It’s tak­ing longer than I thought.

The whole “don’t be depressed, things aren’t as dreary as they seem” cam­paign, I mean. How can it stay so grey?! Yes­ter­day the sun came out briefly while I walked to the Lebanese food shop. By the time I came back out… grey.

And it’s extend­ing its nasty ten­drils right into my house. And school. Even read­ing with the gulls this morn­ing was a bit lack­lus­tre. Lit­tle Elodie allowed as how she had a cold, which neces­si­tated much swip­ing of sleeve over nose. Tis­sue? Why? Mad­die was read­ing “Charlotte’s Web” and as she rivals Avery in the drama-queen stakes, I felt in duty bound to tell her that the story ends in tears. “I already know, Mrs Cur­ran. My sister’s read it twice and she cried both times.” I sort of slumped toward home and in the mid­dle of the high street remem­bered some sappy adage from “Lit­tle House on the Prairie,” or some Shirley Tem­ple movie: if you want to feel bet­ter, think of some­one else. So I stopped in the flower shop and ordered some pot­ted plants for the school stair­case, which makes three grace­ful turns from the top floor to the bot­tom, and in each curve is a pot. Empty now with­out the hol­i­day poin­set­tias. So by the time I go to read again on Thurs­day, there will at least be some­thing alive to look at on the long way up, and the much shorter way down.

Well, I’m sorry to say that my flo­ral trib­ute did noth­ing what­so­ever to leaven my mood. Once home, I cleared off my desk by putting things to post to Amer­ica into envelopes. The upside is that my desk is clear, but I hate to think how much it will set me back in postage! Still, Janie’s birth­day approaches and now there is a nice fat pack­age headed her way. Vir­tu­ously, I folded some ran­dom laun­dry, but when I went to put Avery’s clothes away, fully six sweaters leapt from her cup­board and fell at my feet. I decided it couldn’t wait another minute, so I dragged every last gar­ment she owns out onto the floor and am now pay­ing for it. So much out­grown! So much shabby. So a big bag for Oxfam and a lit­tle pile for Jane, and now kind John has gone out and bought stor­age draw­ers for me to put in the clos­ets and start organ­is­ing. What a bore.

How­ever. Remem­ber the per­snick­ety guy’s house we saw last week? Well, he might have been a neat­ness psy­chopath, but his WIFE had orig­i­nal copies of “Milly-Molly-Mandy,” and I wanted them. Avery’s copies are not only reprints, and so rather not so excit­ing, but they belong to Jane now, so when I got home from the wacky house, I tracked down orig­i­nal copies of two of the ear­li­est books. If you have a lit­tle girl or boy, or need a present for a lit­tle girl or boy, you sim­ply can­not do bet­ter than these books. She’s a lit­tle Eng­lish girl from prob­a­bly the 1920s, with an extended fam­ily of quite unpar­al­leled sweet­ness, sev­eral friends to play with, and most mem­o­rably, a rather addic­tive cadence of nar­ra­tive. Her lit­tle friend Susan, for exam­ple, is referred to always as “little-friend-Susan,” which is of course the way chil­dren hear things. The copies arrived yes­ter­day, and Avery is thrilled to have them, plus they include some sto­ries the Amer­i­can reprint did not. OK, things are look­ing up.

And why shouldn’t our trouble-free cat, Hermione, get a lit­tle atten­tion? Of course Wim­sey and Keechie fre­quent the pages of the blog because they are insane. But poor Hermione and Tacy, the orig­i­nal unsqueaky wheels, are neglected. Of course Tacy told me exactly what she thought of my atten­tions by refus­ing to pose for a pic­ture. So there. But how down can any spoiled rot­ten per­son like myself be, when a tabby of this sort will sit on my lap.

It seems fit­ting to close with one of the few recipes for ugly food that I have to offer. This is a very healthy, very tasty and inex­pen­sive side dish of my own design, invented last night to take advan­tage of the lovely lentils I had bought at Green Val­ley. It has a strangely sat­is­fy­ing heft, a spoon­ful of this dish does. Life as a veg­e­tar­ian might not be so lame as it always sounds to me, with this dish avail­able. The lentils are nice and firm, al dente in fact. I adore the old Mario Batali quote, “Don’t let me hear you pro­nounce it ‘al Dante.’ He’s dead and he doesn’t care about your pasta.”

But this dish is warm, it’s hearty, it’s full of big fla­vors, it cooks itself, and the house smells divine while it’s on the stove. And won­der­ful cold left­overs, tucked in a pita. But… it is ugly. So enjoy.

Ugly Cur­ried Lentils
(serves four)

1 1/2 cups split lentils (green or yel­low, or I mixed in both)
4 cups chicken stock
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
1-inch knob fresh gin­ger, peeled and minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp hot curry pow­der (or rogan josh)
1/2 tsp chili pow­der
salt to taste
3 tbsps butter

Go over the lentils and dis­card any lit­tle hard bits. Place in a saucepan and cover with water, swish around, dis­card water and repeat three times. Pour in 3 cups chicken stock and sim­mer for one hour, stir­ring and adding more stock if lentils dry out. When al dente (hee hee), add the gar­lic, onion, gin­ger and sea­son­ings and the rest of the stock and sim­mer, cov­ered, for at least an hour, but indef­i­nitely if you like. Right before serv­ing, add the but­ter and give it a good stir, adding more stock if nec­es­sary. Deli­cious. With it we had an inex­pen­sive cut of steak sliced in strips and sauteed in peanut oil with Japan­ese mirin, soy sauce and oys­ter sauce, which we devoured wrapped in let­tuce leaves, with sliced fresh mush­rooms, sliced pears, fresh corian­der leaves and chili sauce. Messy, cheap, crunchy and glo­ri­ous. Oooh, I’m cheer­ing myself up…

Yes, Avery’s team in the under-12s won their “Area 12″ group of the Pony Club Quiz! Area 12 is, I found out through assid­u­ous googling, the “North­ern Home Coun­ties” of Eng­land, which includes all of Lon­don. As Vene­tia, head girl at Ross Nye Sta­bles put it, “Avery won it for us!” She was pos­i­tively jump­ing up and down like a jack-in-the-box last evening when we went to col­lect her at the sta­ble, a lit­tle bounc­ing fig­ure in the dark, clutch­ing her blue rosette. “We won, we won!” So she and her lit­tle com­pan­ions are all set to move on to the next round, which I think is all of Area 12, and then Region­als, near to Easter. Well done! That barn has been incred­i­ble for her self-esteem, not to men­tion leg mus­cles. As she fell asleep she mur­mured, “I never had any­body do a three cheers for me before. Hip, hip, HOORAY… for Avery!”

So she tripped off to school this morn­ing with her rosette, and I’m sure she will have plenty of sto­ries to tell.

I myself have not been idle. Did I tell you I finally got all the hor­ri­ble ugly hair color from last spring cut off? Yes, on Coco’s mother’s rec­om­men­da­tion I headed off to Shepherd’s Bush and under the min­is­tra­tions of Rad­ina, got all the bad color gone, a new nice, sub­tle blonde-ish color put on in high­lights, and a nice, if too-short cut. Took years off my appear­ance, I have to say. Plus they were ter­ri­bly nice, and all just like char­ac­ters out of a British tele­vi­sion show. Very homey, lots of in-house gos­sip, advice given on all sub­jects from school choice to the best way to cook sea bream, and a lit­tle glimpse into the teenage years to come. Rad­ina told me wisely, “Kris­ten, if your daugh­ter comes to you at any time, come the teen years, and wants to do some­thing with her hair, just you let her do it. Because it’s either that or pierc­ings, and hair GROWS BACK.” As I sat there, out­last­ing all the other ladies who had less demand­ing hair prob­lems, a nice Eng­lish lady sat down to have a sham­poo. Her hair­dresser asked if she’d man­aged to get that birth­day present off to her son in time. “No, I found out it would cost the price of the book to get it to Wash­ing­ton in time, so there’s just a card in the post, now. I would have liked him to have a lit­tle some­thing to open, on the day, but he’s 42 this year and per­haps it won’t mat­ter so much.” Oh, it made me home­sick for my own mum! I’m turn­ing 42 as well, this year, but I still want a present from my mum on the day. Just so she knows. Now it’s public.

Then today I ven­tured off to a shop a friend has been urg­ing me to visit ever since we arrived last year, but for some rea­son, some things just go undone until one day it’s absolutely imper­a­tive to find roasted almonds in bulk, and poof! Off goes the lit­tle light­bulb about where my friend said to get nuts in bulk. And every­thing else exotic and Lebanese, as it tran­spires. Green Val­ley is the place to go if you want the most deli­cious lamb sand­wich you will ever have, called a shawarma: in-house just-baked pita bread, stuffed with home­made pick­les, pep­pers, onions, car­rots and shav­ings of roast lamb, which I then topped with their yoghurt sauce with cucum­bers and dill. Warm, deli­cious, and very fill­ing. John of course inhaled his in the time it took me to lift the sand­wich to my mouth, so I think he was pretty happy as well. I had such fun trawl­ing the aisles. Every kind of olive you can imag­ine, and dozens of dif­fer­ent sorts of chick peas, and many brands of tahini (I can’t imag­ine why you’d need more than one, but then I’m not Lebanese). Really high qual­ity pro­duce (I bought a cou­ple of guava, think­ing surely they give juice?), seem­ingly hun­dreds of vari­eties of baklava, nougat and other sweet things that did not tempt me, but might you. Spices I had never heard of, like “lime pow­der,” can’t imag­ine what that’s for, but some cook might not be able to exist with­out it and is search­ing Blog­ger for some­one who can tell you where to buy it. There you go. And a lovely new bev­er­age (because I’ll try any­thing that smacks of a way to drink water that doesn’t taste like water), made from hibis­cus flow­ers. Becky would laugh so much, as she does every day at school pickup when I show up with a new bot­tle and either a thumbs up or resound­ing thumbs down. But do go to Green Val­ley if like me you adore food shopping.

Oh, and a place to visit if you need gifts. We went before Christ­mas and I meant to describe this shop right away, but the brochure found its way to the bot­tom of the pile of things on my desk that need attend­ing. It’s called The Big Tomato Com­pany, in St. Helen’s Gar­dens in West Kens­ing­ton, and what they do is put funny expres­sions, epi­thets, nick­names, you name it, on cof­fee mugs, uten­sil con­tain­ers, serv­ing plat­ters, every­thing. One of my favorites was the toast rack that read “nice rack.” I bought “loser” for John, because of his obses­sive rant­i­ngs at bad dri­vers: “You’re a big fat loser!” And I wanted “dark horse” for Avery, but they were sold out. I bought “footballer’s wife” for Alyssa, and “drama queen” for Annabelle. You could get a teapot with “not for all the tea in china,” or a cof­fee cup with “yummy mummy.” The pro­pri­etors were there and very keen to chat. They’ve cracked the Amer­i­can mar­ket already, but John and I feel con­fi­dent they could have a fab­u­lous suc­cess in, say, Nolita in New York. Go, do, and indulge your­self in some­thing funny.

Well, we’re off to see another house, in Not­ting Hill. The one in Bed­ford Square fell through because a ginor­mous devel­oper turned up with cash and the abil­ity to close in ten days, so John is very sad. Some­thing will turn up. Maybe it will turn out there’s a highly lucra­tive quiz show called “Who Wants To Be A Sta­ble­hand?” and Avery will be the sav­ior of us all…

Oh, but before I get to my enig­matic (to most of you, I’ll bet) sub­ject mat­ter of the day, I have to give you all an update (I’m still in shock over nearly using that as a verb, whew) on the story I told you all about in the sum­mer, the pub­lic appeal for dona­tions to save the sur­round­ings of a Land Trust that was the orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tion for “Wind in the Wil­lows”. They’ve reached their goal, and the land has been pur­chased, plus enough extra to start all sorts of gar­den­ing and con­ser­va­tion projects. I won­der if any­one from my blog clicked on the link and donated? It’s just that sort of world. But I bet I never find out. Leave a com­ment on the blog, if you did, please. Oh, and that reminds me, I’ve been get­ting com­ments lately, which is new and excit­ing. I just love to get that email that tells me someone’s had some­thing to say about some­thing I said. It’s all part of the self-centeredness I was lec­tur­ing you all about recently, and it’s very reward­ing. Plus the peo­ple are so nice.

Any­way, I was root­ing through all my books look­ing for some­thing to read the other night when I stum­bled upon my mother’s old copy of just about the fun­ni­est book ever writ­ten, although as my com­edy class is teach­ing me, not every­one finds every­thing funny. How­ever, in this case, any­one who doesn’t think it is com­pletely clever is sim­ply wrong. It’s called Anguish Lan­guish, and in case you were plan­ning to run over to abe­books to get a copy, save your money (because it’s a LOT of money!) and go right to the web­site that has all the sto­ries nicely pre­sented for you.

But I must begin again. Because you don’t know what the whole point of “Anguish Lan­guish” is, yet. Let me enlighten you. The whole point that author Dr. Howard L. Chace makes is “water larder warts sunned lack itch udder.” Now say that fast and lis­ten, or have some­one else say it fast and you lis­ten. And then you can’t stop. Avery has been in my study at least four times in an hour try­ing to wrench this book away from me, laugh­ing over the the bird and the worm chat­ting. The worm says, “Europe oily disk moan­ing!” and then bird replies with an evil grin, “Doily board cashes or warm!”

How many “furry tales” do you think you can recite off the top of your head? How’s about “Ladle Rat Rot­ten Hut”? Or nurs­ery rhymes? Think back to “Marry Hat­ter Ladle Limb,” always a crowd-pleaser. I par­tic­u­larly groove to “Sinker Sucker Socks Pants,” but then I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the Agatha Christie story “A Pock­et­ful of Rye” on tape this week, so nat­u­rally it fol­lows as night the day.

But you know what I just remem­bered? I have to con­fess that my hus­band, while prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way, is not amused par­tic­u­larly by “Anguish Lan­guish,” and I think that prob­a­bly that’s all right. Because he does have so many other star­ling koala tees.

I ask you this not in a rhetor­i­cal way, but with a twofold pur­pose. One, I need cheer­ing up because my house is a dis­as­ter, which is upset­ting sec­ond only to the fact that we really have to find a new house. Two, I have been to my first “com­edy writ­ing for tele­vi­sion” course and the ques­tion is actu­ally part of our homework!

Oh, it was such fun. I was a bit skep­ti­cal given my not-so-pleasant expe­ri­ence in the “Cre­at­ing Fic­tion” course last autumn, where my fel­low class­mates were rather more… shall we say, seri­ous than I am. Their novels-in-the-making were quite gritty (I think that’s the word they would have used, or maybe “edgy”), and the only thing less likely than my read­ing a gritty novel, is my writ­ing a gritty novel. So I was the prover­bial fish out of water. This crowd, on the other hand, is funny. Not sur­pris­ingly, I guess! I remem­ber from my first act­ing class last spring, think­ing, there’s a lit­tle pres­sure on in a social way, when you’ve all come together claim­ing you want to be the­atri­cal. You can hardly just sit there like a lump, wait­ing to learn! You have to act. And while I turned out to be some­thing rather less than the next Kate Winslet, it was very amus­ing to be with lots of peo­ple who like to pre­tend. The same goes for the com­edy class. You have to be funny, right off the bat.

The tutor, espe­cially, was under the micro­scope from the word go. Think of it: your man­date is to help peo­ple write funny things for other peo­ple to say. There­fore, the first words you utter had bet­ter be funny them­selves. And he did not let us down. Guy Mered­ith, isn’t that an excel­lent name? Quite spon­ta­neously funny, as well as hav­ing obvi­ously thought up funny things before­hand, to say. We started off dis­cussing what are the most use­ful items for com­edy: cur­rent events. He asked, “Did you all read about the Suf­folk Stran­gler speak­ing out finally? Of course he said he didn’t do it, but he prob­a­bly shouldn’t have done so under the name ‘The Suf­folk Stran­gler.’ See, mur­der­ers always make one mis­take.” Then we were on to the first exer­cise. “Imag­ine, if you would, that you are at a dis­as­trous drinks do [“cock­tail party,” to you Yanks], and it’s becom­ing obvi­ous that you’re not going to find any­one to talk to. You’re hid­ing in the kitchen, when you hear a foot­step com­ing down the pas­sage. Sud­denly you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the per­son approach­ing could be really impor­tant to you, if you could only get his/her atten­tion. Write down three fas­ci­nat­ing things about your­self, that you can tell this per­son. The catch is, two of the things are true, and one is a lie.”

So we each had to think of these three things, and say them out loud, where­upon Guy repeated them and asked the class to vote on which thing was a lie. And what we dis­cov­ered was: suc­cess is in the details. For myself, I said 1) that I had writ­ten a book on the his­tory of women artists from the Renais­sance to the present, 2) that I was aller­gic to alu­minum [Guy nat­u­rally inserted the extra Eng­lish ‘i’, for “alu­minium”], and 3) that I had a degree from RADA, the Royal Acad­emy of Dra­matic Arts. And you know what? Not one per­son thought the book was a lie. “She has a stu­dious aspect, does she not?” was Guy’s unflat­ter­ing but unfor­tu­nately true con­clu­sion. Some peo­ple thought it implau­si­ble about the allergy, but most peo­ple imme­di­ately con­cluded that the RADA claim was a lie. Guess why? RADA don’t offer a degree, they just offer courses. Did I, as a mere out­sider to the finer points of Eng­lish cul­ture, know this? Uh, no. And the les­son was: write what you know.

Amaz­ingly, sev­eral of the female stu­dents’ claims to be, var­i­ously, “exotic dancers, “bur­lesque per­form­ers,” and mostly baldly, “strip­pers,” were TRUE! And one fel­low in his 60s really was, con­trary to our guess, approached to appear in the first-ever issue of Play­girl. “Wor­ry­ing, isn’t it, that no one believed me?” he said mourn­fully. One girl was found out about not being a nurse because she said “psy­cho­log­i­cal” instead of “psy­chi­atric” nurse, and a guy was found to be lying about falling off a don­key ride in the sea­side resort of Brighton, because there aren’t any don­key rides in Brighton, only in Bournemouth, appar­ently. Very amusing.

So the other les­son was, in order to write suc­cess­ful com­edy, one must be able to lie con­vinc­ingly, and also know how to draw on one’s real expe­ri­ence in mak­ing things up. And I learned exactly how much I don’t know (as if I needed remind­ing) about really up-close British pop­u­lar cul­ture. Have you Amer­i­can read­ers ever heard of a musi­cian called Tommy Steele? Nei­ther had I, but he’s really famous here. And he’s the sec­ond cousin of one of the class mem­bers, although we thought she was lying. Have you heard of a com­edy team called “French and Saun­ders”? I was not flu­ent enough in that ref­er­ence to get it right away, but my Hello! mag­a­zine loy­alty meant that I could parse it even­tu­ally, and Dawn French really is a national trea­sure. I loved her in the clip I saw of the recent Christ­mas air­ing of “The Vicar of Dib­ley.” Of course I saw the clip only through the sev­eral degrees of sep­a­ra­tion that my Matthew Mac­fadyen site pro­vides, since his wife Kee­ley Hawes was in the pro­gramme as well (look­ing irri­tat­ingly gor­geous, I must add in all hon­esty). Well, how about “ENO”? Eng­lish National Opera. “Red Dwarf”? Nope, me nei­ther, but it’s a cult sci­ence fic­tion show. It’s expe­ri­ences like this that I trea­sure, a chance to be a fly on the wall (the only non-British per­son in the class) and just enjoy absorb­ing what it’s like to be British. There’s one Scot­tish bloke in the class, and while Cal­lum turned out not in fact to be an air­line stew­ard, he has met Zsa Zsa Gabor and he is a mem­ber of an obscure Scot­tish sep­a­ratist group (but not the ones who advo­cate assas­si­nat­ing the Queen, impor­tantly). I guess I knew vaguely that some Scots would like to be inde­pen­dent from Great Britain, and every once in awhile they’re on the BBC com­plain­ing about var­i­ous par­lia­men­tary injus­tices, but in gen­eral, do most Amer­i­cans liv­ing in Britain get to meet one? I feel very for­tu­nate. The fact that Mel Gibson’s face adorns one of the inde­pen­dence web­sites had a bit of a deflat­ing effect on any par­ti­san­ship I might have felt, however.

But I digress. What makes some­thing funny? We decided that con­trast and incon­gruity are funny, and two things being com­bined that don’t belong together are funny. Peo­ple being as fool­ish as you know you can be but hope you aren’t all the time, are funny. Spoofs of things that are just this side of ridicu­lous, are funny. There are two absolutely hilar­i­ous pro­grammes that we saw clips of in class that I have sim­ply got to track down copies of. One is called “Bro­ken News,” obvi­ously a spoof of the con­cept of “break­ing news,” that sends up all the 24-hour news chan­nels we watch in spite of our­selves. The bit we saw was fol­low­ing a break­ing story of a woman who had died mys­te­ri­ously fol­low­ing a meal that fea­tured toma­toes, and the news crews were pro­vid­ing Team Cov­er­age of the expected “Tomato Flu” pan­demic that would soon be sweep­ing Britain. This is, of course, so per­ilously close to our panic over bird flu that it’s just embar­rass­ing, and totally hilar­i­ous. Here’s some­thing impor­tant though: not every­one thought it was funny. So I think that’s a good point: some peo­ple will find “Lit­tle Britain” side-splittingly funny, some peo­ple will laugh reluc­tantly, and some peo­ple will be hor­ri­bly offended. I myself can­not bear that pro­gramme, although I adore David Wal­liams in straight roles, so there you go.

We had a great time. My fun was only slightly spoiled by my jour­ney home­ward. No, amaz­ingly, I did not get lost, but it was actu­ally worse. I walked out of the build­ing and headed toward Oxford Street, when a cab sud­denly stopped in front of me and a head poked out the open win­dow, and it was the lovely James from class (already clearly the fun­ni­est per­son in the group, if actu­ally not mar­ried to and divorced from the same woman twice, as he tried to get us to believe). “Get in, I’ll run you wher­ever you’re going, as long as it’s where I’m going.” So, because he is funny, I got in, and we were get­ting along famously, head­ing vaguely north and west, swap­ping life sto­ries. Then I real­ized I had left my &^%^$ hand­bag in the class­room. I pulled out my vibrat­ing mobile phone to find I had a mes­sage from Guy and he’d left my bag with secu­rity. I jumped out in con­ster­na­tion, even as James was pulling out his wal­let for me, said good­bye and started walk­ing, not know­ing even where I was. And it started to pour down with rain. I just stood curs­ing and get­ting wet­ter and wet­ter, look­ing at my watch and know­ing I had to pick Avery up at the sta­ble. What to do? Finally I flagged another cab and explained my sit­u­a­tion and begged to be taken back to school where I would get my bag and get right back in and he could have a nice long fare to the stable.

This proved accept­able, only I had to sit through one of the very few unpleas­ant cabby con­ver­sa­tions I have been privy to: this spec­i­men of human­ity was one of a type of British per­son (and there’s an Amer­i­can coun­ter­part, make no mis­take) who believes firmly that the world is going to hell in a hand­bas­ket, every­thing was bet­ter before immi­gra­tion, we should close the bor­ders, vote out every politi­cian, turn off the per­ni­cious inter­net, and stop eat­ing any­thing green. And the envi­ron­ment? It can go to the dogs because any­way the ter­ror­ists will get us first. Urgh. What a long ride. And at the end he said, “And you know what, luv? Every­one I talk to about this agrees with me, just like you do. Never get any­body in my cab what don’t. You have a nice day now, if the [exple­tives] will let you, which they won’t.” Oh dear.

Which entire after­noon, with its cast of char­ac­ters, screw-ups, weather emer­gen­cies and new­found Britishisms, leads me to believe that while I may need help in my pre­sen­ta­tion of com­edy, I’m not lack­ing in material.

Ah, it’s that time again. In the run-up to Christ­mas I feel pos­i­tively addicted to clut­ter. I want the tree, the orna­ments, the lit­tle vil­lage of skaters and sled­ders, the cen­ter­piece of pinecones and cran­ber­ries, the presents, the wreaths! And music, and big meals with lots of gravy, and Christ­mas cards from friends stacked and dis­played, and bows on cats, if they’ll let me. Let the bells chime.

No more. Yes­ter­day I was vis­ited by the Spirit of Minimalism.

After a day of fren­zied labor (poor John was roped in as well), the tree’s gone, the nee­dles swept up, all the orna­ments packed away and the boxes stored in the lit­tle Harry-Potter-room under the stairs, table bare, songs silenced, every­thing neat, tidy and pol­ished. And empty! It actu­ally feels good.

I even got obsessed yes­ter­day with my kitchen. At first all I was going to do was throw away the old, stale, dried-up stuff on my “pantry” shelves (I wish I had a pantry, but all I have is stainless-steel shelves right out in the open in my kitchen). But once I got started, no object was safe. Seven boxes of teabags? I don’t think so. I bunged the bags them­selves into a lovely clean glass jar, screwed on the lid, and threw away all the boxes. Half a bot­tle of red wine I’d been sav­ing for spaghetti sauce? Down the drain. Why had I kept a box of lasagne sheets with just one and a half of them left? Gone. And then, while I was at it, I decided to switch all the food and dishes around, so into the cup­boards and draw­ers went the rice and tinned toma­toes, and out came the green Fire King din­ner plates and all the teacups and saucers from my Evil Grandmother’s wed­ding china. Lots of odd dis­cov­er­ies since the day long ago last year when John kindly (if a bit hap­haz­ardly) unpacked the kitchen for me. And you know what? It looks nice in there now!

By din­ner time, how­ever, I was exhausted, dirty and hun­gry. But some­thing in me rebelled at pro­duc­ing yet another meal of meat and two veg, or pasta, baguette and salad. No, I rebelled and decided that just for once, a sand­wich for din­ner wouldn’t kill us. And what a sand­wich! At first I thought, “How can I blog a recipe for a sand­wich? Every­one knows how to make a reuben.” But maybe not. Have a look, but keep in mind that, what­ever the time-honored dis­tic­tions in cur­ing or what­ever, if you expect American-style pas­trami, it’s called “salt beef” here.

Clas­sic Reuben

2 slices tra­di­tional rye bread
1 tbsp but­ter
enough Cheddar-ish cheese to cover bread
1/4 cup sauer­kraut (or cole slaw)
2 tbsps Thou­sand Island or Russ­ian dress­ing
pastrami/salt beef to taste (we like lots)

Heat a skil­let to medium, and lay one slice of but­tered bread but­ter side down. Cover with cheese, then sauer­kraut and dress­ing, then pas­trami. But­ter the sec­ond slice of bread and place on top, but­ter side out of course. Keep­ing all the wet­tish bits in between the cheese and pas­trami avoids that fate worse then death for any sand­wich: soggy bread. Grill gen­tly until cheese is melted and bread crispy, then care­fully turn over and grill other side until crunchy. Heaven!

I did cave to con­ven­tion and had a salad on the side, but it was noth­ing more than chopped cab­bage and more Thou­sand Island dress­ing. Now, Avery will not eat dress­ing of any kind, but strangely enough, from a baby one of her favorite foods was sauer­kraut. Odd, but there you go.

Well, today we moseyed over to North (or is it called West?) Kens­ing­ton again to see a house in Bas­sett Road, designed, owned and inhab­ited by the most PER­SNICK­ETY man I have ever encoun­tered! Hon­estly, he makes me look devil-may-care and messy, and those who know me best know to their despair that I tend to fol­low peo­ple around pick­ing up the things they have just put down and tidy­ing them away. This guy was nuts. On his cof­fee table were six rows of mag­a­zines, all stacked the way fur­ni­ture stores do, so the title of each issue shows? And in his bath­room, noth­ing that would indi­cate a per­son could actu­ally prac­tice per­sonal hygiene in it. Just can­dles, and books, and flower arrang­ments. And he comes with a wife! And child! The child’s room looked as if they had just whisked away the glass dome that nor­mally cov­ers it. Antique dolls and ted­dies lined up with vin­tage books care­fully stacked beside a sepia-toned pho­to­graph of the child her­self, who appeared briefly dressed like some­thing out of a Vic­to­rian doll­house, and was promptly taken away by a dot­ing nanny. Hon­estly, it was sur­real, and most enjoy­able, to inhabit their world for half an hour.

But the house itself is like our loft in Tribeca trans­planted into a Lon­don build­ing. Not for me. What would be the point of mov­ing to Lon­don and liv­ing in New York? I really want an Eng­lish house. So I dragged John kick­ing and scream­ing from that envi­ron­ment of steel and glass, and we’re back to the draw­ing board. Although it will take awhile for me to for­get the image of all those sweaters folded like they are at Ralph Lau­ren, repos­ing in a glass-fronted clothes cup­board. Stacked by COLOR. It reminded me of the per­fec­tion of the house where we were so warmly wel­comed in Southamp­ton this sum­mer. I am just not cool enough to live like that, but it’s a nice place to visit.

I’m off to a new class this after­noon! “Com­edy writ­ing for tele­vi­sion.” Per­haps that lev­ity implied in that title will be suit­able for a brain like mine that doesn’t seem capa­ble of pro­duc­ing a novel or a screen­play, my pre­vi­ous City Lit endeav­ors notwith­stand­ing. Some days I feel that my life is like a sit­com episode, one of them where it isn’t funny to the peo­ple on the telly, but the audi­ence really enjoys it. So we’ll see if I can trans­late any of that to the small screen. Watch this space.

Truly, this movie has some­thing for every­one! First off, I apol­o­gise for any skep­ti­cism I might have felt for Renee Zell­weger (I know that’s a load off her mind). I think I was influ­enced by never hav­ing seen her in a film, just in crazy Peo­ple mag­a­zine hav­ing got divorced from some­one she’d been mar­ried to for about six minutes.

But she was mag­i­cal! Quite a per­fect Eng­lish accent, very quirky and vul­ner­a­ble. And Emily Wat­son was her usual incan­des­cent self (in fact would have made a very believ­able Beat­rix Pot­ter her­self), and the won­der­ful, change­able Anton Lesser had a small but excel­lent per­for­mance as one of the Warne broth­ers who pub­lished the orig­i­nal Peter Rabbits.

The most won­der­ful thing? The draw­ings come to life! Not in a creepy Dis­ney way, but just the draw­ings them­selves, hop­ping around and being charm­ing. And lovely inspired shots of Lon­don in 1902, as well as the Lake Dis­trict where Beat­rix Pot­ter even­tu­ally saved 4000 acres of coun­try­side from devel­op­ers and gave it to the British peo­ple. I was so pleased: Avery imme­di­ately got the con­nec­tion between what Beat­rix was doing, and what our won­der­ful neigh­bors in Con­necti­cut have done with the Land Trust that includes our lit­tle farmhouse.

And the top­per is that Fred­er­ick Warne pub­lish­ers had their offices in… Bed­ford Square! Oh, how John’s eyes lit up: his beloved Bed­ford Square (not that we can ever really afford the build­ing he’s dying to buy there). “See,” I hissed to Avery, “some­thing for every­one. Real estate.”

Any­way, I can­not imag­ine any­one being stal­wart enough to get through this film with­out cry­ing. Except… my child. “How can you be so hard-hearted?” John asked. “Well,” she said, “there were tears in my heart, but I did not cry them.” This is, we con­cluded, because she does not have chil­dren of her own. Because really the movie is about fathers and daugh­ters, in the loveli­est pos­si­ble way. Watch­ing the lit­tle girl who plays the young Beat­rix inspired Avery to ask about act­ing school yet again, so I’ve finally got organ­ised and sent in her appli­ca­tion to the Sylvia Young The­atre School in Maryle­bone. I can­not imag­ine that there is any trick to the drama trade that Avery couldn’t teach her­self, but I could be wrong.

So go. Take your mother. Take your daugh­ter. Take them both! And take a tissue.

I really should be help­ing Avery rinse her hair in her bath… but I just have to tell you what is the best thing to eat while you’re cook­ing din­ner. The secret? It’s a pur­loined bite.

You know you’re meant to be chop­ping the thyme for your tomato sauce, and you are. And you know you’ve peeled the per­fect avo­cado, driz­zled it with juice from the plumpest lemon, and quar­tered the per­fect tiny san­tini toma­toes for salad. But then your eye trav­els to the lit­tle green Pyrex bowl of sea salt, and before you know it, you’ve sliced a lit­tle bite of avo­cado, swiped a quar­ter of tomato, brushed them quickly against the rem­nants of chopped thyme, dipped the whole lot in the salt and… per­fec­tion. Enjoy your din­ner, what­ever it may be!

It’s been an uphill strug­gle, accord­ing to Avery, the dreaded required “mohawk” being a nearly impos­si­ble feat to achieve. But it’s finally been done! And as a reward, she finally got the Fine Red Shoes about which she has been dream­ing for months and months. There’s a lovely shop in the Maryle­bone High Street called Rachel Riley, full of clothes for mostly chil­dren, but I did get a very wear­able and yet chic tweed skirt with leather buck­les for myself. Last spring Avery saw a pair of shoes there that exceeded what even I will spend on my child (and for sure she is bet­ter dressed than am I). So I had to put my foot, so to speak, down, and she was all right with that. Some things are just too crazy.

But we never for­got them, and every once in awhile vis­ited them in the shop, just to see if they had gone on sale, but they never did. Until last week! John and I were out and about in the street wait­ing to pick Avery up from some­thing or other, and there they were, mas­sively dis­counted and in her size. What to keep them for, though? It came to us: Level 8. So today was the day. She jumped up and down and screamed. “This is what I wished for when I threw my coin into the Trevi Foun­tain in Rome!” Good on you, Aves. Her school friends Isabelle and Sarah just hap­pened to be there to share the glory, which was nice.

Now we are off (after meat­loaf sand­wiches for lunch, not to be despised) to see “Miss Pot­ter,” the Beat­rix Pot­ter story with Renee Zell­weger. Not sure about her, but every­one says her Eng­lish accent is remark­able, and it’s a grey, rainy, spitty day so we need some cheer.

All this friv­o­lity serves a dual pur­pose: to mark the last day of the long Christ­mas vac, and to put off for one more day the awful task of clean­ing out the kitchen pantry. John is con­vinced that if I throw away every bot­tle with a quar­ter of an inch of bal­samic vine­gar, every plas­tic bag with five pine nuts, every con­tainer of out­dated bak­ing soda, every spice with price tags in pounds from the LAST time we lived in Lon­don, we won’t actu­ally have to move. We will all be able to live JUST IN THE KITCHEN. Any­thing to make him happy… In the mean­time, con­grat­u­la­tory telegrams from all over the skat­ing world are pour­ing in for Avery, and I must run answer the door one more time.

Actu­ally, I don’t know why they call it the “blues” (isn’t that a line from an Elton John song? no, I think he does know, but I can’t remem­ber why). If I were in the busi­ness of coin­ing phrases, I’d call it the “greys.”

Don’t get me wrong: I like grey. I wear a lot of grey, my sit­ting room fur­ni­ture is grey. John’s get­ting grey and he looks fab­u­lous. I don’t even mind the grey Lon­don sky. It’s more the pre­vail­ing sense that every­thing is at an ebb, noth­ing new is around the cor­ner, and it’s mak­ing me sleepy.

Added to this gen­eral aura of gloom is the fact that Keechie has once again decided that our down com­forter is far supe­rior to her lit­ter box, so back we’ve gone to the cleaner’s with a big plas­tic bag full of the unspeak­able, and John’s jaw is set in that way that makes me count the cats every now and then, just to make sure. I don’t under­stand what part of “a quar­ter of a Val­ium twice a day” isn’t work­ing for her. Sigh. Let’s see, what else can I whinge about? I broke a blood ves­sel in my fin­ger, have you ever done that? Agony! All blue and pur­ple and puffed up under the skin of my knuckle like it’s either going to explode, or send a heart-stopping blood clot surg­ing through my veins. Awful. Can you say “wimpy”?

And then there’s the ongo­ing anxiety-making house search. Every­thing is sick­en­ingly unaf­ford­able, and the thought of pack­ing up again in just a year since our last move is obscurely unpalat­able. But then I look around this flat, albeit a nice flat, and there isn’t enough room for dishes or pantry things in the kitchen, no room for Avery’s belong­ings in her room, or her clothes in her closet (and she hon­estly doesn’t have that many, it’s just bad stor­age). Cer­tainly no room for the books that seem to enter our lives with no voli­tion on our part. So we have to move, out of unaf­ford­able small square footage into, one imag­ines, even less afford­able but larger square footage. It makes my stom­ach squig­gle to think of it. And John’s unshake­able sang-froid is, frankly, mad­den­ing. Some­one needs to share my anx­i­ety, and I’m not get­ting any help from my chirpy hus­band or chirpy daugh­ter. Oh, wait, it’s Keechie who is my part­ner in strife. I wish it could have been some­one who is toilet-trained. Dou­ble sigh.

So we’ve been cast­ing about for things to cheer us up. Let’s see, there was the James Bond movie yes­ter­day! I sur­vived! I would actu­ally per­haps con­sider see­ing it again, so I can enjoy things like the unde­ni­able eye candy that is Daniel Craig, with­out won­der­ing whether in the next scene he will lose both arms. He is sim­ply dreamy in the role, I think (yeah, like it wanted only my opin­ion to estab­lish the fact), even though in gen­eral I don’t groove to blonds, and he’s too beefed-up, I think. I pre­fer a man who looks as if he has bet­ter things to do than beef up, although arguably poor James gets that way just leap­ing away from cer­tain death sev­eral times an hour, and lift­ing heavy things off damsels in dis­tress. Any­way, it was fun, and I’m proud I made it through with no averted eyes, much less an untimely departure.

Then I felt unfaith­ful, so I found another Matthew Mac­fadyen site that’s lots of fun to dip in and out of. I’m des­per­ate enough for the sound of his vel­vety voice that I actu­ally lis­tened to sev­eral of his com­mer­cial voiceovers. We can but wait for “Death at a Funeral,” star­ring as well the deli­cious Rupert Graves, as you see. Some kindly soul has cre­ated a cal­en­dar on the Matthew site that counts down the days. There are 109 left, in case you were wondering.

Then there’s the con­tro­ver­sial (but we thought sub­limely uplift­ing and inspir­ing) BBC pro­gramme called “The Choir.” The show fol­lows the progress of an Eng­lish school choir, directed as a sort of social and cul­tural exper­i­ment by Gareth Mal­one, the impos­si­bly youth­ful choir­mas­ter of the Lon­don Sym­phony Orches­tra. I per­son­ally believe that any­one who is will­ing to try to teach young kids any­thing should be knighted. The devel­op­ment of these very unpromis­ing high school kids, unex­posed to clas­si­cal music until the exper­i­ment began, from typ­i­cal slouchy teenagers to peo­ple so proud of their achieve­ments that they were in tears, was ter­ri­bly mov­ing, we thought. Some peo­ple have offered up crit­i­cism that the direc­tor was so hard on the chil­dren, but John and I are both fresh from the expe­ri­ence of being Amer­i­can par­ents in an atmos­phere where sin­gling out, whether for fail­ure or suc­cess, is vir­tu­ally pro­hib­ited, and I think chil­dren suf­fer a lot less from harsh crit­i­cism than they do from a) neglect, or b) blind, unde­served praise. Avery has so thrived in the Eng­lish girls’ school atmos­phere where every day offers a chance to do well, to be roundly scolded if she doesn’t, and greatly rewarded if she does, that we’re loath to find fault. Any­way, if you can find a way to watch the series, it’s def­i­nitely attention-grabbing.

Oh, and the Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum of Child­hood is a good way out of the dol­drums. My friend Bex from my screen­writ­ing course invited Avery and me to meet up with her fam­ily there, so we hopped on the Cen­tral Line (not with­out a bit of req­ui­site fum­bling in the tube sta­tion over the dif­fer­ence between the Cir­cle and Cen­tral lines, requir­ing the inter­ven­tion of a lovely ticket agent, thank you, how CAN I be so lame about direc­tions?) and ended up in Beth­nal Green. Ignor­ing all the promi­nent signs direct­ing us to the Museum, it was but the work of a moment for me to lead Avery in the oppo­site direc­tion and walk sev­eral blocks out of the way, finally suc­cumb­ing to ask a nice lady with a pushchair where I should be going. She firmly turned me around 180 degrees, say­ing kindly, “Love, you just got your­self all turned about,” and within min­utes we had we achieved our destination.

Bex was there with her dar­ling baby Tilda, dressed in a com­pletely Eng­lish fash­ion with a flow­ered blouse topped by a hand­made leaf-green cardi­gan. She fol­lowed us solemnly with her eyes at first, but soon was wolf­ing sat­sumas as fast as Bex could peel them, and seemed ready to accept us as after­noon com­pan­ions. What is the dif­fer­ence between sat­sumas, man­darin oranges, and clemen­tines? I do not know, and every Eng­lish per­son I ask has a dif­fer­ent answer. Some­day I will find out, prob­a­bly the same day I get the defin­i­tive answer on what is a prawn and what is a shrimp. Are all these ques­tions basi­cally down to size? Or is there a crea­ture dif­fer­ence? A project for a day when I’m not look­ing for a way out of the doldrums.

Any­way, the museum was great fun, with the most amaz­ing col­lec­tion of doll’s houses (I love how they say that, not “doll­houses” as we do in Amer­ica) I have ever seen. How did the chil­dren not destroy all the lit­tle pieces, or lose them even­tu­ally as Avery did? And she was a care­ful child. There were rock­ing horses to ride, and thou­sands of stuffed ani­mals, board games, puz­zles, dres­sup clothes, you name it. Even­tu­ally Bex’s hus­band Joe turned up, fresh from his night work as a fish pur­veyor! I would love to know more about that. Must ask Bex for details. His fam­ily firm work all night to pro­vide fish to Sel­f­ridges, among other food halls and restau­rants, all over Lon­don. How fas­ci­nat­ing. He took off with Tilda to the Miffy exhibit and Bex and I trailed around after Avery, gos­sip­ing. One of our fel­low screen­writ­ers turns out to be a … strip­per! I always did notice the lacy tops to her real-live stock­ings, when she sat down in class, and thought, “Gee, that’s a lot of effort to go to, to be sexy, for a screen­writ­ing class.” In his typ­i­cal lack­adaisi­cal fash­ion, our tutor never seemed to notice. Wow, what a job.

Finally Tilda had reached the end of her con­sid­er­able atten­tion span, and we parted, with plans to get together again. I always find it absurdly flat­ter­ing when an Eng­lish girl wants to be friends, so I am def­i­nitely not let­ting Bex go. It’s such fun to be with a smart, tal­ented, new friend about whom all the details are yet to be learned! Like that she and her hus­band met “speed-dating,” a con­cept new to me. Appar­ently you and the friends you go with meet lots of peo­ple all in a row, and then sort of tick a box to say which of them you’d like to meet again. And it was instantly clear to Bex and Joe that they had hit pay dirt. This is so alien to my own his­tory (take one look at the impos­si­bly gor­geous and cool 18-year-old John, lo these 24 years ago and… that’s it! game over, in a good way) that I could hardly credit it as real.

She and I both have sort of frus­trat­ing wishes to be writ­ers, now know­ing exactly what we want to say, but know­ing we want to say some­thing. And there’s always the lure of some­one who appears to be as besot­ted with her daugh­ter as I am with mine. How well I remem­ber, how­ever, the pres­sures of a day with a per­son who can­not talk. I remem­ber sit­ting with Avery, as she had her blue­ber­ries and melon balls and cheese cubes in her high chair, look­ing at her long­ingly and mur­mur­ing, “Please say some­thing.” I was roundly rewarded, as it turns out. The other night we were fin­ish­ing din­ner and I looked around all the empty serv­ing dishes and said, “We dec­i­mated that meal.” Avery coughed self-deprecatingly and said, “No, actu­ally that’s not the word you mean. ‘Demol­ish,’ per­haps, but not ‘dec­i­mate.’ That word refers to the ancient Roman tra­di­tion of choos­ing the tenth per­son in a group of pris­on­ers to exe­cute. That’s why troops are always referred to as ‘dec­i­mated,’ although they don’t do the tenth-person thing anymore.”

Well put. Thank you.

The best way, how­ever, to beat the “greys” is… meat­loaf. And while my father is prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way, I have moved away from his super-simple (and deli­cious) recipe, lifted from my grandmother’s recipe file, con­tain­ing lit­tle more as I recall than ground beef, bread, onions and eggs. No, this meat­loaf is of my own design, because I wanted a lit­tle more vari­a­tion in the fla­vors. And last night’s ver­sion made one last change to my orig­i­nal recipe, because there was no plain ground pork at the gro­cery, and John made the excel­lent exec­u­tive deci­sion to sub­sti­tute pork sausage. With mashed pota­toes and a big plate of aspara­gus spears, sauteed slowly in olive oil and sea salt, you can­not get a more com­fort­ing din­ner. Enjoy.

Kristen’s Pre­ten­tious Meat­loaf
(serves six eas­ily, with leftovers)

1/3 pound each: minced beef and minced lamb
1/3 pound pork sausage
4 slices whole­meal bread, with­out crusts, torn into shreds
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup grated parme­san
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 medium onion, minced
3 stalks cel­ery, minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley leaves, chopped
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried basil
salt and pep­per to taste
six slices streaky bacon

It couldn’t be any sim­pler: mix every­thing together, except for the bacon, which you drape over the loaf once it’s shaped in a glass dish that you’ve sprayed with non­stick spray, or lined with alu­minium (note the dar­ling extra “i” there) foil. Bake at 400 degrees for one hour.

Now, curl up with a movie, and a nice woolly throw, and a hot water bot­tle, and if you can get one, a nice lit­tle girl. Put your feet up, and wait for Feb­ru­ary. It can’t take longer than a few weeks…