of Peter Pan, more houses, and a great pub

-- July 3rd, 2007 --

Oh, the school play last night was great. Our friend Amy made a superb Peter Pan, arms akimbo, full of brav­ery and defi­ance, and a beau­ti­ful voice. Avery was a very beau­ti­ful mer­maid, what­ever she said about the cos­tume falling off and hat­ing her green wig. It was really lovely to see the results of all the hard work, and dear Miss Potts so earnest at the piano. It was touch and go at first, though, as I for­got our tick­ets. “I hope some­one I know is at the ticket desk,” I moaned, and luck­ily it was Mrs Dalling, for whose Form Two class­room I read every Thurs­day, so I slid under the radar. I’ve been incred­i­bly flat­tered the last few days by hav­ing the head­mistress call me by my first name! So now she can be “Judy.” A milestone.

We came home to the duck­ling that had been roast­ing while we were away, and simul­ta­ne­ously roast­ing beets, and a less-than suc­cess­ful pot of rice, but oh well, bet­ter than order­ing a pizza. You can’t do everything.

I feel…

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a lit­tle more the­atre before we go

-- July 1st, 2007 --

But before I tell you about the greatly improved sec­ond go at “The Pain and the Itch” on Sat­ur­day (plus some great celebrity sight­ing), I must con­fess: we just broke a fun­da­men­tal school rule: a party on Sun­day night. AND the Sun­day night before the Mon­day per­for­mance of the school play, “Peter Pan.” It was like this. I invited sev­eral fam­i­lies, FAM­I­LIES mind you, to our house for a nice end-of-year get together. A lit­tle cham­pagne, a lit­tle din­ner, the gulls could play together, it begins at 5 and ends at 8. Done. No problem.

Into this happy sce­nario comes a last-minute birth­day party from one of the gulls in Form Five, in Not­ting Hill-ish, to throw a wrench into everyone’s plans. Oy veh. In the mean­time, of course, it occurred to Becky and me that Avery and one of her girls would be rid­ing at the sta­bles all after­noon. Becky gal­lantly offered to pick them up early, take them home to hose them off, and take them to the party, where­upon she and her two other gulls and hus­band would come to us for din­ner. Except.

The school head­mistress actu­ally tele­phoned the Birth­day Party Mum and told her in no uncer­tain terms to end the party early! As in, shortly after our din­ner was to begin. Grrr. So what was to be a lazy evening of Moroc­can meat­balls, Lebanese cucum­bers from Green Val­ley in sour cream, fresh dill and lemon juice, and steamed new pota­toes with pars­ley and olive oil, turned into a race against time. How fast can you chew? In fact, is chew­ing really nec­es­sary when you can just… swal­low? Ah well, every­one came pre­pared to have a good time, and we did. The enor­mous mound of straw­ber­ries I’d pre­pared, accom­pa­nied by freshly whipped dou­ble Devon­shire cream with vanilla, dis­ap­peared in record time. It was three fam­i­lies plus ours, and the con­ver­sa­tion ranged between the school play and next year’s tests, which top­ics I must say can keep most par­ents busy for hours. But we didn’t have hours. Before we knew it, we were rip­ping forks from peo­ples’ mouths as one lit­tle sis­ter mur­mured, “it’s 7 o’clock,” whilst simul­ta­ne­ously ask­ing for more straw­ber­ries. Just an end-of-year frus­tra­tion, but bet­ter than eat­ing alone! Next autumn we will plan a much more exten­sive debauch­ery, I promise. Four courses, at least.

But I digress. The play! As you know, my friend 6point7 and I had been to see “The Pain and the Itch” last week, as an extra for the the­atre Open House day. But the ticket I had for this Sat­ur­day had been burn­ing a hole in my cal­en­dar since I booked it in March, so I was quite excited. And it was worth the wait. Due to unpleas­ant­ness on Park Lane on Fri­day (a bit daunt­ing, a block from our flat), the traf­fic was such that I ended up walk­ing to the the­atre, and can I just say: the humid­ity was like walk­ing through a wet paper towel. By the time I got to the Royal Court I was feel­ing like I’d been steam-cleaned, only not clean. 6point7 (oth­er­wise known as Sue!) and I met up with fel­low Matthew Mac­fadyen fans Caz and JoAnn in the bar before the play. How can I describe Caz as a “fan”? In fact she is THE fan, ini­tia­tor of the won­der­ful fan­site that was, for me, such a great dis­trac­tion last year dur­ing our move. It was just lovely to meet her in per­son, and JoAnn is a trans­planted New Jer­sey girl who will be liv­ing in Oxford for the fore­see­able future, so we have plans to meet again in the autumn. And sit­ting next to JoAnn, per­fectly friendly and socia­ble? Trevor Eve and Sharon Maughan, live and in per­son! Very excit­ing indeed. It is hard to believe they’re old enough to be par­ents of the gor­geous Alice Eve, so impres­sive in Starter For Ten. Did she actu­ally get to kiss James McAvoy, lucky girl?

The comic tim­ing of the play was much improved, Matthew bet­ter than ever, and even the slightly irri­tat­ing lit­tle girl in the cast was not quite so irri­tat­ing. And after the play we sat down for a drink at a table just adja­cent to… Kee­ley Hawes, Matthew’s wife, and her fam­ily. And in just a moment, there he was, ready to relax. I thought Caz would faint. Can’t wait to read her account on the boards.

But for now I’m off to my last “Cre­ative Non­fic­tion” class. It’s been such fun. The assign­ments are really mind-bending: “choose a small object that has sig­nif­i­cance in your life and write an essay about it.” “Choose a pho­to­graph from your his­tory and write a story about it.” And today, “Choose a per­son in your life that you knew up until that person’s death, and describe your rela­tion­ship in an essay with a begin­ning, a mid­dle and an end.” I shall be sorry when the class is over, but the tutor, Amy Prior, thinks she will teach a con­tin­u­a­tion next term. It’s good just for the feed­back and the dis­ci­pline. This morn­ing at break­fast John asked, “Did you fin­ish your home­work?” and Avery started and said, “I didn’t have any!” “Not you,” he laughed, “I was talk­ing to Mummy.”

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