Now you all know of my quest to enjoy (or at least expe­ri­ence) all things British while liv­ing here. To ful­fil this quest we have, for exam­ple, not sub­scribed to any cable telly chan­nels, which lim­its us to only British things like the BBC (noth­ing to com­plain about there). And I’ve set up a whole host of Google alerts to let me know when things and peo­ple I care about are hap­pen­ing and doing things, and it was by this method that we found our­selves, last evening, spend­ing a glo­ri­ous time doing some­thing truly… British. As in, see­ing a play by Alan Ben­nett. Last year we so enjoyed the film of “The His­tory Boys” that I knew we’d like the play “Office Suite,” even the more so because it starred… My Crush Edward Pether­bridge. All right, all right, also the two ladies pic­tured above, Patri­cia Rout­ledge (who we used to love even back in New York in “Keep­ing Up Appear­ances, don’t you love that pro­gramme?), and Janet Dale, cer­tainly not to be sneered at. But so not Crush Material.

It was lovely. Firstly we dashed around get­ting Avery to skat­ing in the morn­ing and rid­ing in the after­noon, dashed home to do all our house­hold chores and pine over Keechie, who seems to be back­slid­ing into anx­i­ety again (grr), and then dash to get her at the sta­ble and drive to Richmond-Upon-Thames. What a per­fect name. It is, you know, upon the Thames, and I know this because I ate upon it. The Thames, I mean. We walked down to the river and looked in vain for a fab­u­lous restau­rant (would it have killed me to look up restau­rants instead of blog­ging about meat­balls? appar­ently so). Avery kept walk­ing us past the H2O Restau­rant, wor­ry­ingly perched atop a… boat, but finally we suc­cumbed. The wait­ress said, “Con­vinced you, has she?” and we pro­ceeded to have a most pleas­ant, if not mind-bendingly inter­est­ing, din­ner, with the most splen­did views you can imag­ine. Stuffed mush­rooms, Cae­sar salad, margherita pizza, and my grilled salmon which was quite deli­cious. And just a great touristy experience.

Off from there to the Rich­mond The­atre, where to judge by the wine-sipping crowds out­side, we would be the youngest (and for Avery by six decades) youngest peo­ple there. The play was lovely. There were sev­eral Eng­lish ref­er­ences that we didn’t under­stand, and which I’ll have to ask some­one about, but all the per­for­mances were spot on, touch­ing and funny and very, very dated to the 1970s, pre-Thatcher-era Britain. I’d advise you to go see it, but it left Rich­mond today and went I know not where. I can­not hon­estly imag­ine why Avery enjoyed it, see­ing as how it was about retire­ment aged British office work­ers in an era she can’t even have read about, but there you have it. She said, “I enjoyed the triv­i­al­ity of it,” so fair enough. It was all about trivia, and yet with an under­cur­rent of emo­tion about loss of youth, loss of secu­rity, that was very sweet. And there were some very funny Mala­propisms, like “I wouldn’t want to be cast­ing nas­tur­tiums,” which Avery loved. Alto­gether an expe­ri­ence that I can­not imag­ine hav­ing under­stood two years ago. I am fairly cer­tain we were the only Amer­i­cans there, which is always a good sign as far as doing British things goes.

Home super late in top-down Mini Cooper, and today we… pic­nicked in Hyde Park. A cou­ple of evenings ago we walked all the way down to the rose gar­dens near the Mile where Avery rides (as she always reminds us when we see it), and there found an enor­mous tree under which you can walk! And stand, and feed squir­rels, and carve your ini­tials into the trunk (although we refrained). If any­one read­ing this can tell me about the his­tory of this tree, please do! I haven’t found any­thing online about it. So we took Avery’s friend Jamie and a whole enor­mous pic­nic bas­ket and had lunch. Oh, the sand­wiches: duck pate, smoked salmon, salami, and my per­sonal favorite, home­made chicken salad. I don’t know what you’d call it here, as nor­mally the des­ig­na­tion “chicken salad” would get you… chicken and salad, as in let­tuce. No, what I mean is what you make when you’ve had the ulti­mately budget-friendly two days of eat­ing. Let me explain.

Chicken on a Bud­get, Three Ways, Three Days
(serves about the same num­ber as the loaves and fishes)

DAY ONE: you buy a large roast­ing chicken and cut it up. Leave the entire breast intact, on the bone. But take away the legs, thighs and all, and the back­bone, and the wings. Place all these bits in a stock­pot, add a cou­ple of car­rots, a parsnip, an onion and some cel­ery, with LOTS of salt and bay leaves, and cover with water. Sim­mer this all after­noon, but remove the thigh and drum­stick meat after about an hour, and set aside in the fridge. Leave the rest of the stock to cool overnight, skim off the fat, strain it into another saucepan and make dar­ling mat­zoh balls to plop on top. A lit­tle dill, and the sliced thigh and drum­stick bits you saved… din­ner num­ber 1. Prac­ti­cally free.

DAY TWO: Remem­ber that breast you saved? Right. Place it on top of a giant stem of rose­mary in a nice glass cook­ing dish. Smear but­ter over all of it and sprin­kle with oregano, salt, pep­per and roast at 350 degrees for 45 min­utes. Some steamed rice and a bunch of sauteed aspara­gus… din­ner #2. Still prac­ti­cally free. Save the leftovers.

DAY THREE: Left­over chicken breast in the Cuisi­nart with a good tea­spoon dried oregano, the juice of a lemon, salt and pep­per. Whiz till nicely chopped, then mix in a table­spoon or two of mayo, and bob’s your uncle. Lunch, sorted. On nice whole­meal bread with but­ter. And still, prac­ti­cally free.

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Then, we are addicted to a pro­gramme, sadly now in archives and avail­able only on DVD, “The Vicar of Dib­ley.” We have long been huge fans of Dawn French (I espe­cially loved her in last year’s Marple, “Sleep­ing Mur­der”), but she is at her absolute best in this series, set in an Oxford­shire vil­lage, where she comes to take the towns­peo­ple by storm as their first female vicar. The guest stars are lovely, and you can watch it with a ten-year-old, thank goodness.

Lis­ten, Jamie and Avery are calm­ing down for their sleep­over, and I must get Avery’s things ready for her last rid­ing day with her beloved train­ers Alexa and Karin, who are leav­ing to pur­sue “other oppor­tu­ni­ties,” sadly. What will we do with­out those shout­ing ses­sions from Alexa? Why, oh why do things have to change… Alexa told a hilar­i­ous story last week at the barn. “I lost Zola in the park today,” she said air­ily, ges­tur­ing toward the enor­mously stout yel­low lab trot­ting at her side. “She got off her lead and was away. I went back to the barn and the phone rang and it was the bl**dy police, telling me to come and col­lect her. When I got there, she was lying flat on the floor, eat­ing a bis­cuit. ‘Come away,’ I said, ‘that’s how she got lost in the first place, fol­low­ing some bl**dy fool with a bis­cuit!’” Alexa’s promised me her nan’s recipe for Pol­ish Chicken Soup (which sounds sus­pi­ciously like my own chicken soup with mat­zoh balls from Alyssa), so I’ll make it the Memo­r­ial Alexa Post when I get it.