, no machine to stuff it, but there you go. Then they choose out­fits. Then they fill out birth cer­tifi­cates. By this time John was about to pass out from sweet­ness over­dose, so we sent him out to get a table at the Covent Gar­den Kitchen oppo­site and order a beer, right away. We joined him and the tiny table was imme­di­ately com­pletely cov­ered with the two dogs (huh? Build-a-Dog? not as felic­i­tous a ring as “bear”) that the girls chose, and their leads and their plushy vests, and their ear bows, etc. It was a com­pletely gor­geous day so we couldn’t be churl­ish. And I had excel­lent food! John said his chicken club was good but would have been bet­ter with toasted bread, and the girls prob­a­bly did not taste their kids’ menu pizza with all the Build-a-Whatever stuff they had to con­cen­trate on. But I went with my instincts and ordered two starters, a deli­cious salad of smoked salmon rosettes on really crispy lollo rosso greens, with a very tart dill and lemon mayonnaise-y dress­ing. Then also a toasted round of focac­cio stud­ded with oil-cured black olives, with sit­ting atop it a baked slice of aged goat’s cheese and driz­zled with bal­samic vine­gar and garlic-infused oil. A bite of every­thing together was HEAVEN. I am post­ing a review of the restau­rant here not because it’s pos­i­tive, it isn’t. But the writer, one Jay Rayner, is so funny! I wrote him/her a fan email just now because that’s what I need to be doing to pro­mote my blog: reach­ing out to the com­pe­ti­tion. Ah well, sin­cere admi­ra­tion must be expressed how­ever imprac­ti­cal the result.

The girls went home with John to drown in Syl­va­ni­ans, and I trot­ted over to Citylit for my fic­tion class. For what­ever cow­ardly rea­son, the peo­ple assigned to read aloud that day did not turn up! Which left us lots more time for responses to our own writ­ing. So, so inter­est­ing. Of course I am devoted to my blog, no ques­tion about that. But in gen­eral I like writ­ing just about any­thing: gro­cery lists, emails, what­ever. And I would really like to fig­ure out a way to trans­form my blog into fic­tion, not just to pro­tect all the inno­cent peo­ple who fig­ure in its vir­tual pages, but to stretch my cre­ative mus­cles a bit. John Pether­bridge, the tutor, talked a lot about why we do all the exer­cises we do, which can be daunt­ing, drain­ing and dif­fi­cult. Take that les­son. We were to write about a smell, expe­ri­enced in the present, which took us back to the past, and then brought us back to the present again. Now, the bril­liant Denise sit­ting next to me is an expe­ri­enced writer, a vora­cious reader, and does not suf­fer fools. She did the exer­cise, but then said that she per­son­ally hated descrip­tion and always skipped over it to get to the part she cared about: the action. So John lis­tened to that, and then said that it was the right of every writer NOT to write about cer­tain things, but that it had to be a cre­ative choice, and not a result of not being ABLE to write about that thing. “You as writ­ers face a task that often looks undoable: to WRITE. So you break it down into things you think you can do, tasks you can accom­plish, and once you’ve achieved many tasks, you can begin to reject the ones that don’t help you in achiev­ing your big goal, which is to WRITE.” Very good advice! I had never thought much about the evoca­tive nature of smells before, but it was a good thing to buckle down and pro­duce a piece of writ­ing about it. Now, that’s an ingre­di­ent for a novel that I didn’t know I had.

Com­ing home in the dusk, I was so absorbed by all these thoughts that I… got lost. Yes, on Oxford Street down whose blocks I have walked, now these ten months, twice a week, in both direc­tions. Oooh, I make myself so mad some­times! So it took me for­ever and a day to get home. My spe­cial spaghetti car­bonara and sparklers for the lit­tle girls, to cel­e­brate Guy Fawkes Day! Hey, by the way, what do you think of my pro­vid­ing a link to the page of the blog with a recipe I’ve referred to? All you have to do is scroll down the page to see the recipe.

Later that night fire­works went off from sev­eral rooftops in our gar­den, to the unmasked cha­grin of all the cats except Keechie, in her dreamy Val­ium land. The lit­tle girls sub­sided with their Build-a-Creatures and their hot water bot­tles and were asleep before we could even sing their lullabies.

Finally, to be pre­pared to start the week, John and I have com­pleted a mam­moth gro­cery run at the ginor­mous Tesco in Earls Court. Now before you start to egg my house with your organic free-run eggs from the farmer’s mar­ket coop­er­a­tive where peo­ple would sooner sport an inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­sile than a plas­tic car­rier bag, just wait a minute. I know, I know, Tesco are (love the ran­dom Eng­lish plural there) a hor­ri­ble, evil multi­na­tional con­glom­er­ate bent on strip­ping every high street in every British vil­lage of their unique­ness and family-owned busi­nesses. Believe me, I agree with you! But there comes a time when a cook’s fan­cies turn to… sav­ing money.
As strongly as I feel about sup­port­ing small busi­nesses and doing our best to pre­vent the Tescos of the world from tak­ing over, there is stuff like washing-up liq­uid, kit­tylitta and cat food, toi­let paper and the like where there is no value-added (one of the few busi­nessy terms I under­stand) to pur­chas­ing these items in a cozy mom-and-pop store some­where in Not­ting Hill. No, for these items you get in your environment-friendly lit­tle Mini Cooper and high­tail it to Earls Court to the largest super­mar­ket in London.

While you are there of course you can shop for other things, like the many vari­eties of organic toma­toes, which I feel com­pelled to sam­ple and rate. Now, this larger one in the photo, the Marzanino, was fleshy and yummy, but not sweet. And the slightly larger of the two on-the-vine, the Jer­sey Jewel, was rather too thick-skinned but very flavour­ful. My per­sonal favorite of this par­tic­u­lar Sun­day after­noon is the Pic­colo cherry tomato. Tiny, you take each one off the vine just before you eat it, dip­ping it in Mal­don sea salt first, and oooh! A burst of red, sweet, make-your-mouth-water fresh­ness. And if you eat 11 of them, you’ve got one of your five serv­ings of fruit or veg per day. And yes, that counts even if you buy them at Tesco.