I don’t believe it. My fam­ily used to joke and call it the “Fred­er­ick­son curse,” that every­thing we devel­oped an addic­tion to got can­celled, dis­con­tin­ued, dropped, whether it was a tele­vi­sion show, a favorite per­fume or soft drink. But I’m sorry: Bor­ough Mar­ket?? I just got here!

Seri­ously, John has sent me an email with a link to a “green” blog dis­cussing an absolute impos­si­b­lity: appar­ently plan­ning per­mis­sion has been awarded to some hor­rid rail­road group to run a new train track RIGHT THROUGH Bor­ough Mar­ket! This can’t hap­pen. Just my luck: the place has been run­ning since 1550 and I get here just in time to see a bag­gage car replace my favorite butcher. We’ve all got to sign the peti­tion on this blog. One South­wark offi­cial put it just right: tak­ing away what mat­ters to the res­i­dents for the ben­e­fit of peo­ple who are, lit­er­ally, pass­ing through. I can’t bear it.

As if to thumb their noses at this pos­si­ble hor­ror (fund­ing has yet to be found, and maybe we can keep that from hap­pen­ing), there’s a new foodie show about to start film­ing, every day, from the Mar­ket. I adore Clarissa Dickson-Wright, one of the pro­posed hosts, in par­tic­u­lar, ever since “Two Fat Ladies” aired, and per­haps a lit­tle star power will help our cause. And hey: maybe “Kris­ten in Lon­don” helped “Save Ratty”, one never knows. Blog power!

Now, I know you will think I am merely cry­ing wolf. After all, you’ve had to hear about Matthew Mac­fadyen, and Matt and Bam­ber. But these are merely, dare I say it, cal­low obses­sions, when set against the mas­sive devo­tion I feel for… Edward Pether­bridge. And I met him last night!

How, you ask? I’m still in total shock over the whole expe­ri­ence. I have to creep care­fully here in my rap­ture over the evening, because I have spent many lovely, even mem­o­rable evenings with many of you, includ­ing my very own hus­band. He was, HOW­EVER, com­pletely all right with my say­ing, when I returned home last night, that it was the best evening ever. Calm, calm, as John would say to Avery when she gets ram­bunc­tious at bed­time. I’ll tell all.

Back­ground: I recently joined the Dorothy L. Say­ers Soci­ety, a lovely group of peo­ple ded­i­cated to dis­cov­er­ing things about, pre­serv­ing the mem­ory (and child­hood home of) and prais­ing the accom­plish­ments of, well, yes, Dorothy L. Say­ers, cre­ator of among other lit­er­ary gems the most urbane and sophis­ti­cated fic­tional detec­tive of all time, Lord Peter Wim­sey. Such is my devo­tion that, as you know, I named a cat after him. An odd ges­ture, you may say, espe­cially when the cat in ques­tion is an enor­mously fat, not espe­cially intel­li­gent one who chews all the fur off the mid­dle of his tail, but it was a ges­ture nonetheless.

Well, do you know where Sher­lock Holmes lived? 220 B Baker Street. So Dorothy decided to domi­cile Lord Peter at… 110 A Pica­dilly, which hap­pens to be… the Park Lane Hotel. And as they were cel­e­brat­ing their 80th anniver­sary yes­ter­day, the Soci­ety decided to put together a pro­gram to admire the role that Lord Peter’s (dare I say it) fic­tional life had at that loca­tion. I know I have lost fully 90 per­cent of you by now, but those who care, bear with me.

When the newslet­ter arrived telling me of the cel­e­bra­tion, it was but the work of a moment to tele­phone and reserve a spot. Because guess who would be there? My good­ness. And reputed to speak, no less: the chance to hear his mag­nif­i­cent voice was too much to miss. And it turned out that, as well, two greats of detec­tion, H.R.F. Keat­ing and Sheila Mitchell were hon­ored guests and par­tic­i­pants as well. And Dame P.D. James! Who would believe, all in one room. I remem­bered back to an evening in 1990-ish here in Lon­don when I went to a book sign­ing by, sev­er­ally, Lady Anto­nia Fraser, some­one I for­get, and then just-plain P.D. James, before she was Baroness of Hol­land Park. I said to a lady sit­ting next to me, as the read­ing began, “I won­der what P.D. James is like, because she’s so bril­liant on the page, but one never knows…” and then P.D. James was announced, and up stands… the lady sit­ting next to me. Ooops.

But I digress. I sat out­side the room at the Park Lane wait­ing for the recep­tion to begin, lis­ten­ing to some fool play “Time in a Bot­tle” on a harp, and then amaz­ingly, there was Edward, right before my eyes. White-haired, ele­gant, long-fingered just as Lord Peter, tweed waist­coat, I think even a vel­vet jacket, oh my. I was steady. But I also had my copy of “Gaudy Night” and Avery’s best foun­tain pen, pur­loined for the pur­pose, so I bravely approached him, just stand­ing about, and said, “I’m a mas­sive fan, can I pos­si­bly be a ter­ri­ble bore and ask for your auto­graph?” And, dear read­ers, he sim­ply reached for the pen, and wrote, most ele­gantly, “Edward Pether­bridge, Park Lane, Lon­don, Pic­cadilly, Jan­u­ary 2007.” And then I said like a blither­ing fool, “Even my 10-year-old daugh­ter has had hours of plea­sure lis­ten­ing to the books on tape and watch­ing the films, so I thank you,” and he asked in his ACTUAL VOICE, “And what is her name?” so I told him, and he added “To Avery” to his inscrip­tion, and “All Good Wishes.” The floor could have opened up then and there and swal­lowed me. So I thanked him like an idiot and skulked away to find a seat in the audi­ence where I could not help myself, I know they were cool and col­lected Eng­lish peo­ple, but I burst out to the lady next to me, “He signed his auto­graph, I could die.” And they were all man­i­festly kind and shar­ing in my enthu­si­asm. I am per­haps some years younger than any­one else there, and the only Amer­i­can, so I think it was like get­ting to pet an ani­mal in a zoo. Or they are just plain gra­cious, much more likely. Every­one turned out to be offi­cers of one kind or another of the Soci­ety, and were glad to hear of a new mem­ber. They pointed out all the lumi­nar­ies in the audi­ence for me, includ­ing two Chelsea Pen­sion­ers, and then the man­ager of the Park Lane spoke about the Lord Peter Wim­sey Suite, and how happy he was to have our recep­tion, and then…

Har­riet Wal­ter appeared. Fresh from, and about to return to, the stage on “Antony and Cleopa­tra,” she took out two hours to come and speak her parts as “Har­riet Vane” to Edward’s Wim­sey. How many times have I read the books, lis­tened to them on tape (I can­not cook with­out a book on tape in the back­ground), watched the films. It was mag­i­cal! What would it be to live a life where you gave that much plea­sure and enjoy­ment and stim­u­la­tion to lots and lots of peo­ple you never laid eyes on. Heaven. They, and Edward’s lovely wife Emily Richard, read and acted out excerpts from the first Lord Peter novel, “Whose Body?”, poetry, lim­er­icks, so won­der­ful. I have often dreamed of see­ing him in a play, and just missed “Donkey’s Years” last spring. But why dwell on the past? Hun­dreds of peo­ple, him a mile away on stage, just part of the time? No, I got to be within three yards of him and lis­ten to him speak to just 40 peo­ple, that mel­liflu­ous voice waft­ing over us. The wis­dom and sen­su­al­ity of his voice… I can’t con­vey his charisma in words. You should be so lucky, dear read­ers. Such fun. I imag­ine all of us in the audi­ence could well quote the lines he spoke, we’ve read those books so many times. Just a delight. I have heard a rumour that he will be lead­ing a Lon­don Walk through the the­atre dis­trict in the spring, and rest assured I will be there and ready to pro­vide a report for your vic­ar­i­ous splen­did enjoy­ment. Plus, his new book is avail­able, called “Pil­lar Talk.”

And then, as well, the Soci­ety spon­sor each year an act­ing scholar and a music scholar, who were at the event and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cel­e­bra­tion. The act­ing scholar did a lovely job with her read­ings, but the vio­lin­ist was a huge treat, because she was asked to play the theme song from Schindler’s List,” in keep­ing with the sort of wartime focus of the read­ings, and it was heart­break­ingly beau­ti­ful. I have done lots of intri­cate and com­plex (for me!) tech­no­log­i­cal detec­tive work, and if you click on this link, you will be able to down­load the song and play it as am MP3 file, what­ever that is, right on your com­puter. Not recorded from last night, but from a cool site for music-sharing that, in my quest to waste as much time as pos­si­ble on my blog, I have now joined. Just for you! Cue cliche: isn’t the inter­net amazing.

So the evening ended, and I drifted home up Park Lane, gab­bing to poor John all the way on the phone (he puts up with so much), and cooked, very mun­danely, a quick din­ner of herb-rubbed chicken breasts, mashed pota­toes and sauteed red pep­pers, the ulti­mate half-hour standby, for Avery and Anna, whose mum was home sick and there­fore was happy to loan us her child for the evening. But my head was in the clouds. We drove Anna home in Emmy, top down, to Simon and Garfunkel’s “feelin groovy”, and all was right with the world…

I almost for­got to tell you! I had another excel­lent oys­ter caper, and now a new favorite restau­rant, and one I am dying to try. And it all occurred in one of those slightly creepy con­flu­ences of events and cir­cum­stances that makes you think a Higher Power is direct­ing your actions. OK, oys­ters are an odd vehi­cle to choose, but these Higher Pow­ers have their own ways of doing things.

It all started yes­ter­day at the mar­ket, when I decided I was in the mood for an oys­ter or two (or three, as it turned out). Now you know how mad I am about an oys­ter, cold and deli­ciously fresh, shucked for you that very moment and sprin­kled with a lit­tle shal­lot in vine­gar, a lit­tle lemon juice, a lit­tle Tabasco. Even the occa­sional bit of shell that you swal­low along with it is yummy (prob­a­bly a good source of cal­cium, you never know). Well, I do feel loyal to the Mal­don oys­ter peo­ple, at my dear lit­tle Maryle­bone farmer’s mar­ket, but they don’t do Bor­ough Mar­ket, and des­per­ate times call for, well, you know. So I ambled over to a gor­geous lit­tle store­front, the Wright Broth­ers Oys­ter and Porter House as you see, adja­cent to the mar­ket, and there was a spe­cial, on some­thing called a “spe­ciale Claire,” a lit­tle oys­ter from the south­west coast of France, it turns out. I have clev­erly had this web­site page trans­lated auto­mat­i­cally from the orig­i­nal French, and it makes for some pretty funny read­ing, but you’ll get the idea. Any­way, they were small, sub­tle and totally fresh. I was feel­ing pretty dis­loyal to my fish­mon­ger, but I decided it’s all in the name of new expe­ri­ences. Share the wealth, and all that, dontcha know. Plus, it’s not a fish­mon­ger, it’s a restau­rant, and a very beau­ti­ful one, too. All the doors were wide open and there were tall ornate multi-tiered can­dle­sticks with lots of roman­tic drip­ping wax, and wait­ers tak­ing round gor­geous smelling plates of food, as the lit­tle oys­ter man hung about on the pave­ment feed­ing all us mul­ti­tudes. I just know it will be my favorite new place, and I’ve got John booked for a lun­cheon date on Tues­day. Yum yum.

So I came home and waxed lyri­cal about the lit­tle gems to John, to make him realise what he’d missed by skip­ping out on me. Then we went out to return a library book at the lit­tle Mount Street branch, and whilst divert­ing our­selves with peeks into posh shop win­dows, came across a very com­pelling restau­rant facade with a very deli­cious and incred­i­bly expen­sive menu posted out­side, and there were “spe­ciale Claire” oys­ters, of all things! It’s called Scott’s of May­fair and while we can never afford to go there, it made sense that an old-fashioned (but newly redone) oys­ter bar would have the flavour of the month, as it were. Well, I decided to do a lit­tle research on the oys­ter, and the pur­veyor, and who do you sup­pose pur­veys oys­ters to Scott’s? Yep, Wright Broth­ers. Isn’t that funny! Yes­ter­day I wouldn’t have heard of either place, and now I feel as if I’ve made new friends.

I’ve also heard about a great Lon­don food expe­ri­ence com­ing in June, the Taste of Lon­don 2007. Wright Broth­ers will be par­tic­i­pat­ing, and it will be a nice reminder of my old stomp­ing grounds, doing the graphic design for the restau­rants at Taste of Tribeca. I’ll be sure to report back. As well, in my strangely foodie week­end, I picked up a brochure for a cook­ery (as they say here, not “cook­ing”) school, called “eat drink talk.” I’d love to take a cook­ery course, and there are so many to choose from: Approach­able Parisian Bistro, Styl­ish Sun­day Brunch, Gas­tropub Cook­ing, the list goes on.

Right now, though, I’m off to make spaghetti with a creamy, gar­licky, lemony sauce, stud­ded with aspara­gus spears and bite-size bits of gam­mon steak. I’d give you the recipe, but I don’t know it yet! I think I make it dif­fer­ently every time, but this time I’ll pay atten­tion and let you know.

Remem­ber that movie? I thought Elis­a­beth Shue was the liv­ing end. My good­ness, I’ve just read that some­one is remak­ing that movie. I find it very depress­ing when films from my child­hood are being remade. When is some­one going to remake me?

But I’m get­ting away from the point. I had a lovely lunch out with my friend Dalia at Zoom in Maryle­bone, shiv­er­ing a bit from the front door that refused to stay shut, but greatly enjoy­ing my salad of chicken liv­ers, avo­cado, creme fraiche and frisee, and chat­ting up a storm. She is what she described to me as a true Scor­pio, which gives me food for thought since Avery is as well: fiery, opin­ion­ated, stub­born and pas­sion­ate. It makes for very good lunch con­ver­sa­tion! She and her hus­band (who she casu­ally describes as a for­mer model who once won a “James Dean looka­like” con­test, can you imag­ine? I’ve got to meet this guy) just came back from a hol­i­day in New York, which makes me slightly home­sick. But we’re headed there for Avery’s half-term break in Feb­ru­ary, which will be fun.

After lunch, I strolled over to school, and the rest of the after­noon turned into one of those sit­u­a­tions when good old Hilary’s “it takes a vil­lage” comes into play. We turned up at school, pet­ted somebody’s fer­ret on a lead, and packed Avery and Kimia into lit­tle Emmy, not easy to do with back­packs, PE kit bags, vio­lins, skates and skat­ing out­fits times two, but in time we were off. The girls took to the ice and up came Becky with her eldest, Ash­ley, plus Anna and Ellie, and Ellie’s play­date Ella. Got that? All were decked out, skates tied up, gloves pulled on, and even John and I got onto the ice. But truth be told, I hate to skate. I really do. My ankles turn in, it’s cold, and I know it’s only a mat­ter of time before I fall and then I’m not only cold, but also wet. So I decided to go keep Becky com­pany look­ing after all the enor­mous piles of stuff that accom­pany six girls. Within min­utes Ash­ley was strug­gling off the ice, hold­ing her wrist, in tears of pain. “It’s not get­ting bet­ter, it’s get­ting worse,” she sobbed, and Becky told me that she had bro­ken that same wrist twice before, so there was def­i­nitely a been there, done that sort of feel­ing to the event. It was clear that a trip to some med­ical pro­fes­sional was in the off­ing, so amidst sev­eral phone calls to the GP, a poten­tial ortho­pe­dist, Becky’s husband’s office to get him home early, Ash­ley bravely held onto her wrist and lis­tened to my lame attempts to enter­tain her.

In the end, an appoint­ment was secured at the doctor’s, plans were made for me to take Avery and Kimia home, and John to get Anna, Ellie and Ellie to their house in time to meet Becky’s hus­band, and give him the house keys. John and Becky fought over the money she tried to give him, and then poor Ash­ley trudged off with her mother, and the rest of the girls alter­nated between teach­ing each other com­plex skat­ing moves and com­mis­er­at­ing about their fallen com­rade. Avery had her les­son with Nicky, but Level 9 is still out there, not yet attain­able. Five girls were given hot choco­late, crois­sants and French fries, count­less nap­kins dis­persed, skates adjusted, hair rebraided, falls sym­pa­thised with, ketchup pack­ages opened, socks adjusted, tales of other rink users’ iniq­ui­ties absorbed. Then it was down to five pairs of skates being removed, bags packed, coats on and out the door.

Avery and Kimia and I headed to La Car­i­catura, a new restau­rant in our neigh­bor­hood, while John took the other girls to Anna’s house, and I admit to a cer­tain ner­vous­ness when both girls in my care sim­ply put their heads on the table and fell silent. That’s Fri­day evening for you, in this world where they all work so hard all week. But food arrived, and John arrived, and every­one perked up con­sid­er­ably. The ser­vice was sim­ply ter­ri­ble, every­thing arriv­ing at dif­fer­ent times, pineap­ple juice instead of apple, piz­zas given to the wrong peo­ple, my “vodka on ice” a scary tall glass of some­thing that tasted like sac­cha­rin, but the food was lovely. So we think we’ll give them another try, maybe wait a bit to let them get their staff under con­trol. I had a deli­cious salad of beef carpac­cio with totally fresh rocket and huge shav­ings of parme­san, Avery had lasagne and Kimia and John each had a wood-oven pizza, very thin crust, beau­ti­ful tomato sauce, large fresh leaves of basil.

I can’t actu­ally remem­ber the last time I had both lunch and din­ner out! What lux­ury. Avery and Kimia recov­ered their energy to the point of singing excerpts from “Joseph” all the way to St. John’s Wood, where we dropped Kimia at home and came home to col­lapse our­selves. And update: Ashley’s wrist was only sprained, not bro­ken, thank goodness.

Sat­ur­day we dis­cov­ered, alas, that as much as I adore it, Bor­ough Mar­ket is not for every­one. The trou­ble began when we decided to drive rather than take the tube, and we arrived to find that of course the mar­ket was mobbed and John and Avery (never really farm­ers’ mar­ket devo­tees under the best of cir­cum­stances) went off to park and meet me later at Neal’s Yard. Well, I did some fruit and veg shop­ping, but when I finally met up with them they were in a joint foul humour. Car parked far away, too many peo­ple, and some­one jos­tled Avery and made her drop her last bite of cheese­cake. So I packed them off back home and stayed for another bliss­ful hour on my own! I really don’t mind crowds, espe­cially with inter­est­ing peo­ple to look at, but Avery was so far down that peo­ple just kept step­ping on her.

Can you believe, pur­ple brus­sels sprouts? I think I will sub­mit them to the same treat­ment as at Thanks­giv­ing, shred­ded and sauteed. Oh, and my sus­pi­cion that Cherie Blair’s recipe for sprouts would be heinous was jus­ti­fied: a nasty floury roux and lemon juice, gloppy and not good. Much bet­ter to keep it simple.

I sam­pled every­thing in sight! And came away with glo­ri­ous things. Deli­cious pep­pered smoked mack­erel, bought from a man in a kilt (I find it tastes bet­ter that way) from Jolly’s Fish and Farm Pro­duce, a creamy Caer­philly cheese from Wales, and just lis­ten to the address: Gor­wydd Farm, Lland­dewi Brefi, Tre­garon, Ceredi­gion, Wales. It just has to taste good. A new potato, called the “Estima,” from my favorite potato stand. I can’t say I can tell the dif­fer­ence among them all, but it’s fun to try them. And for tonight’s spaghetti with aspara­gus and ham, I bought two lus­cious gam­mon steaks from Sill­field Farm, from a man I wish I could have taken a pic­ture of: round, cheer­ful, sim­ply crazy slippy teeth, the most gra­cious man­ner. “Any two in par­tic­u­lar take your fancy, my love?” I want Eng­land always to have a gen­er­ous num­ber of these men, but I don’t know if they make them any­more. Oh, I’ve been reread­ing Helen Hanff’s The Duchess of Blooms­bury Street, and while it’s noth­ing like as won­der­ful as 84, Char­ing Cross Road, it’s a lovely mem­oir by some­one who may well rival me in my love of Lon­don, and all things Eng­lish. What an evoca­tive book, of a time when Lon­don was chang­ing so quickly, and it was so impor­tant to hang onto every­thing that made it Lon­don. I love what she says about Eng­lish money, and why every­one was so angry to change the sys­tem: “It has to do with the Englishman’s need to be dif­fer­ent. The dec­i­mal sys­tem is much sim­pler than the old ha’penny-tuppenny guinea ten­ner tan­ner sys­tem, but the old money was theirs; no other coun­try had it and nobody else could under­stand it.” Can you imag­ine what these lovely old Eng­lish peo­ple would think of the Euro­pean Union? I myself sim­ply hate the Euro and would pos­si­bly not have moved back to Lon­don had there been no pounds ster­ling. I’m such an old fogey.

Finally, what do you think of Avery’s crazy Raiha’s-birthday hairdo? It’s a funny thing for birth­days here: so many girls have hair-and-makeup par­ties where pro­fes­sional ladies come in and do them all up. We took her up to St. John’s Wood and dropped her at Raiha’s big, gor­geous double-fronted brick house, and two hours later Becky dropped her back to us with what you see here. And eye­liner! And mas­cara! Tat­toos! They all had a won­der­ful time. Such a funny child: I came down into our bed­room last night to find her, bespec­ta­cled (or “bespeck­led” as some Mrs Mala­prop I know has said), perched on the end of our bed, clutch­ing a bowl of rasp­ber­ries, bananas, pears and blue­ber­ries, avidly fixed on “Top Gear,” sigh­ing, “It’s the Ham­ster!” when Richard Ham­monds arrived on set. A new series starts tonight, and I’m sure the stu­dio will be all agog to see him, fresh from his near-fatal acci­dent last sum­mer. She and her father will be in heaven…

Well, once again our friend­ship with the peren­ni­ally ele­gant and yet cutting-edge Vin­cent has taken us to unknown lands. Wednes­day after­noon saw us wend­ing our way across the river to his new flat, in a neigh­bor­hood that sort of bor­ders Bor­ough Mar­ket, called Lon­don Bridge. Both John and I imme­di­ately felt that we were back in Tribeca, with the fac­tory and ware­house archi­tec­ture, but with the wind­ing streets of the Wall Street area. It feels very up and com­ing down there, which is appeal­ing, and for sure Vin­cent has scored an amaz­ing loft, but it feels like… New York. I still think we want to hold out for an Eng­lish expe­ri­ence. But it was great fun to tour his new, empty home, wait­ing for the con­tainer of belong­ings to arrive later in the day. In fact, our lunch was unhap­pily punc­tu­ated for Vin­cent by many tele­phone calls from the inept movers, who at first seemed to think it would be accept­able just to let him know that they wouldn’t actu­ally be able to bring all his things to his new house, just some. “Well, all I can say is that the house doesn’t belong to me any­more, and new peo­ple are mov­ing in who won’t want my things, and I do want my things, so I am going to rely on your pro­fes­sion­al­ism to solve this prob­lem, and I will look for­ward to another call soon telling me how you have man­aged just that,” Vin­cent said with alarm­ing patience.

How­ever, it was not that sim­ple, and we had the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing his famous sang-froid slip finally, with “You are about to make me very unhappy! Just fill the *&^% truck and get it to my new place!” Poor guy, noth­ing more stress­ful than mov­ing. But in the midst of it we had a deli­cious lunch at a restau­rant right in his new neigh­bor­hood, called Vil­lage East. Appar­ently the new brain­child of the peo­ple behind another Bermond­sey restau­rant called The Gar­ri­son. Very warm and invit­ing, in a sort of min­i­mal­ist New Yorky way, with what I would call very good, fresh food, but I think I could have ordered bet­ter. My starter was an indi­vid­ual pot of par­fait of foie gras, under a sin­ful layer of pure fat, accom­pa­nied by toasted sliv­ers of a sour­dough bread stud­ded with sul­tanas. Per­fect, and I did not eat the pear and chut­ney that came with it, although it was tasty, because noth­ing must sully the per­fec­tion of foie gras, in my opin­ion. My main course was another starter, a deep-fried soft-shell crab with a per­fectly mun­dane dip­ping sauce that claimed to be wasabi-based, but not only was it red instead of green, it was… not spicy. I think I’ve been dis­tracted by the accom­pa­ni­ments to the soft-shell crab at Man­darin Kitchen, and what I really like about the dish is not so much the crab, but the sliced hot red and green chillis and gin­ger. But it was very nicely cooked at Vil­lage East, and the boys greatly enjoyed their meals as well (John had a divine veni­son carpac­cio salad, and mac­a­roni with roasted red pep­pers and Jerusalem arti­chokes, while Vin­cent had a very scary-sounding salad of squid and chorizo, no no no).

Mostly we had fun chat­ting about his excit­ing plans for his new home with Pete, and the new neigh­bor­hood of Bermond­sey he has now to explore. I became fas­ci­nated with a build­ing across the street from his house, with the carved leg­end “Time and Tal­ents Set­tle­ment” above the door. What on earth? It looked vaguely turn of the cen­tury, and seemed empty. It was but the work of a moment, once home, to find that in Vic­to­rian time, a move­ment was launched that took advan­tage of the “Time and Tal­ents” of leisured young ladies to give of their riches to poor fac­tory girls, in the way of dona­tions of food, cloth­ing and the Gospel. Finally actual homes were estab­lished for them to live in as they scut­tled to their horrible-sounding jobs at gin fac­to­ries, leather fac­to­ries and pos­si­bly worst-sounding of all, onion-peeling fac­to­ries. Can you imag­ine the floods of tears? Peel­ing onions all day. But at least they had their set­tle­ments to go home to, with tea and bis­cuits, flow­ers and Bible Study. I’ve been learn­ing all about this from a lovely lit­tle book called “By Peace­ful Means: The Story of Time and Tal­ents 1887–1987,” by Mar­jorie Daunt. The far­thest I have got in my researches into what they’re doing today is a web­site extolling their work in the “Old Mor­tu­ary,” a build­ing that used to house all the dead bod­ies that turned up in the Thames, for the police to try to iden­tify! Eeew. But the lat­est activ­i­ties they describe are in 2001, so I’m going to dig a lit­tle deeper.

Yes­ter­day was com­edy class, and I have a whole host of new cul­tural ref­er­ences to look up, among them a Radio 4 show called “Down the Line,” which class­mate James assures me is hilar­i­ous. Also a sit­com called “The Green Wing,” worth watch­ing just for the lovely Tam­sin Grieg, and “Drop the Dead Don­key,” and a come­dian called Harry Hill, who every­one claims is as funny as Jon Stew­art, although that can­not be the case.

Our task at class was to break up into small groups and come up with a set­ting for a sit­com, and three or four main char­ac­ters. Need­less to say, our small group couldn’t agree on any one idea, so we pitched four! I really think an art gallery would be a per­fect set­ting, with excel­lent crazy artists, unre­li­able young assis­tants, spoiled rich clients. Of course the hard thing is how to have all the main peo­ple appear every week, which is a must in sit­coms, and a notion I hadn’t ever thought of before. Of course, yes, you want to return cozily to the place and peo­ple you’ve come to look for­ward to, not to have incon­sis­tent sto­ries and peo­ple. It’s sur­pris­ingly com­pli­cated to work all this out. James wanted to set his show on a city trad­ing floor, and Liz and Leo wanted a library and a firm of per­sonal injury lawyers. We decided the com­edy world was a far poorer place with­out us, so with great energy pitched our ideas to Guy, who took us quite seri­ously and had great sug­ges­tions. Namely, I got my best laugh on a line from one of “my artists,” who paints in a mix­ture of human ashes and breast milk. Ever since such a lady really did walk into my gallery, I’ve been des­per­ate to use her for some­thing, so maybe this is it. How­ever, Guy pointed out that it’s going to be hard to keep her around, since artists are tran­sient in gal­leries. The undreamed-of pit­falls! How does any­one man­age to be suc­cess­ful at these writ­ing tasks that I approach and give my all, only to find out how dif­fi­cult they all are. Sigh.

James kept us all dis­tracted by a run­ning series of gags, among them a response to Liz’s sug­ges­tion of a library for her sit­com. “Did you hear the one about the guy who came into the library and said, ‘Can I have an order of fish and chips?’ and the librar­ian said, ‘This is a library,’ so he whis­pered, ‘Can I have an order of fish and chips?’” He’s clearly a nat­ural, with an MPhil in cre­ative writ­ing from Trin­ity Col­lege, Oxford. My favorite kind of Englishman.

Ah well, even if I never write a great sit­com, we’re hav­ing fun, and Guy is an extremely organ­ised, pointed, tal­ented tutor with, thank God, a sense of humor. What I think I would really like to do is work with peo­ple who already have a suc­cess­ful show going, so I can just slip in an add to some­one else’s genius, not appar­ently pos­sess­ing any myself. But I think I could be a good team mem­ber. One never knows.

I’m off for lunch with one of my screen­writ­ing friends, Dalia, and if she’s will­ing, I must ask her what she makes of the crazi­ness in Beirut the last few days. She still has fam­ily there and it must be hor­ri­ble. And then, incon­gru­ously, ice skat­ing after school with Avery and her lit­tle friends Kimia, who is Per­sian. What a town.

You know the expres­sion, “busman’s hol­i­day,” where the poor bus dri­ver spends his vaca­tion dri­ving his fam­ily some­where? Well, I got the Sel­f­ridges Food Hall ver­sion over the week­end. I was feel­ing peck­ish, and frankly wish­ing to repeat my spicy shrimp recipe from the night before, and maybe do it even spicier, when my enthu­si­asm was com­pletely damp­ened by the notion that I might have to pay 26 pounds a kilo for the priv­i­lege. I’m sorry, $50 for one at-home din­ner was quite lit­er­ally too much to swal­low. Plan B? Well, there was a spe­cial on leg of lamb, and that sounded quite tasty as well, only even on sale, the leg came to… 26 pounds. Urk! Couldn’t do it. Finally I told the butcher I was on a bud­get and what did he rec­om­mend? “I have a very fru­gal hus­band,” I explained, “and he won’t enjoy his din­ner if he sees these price tags.” He shook his head and said,“In my opin­ion, hus­bands don’t appre­ci­ate econ­omy when it comes to the din­ner plate, but if you think it will lead to domes­tic har­mony, you give it a try. How about a nice pork roast, on the bone, with the crack­ling scored, like, to make it nice and crispy?” “Oh, that sounds per­fect,” I decided, and with a price tag of just over 6 pounds I was happy. “You’re mak­ing me hun­gry, describ­ing the crack­ling,” I told the butcher, “and I’m going to put him on a bed of onions, gar­lic and rose­mary, and driz­zle him with olive oil. Doesn’t that sound good?”

“I have to be hon­est with you, madam, I don’t eat meat. Almost never, that is. Can’t bear the stuff. Give me a choice, and I’ll take lasagne every time.”

Well!

As I car­ried on shop­ping, the idea began to take hold, and by the time I got home I was ready to put away my pork roast and get on with lasagne, which choice was met with loud cheers from my ail­ing child, who thought it would slide down nicely past a sore throat. And in def­er­ence to my veg­e­tar­ian butcher, I left out the meat, but a nice layer of sauteed beef mince or sausage tucked between pasta sheets would go down a treat, as they say in my adopted land.

Veg­e­tar­ian Lasagne
(serves 8 easily)

15 lasagne sheets
3 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
3 soup-size cans chopped toma­toes
3 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
2 cups ricotta cheese
2 cups moz­zarella cheese, freshly grated
1/2 cup grated pecorino or parmesan

Pour your olive oil into a heavy saucepan and saute and onion and gar­lic till soft, then throw in the sea­son­ing and toma­toes and sim­mer for 15 min­utes. Mean­while, bring a big stock­pot of water to the boil, with salt added. Cook your lasagne sheets until ten­der, and drain off the water. Now, in a well-nonstick-sprayed 9 x 13 dish, place a layer of pasta sheets, then spread out one cup of ricotta, cover with half the tomato sauce, and repeat the whole thing. Finally top it all with the moz­zarella. I can’t stress enough how unhappy I would be if you went out and bought a hor­rid plas­tic pack­age of the stuff called “shred­ded moz­zarella.” Two things: it bears no resem­blance to either the taste or tex­ture of real moz­zarella, which comes in a nice ball sus­pended in milky liq­uid. Sec­ondly, have you ever thought of where it got shred­ded? How many unclean sur­faces might all the sides of those lit­tle shreds have touched? No. Buy two nice balls of real moz­zarella, and although it will cost you a cou­ple of pounds or dol­lars more, it’s deli­cious, healthy and clean. Then you just push it along your box grater with a plate under­neath, and when it gets too squishy to grate any­more, you just tear it apart with your fin­gers. Lec­ture over. Now top with the pecorino, and pop in a 400 degree oven for an hour.

This dish is so easy peasy, and it cooks itself for the hour before din­ner, so you can sit on your child’s bath­room floor while she takes a restora­tive bath, and read aloud one of the nicest books ever writ­ten about a child mov­ing to Lon­don, “Blow Out the Moon” by Libby Kopo­nen. She must be an extremely nice per­son, and clever as well, to have writ­ten a book that so spells awk­ward, intel­li­gent child­hood, and that appeals to child and par­ent alike. Avery has been given at least four copies, and they have made other lit­tle girls very happy as well. It’s Libby’s own life story, and how she attained adult­hood with such a com­pre­hen­sive mem­ory of her expe­ri­ences here, I can­not imag­ine. And she main­tains a web site with many more details of her expe­ri­ences, and sto­ries of writ­ing the book. She and Avery have actu­ally cor­re­sponded by email! That sort of an effort would make one life worth hav­ing been lived. What a joy. Plus it’s illus­trated with real pho­tographs from her child­hood, as well as fac­sim­i­les of her actual home­work, and let­ters from friends. Won­der­ful, except that the chap­ter I was read­ing as my lasagne bub­bled got me very teary-eyed, with its depic­tion of a truly mag­nif­i­cent head­mistress. My love for our own Mrs D is never very far from my mind, and I won­der how much she knows about her influ­ence on the lit­tle gulls that pass through her school. I try to tell her every so often, but I think a per­son with the larger-than-life per­son­al­ity of a Mrs D has a hard time com­ing down to earth to really hear praise.

Well, I dried my eyes and we had our din­ner, along with a nice salad for which I made a spicy dress­ing laden with red chill­ies and mus­tard. I have to laugh and tell you: this week’s Hello! mag­a­zine fea­tures a recipe pur­ported to be by Cherie Blair (can’t imag­ine she spends much time bun­dled in an apron, but maybe I’m just a cynic). It’s “Sprouts Supreme,” with a creamy dress­ing that I will try tonight, and let you know. I am slightly taken aback by the instruc­tion to boil them for 15 min­utes, which I think is a lit­eral recipe for dis­as­ter. It would leave all the fla­vor in the water, and just a hor­rid taste of cab­bage in its wake, that method would. I shall steam mine for 3 min­utes. It reminds me of one of our first Eng­lish culi­nary expe­ri­ences (although I think it was more a mat­ter of a really bad cook, not an Eng­lish per­son per se), with lovely hosts who shall remain name­less. The wife put a saucepan of cau­li­flower in water on the stove, turned up the heat, and sug­gested a nice walk around the lake before din­ner! Eeek. I think there was a sad fil­let of salmon that was sac­ri­ficed as well.

Speak­ing of recipes, let me direct you to an excel­lent foodie web­site, as ner­vous as I am that you will stop read­ing mine. I love every­thing she says about food. Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I gave you my recipe for spinach casse­role in which I uttered the immor­tal, and so fool­ish, words “Do not use fresh.” I could just die.

Here’s the orig­i­nal recipe, but then read on so I can change it for you. Yet another exam­ple of the unfor­tu­nate but true adage: if there’s a way to make some­thing more labor-intensive, you can bet your fam­ily will pre­fer it. Sigh.

Lau­rie Colwin’s Spinach Casse­role
(serves 8)

First of all, a word about the spinach itself. Do not use fresh. In my opin­ion, there is only one pur­pose in life for frozen spinach and this is it. Now, in Amer­ica, frozen spinach comes in lit­tle square-ish flat boxes. You need two of these. In Eng­land, how­ever, frozen spinach comes in bags, in which you will find intrigu­ing sort of hockey-puck shapes. For this, you need about 1 pound.

1 lb frozen spinach
6 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps flour
1 medium onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 ounces evap­o­rated milk
8 ounces any sharp cheese, like ched­dar
sprin­kling of chili flakes (or in Amer­ica you can use jalapeno Mon­terey Jack cheese)
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (essen­tial!)
3/4 cup fresh bread­crumbs
3/4 cup grated parmesan

Spray a 9x9 glass dish with non­stick spray. Believe me, you don’t want to skip this step. Then put the spinach in a saucepan, cover with water, and boil till cooked, but don’t over­cook. In the mean­time, melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour, and let bub­ble for about two min­utes to cook the floury taste away. Add the minced onion and gar­lic and saute till soft, but do not burn the floury but­ter. When your spinach is cooked, drain off the water, but into a mea­sur­ing cup, till you have 1 cup liq­uid. Dis­card the remain­der. Slowly add the liq­uid to the onion and gar­lic, and stir till thick. Add the evap­o­rated milk, the cheese, the chili flakes, the cel­ery salt, and stir until cheese is melted. Pour the mix­ture into the glass dish and top first with bread­crumbs and then with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour, or until bub­bly and browned on top. Heaven.

******

All right.

This after­noon, as I was hav­ing my fin­ger acupunc­tured (more on that later, spinach is more impor­tant), I lay in dark­ness, Chi­nese music play­ing all round, can­dles flick­er­ing, and my thoughts turned nat­u­rally enough to… spinach. Namely, that I had a bag full of baby spinach leaves in my fridge, had used only a tiny num­ber for my OCD chicken dish over the week­end, what to do? Spinach casse­role? But, my nearly uncon­scious mind reit­er­ated, “Do not use fresh.” How to rebel from one’s own recipe self? I knew it could be done.

So I rushed home and put a table­spoon of but­ter in my large skil­let, threw in the spinach, which looked an enor­mous amount, poured on a 1/2 cup water, slapped a lid on and put the heat on under it. A scant two min­utes later and there was NOTH­ING LEFT. All those leaves, noth­ing. So I went on with the rest of the recipe, only halv­ing the amount of flour and evap­o­rated milk, owing to the cow­ardly amount of spinach.

Then, I real­ized I had only gruyere cheese. Threw it in. The whole spinach leaves, too. Not chopped at all. I served it with trep­i­da­tion but… howls of delight. Avery asks only that the stems be removed, because “they occupy a sep­a­rate part of my mouth from the leaves,” and I have to agree. Sorry, frozen spinach, your offi­cial LAST rea­son for exis­tence has been… sim­mered away.

We did it! Can I say “we” even though I live in Lon­don? My home­town foot­ball team, that’s Amer­i­can foot­ball, is headed to the Super Bowl! Go Colts! I think it was the karma of my niece, lit­tle Jane, who spent the day in Colts paja­mas, that turned the cor­ner for the team. Of course, my sis­ter is a big, pow­er­ful exec­u­tive at the defin­i­tive sports chan­nel which until I get per­mis­sion from her must remain anony­mous, so she knows how to train a child to be a sports fan. Yippee! Appar­ently part of the big buzz is that both teams, the Colts and the Bears, have black coaches, and it is the first time a black coach has got to the Super Bowl. That sure seems a long time com­ing, and I can under­stand the Indi­anapo­lis coach when he says he hopes that stops being remark­able, fairly soon. Good, we need another sport­ing event to get excited about. And at least I can sort of under­stand the rules, unlike cricket.

I wish we could turn some of their good luck on poor Avery, who is home sick for almost the first time ever. Just mis­er­able, and quite bored as well. “If I have to look at another com­puter screen, or tele­vi­sion screen, I will go crazy!” is the ver­dict. Plus, she claims not to be able to swal­low a pill, so there is no abat­ing of her symp­toms. This to her father is a seri­ous red flag. He has visions of her sud­denly, overnight, com­ing down with an ail­ment that if she can’t swal­low six pills on a Tues­day with a full moon, she’ll die. To John, say­ing she can’t do some­thing is just… an ill­ness in itself. So he’s huffy. “Daddy’s lost all sym­pa­thy,” Avery says. “But you’re still a nice mummy.” The child knows that a house­hold with­out even one sucker par­ent is a cold, cold house.

So how to enter­tain an at-home child? I’m afraid we’re look­ing at that par­ents’ worst night­mare: the boardgame. Mean­while, good on you, Colts!

But first, an impor­tant Shrimp Announce­ment: there is no way, con­trary to the cav­a­lier advice I gave you in the recipe yes­ter­day, that the shrimp recipe I gave you can feed four. Scratch that, it can’t even serve two. We ate like lit­tle wolves, while Avery swam peace­fully in her bath, being an unshrim­p­like per­son. I for­got how much I love that dish. So dou­ble it def­i­nitely, and maybe even more, for four. Even with the rice to soak up all the spicy good­ness, we were both left peer­ing into the serv­ing dish in dis­may when it was fin­ished. Make it right away, do.

Avery has a dread­ful cough. She said this morn­ing with rel­ish, between cough­ing up lungs, “I’m so excited for today!” “Why, what do you have going on?” I asked in sur­prise. “NOTH­ING.” So we sat around and did noth­ing. Or rather, she sat around and watched movie after movie. We started out with “Peter Pan,” which got her all fired up for next week’s school audi­tions for their per­for­mance of said drama, in the sum­mer term. We’re angling for her to be a mer­maid, since they get to sing, or one of the spe­cial two “Lost Boys” who get actual lines. Then it was onto her school ver­sion of “Joseph and the Amaz­ing Tech­ni­color Dream­coat,” “The Phoenix and the Car­pet,”) while John and I cleaned out clos­ets in our bed­room. Seven bags of clothes for Oxfam, whooppee.

I found things with dry clean­ing tags in them from the last time we lived in Lon­don, in 1993. Which means said gar­ments have not been worn in 15 years. Why have I placed them in boxes and moved them at least five times since then, if I didn’t care any more than that? But some items of sen­ti­men­tal value: the cardi­gan I was wear­ing when John met me lo these 24 years ago, a sweat­shirt from Bryn Mawr with 1992 embla­zoned on it, the year I got my PhD! And it’s cov­ered with paint from when we refur­bished the din­ing room in our first home in Maple­wood, New Jer­sey. And the lit­tle tweed dress my mother was wear­ing in her engage­ment pho­to­graph for her local news­pa­per! Quite a sen­ti­men­tal journey.

But we were glad enough to fin­ish and col­lapse to watch the first episode of “Brideshead Revis­ited.” I for­got what a won­der­ful, evoca­tive, beau­ti­ful pro­duc­tion that was. A bit too sub­tle for Avery, all sorts of mor­tal nuances that she wasn’t very inter­ested in. But it will be nice to have in reserve for times when we need a lit­tle ele­gant enter­tain­ment. Was there ever any­one more beau­ti­ful than the young Anthony Andrews? He turns up, as well, in one of the new Miss Marples, play­ing Tommy of “Tommy and Tup­pence,” never my favorite Agatha Christie char­ac­ters, and a very weird tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion (com­pletely chang­ing the story, picky picky), but still well done in his capa­ble hands. And of course the per­fect Jeremy Irons as Charles. From the spe­cial edi­tion brochure that came with the DVD I learned the touch­ing fact that the rooms at Oxford that Charles inhab­its in the film are the real-live rooms where Eve­lyn Waugh actu­ally lived. Sigh, to go to Oxford. Maybe Avery will go.

Do you feel in the mood for a slightly obsessive-compulsive din­ner prepa­ra­tion? I have to say, it’s sat­is­fy­ing not only to pre­pare, but it’s deli­cious as well. For some rea­son, all the but­ler–served meals in “Brideshead Revis­ited” made me long for a slightly elab­o­rate din­ner with, cru­cially, a sauce. So between home and Marks & Sparks I invented this. Have a go.

Chicken with Parma Ham and Aspara­gus
(serves four)

3 tbsps but­ter
6 leaves fresh sage, whole
4 bone­less chicken breasts, skin removed
4 tooth­picks
20 stalks thin aspara­gus, snapped at the weak point on the stem
4 slices Parma ham
16 leaves baby spinach
6 mush­rooms, sliced thin
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
salt and pep­per to taste

Melt but­ter in large skil­let and fry sage leaves until crispy, then remove the leaves and take skil­let off heat. Lay chicken breasts on a cut­ting board and either 1) pound them quite flat, or 2) cut as large a slit as pos­si­ble in one side, to make a pocket. Now, on a sep­a­rate cut­ting board, lay out Parma ham slices next to one another. At one end of each slice, pile on four spinach leaves, and lay 5 stalks of aspara­gus on each pile of spinach. Roll up the ham around the spinach and aspara­gus and tuck the lit­tle roll into the chicken pocket, or roll up in the flat­tened chicken breast if you went that route. Secure with a tooth­pick. Aren’t they cute?

Now, heat up the but­ter in the skil­let again. Lay the chicken breasts in the but­ter and brown, then turn over and brown again. After about 3 min­utes on each side, take chicken out and put on a plate, set aside. Add more but­ter if nec­es­sary and throw in the gar­lic, shal­lot and mush­rooms to saute until soft. Deglaze the skil­let with the wine and cook down for 3 min­utes, then add the cream, salt and pep­per and stir. Care­fully scoot the mush­rooms to the sides of the skil­let to make room for the chicken breasts, and lay them in the sauce. Cover and cook for six min­utes at a sim­mer. Serve on a plat­ter with the sage leaves on top.

Yum yum!

With this we had mashed pota­toes and sauteed red pep­per strips, and I hereby promise, no more mashed pota­toes for awhile. Such a guilty plea­sure, but I should turn our pasty white win­ter bod­ies toward more vir­tu­ous side dishes, like the lentils, or a risotto with at least some veg­eta­bles in it. Actu­ally the lentil dish is quite like a Mid­dle East­ern risotto, isn’t it? I’m sure I’m not the first cook to draw that comparison.

Right. I’ll close with a spe­cial wish for my Indi­ana rel­a­tives: GO COLTS!