Do you ever have one of those days when every­thing you encounter seems like some­thing you just can’t live with­out, and you start wor­ry­ing about when they won’t be there any­more? Or am I just mor­bidly fear­ful and Scan­di­na­vian? Well, I have those days quite fre­quently, and so today I’ve decided to turn myself around and instead of wor­ry­ing about los­ing them, just con­cen­trate on being glad I have them. I don’t know how suc­cess­ful this strat­egy will be, going directly counter to my usual method of mak­ing even pos­i­tive things poten­tially neg­a­tive, but I’ll give it a try.

I have to start with this morning’s visit to the “Cafe Rouge” at Avery’s beloved school. Every autumn the French teacher organ­ises a cof­fee morn­ing to ben­e­fit the Macmil­lan Can­cer Trust. All the moth­ers at school are invited to come, in care­fully organ­ised groups, and sit in the din­ing room of the school and be served crois­sants and cof­fee by our lit­tle gulls. All this is accom­plished in what I will again describe as “French,” and is very funny. There is a lit­tle script on each table denot­ing what the gulls are meant to say, and what the moth­ers must say in response. Believe me when I say that any devi­a­tion, how­ever small, from this script is met with the blank­est of stares. “Bon­jour, madame. Bon­jour, made­moi­selle. Vois avez choisi?” and so on.

Now while I feel under­stand­ably that my child is prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way, I have to step up and say that her French is not, shall we say, her strongest point. In fact it’s dire. How this can be when one of my few tal­ents is for­eign lan­guages, I do not know. But even so, we had fun. “Mummy, I’ll go get your pain au choco­lat, but I don’t think you’ll really want it, and if you want me to, I can eat it for you.” And silly me, I actu­ally asked for three fur­ther help­ings which it then turned out I did not want. I really think these chil­dren would ben­e­fit a LOT from hav­ing sev­eral help­ings of pas­try at 10:30 in the morn­ing every day. They were all very chipper.

I kept think­ing that this time next year, she’ll be at a dif­fer­ent school, and I will not be wel­come any­where near. I won’t be able to buy myself a seat in her school din­ing room. And soon after that she’ll be get­ting to and from school on her OWN, unbe­liev­ably, so no more of my offi­cial favorite moment of the day, when she emerges laden with all her clob­ber and lots of sto­ries about her day. Sob.

Then, get this sad news flash: her uniquely won­der­ful head­mistress has announced her retire­ment in July. Dou­ble sob! From day one, she has been the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of stiff upper lip and warm hand on one’s shoul­der. A sense of humour, great tact, gen­uine love for each child, the whole nine yards. Of course they will find a great replace­ment no doubt; I would imag­ine it’s a pretty plum job. But it will be an enor­mous loss. So I stood and chat­ted with her after the gulls had gone back to class, and we made plans for the Leavers’ Annual Book which we’re plan­ning to organ­ise all year: a pho­to­graph of each child, plus a piece of work from every sin­gle one. That will huge fun to accom­plish. Sob.

Then, let’s see, I sat up very late one night this week and just chat­ted with my mother. Too infre­quently does this hap­pen. It’s the time dif­fer­ence, and the gen­eral sense that once it’s late enough to call her, there’s school pickup, home­work help, din­ner to organ­ise, eat and wash up, bath, sto­ries, songs. But this week I just sat down when every­one else was asleep and we had the nicest time. I got brought up to date on their house­hold projects, and health and cute­ness of their new cat, my grandmother’s health. And of course there is no bet­ter audi­ence than a grand­mother for sto­ries about a remark­able child, so I got to spill all my lit­tle tales to the one per­son besides her other grand­mother who never gets tired of hear­ing about Avery. And who is always on my side, in any dis­pute! I love that.

Also, on the sub­ject of things to love, yes­ter­day I came out of my study to find a note in the hall­way from our next-door neigh­bor say­ing, “Dear Kris­ten, Have you lost a torty kitty? There is a very friendly one in the gar­den that I have never seen before, and I won­dered if you had an escapee. Janet.” Because yes! Tacy and Hermione have become vagabonds. They dis­cov­ered, some­how, nearly two years after we moved in, that they can squeeze through my open bed­room win­dow and escape. And after accom­pa­ny­ing them a cou­ple of times, I decided that it was worth the tiny risk of some preda­tor being back there (or that rarest of crim­i­nals: the kid­nap­per of worth­less mutt cats), and they’ve been hap­pily com­ing in and out since, many times a day. Hermione came in once, with some­thing in her mouth. I screamed slightly and said, “John, you’ve got to go look. If it’s dead… and if it’s not…” So we both went stealth­ily over to where her lit­tle tabby body was crouched pro­tec­tively over her prey, and looked. It was a leaf! That first day she went out, she killed at least six leaves and brought them proudly in to give to us, so like fools we find our­selves say­ing, “Good hunter! Good kitty!” Clearly we both need to get a job.

And yes­ter­day at my class was one of those days when I really adore liv­ing in Lon­don: the amaz­ing vari­ety of peo­ple you meet! Plus I guess when you nar­row your cross-section of human­ity down to peo­ple who want to write auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal short fic­tion, you’ve already got an inter­est­ing bunch. Or at least a mem­o­rable bunch. Well, this group of thir­teen stu­dents promises to live up to its sta­tis­ti­cal poten­tial. We’ve got two pro­fes­sional trans­la­tors: one of Dutch instruc­tion man­u­als (how big can that mar­ket be). He expressed his sort of exis­ten­tial dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his job by observ­ing, “No mat­ter how good you are, and how much you get praised, your great­est accom­plish­ment is in being just like some­one else, only in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage. I need to express MYSELF.” In instruc­tion man­u­als? Why not?

Then, fun­nily enough, another trans­la­tor, who’s trans­lated all Jean Cocteau’s orig­i­nal screen­plays. For what pur­pose, one is tempted to ask, but it’s a big city. She’s also a psy­chi­a­trist, nat­u­rally. Then there’s a lady who’s appar­ently thrown up her in West Sus­sex to learn to write her life story, and finds Ham­mer­smith the most con­fus­ing place in the world to find one’s way around. And a French girl with a degree in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture from the Sor­bonne, and a West Indian lady with a lilt­ing voice and gig­gle, and a lady who speaks French, Eng­lish and Ara­bic, and of course my friend Dalia, Lebanese-born and raised in Nige­ria and Eng­lish board­ing schools, who’s a life coach.

We had a great first day, with one glitch that only time will tell how we can iron out: one of the stu­dents, a very frail lit­tle lady with a superbly lux­u­ri­ous Ital­ian gilded note­book, inter­rupted the tutor after per­haps the first ten min­utes of the class had gone by and said, “You know, I have no hear­ing at all in this ear, and very lit­tle in the other. I have not heard one word you’ve said.” Silence. What could we do? “You’ve got to throw your voice, you know,” she con­tin­ued, “throw it right to me. And if any­one else speaks, I can­not pos­si­bly notice.” Hmm. The tutor said that she would try to speak up (writ­ers are noto­ri­ously soft-voiced, Dalia pointed out!) and then gamely sug­gested that if any­one wanted to make a com­ment, to raise a hand in warn­ing. “But you see,” per­sisted the lady, “If I’m try­ing to read your lips, I can­not pos­si­bly also be look­ing for peo­ple putting their hands up.” Oh dear.

And before we could think of a solu­tion to this, another lady said politely, “And please, no writ­ing on the board, or if you do, you must please tell me what you’ve writ­ten. I have no sight.” The tutor looked truly dashed at this point, and a man in a wheel­chair said kindly, “We’re merely talk­ing about access issues here. Per­haps for our deaf friend we can all speak very firmly, and for our blind friend we can make sure we do not com­mu­ni­cate in a way that requires sight. It’s all just access issues.” All these peo­ple have my com­plete respect because I feel cer­tain if I were sim­i­larly chal­lenged, I would just stay home and shrivel up. The blind lady had a fas­ci­nat­ing com­puter sys­tem whereby she typed what she was hear­ing into a lap­top and then some­how the lap­top spoke back to her what she’d writ­ten, in lit­tle head­phones. And she explained that hav­ing this process occur when­ever she wrote was actu­ally very instruc­tive, because hear­ing your own words spo­ken to you gives a whole new per­spec­tive on what you’ve said. Now that’s a pos­i­tive attitude.

Well, I think my exper­i­ment in enjoy­ing rather than dread­ing has paid off! I’m feel­ing quite cheer­ful. We’re headed to the skat­ing rink with Avery and Jamie, and then off to Rich­mond tonight to see “Shad­ow­lands,” with Charles Dance who is one of my favorite British actors, and I’ve just been read­ing some fan­tas­tic reviews. I’ll be sure to report. TGIF!

All right, it’s an odd com­bi­na­tion of sub­jects. Such is my diverse set of inter­ests these days. First, the play.

I have never read “Saint Joan,” by George Bernard Shaw, and it’s highly unlikely that I ever will, but the play was an absolute rev­e­la­tion. Now, I con­fess that I was first drawn to see the play because it stars my crush’s wife (well, one has to do what one can to feel close to one’s crush). And I have loved her in Shame­less and The Way We Live Now. She even had a tiny cameo at the end of Notes on a Scan­dal. But she, Anne-Marie Duff, was tremendous.

I feel really remiss that I saw it on the last day, so I can’t send any of you to it. But hon­estly, over the sum­mer when I bought the tick­ets from Con­necti­cut, it was sold out every evening and I got mati­nee tick­ets only by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. I thought: three hours long, burn­ing at the stake, maybe NOT the place to take my ten-year-old child? So we went on the last day, just the two of us. And it was shat­ter­ing. From the intro­duc­tory music with old-fashioned bell-ringing and a haunt­ing vocal score by Melanie Pap­pen­heim, through the very dis­turb­ing bat­tle of Orleans, and Joan’s even­tual col­lapse at her trial, and the last moments of her time at the stake, Duff’s per­for­mance was a tour de force of every emo­tion pos­si­ble. She was vul­ner­a­ble, pas­sion­ate, flir­ta­tious, inno­cent, vio­lent sol­dier, reli­gious fanatic, and finally at the end, a frag­ile vision in white blow­ing ashes over the audi­ence. Amazing.

See her in any­thing she’s in!

From that it was a bit of a come­down to have ordi­nary life resume, pick­ing Avery up in a rain­storm at Anna’s, home­work super­vi­sion, din­ner prep and the like. But I must tell you while I have always felt I had a good lasagne recipe, I have dis­cov­ered two secrets that I will share with you: and both of them were the result of my lazi­ness. First off, you need to start your tomato sauce in the after­noon because you won’t be home until 6 and you don’t want to deal with cre­at­ing it that late in the day. The beauty of this is that the sauce had time to sim­mer off a large part of its liq­uid, with­out which step I find a lot of lasagne is watery. SO make your sauce at noon or so, and rashly leave it out on the stove­top to (you think) shrivel up and die. But NO. This wait­ing period is a good thing. Then you can turn the heat up under it when you’re ready to assem­ble your lasagne and it is thick and rich and NOT watery.

Sec­ond lazy bit: I was at Marks and Spencer gro­cery shop­ping and there was no ricotta. Lasagne with­out ricotta! It surely can­not be. But faced with the choice of “make do with some­thing else” and “go some­where else,” I impro­vised. And it turns out: half mas­car­pone cheese and half cot­tage cheese is FAB­U­LOUS. Pro­vides a rich, creamy layer among the pasta and meaty tomato sauce, and is sim­ply divine. Give it a try.

Well, let’s see, today it was onto the new writ­ing course. I have been quite devoted to CityLit since I’ve been here, tak­ing at least four courses in writ­ing var­i­ous things and really enjoy­ing myself. But I decided to fol­low the tutor from last term to Birk­beck where our course was today to begin, and I must say she was mar­velous. My friend Dalia and I signed up together, and it seemed so strange to me that some­thing planned months ago, in a farm­house in Con­necti­cut, should be com­ing to pass in a Ham­mer­smith school build­ing. I never really believe that the things I’m plan­ning for will come to pass, and feel con­tin­u­ally amazed when they do; just think, that in March, when this course ends, we’ll know where Avery’s going to senior school, John will doubt­less have a job after our glo­ri­ous year of no-job, we may even have found a house. It all seems hard to believe.

I con­fess to being com­pletely whacked right now, hav­ing con­sumed our din­ner of roast pork fil­let with rose­mary, gar­lic, olive oil and lemon juice, and roasted beet­root, sauteed car­rot and aspara­gus, baked squash and mashed potato. Can you tell I was clean­ing out the fridge? I sim­ply took care of every last lan­guish­ing raw ingre­di­ent and we ate, dis­cussing Avery’s short story from class today. Is there any­thing more sen­si­tive than a writ­ing project, hav­ing received a bad mark? I don’t know, but the brave lit­tle soul has revised it to her teacher’s con­tent if not her own, and is tucked up with hot water bot­tles against the early-chill Sep­tem­ber night. Be cosy, wher­ever you are.

Nat­u­rally on a sunny autumn Sun­day in Lon­don, young ladies’ thoughts turn to… a lit­tle scoop­ing detail after The Bless­ing of the Horses. Not that you’d know it to look at them, but the girls had a thor­oughly good time on Sun­day (I turned these pho­tos black and white because they looked SO Dick­en­sian with their brooms and bas­kets). After last year’s expe­ri­ence with this arcane and bizarre (but some­how very sweet) rit­ual, we def­i­nitely were not going to miss the cer­e­mony. Sim­ply dozens and dozens of horses clam­or­ing for atten­tion, whin­ny­ing and rear­ing, lin­ing up in the square to be blessed.

Avery was put in charge of the barn dog, Zola, and strug­gled along with Ava who had hold of the fam­ily dog Holly. The rid­ers were cho­sen by lot­tery, and sadly none of our girls won out, but the dog duty was pretty nice as well. Then home for a quick lunch while Avery ate hers at the sta­ble, and we all met up again at the ring on the Knights­bridge side of the park for the gymkhana. Avery has pro­gressed (or sim­ply aged, I guess) to being in charge of the lit­tle ones and spent most of the show trot­ting with a lead rope in her hand, kick­ing up immense amounts of dust while she led a lit­tle girl across the jumps. But she was rewarded by being classed with the big girls for the real jump­ing later! A glo­ri­ous after­noon hang­ing out with Becky and Mark, and Avery was more than happy to repose for a long time in a warm bath afterward.

We spent Sat­ur­day evening with Avery’s friend Julia’s fam­ily see­ing “As You Like It” again, at the quaint lit­tle Cur­zon May­fair cin­ema (a hid­den lit­tle May­fair jewel)and I would highly rec­om­mend it if you have a chance. Great cast­ing wtih lots of faces you’ll rec­og­nize (Kevin Kline and Adrian Lester among them), and all the girls enjoyed it. Pizza after­ward at a lit­tle joint in Shep­herd Mar­ket and lots of con­ver­sa­tion about the upcom­ing school poetry recit­ing com­pe­ti­tion (they can find ANY­THING to com­pete about at that school!), plans for Octo­ber break, the hid­den Jun­gian mean­ing of the play (well, that was Julia’s intel­lec­tual mother, not me). A really nice night.

Sat­ur­day itself was one of those after­noons that makes me truly love liv­ing in Lon­don, on a gor­geous sparkly autumn after­noon. We dropped Avery off at her act­ing class (she says a cast­ing agent came to watch!) and then John left me up at the top of the Maryle­bone High Street to run a cou­ple of errands, and it was such a plea­sure! Start­ing off at the lit­tle food and cloth­ing mar­ket that runs on the week­ends, I was able to pick up a bot­tle of my favorite Danilo Manco super-spicy chilli-infused olive oil, which makes any salad bet­ter. And a great olive-oily rose­mary foc­ca­cia from The Flour Sta­tion, and even a stem gin­ger cake from Rum­manco. Such nice peo­ple, and so pleas­ant to buy real food from actual peo­ple who made it.

From the mar­ket I saun­tered on to Daunt Books, always a dan­ger­ous thing to do, espe­cially if I have my wal­let with me. I ended up with a copy of Ams­ter­dam, the Booker Prize-winning novel by Ian McE­wan, whose Atone­ment is such a stun­ning film this fall. I can’t stop think­ing about that film, although it could be that I just can’t stop think­ing about James McAvoy. An under­stand­able obses­sion these days! Plus, some travel books about Ire­land, to get ready for our Octo­ber break: two days in Dublin and four days at a haunted cas­tle in County Kilkenny! Can’t wait for that. There’s some­thing about the expe­ri­ence at Daunt that makes me feel there’s hope for us all: staff who gen­uinely want to help you find some­thing good (and they’re nice to Avery, which always makes a big dif­fer­ence), piles of books you would never find in Amer­ica like biogra­phies of obscure gar­den­ers and diarists), a soar­ing sun­lit travel sec­tion (I love it that Shake­speare appears in the Eng­lish travel sec­tion), and lots of con­tented cus­tomers perus­ing the dark wood bookshelves.

It was but a step from there to Fish­Works, which while I rec­og­nize is a chain of sorts, and not the family-owned fish­mon­ger that used to inhabit the shop, is nonethe­less a solid pur­veyor of great fish, and the guys in the front who fil­leted my lemon sole for me are so kind. We dis­coursed about my dis­cov­ery of The Fish Soci­ety as a place to buy soft­shell crabs, and recipes for lemon sole, and I felt happy. To be here! I sup­pose some­day all these lit­tle errands will become com­mon­place, but not yet.

Right now I must eat some lunch (yel­lowfin tuna with red pep­pers, red onions, lemon zest and horse­rad­ish, any­one?), but then I’ll tell you about…“Saint Joan.” What a play! I’ll leave you with a per­fect sim­ple autumn recipe. It just about invented coziness.

Apple­sauce

Oh, my film and tele­vi­sion friend Sue took me to the most impres­sive and enjoy­able screen­ing (I’m throw­ing about that cool word) of “As You Like It,” at Bafta! I’ve never been to 195 Pic­cadilly, home of the British Acad­emy of Film and Tele­vi­sion Awards, but it’s very swanky, very plushy, all the chairs in the screen­ing room labelled dis­creetly in brass with “Endowed by Michael Dou­glas and Cather­ine Zeta-Jones,” or some such luminary’s name. There is a strict house rule that no one makes a sound from the moment the lights go down until the last credit rolls, which makes the atmos­phere much more antic­i­pa­tory than your ordi­nary the­atre. And the film was lovely! Great per­for­mances from the gor­geous Bryce Dal­las Howard and David Oyelowo made the entire film worth­while, and Ken­neth Branagh’s direc­tion is fresh and ener­getic. It opened last night in reg­u­lar the­atres and I would say it’s worth an evening. We’re going to take Avery and her friend Jamie to see it tonight, and I think it will be very inter­est­ing to see if 10-year-olds can fol­low a very cheer­ful and cheeky but still Shake­spearean plot.

Where on earth did the week go? I saw the film on Mon­day night, and now what do I have to show for the fol­low­ing four days? I can’t imag­ine. Well, first paired read­ing on Tues­day morn­ing with my lit­tle Form Three gulls, who have grown quite shock­ingly since last July. Enid Bly­ton, Dick King-Smith, all the favorites were trot­ted out in their posh lit­tle accents. I hate to think that this time next year, I will have no rea­son to hang out at King’s Col­lege, where there are truly lit­tle chil­dren. Instead Avery will be the youngest at a new school, sur­rounded by… teenagers. How did that happen?

We made a ruinous trip to Rid­ers and Squires in South Kens­ing­ton, for new half-chaps and gloves. This world is lit­tered, from sea to shin­ing sea, with rid­ing gloves Avery has left in one barn or another. It’s like socks in the dryer. Anna came with us, since the girls were in a state of deliri­ous hap­pi­ness at hav­ing been named “Envi­ron­ment Pre­fects” at school. Now, while you might think that this job would entail encour­ag­ing their school­mates to recy­cle, it seems that it’s actu­ally to do with mak­ing the school envi­ron­ment more appeal­ing. So right away, they took bunches of flow­ers in the next day. Surely we can’t have signed on for sup­ply­ing the school with flow­ers all year?

And I made a nice trip that after­noon to the nearby Whole Foods, as tan­ta­liz­ingly stocked with glo­ri­ous choices as ever. I came away with three whole lemon soles, hav­ing watched them be fil­leted right before my eyes. Try­ing that process once was enough for me. Leave it to the pro­fes­sion­als, I say. But it was com­pletely deli­cious. Be sure to get whole­meal flour (it’s often labelled “for bread­mak­ing”, I like Hovis). It has much more body, grain and flavour than all-purpose flour. Save that for a nice apple cake.

Com­pletely Sim­ple Sauteed Lemon Sole

****************

And how about another night of com­pletely sim­ple fish, for your Omega-3 oils?

Salmon with Soy, Gin­ger and Garlic

**************

In our expe­ri­ence, you need to allow for one fil­let per per­son plus one extra if you’re three. It’s so light and deli­cious that you’ll find each per­son needs one more lit­tle help­ing. With both these dishes, a gen­er­ous blob of mashed pota­toes and a nice green veg are all you need. Or if you’re Avery, copi­ous num­bers of sliv­ered red pep­pers, sauteed in olive oil.

But really, what did I accom­plish this week? Not much. Avery had her first week­day rid­ing les­son since sum­mer, and the ponies were feel­ing fresh. Lit­tle Ellie was tum­bled off Sey­mour, Brody gave Anna a hard time, and even Amber was a lit­tle frisky for Avery. But the rain that threat­ened the begin­ning of the les­son blew over, thank­fully, so I was left just shiv­er­ing, but not actu­ally soak­ing wet.

John and I have been tak­ing long, long morn­ing walks in the park, and I real­ize some­thing odd: you’d think that a sum­mer spent in the coun­try­side of Con­necti­cut would leave you really fit, with plenty of exer­cise, but not so. It’s much eas­ier to stay fit in a city where you’ve got to walk every­where, than in the coun­try where you jump in your car. So my legs are thank­ful it’s autumn.

Well, one thing I did man­age to organ­ise: our Irish hol­i­day in Octo­ber! We’ll be stay­ing in a cas­tle, mind you, lov­ingly restored by Irish Land­mark Trust, just out­side Water­ford. I’ve still got to get a hotel for us in Dublin for the first two nights. Has any­one stayed at the Dylan? It sounds fright­fully chic, when I’d really rather a place that was old Irish, cosy and warm. But Dublin seems to run to either thread­bare and smokey-smelling, or fright­fully chic. It sounds like such a great adventure.

Then, with­out a doubt the crown­ing glory of the week was yesterday’s lunch at Maze. We have been intend­ing to go there since we moved to Lon­don, such is the rep­u­ta­tion of the Gor­don Ram­say strong­hold in Grosvenor Square. But as so often hap­pens, it takes some­one else’s moti­va­tion to get the thing done. My barn-mother friend Kristin men­tioned at pickup on Thurs­day that she was going for her birth­day with our mutual friend Becky, and did I want to join? Well, I really should have been gro­cery shop­ping, or get­ting up to date on my photo albums, or writ­ing the intro­duc­tion to this cook­book I’m work­ing on, but it was the work of a moment to drop all that non­sense. And I’m so glad I did. It was ridicu­lously… over the top.

I thought I’d seen about every­thing as far as pre­cious pre­sen­ta­tion and funky ingre­di­ents go, but this restau­rant is beyond the pale. I have never before needed to keep back a copy of the menu as a ref­er­ence guide dur­ing the meal! We began laugh­ing when the first course came (carpac­cio of tuna and sword­fish with lime and cucum­ber mari­nade, soya dress­ing) and never stopped till the last bite. I could have eaten six help­ings of the tuna dish: lit­tle translu­cent medal­lions the size of pound coins, of each fish, topped with edi­ble flow­ers (the waiter said, with a sur­pris­ing degree of humour in one so doggedly French), “Don’t, of course, eat the flow­ers. They are quite lethal. Just kid­ding.” Then Becky had ordered “Jerusalem arti­choke veloute with braised Gress­ing­ham duck leg,” and was most sur­prised when along came a tiny white bowl with a scat­ter­ing of lit­tle brown objects in the very bot­tom, which was promptly cov­ered by a stream of liq­uid from a gravy boat by the assid­u­ous waiter. The lit­tle brown objects turned out to be the duck leg, cubed incred­i­bly small, and the liq­uid the soup. Unbe­liev­ably sub­tle and deli­cious flavours, quite inde­scrib­able. Then there was “honey and soy roasted quail with Lan­des foie gras and spiced pear chut­ney,” and would you believe Becky does not like foie gras? I felt it was the least I could do to take her por­tion away: every so lightly sauteed with a crust of minced chives, sea salt and fresh black pep­per, YUM.

Then I had “Roasted Orkney sea scal­lops with cured ham and maple syrup, egg and peas.” But this descrip­tion can­not con­vey the minute per­fec­tion of the dish: “egg and peas”? Try one minus­cule quail’s egg, sunny side up, and a lash­ing of bright green pea puree. Magical!

We had so much fun. And while it was expen­sive (about 30 pounds a per­son), we all felt that for the ridicu­lous lux­ury and the absolute per­fec­tion of every bite, it was worth the money for a spe­cial occa­sion. And Gor­don was there! He signed copies of his lat­est cook­book, “Fast Food,” for us. Now I must say that even with the celebrity glow, and the mem­ory of the fab­u­lous lunch, the cook­book itself is… very lazy. Only a celebrity chef could get away with such a neb­u­lous con­cept, such for­get­table recipes, and such bad pho­tog­ra­phy. I have to be hon­est. I think I would have been bet­ter off with one of his over-the-top silly cook­books with uncook­able fancy food. More like fic­tion than real-life.

What fun. It was one of those after­noons when all was right with the world: good friends, a beau­ti­ful atmos­phere, the early-autumn leaves of Grosvenor Square just begin­ning to fall out­side the win­dows, per­fect food. Thanks for includ­ing me, girls.

Just a photo to add to the end­less com­pi­la­tion of images of Avery harass­ing wild birds in pub­lic places. She will not be dis­turbed in her quest to catch one, and fol­lows them around say­ing, “Here chick­abiddy, here chick­abiddy,” a la Betsy-Tacy.

Well, I can report a qual­i­fied suc­cess on the soft­shell crabs! I say “qual­i­fied,” because while they were very good, they were noth­ing at ALL like the restau­rant crabs I love so much and wanted to repli­cate. Some­how in the space between get­ting the list of ingre­di­ents and the cook­ing method from the nice wait­ress at Man­darin Kitchen, and pro­duc­ing them in my own kitchen, a cru­cial ele­ment (prob­a­bly magic) was lost. They were very good, and since you prob­a­bly haven’t sam­pled them from Man­darin Kitchen, I can give you this recipe with all con­fi­dence that you will enjoy it. It just wasn’t what I was expecting.

Deep-Fried Soft­shell Crabs with Gar­lic and Chilli

*************

They were deli­cious! I can­not praise “The Fish Soci­ety” highly enough. The crabs arrived promptly, com­pletely frozen in dry ice packs. Their qual­ity was much higher than the actual crab in the restau­rant: meaty and sub­stan­tial, and tast­ing of per­fectly fresh seafood. I will hap­pily order from them again. Appar­ently, this UK-run com­pany gets its soft­shells from Thai­land, but the pur­vey­ors there are for­mer Boston­ian fish­er­men! I love that. You would not believe the vari­ety of seafood avail­able from this com­pany. Dive in and order some­thing exotic.

When I told Becky blithely last week that I was going to buy some soft­shell crabs (not know­ing that it sim­ply can’t be done out­side Chi­na­town and I was too intim­i­dated), she laughed and said, “Oh, Mark will be by later then to pick up Anna and… some soft­shell crabs. He adores them.” So it was but the work of a moment to pick up the phone when they arrived in the post and arrange a din­ner. Nat­u­rally not one sin­gle child would con­sider eat­ing one, nor would Becky her­self, so she brought her incom­pa­ra­ble Chicken Mar­bella, chock-a-block with gar­lic, olive, capers and prunes. It was per­fect, and the noo­dles and sprouts I made to go with both went down a treat. Anna, Avery and Ellie were all rather filthy in their horse­back rid­ing gear, after a day at the barn, but never mind. Ash­ley was, in her teenage way, per­fectly turned out and sat with the adults. That mys­te­ri­ous trans­for­ma­tion from lit­tle girl to young lady is, of course, tak­ing place.

Becky and Mark have the loveli­est aura of South­ern gen­tle­folk! I love to hear Becky say “visit” as she does. “It’s so nice to have a chance to visit,” she will say, or tell Mark on the phone, “I’m just here vis­it­ing with Kris­ten.” It’s good to have peo­ple in your life who you know instinc­tively (and by now with a fair amount of prac­ti­cal proof!) will always, always do the right thing in any sit­u­a­tion. In any big city, any big com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, I’ve found, there’s a goodly dis­play of expe­di­ency. What will this rela­tion­ship, or this deci­sion, net me today? some peo­ple ask them­selves. This was SO not a part of my grow­ing up in the Mid­west (or at least in my fam­ily, with our friends) that when I first encoun­tered it in the East, and cer­tainly in Lon­don, I was taken aback. It’s not evil, it’s just… expe­di­ent. And hap­pily, Becky and Mark are just about the least expe­di­ent peo­ple I know. They are in it for being good, and hon­est. It’s cer­tainly an exam­ple I like hav­ing in my life, and set before my daugh­ter. And they’re a hoot, besides! John and Mark know lots of busi­ness peo­ple in com­mon, so sto­ries were fast and furi­ous about “idiot hedge fund man­agers I have knows,” and “invest­ment bankers who have screamed at me,” and extrav­a­gant birth­day par­ties run amok in the busi­ness world.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that the life John has been liv­ing for the past year, hap­pily unem­ployed, has run its course. His mind really thrives on all those sto­ries, all that knowl­edge and his­tory. It’s about time for him to get a job. But noth­ing, noth­ing could ever replace the world we’ve had for a year. A world with one small child and two par­ents to look after her, lunch together every day, my hus­band to tell every­thing to all day, get his per­spec­tive, a year when he knew all the sto­ries, all Avery’s friends, never missed a per­for­mance or a party or a play­date. Still, all good things must come to an end, and the real­i­sa­tion of this dawned last week when a bunch of us moth­ers (John included) were talk­ing about senior school deci­sion. “It’s all about the uni­form,” John declared. “The Godol­phin gray and red is really nice…” Sud­denly he caught Becky’s eye and she burst out laugh­ing. He said rue­fully, “It’s time for me to get a job, when I have opin­ions on SCHOOL UNIFORMS!”

In any case, we had a lovely evening. Becky brought just enough dessert for all of us (to sup­ple­ment my dessert-challenged con­tri­bu­tion: mixed berries with Coin­treau): peanut but­ter cook­ies topped with mini Reese’s peanut but­ter cups and choco­late chips. Only… while the lit­tle girls were away from the table play­ing dres­sup or what­ever, we ate them ALL. Oops. A super evening with super friends.

Becky’s Chicken Marbella

**************

So today was another day, and I traipsed over after school to my friend Nancy’s house with Avery and Nancy’s adorable daugh­ter Sally, to have a snack and do home­work and catch up on life gos­sip. On the way Avery and Sally com­mis­er­ated on the not so much evil, as com­pletely incom­pe­tent French teacher at King’s Col­lege. “Made­moi­selle… Stan­way!” Sally chor­tled. “My brother calls her Made­moi­selle Stein­way, because he’s obsessed with piano,” she added, and Avery said, “We learned the signs of the ZODIAC today. Why? I can’t even say ‘down.’ Or ‘up’ for that mat­ter!” We arrived at their gor­geous Nash house off Regent’s Park and Diana served us a lovely fresh apple cake and the girls set­tled down to home­work while we chat­ted. Diana is the UK coor­di­na­tor for Barack Obama’s cam­paign, so I was happy to get a bird’s-eye view of that sit­u­a­tion. I don’t know enough, frankly, to have a strong opin­ion on the var­i­ous can­di­dates, but Diana is pas­sion­ate about Obama (as she is about every­thing she cares about; Diana is an intense and intensely pas­sion­ate per­son in gen­eral), so I lis­tened. I wish I had the firm con­vic­tion that any one per­son can change any­thing as enor­mous as the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene (and there­fore, I’m afraid, a lot of other things). I’m too much of a dreamy non-politician to have a firm grasp of any given year’s choices to get too awfully com­mit­ted to any one of them. But it’s a lot of fun to have the chance to learn from the woman behind the man (at least one of them!).

Tonight I’m aban­don­ing my fam­ily to left­overs (Becky’s chicken will not go unap­pre­ci­ated, thank you!), while I head with my friend Sue (aka 6point7 to see an advance screen­ing of “As You Like It” at Bafta. I’ll be inter­est­ing tomor­row, I promise.

I really mean it. If you are in the UK and “Atone­ment” is play­ing ANY­WHERE near you, run, do not walk. It is staggering.

Of course I adore James McAvoy, who wouldn’t. He was spec­tac­u­lar in Nar­nia, in Last King of Scot­land, in the BBC telly pro­gramme “Shame­less.” He was even won­der­ful in “Becom­ing Jane,” a sort of Jane Austen Lite. But in this film he is incan­des­cent. You can’t take your eyes off the screen. The man can act more with a lift of his eye­lids than most actors can with their entire bod­ies. Quite sim­ply the most com­pelling love scene ever in a film I’ve seen, and done so stun­ningly in a sort of post­mod­ern now-and-earlier fash­ion, where you see the even­tu­al­ity from more than one point of view: breath­tak­ing. How any­one could come away from this film never hav­ing been deeply in love, and sur­vive… I don’t know. I wish he had more chance to smile in any film: his smile is enchant­ing and wicked. Luck­ily I had my loyal hus­band with me, who was sim­i­larly (if not equally) enthralled. A fab­u­lous film.

And the sound edit­ing! You can hear cig­a­rettes light, kisses hap­pen, drops of water fall. And the DP! Who­ever he is: the fall of gar­ments! And the art direc­tor: the bed­rooms full of 1930s clob­ber that puts you RIGHT in the scene. And the MUSIC. One Debussy strain will leave you weep­ing. Gor­geous. I’m still think­ing about it 10 hours later, and plan to see it again.

You must see it. And when it comes to the US (don’t know when exactly) you must not say, “Well, it will come out on DVD.” No, the World War II scenes espe­cially MUST be seen on the big screen. Do go. You will be cap­ti­vated for 2 hours and 3 min­utes. Take tis­sues. You will need them.

irst I have to say: this is the crazy kitty who has been such a prob­lem to us. And yet: since we got home from the sum­mer she’s been noth­ing but a delight. Look at this seren­ity. Cats are a mystery.

Sat­ur­day dawned incred­i­bly fair and cool, truly the per­fect weather in any city, any­where. Slightly chilly in the shade, per­fect in the sun. Blue skies and tiny white clouds. I think we brought this weather with us from Con­necti­cut. So we decided the day could not be spent indoors, and in a rush jumped into Emmy and headed to Kew, to the and the Henry Moore show that opened today. Why wait? We are such suck­ers for any­thing adver­tised on the sides of buses, I hate to say. Henry Moore at Kew? Done! No research needed.

Except that we did. Need research, that is. So con­sider your research done, my friends: I have suf­fered for you. Not suf­fered in any sig­nif­i­cant sense, mind you, and prob­a­bly every­one knows what I’m about to tell you, but I didn’t. Tip one: the traf­fic can turn wicked on the way to Rich­mond, and it took us nearly an hour to get there. Tip two: the cafe is dis­gust­ing and the snack-ish shop worse, and both very expen­sive. Tip three: one could spend an entire day, even more, at the RBG and not make a dent.

So here’s what hap­pened. We had three hours to enjoy between sleep­ing late and Avery’s act­ing class, so we blithely headed off. Got stressed, in a minor way, by the unex­pect­edly inflated traf­fic. Arrived starv­ing and were forced to eat repul­sive sand­wiches and drink some­thing unfath­omable called Fentiman’s Dan­de­lion and Bur­dock Some­thing or Other, AWFUL. And by the time we arrived we had just an hour and a half to spend and didn’t get to see a tenth of what we wanted to.

But that’s the bad news. The good news is I was with the two least com­plain­ing, most agree­able peo­ple I know, and so we made the prover­bial lemons into… well, at least not Dan­de­lion Elixir. In future, I think I’d drive through town and Chiswick and avoid the motor­way. As it was, we all just bit the bul­let and enjoyed the walk from the car park to the Gar­dens (hop the brick wall and you’ll find your­self on the tow lane for the river, look­ing right down to the Thames and all its exotic water birds), then paid the sur­pris­ingly enor­mous fee to get in, and swal­lowed our awful lunch with good humour. Mostly we planned on the pic­nic we would bring the next time, when we’d have all day: egg salad with cress, duck pate sand­wiches, roast chicken, potato salad with scal­lions and dill, straw­ber­ries and cream. It’s easy to dream. With a book each (as it was only Avery had some­thing to read, “The Princess Bride,” with which she is obsessed lately in an adorable way, but at least she loves to read aloud), a nice water­proof rug to lie on, and all day to spend, it would be heaven.

And plan to spend all DAY. There are nearly 30 sculp­tures by the genius Henry Moore, one of my mid-century favorites, heav­ily influ­enced in the neg­a­tive by my old chum Rodin, scat­tered around the acres of gar­dens. We got to see almost a dozen, wan­der­ing around toward the Palm Court and tak­ing a brief trip through the marine life cen­tre, a sort of mini aquar­ium. Lovely.

But it ended all too soon. We got back into town just in time to deliver Avery to her act­ing class, and for me to birthday-shop for our friend Estee, cel­e­brat­ing her eighth in style in Bermond­sey. And luck­ily her father Vin­cent was cook­ing, in a BIG way.

Whole Gam­mon

************

This, with the sim­plest of potato sal­ads, tiny new car­rots steamed and driz­zled with olive oil, and a green salad, was the per­fect large party menu. And an ENOR­MOUS choco­late cake of Vincent’s own design, stud­ded with Smarties.

And the presents! We gave her the present of the moment, in my opin­ion: sim­ple and per­fect. A pile of white t-shirts and a set of fab­ric mark­ers. She imme­di­ately had every­one sign it, as a memento of her birth­day party, dear girl.

What great guests: Kate and Mal­colm, archi­tects extra­or­di­naire, Tara and Brian, happy for­mer own­ers of “Fresh and Wild” (I had a stir­ring dis­cus­sion with him about the sale to Whole Foods, that bas­tion of epi­curean con­tro­versy). Brian is now deeply into his new con­cern, Nude skin­care, a com­pletely organic cos­met­ics group if you can imag­ine. I can scarcely be both­ered to slap my face with whatever’s left from my body lotion after a shower, but fair enough, I know most women are much more care­ful of their appear­ance. Lord knows I should be. And there was our old friend Boyd. This made me very sen­ti­men­tal: Avery caught sight of Boyd and hissed under her breath, “You never told me Boyd was here!” The friend­ships that were nur­tured by that trip to Morocco will never die. And there were new friends Nick and Tony, a tremen­dously con­ge­nial and happy group.

We all sim­ply ate and talked until we couldn’t any­more, watched the present-opening and Vincent’s heart­warm­ing joy in the gath­er­ing of his beloved daugh­ters, their friends, his friends. Per­fect com­pany, deli­cious food, good music, a great birth­day. Thanks for invit­ing us, Estee. The next party’s on us.

Well, it’s not a clas­sic yet, but it might become one. “Run, Fat­boy, Run” is really worth see­ing, if you like self-deprecating, sophis­ti­cated Eng­lish com­edy. I don’t know if it will have wide release in the States, but it should. It always amazes me that we here in Eng­land can really love an actor like Simon Pegg, and he can be phe­nom­e­nally suc­cess­ful here, and yet there aren’t a lot of Amer­i­cans who will rec­og­nize him. When­ever I think that our two cul­tures are grad­u­ally merg­ing and los­ing all indi­vid­ual iden­tity, I com­fort myself with that fact. Although I’d like him to be successful.

Any­way, my gor­geous friend Dalia and I met up yes­ter­day for lunch (I was in food-spy mode as I tried to iden­tify all the ingre­di­ents in my favorite soft-shell crabs at Man­darin Kitchen), and to see the film. First we had to catch up (her sum­mer trip back to her Lebanese fam­ily in Nige­ria (how exotic is that?) and dis­cuss the food. She rec­om­mended the crab­meat and sweet­corn soup, and it was deli­cious, but take a leaf from Dalia’s book and order soy sauce and chilli sauce to go with it, as it kicks the fla­vor up from its orig­i­nal rather bland stance.

I can’t wait till our new writ­ing course begins week after next: “Prose Fic­tion and Auto­bi­og­ra­phy” at Birk­beck, part of the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don. Every­one not employed full­time should take note: so many col­leges do part-time courses, and it’s a great inex­pen­sive way to try out a new sub­ject and make Eng­lish friends. It will be so nice to see Dalia every week, instead of the ran­dom get-togethers we man­age now. She is my polar oppo­site in nearly every way: lit­tle and dark, with a fiery tem­per and very strong, pas­sion­ate opin­ions about absolutely every­thing. She is a fas­ci­nat­ing com­bi­na­tion of ter­ri­bly strong and very gen­tle, and one of those com­fort­ing friends where I could turn to her in any sit­u­a­tion and know that she would be on my side. And we haven’t even been friends for a very long time. But it’s been a joy to have her to play with. Plus she’s mar­ried to a saxophone-playing model with what has to be a dev­as­tat­ing Irish accent. I can’t wait to meet him.

So I weasled what will have to pass for a recipe from the head wait­ress (most impor­tantly, no bat­ter, just flour), and I’ll be giv­ing it a try when Becky and her fam­ily come to din­ner on Sun­day. Becky’s bring­ing her famous Chicken Mar­bella as well, since nei­ther she nor any child would con­sent to eat­ing soft-shell crabs! I hope I’ll have both my recipe and Becky’s when Mon­day morn­ing comes around.

The movie was great fun. A rather silly premise: man throws preg­nant fiance over at the altar, then fast-forwards five years and wants her back, but has to com­pete with her obnox­ious Amer­i­can (sadly a rather repet­i­tive descrip­tion over here, I’m afraid) boyfriend who runs marathons. So Simon Pegg’s char­ac­ter decides to run the marathon as well. But run­ning under­neath is a sweet story between Pegg and his lit­tle son, and a hilar­i­ous friend­ship between Pegg and the DIVINE Dylan Moran. I am such a sucker for an Irish accent! Or Scot­tish, come to that. And it’s an in-love-with-London film. Great panoramic shots as well as cosy neigh­bor­hood ram­bles. You’ll love it.

I met up with Avery and John at the incom­pa­ra­ble Daunt Books in the Maryle­bone High Street, and we came away with an embar­rass­ing stack of books. I can’t seem to say no to a book pur­chase. She is in such heaven in a book­store or library, and then reads them all over and over. “Are you sure you need ALL those books, Avery?” She thought for a moment. “I sup­pose I could go over them again,” she said, and came up with a cou­ple she thought she could live with­out, includ­ing a gor­geous book on the Flower Fairies she loves so much. “How about if you wait until your birth­day for that one? It’s not very far away,” I sug­gested, and the lit­tle dear agreed, because she is a nice per­son. “But Mummy,” she averred, “I know to a grownup seven weeks is not a long time, but to me…”

Now the last few days there has been a lit­tle nip in the air, and more than occa­sional leaves drift­ing down into the gar­den. The giant tree (that if I were a real Eng­lish per­son I could iden­tify) at the bot­tom of the gar­den is turn­ing from its dark sum­mer green to a sort of yel­lowy shade, and I know it won’t be long before the whole gar­den is stripped of its leaves, so I’m enjoy­ing it. It also makes me think of win­try foods, and so last night’s din­ner was appro­pri­ately warm­ing. I need to think of a bet­ter name for this recipe, clearly, schmier being the only word that comes to mind (in Alyssa’s voice, since this week was Rosh Hashanah). But the coat­ing wasn’t crispy so it couldn’t be called a crust, nor was it dry so it wasn’t a rub. Help!

Shoul­der of Lamb with a Pinenut-Spice Schmier

*************

With this we had our favorite spinach and cheese casse­role. It’s a very for­giv­ing recipe. Because I was feel­ing lazy, I reverted to frozen spinach, and because I had not ade­quately gro­cery shopped, I had no evap­o­rated milk. I used skim milk and some parme­san cheese instead, and it was lovely. There being a refrig­er­a­tor full of cheese, I did not indul­gently buy some­thing spe­cial for the casse­role, and it turns out Red Leices­ter is fab­u­lous in this dish.

Well, today is back to the skat­ing rink for Avery. I will just be glad to get away from this desk and its piles of pass­port appli­ca­tions, school appli­ca­tions, insur­ance forms, accoun­tants’ bills and the like. TGIF!

So. We’re walk­ing home from the car yes­ter­day evening and there’s a huge crowd of Asian pho­tog­ra­phers with huge furry micro­phones and all sorts of equip­ment, hang­ing about the door­way of the block of flats across the way. John approached one of the guys sit­ting on the stoop of our build­ing and said, “Hey, who’s com­ing out?” “The for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan,” the fel­low answered, and sure enough, like clock­work, up went a bunch of green flags with a man’s pic­ture printed on it, and the man him­self emerged from the build­ing. “Cool,” John said, and aside from watch­ing in my apron from the kitchen win­dow, I didn’t give the mat­ter much fur­ther thought.

Until the Break­fast News this morning.

“For­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan, Nawaz Sharif, left his posh red-velvet flat in London’s May­fair today for Heathrow Air­port, to fly to his native Pak­istan where the Supreme Court has over­turned his exile.” Then, later in the day, he was deported to Saudi Ara­bia, pend­ing fur­ther Supreme Court machi­na­tions with Gen­eral Mushar­raf. To think this was all hap­pen­ing in our very own neigh­bor­hood! One day last spring John said, “Run to the win­dow, there’s David Frost across the street!” He must have been going to inter­view this chap. Amazing!

Nearly as inter­est­ing as these inter­na­tional pol­i­tics on our doorstep is… a lovely sprout dish I invented tonight. It’s a vari­a­tion on the left­over flank steak recipe I made for lunch at Red Gate Farm this sum­mer. This requires no left­overs, and includes even more veg, for your health. Enjoy.

Stir-Fried Chicken with Sprouts, Noo­dles and Red Pepper

**********

This was fan­tas­tic. So sim­ple, so inex­pen­sive, so easy. Col­or­ful and chil­dren will LOVE it. It had all Avery’s favorite things: chicken, pep­pers, noo­dles and SALT.

Let’s see: tomor­row will be the unhappy anniver­sary, which does not mean so much here so it was per­fectly nor­mal for the school to plan its 5th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. So tomor­row after­noon will find us gath­er­ing at All Souls Church in Lang­ham Place to hear the sounds of lit­tle pip­ing voices. I myself still find it hard to buy milk or any­thing else whose sell-by date is stamped Sep­tem­ber 11. Such a dumb thing, but I feel that way. It’s just too evoca­tive, still. Ah, well, some peo­ple assert that after six years it is time to move on and stop observ­ing anniver­saries and reliv­ing and such. I’m not sure about that, so we will be get­ting together with our New York friends, the McBs and Vin­cent and Peter, but just to get together. And to cook and eat! I haven’t a clue about the menu yet, but I will let you know. Doubt­less, with that cast of char­ac­ters, the food will be note­wor­thy. Wher­ever tomor­row finds you, be safe and put an arm around some­one you love. Even maybe two, arms and a someone.