Isn’t it won­der­ful to sit around? You can repair to a chintz-covered sofa before a roar­ing fire, or stretch out on your medieval-canopied bed (Avery tried really hard all week not to think about the Laura Ash­ley tag on the bed­spread), or go out to the front lawn and sit on a deck chair till it gets too chilly, or lie in the win­dow seat. And you can have a fash­ion shoot with your child who’s wear­ing her favorite out­fit from Zara, and fan­ta­sise about her being the company-wide model. And you can pick apples in the aban­doned orchard in back of the Cas­tle and then make a nice crum­ble (they were ugly, pock­marked apples but under the skin, the MOST deli­cious and crispy perfection).

We all read like crazy. Want some sug­ges­tions for cosy Irish books? How about a good old-fashioned roman­tic sus­pense story set in modern-day restored abbey, with mys­te­ri­ous nightly goings-on, an Amer­i­can gov­erness and Irish film star father? Abbey­gate, by Cecily Crowe, is just the ticket. Or how about a brother who claims to be his own cousin and steals his iden­tity to get an inher­i­tance in Dublin? Then you want Mur­der Machree by Eleanor Boy­lan. Fancy a rest from Irish, but want Eng­lish? John found the per­fect book for me in the castle’s well-stocked musty book­shelves, and I’ve ordered my own copy. Down the Kitchen Sink is a mem­oir by Bev­er­ley Nichols (a man! I felt so igno­rant when I found out), an Eng­lish nov­el­ist begin­ning as a Bright Young Thing jour­nal­ist in 1920s Lon­don, and this is his account of his 40-year rela­tion­ship with his devoted gentleman’s gen­tle­man, Gaskin. Think Jeeves with­out the silli­ness, and Lord Peter Wimsey’s Bunter with­out the corpse in the but­tery. It’s just a won­der­ful story of bygone days and peo­ple who really knew what was what in the social arena. And some excel­lent name-dropping.

Well, let’s see, I was inspired by my Irish cook­book and a trip to the dis­tress­ingly mod­ern and urban (but use­ful) super­mar­ket in Kilkenny to pro­duce a lovely salmon dish (although I was des­per­ate for gar­lic and cel­ery, so I added them). You should try it too. And it’s a real tes­ta­ment to the ver­sa­til­ity of the var­i­ous areas of the Stan­ley stove! But you could cook it just as eas­ily on your own stove at home, or even bake it. The impor­tant thing is to gen­tly sweat and even crispy a lit­tle bit the cel­ery before you cook the fish itself.

Salmon with Cel­ery and White Wine
(serves four)

1 salmon fil­let per per­son, skin­less and bone­less
2 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
2 stalks cel­ery, cut in half and then finely shred­ded length­wise
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup cream
1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves
salt and pep­per to taste

Melt the but­ter in a heavy skil­let (the Cas­tle came with four cast-iron beau­ties in grad­u­ated sizes! I was sorely tempted to nick them) and add the gar­lic and cel­ery. Now, I put the skil­let on the least-hot bit of the top of the stove and cov­ered it with an upside-down din­ner plate. Then I left it there for per­haps 20 min­utes and it gen­tly, gen­tly cooked the cel­ery through and got it slightly crispy.

Place the salmon on top of the cel­ery and gar­lic and pour over the white wine and cream, then sprin­kle with the sea­son­ings. Cook cov­ered VERY low until the salmon is just not bright pink in the mid­dle, but lightly pink. Baste now and then with the wine and cream. It should take no more than 15 min­utes to cook. Do NOT over­cook! It should be melt­ingly ten­der and creamy, and a bite of salmon with a bit of cel­ery is divine.

Serve with mashed pota­toes and red pep­per strips that have been siz­zling low in but­ter (sorry, yes, more but­ter! Irish recipes do not include olive oil).

***********

Avery and I are off to John Lewis to find black mate­r­ial for a Hog­warts robe for Wednesday’s muted extrav­a­ganza. The Eng­lish (save the chil­dren) are not keen on Hal­loween, feel­ing it a typ­i­cally Amer­i­can import: greedy, intru­sive and full of sugar. But needs must.

It’s hard to believe, in the cold light of a Lon­don Mon­day, that we were ever in the delights of the Irish coun­try­side with noth­ing more to worry us than how many apples to pick from the orchard behind the cas­tle! This morn­ing finds me dis­cov­er­ing that we for­got to go to a con­cert for which I had really good tick­ets last night (good hard thwack on fore­head), com­ing to terms with the fact that my pass­port expires in six months and there­fore I need to go queue up at the wretched Amer­i­can Embassy and get it renewed. What’s more, the school appli­ca­tions that were on my desk when we left are, for some curi­ous rea­son, still there, blank as ever. And some dreaded long divi­sion has appeared in Avery’s home­work, so we all have lit­tle worries.

How­ever. The fact remains that a week ago today, we woke up in Dublin, checked out of our lovely hotel, and hit the roads to Co. Kilkenny in a blind­ing rain­storm. The rain fol­lowed us through the coun­try­side, pass­ing road signs of dreamy romance: Co. Cork, Lim­er­ick! Avery and I amused our­selves by try­ing to trans­late the Gaelic into Eng­lish, watch­ing as the greener-than-green scenery flashed by. We had lunch in a dar­ling lit­tle town called Abbeyleix in Co. Laois, just off the motor­way, at Cafe Odhran, a tiny lit­tle estab­lish­ment that winked out of the rain. Avery ran to do recon­nais­sance on the place and returned to say breath­lessly, “There’s a soup of the day, which must mean it’s a nice place!” Lovely panini of pancetta and a local Irish Brie called Bal­la­colla, very flavour­ful and sharp and worth an order from here, and then Avery was des­per­ate for a pud­ding but too shy to ask for it, prob­a­bly because of her scratchy throat, but we per­se­vered and finally she got her apple crum­ble. Then we were back in the car which was, by the way, com­pletely packed to the gills so that Avery was squashed under books, pil­lows, rain­boots, etc.

An unevent­ful drive until we reached Kilkenny at which point the direc­tions from Land­mark Trust were, let’s see, laconic at best. I have a pet peeve about direc­tions that say “fol­low the Thurles road,” as opposed to “make a left on Route 639.” How do I know which road is the Thurles road? So back and forth in the mist along one 5-kilometre stretch of road look­ing for “church ruins on your right,” grrr! Finally we repaired to a tacky fur­ni­ture store to ask real direc­tions, and the sweet pro­pri­etor had use­ful bits of advice like actual mile dis­tances and road signs. We passed through dar­ling lit­tle Fresh­ford, the near­est vil­lage, and I was thrilled to spy a series of tiny shops and, most won­der­fully, a butcher! I made a men­tal note to return for pro­vi­sions. And we were finally off in the right direc­tion, and there were church ruins, as it turned out OUR church ruins! And imme­di­ately after that, Clo­man­tagh Cas­tle looked huge and dark in the distance.

We were greeted by the ulti­mate in Irish hos­pi­tal­ity, the house­keeper Mrs But­ler, who threw open the Dutch door and let out a waft of warm peaty air, the dul­cet tones of Irish radio float­ing with it. “Sure and you’ve made bet­ter time than I thought you would, and this bein’ a nasty rainy day for it,” she said, and gave us a tour of the cas­tle, up and down wind­ing ancient stone steps, around mys­te­ri­ous cor­ners, fling­ing open this and that bed­room door. “Now this is the blue room, and it’s said the ghost, a lovely kind one to be sure, is to be found here most fre­quently,” so imme­di­ately Avery claimed that room (although her enthu­si­asm waned a bit at actual bed­time). John and I chose the only bed­room in the cas­tle proper, the oth­ers being in an ancient farm­house addi­tion attached to the cas­tle itself. The kitchen was huge and intensely warm, with a mas­sive Aga-like Irish Stan­ley stove on one wall and a cosy deep cush­ioned win­dowseat next to it. “I know that’s where I will be read­ing,” Avery gloated.

We let our bub­bly host­ess go home, set­tled in a bit and then headed to Fresh­ford to get food, since noth­ing makes me more ner­vous than an empty fridge and empty cup­boards. We repaired to “M Bergin, Vict­ualler,” and found our­selves served by a lovely, shyly friendly young butcher. I was in my usual posi­tion when speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage (and Irish Eng­lish is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge, how­ever much the illu­sion that’s it’s Eng­lish): I ask a ques­tion that’s per­fectly under­stood by my lis­tener, and then… I can’t under­stand a word of the answer! Case in point. “That looks like lovely pork. Where do you get it?” And a stream of lilt­ing mys­tery came back at me! So I smiled encour­ag­ingly and asked for a pound of stew beef, chose a nice green cab­bage, some mush­rooms, cel­ery, onions, pears and apples from the boxes off to the side of the butcher counter, and departed in a soft flurry of indis­tin­guish­able communication.

Thence in turn to each of the lit­tle gro­cery stores around the vil­lage square, over­hung with yel­low­ing trees and bright green grass. One shop was tended by a sweet elderly cou­ple, she with a per­fect Lady Bird John­son bee­hive lac­quered hairdo, and he pleas­antly deaf and smil­ing. There we acquired but­ter, milk, salt and pep­per, herbs, apple juice. Onto another shop where we found bread, spaghetti and tinned toma­toes, and then I felt safely pro­vi­sioned and could go back to the cas­tle to set­tle in.

Avery was in heaven to dis­cover that in the sprawl­ing lawn out­side the house, actu­ally between the cas­tle and the church ruins, was a pair of horse jumps! “Some­one must have rid­den cross-country here!” she exclaimed, and was per­fectly happy to go rac­ing across the wet grass in her school shoes, promptly soak­ing her­self to the skin, the per­fect posi­tion for a per­son recov­er­ing from a bad cold to be in. Into the house to sit by the stove and dry out. And I had my first expe­ri­ence cook­ing on a stove that’s peren­ni­ally ON. Over the next sev­eral days I had the MOST fun devel­op­ing a rela­tion­ship with the var­i­ous strate­gic heat sources. For those of you who have cooked on an Aga or a stove like it, this will be old hat. But for me, it was like putting together the pieces of a puz­zle to fig­ure out how hot it would be under the heavy iron lid if I just opened it for a minute, or if I left it open for 10 min­utes, and then there’s the lit­tle rec­tan­gu­lar space to the side of the burn­ers that holds a bit of heat slightly above warm, but not hot enough to get above a lit­tle siz­zle. Such fun.

I deter­mined to cook noth­ing all week that Irish peo­ple wouldn’t tra­di­tion­ally eat, and thank­fully I had bought at the Geor­gian Museum in Dublin a tiny book­let of tra­di­tional Irish recipes. But the ovens? For­get it. I could never get them cool enough to put any­thing in with­out burn­ing it, even with a lid. So the beef stew we had the first night was a bit less liq­uidy than yours will be, in a reg­u­lar oven whose tem­per­a­ture you can con­trol better.

Irish Beef Stew
(serves 4)

3 tbsps but­ter
1 pound beef cubed for stew
1 white onion, sliced thin
2 hands­ful small but­ton mush­rooms, cut in half
1/2 cup beef stock from bouil­lon cubes
good splash Irish whiskey
good pinch dried thyme leaves
good pinch “mixed herbs“
salt and pepper

Melt the but­ter in a good heavy casse­role (the cas­tle yielded a le Creuset) and over fairly high heat saute the beef and onions until the onions are soft, then add the mush­rooms and stire well. Cover with stock and whiskey, add herbs and sea­son­ing and cover. Place in not-too-hot oven for about 20 min­utes. Serve with:

Col­can­non
(serves 4)

3 tbsps but­ter
1/2 white cab­bage, shred­ded
3 green onions, sliced
4 boiled pota­toes
1 cup-ish cream
salt and pepper

Melt but­ter in a heavy skil­let and saute cab­bage and green onions, then set aside. Mash the pota­toes with the cream and mix into the cab­bage. Sea­son well.

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

These two dishes were LOVELY together, and we invented a nice left­over dish from them as well, which was a per­fect lit­tle lunch for John next day.

Sally the Ghost’s Cas­tle Pie
(serves one)

left­over beef stew
left­over col­can­non
bit of butter

Put the left­over beef stew in an oven­proof dish and top with left­over col­can­non. Dot with a lit­tle but­ter. Bake until warmed through.

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

Sally the Ghost, you ask? Yes, indeed, she appeared first time as I was cook­ing din­ner and set­ting the table. I reached into the sil­ver drawer for three forks and was JUST think­ing, “I need a small one for Avery,” when I looked down to see that all there was in the drawer were… two large forks and one small. No doubt the work of the ghost whose pres­ence we read of in the Irish Land­mark Trust log­books, one of our favorite bits about stay­ing in an LT house. Every­one who stays leaves sto­ries of their adven­tures, and Sally popped up in many accounts. Later, Avery left her a note of thanks and an invi­ta­tion to help her­self to an apple should she feel peck­ish, and in the morn­ing there was an apple with sev­eral bites from it, atop the note. Proof pos­i­tive if ever we were in doubt.

Well, sadly the Embassy beck­ons, so I must go do my paper­work. Avery is hap­pily ensconced mak­ing a black felt witch from a kit her lov­ing Nonna sent her in the post, and I have no excuses to post­pone my duties. More on life in the cas­tle soon…

Dublin, Dublin, where to start? Well, I know I run the risk of alien­at­ing the many peo­ple who will read this and doubt­less adore the town, but I’ve got to say it: it wasn’t our sort of place. Actu­ally, that’s being unfair. What didn’t hit the spot for us was that it was per­ilously like… Lon­don. And you must keep in mind my intense ado­ra­tion for my adopted home, but hon­estly, when you go on hol­i­day, or when we go on hol­i­day, we want to end up some­where quite dif­fer­ent from our home. Dublin is a crowded, enor­mously excit­ing, diverse con­glom­er­a­tion of mas­sively beau­ti­ful archi­tec­ture, shop­ping, peo­ple watch­ing, city squares and leafy pub­lic greens. Gor­geous, yes, ener­gis­ing, yes, but dif­fer­ent from Lon­don? Not so very much.

We adults imme­di­ately said that if we did not live in Lon­don, Dublin would have pre­sented much a dif­fer­ent face. It would have felt exotic, for­eign, fas­ci­nat­ing, offer­ing up end­less unusual plea­sures. But as we do live in Lon­don, what stood out for us was the beauty of the Irish accent, the friend­li­ness of every per­son we encoun­tered from the hotel staff to the sweeper ladies in St Stephen’s Green. And those were to be had in the coun­try­side as well, no doubt.

The pos­i­tives? St Stephen’s Green itself, where our hotel, the Fitzwilliam, is located. A pos­i­tive oasis of green, falling autumn leaves, young cou­ples in love, older cou­ples in a more jaded moment of life try­ing to rein in small obstreper­ous Irish chil­dren, old men lec­tur­ing younger men on park benches as to the mer­its of Guin­ness. And in fact, the whole Green was pri­vate until 1877, acces­si­ble only to the rich own­ers of houses the formed the square. But then the founder of the Guin­ness fam­ily and for­tunes bought it out, fixed it up, and opened it to the pub­lic. What’s not to love about the Guin­ness fam­ily, it would seem?

As well, we all three of us fell heav­ily in love with Trin­ity Col­lege, Dublin. John came home from an early morn­ing walk extolling its virtues, and since we two are now too elderly and dried up to make fab­u­lous plans for our own futures, we promptly informed Avery that her goal should be a place in its green and glo­ri­ous gates. Actu­ally they are wrought iron and very, very old. But more on Trin­ity later.

Let’s see, what else on the pos­i­tive side? Well, let me take you on our jour­ney, start to fin­ish, and you can choose the happy bits you want to do when you get there. And believe me, if you’re com­ing, as we would have 15 years ago, straight from New York, or Iowa, or Indi­ana, there is much to mar­vel at in Dublin. But if you’re already an inhab­i­tant of a visitor-laden, hugely crowded and incred­i­bly expen­sive cos­mopoli­tan British-ish urban sprawl, you might not need to book a long stay. That’s just our expe­ri­ence. And I know, I know, Ire­land is not British! But you know what I mean: English-speaking, with Marks and Spencer, Hello! Mag­a­zine, tuna and sweet­corn on sand­wiches, Waterstone’s book­store. That’s what I mean. It was too familiar.

But let’s begin at the begin­ning. Which was inaus­pi­cious to say the least. The Irish Ferry? For­get it. Slow, petrolly, evilly dec­o­rated and filled with mewl­ing, scream­ing chil­dren wav­ing bags of crisps and hit­ting their num­ber­less sib­lings over the heads with bot­tles of sugar-laden drinks. I know I sound the worst pos­si­ble snob, but I owe it to my read­ers. Seri­ously, high­tail it to Luton or wher­ever and hop on Ryanair (no agent of the upper classes by any means, so I’m not a mind­less snob) and land in Dublin, you’ll be much hap­pier. Our whingey expe­ri­ence was under­lined by the pres­ence of our ill child, silenced by laryn­gi­tis, but no fever and no strep, so we dragged her with us. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d long for the sort of run­ning com­men­taries she gives us on what­ever she is read­ing, or lis­ten­ing to, or think­ing, but her silence made me wish she’d recite from the phone book, or her maths home­work, any­thing but total silence. I felt so guilty hav­ing brought her, which was brought home to me fur­ther when we arrived at the Fitzwilliam and it was clear that all her energy had been com­pletely used up by the jour­ney. Poor mis­treated child. But the hotel is the last word in lux­ury and her lit­tle pull­out bed was already, well, pulled out, so we piled her up with hot water bot­tles and her ani­mals and Harry Pot­ter and she took a long rest.

Not so for me: I hit the streets in suc­cess­ful pur­suit of the Tem­ple Bar Food Mar­ket on Meet­ing House Square. Take your time find­ing it; it’s not eas­ily done, at least for me with the sense of direc­tion of an oys­ter. But speak­ing of: there are deli­cious oys­ters on the half shell to be had in the mar­ket! I kept the lit­tle green nap­kin that I got with my two Atlantic spec­i­mens (unbe­liev­ably plump and fla­vor­ful), but some­where between Dublin and home it’s got lost again. But never mind, you’ll find it. And a lus­cious treat for Avery called a “mil­lion­aire square,” from a bak­ery about whom I can find almost noth­ing, but if you see their label, buy any­thing they make, Noirin’s Bake­house. Impos­si­bly rich, even the three of us com­bined could not fin­ish it: short­bread, caramel, tof­fee, choco­late. It revived even my sick child! And farm­house arti­san cheese from Cor­leggy Cheese, whose address reads like poetry: Cor­leggy, Bel­turbet, County Cavan. I came away with a lovely smelly cow’s milk cheese called Drum­lin, very hard and deli­cious if you cut off a chunk and eat it like parme­san. I imag­ine it would be lovely grated, or melted, as well.

And David Llewellyn’s apples! Worth every penny, and the juice even more so. David is one of a grow­ing num­ber of Irish apple farm­ers who are grow­ing organic. It’s the best apple juice I have ever tasted, and Avery was an instant con­vert. “Sorry to give you this enor­mous bill,” I apol­o­gized to the lady behind the stall, pro­fer­ring my 10 Euro note, “but this is the first thing I’ve bought in Ire­land and it’s all I’ve got to begin with.” The plump apple-cheeked lady (sorry, couldn’t resist) said, “Sure now and I’m glad to hear that one of our apples is the first Irish food to pass your lips.” Hon­estly! This is how the peo­ple talk. I could lis­ten ALL DAY. And my accent, don’t even get me started. I couldn’t help it! Would lis­ten­ing to such dul­cet tones ever get old? It would take a very long time. It’s all poetry, what they’re say­ing, no mat­ter the topic. See?

But here’s another caveat, I have to be hon­est and say. It was a lovely, gor­geous mar­ket. But it felt just like the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, sure and it’s one of my favorite places on earth, but it’s very… famil­iar. But again, if you came from a place with­out gor­geous farmer’s mar­kets, you would have dis­cov­ered some­thing very won­der­ful that would brighten your life. And it did mine, for all it was not news to me. But it was won­der­ful for every inter­ac­tion to include that lovely lilt.

I found my way back to the hotel, a mirac­u­lous feat given my his­tory, to find that Avery had bravely taken some med­i­cine and was feel­ing bet­ter. We headed out to find a place for din­ner. And here I take up a bit of a lament: eat­ing out in Dublin just… didn’t hap­pen for us. The place rec­om­mended by the sweet guy behind the hotel desk was impos­si­bly touristy not to men­tion over­run by very drunk peo­ple who either had been sick or were about to be, so we wan­dered for a bit and finally, fear­ing for Avery’s sta­mina, just alighted on a com­pletely for­get­table restau­rant (see, I’ve for­got­ten it already) just to feed her and get her back to the hotel. And she was silent, com­pletely silent, all evening! Poor girl, but she insisted, in sign lan­guage, that she had wanted to come, that she was fine. Prob­a­bly a case where the actual adults in charge of her life should have said, “no.” In any case, no sign of the famed Dublin restau­rant scene for us, sadly. And the fol­low­ing evening, can I tell you what I suc­cumbed to? I’ll tell you so I can get it out of the way. Room ser­vice! It’s all she wanted, plus a nice warm bath. That and the hor­ror that is “Strictly Come Danc­ing.” I would almost rather stick hot nee­dles in my eye­balls than watch that pro­gramme, but there you go, I am not mak­ing this up, that’s what we did in Dublin. No won­der I’m not in love with the town.

But the fol­low­ing morn­ing all was right with the world because we dis­cov­ered Trin­ity Col­lege. What a place! We enlisted the ser­vices of a com­pletely charm­ing young man who intro­duced him­self only as “James,” and he led us on a tour of the pub­lic spaces. It’s well worth tak­ing a tour, I think, at least if you get such a boy (well, some­where between a boy and a man) with a bit­ing wit and dar­ling Irish hair, a beat-up leather bomber jacket and lots of hilar­i­ous tales. “It’s said that if a stu­dent is to stand on this stone under the bell when it’s being rung, he will not pass his exams. Of course this story may well have been started by a stu­dent who was stand­ing on this stone when it was being rung, and… did not pass his exams.” I was com­pletely spell­bound: it was like lis­ten­ing to a modern-day Sebas­t­ian Flyte, with­out the alcoholism.

I said to Avery, sotto voce, “Isn’t he adorable? You could bring a nice boy like that home from uni­ver­sity and your father and I wouldn’t object one BIT.” And what did the lady her­self say in return? In her groggy voice, but laced with unde­ni­able dis­dain, “Until the cur­rent fash­ion for show­ing one’s under­wear at the waist­band of one’s trousers passes away, I shall remain a spin­ster.” John and I had to admit there was merit to her view­point, but for one cir­cum­stance: in my day, lo these many decades ago, a girl ran the risk of get­ting entirely too fond of a boy who might, after a suit­able courtship period, reveal a deal-breaking pref­er­ence: box­ers or briefs? Now, of course, Avery will be spared this unhappy cir­cum­stance, since his under­wear will be just about the first thing revealed. But I digress.

The Book of Kells? A bit of a (dare I say it) yawn. I am fright­ened to utter such a sac­ri­lege, but I must explain myself. Firstly, the mod­ern mania for untold rooms of multi-media setup for absolutely any­thing an insti­tu­tion might want you to see puts me right off what­ever it ulti­mately turns out to be. It’s like how I feel about Leonardo now, after we were all blud­geoned nearly to a bloody pulp by “The DaVinci Code.” It’s not his fault that he’s been turned into a media cir­cus! And left on its own, as I under­stand the Book used to be, sit­ting in an unpre­ten­tious glass case in the mag­nif­i­cent Long Room of the Trin­ity Col­lege Library, I might well have sighed in delight. Just to come upon it, as it were, and gaze. But to queue for ages, be herded like sheep through cubi­cle after cubi­cle of immensely enlarged views of this or that folio, with lit­tle videos of a hand (pre­sum­ably not THE hand) illu­mi­nat­ing a let­ter with the accom­pa­ni­ment of a lit­tle scratch­ing sound! No, my scholar’s mind protests. And then to be pressed against many other exam­ples of human­ity try­ing to breathe on the glass, no! A thou­sand times no.

Good­ness, could I get any more cur­mud­geonly? I must say, in my long-ago and mis­spent youth I nearly wrote a master’s the­sis on Gothic illu­mi­nated man­u­scripts, one French Book of Hours in par­tic­u­lar, and I adore the genre. But the Book of Kells did not inspire. How­ever, do not let me put you off. And DO go see the Long Room. Avery was in absolute awe of the soar­ing shelves of infi­nite splen­dour. “This is even more books than we have!” she breathed to the guide, who then con­fided that two of her chil­dren go to Trin­ity and are in heaven. Avery offi­cially has a goal. The dor­mi­tory build­ings lin­ing the squares are gor­geous, although James the guide informed us loftily that they “need updat­ing.” I’m sure to his 22-year-old mind they do, but look at the ivy! Avery showed a rare bit of pre-adolescent annoy­ance at her embar­rass­ing par­ents, when we took this pic­ture of her. “Sup­pose some nice stu­dent comes out and sees me trespassing!”

Well, from there we were off to a won­der­ful book­store called Hodges Fig­gis, in Daw­son Street. Avery had hoped to find some Irish children’s books unprocur­able in Lon­don, but didn’t have much luck. This didn’t stop her find­ing lots of other things she couldn’t live with­out, and we had fun. Then onto the Geor­gian Museum at Num­ber Twenty-Nine Mer­rion Square, for John’s sake, given his obses­sion with Geor­gian archi­tec­ture. So impres­sive: the fur­ni­ture and plas­ter­work and repro­duc­tions of pre­cise wall­pa­per and fab­rics. Most won­der­ful: the rug in the main par­lor. And the dar­ling nurs­ery, with scrolls of bits of knowl­edge that the gov­erness would impart. But my oh my, you would want to be wealthy. The poor lit­tle house­maids’ cir­cum­stances would not be desirable.

Oh, and the Celtic Whiskey Shop! I don’t know if I have ever had Irish whiskey before, being a devoted ser­vant of Scotch Whiskey, but if you can imag­ine they were giv­ing away sam­ples, in broad day­light, so of course we had to have some. We tried sev­eral, but the best to our minds was Red­breast, and we brought some home. Smooth, com­plex, lovely.

Our Dublin stay ended with a pil­grim­age, as you can see, to the house where Avery’s beloved Oscar Wilde was born. And then we were on our way out of town, say­ing a wist­ful good­bye to Trin­ity Col­lege, and look­ing for­ward in our heart of hearts to the part of our Irish adven­ture more con­ducive to our hol­i­day spirit: a stay in a medieval cas­tle! And it did NOT disappoint…

Good­ness, where to start? We’re back, after a week in Ire­land and a day in Wales, with a suit­case full of FILTHY laun­dry (it’s dirty liv­ing in a 13th cen­tury cas­tle, plus ponies, rolling on abbey lawns, count­less cook­ing adven­tures with salmon, pota­toes, cab­bage and other sun­dries with­out an apron, net­tles, rain­storms, you name it), cats unbe­liev­ably grate­ful to see us (which I think speaks to Dory’s warm treat­ment of them while we were gone: if they had been lonely they’d pun­ish us). I just crawled out from under a duvet with two cats stretched out on my legs and if I hadn’t heard the *&^% sound of the washer telling me a load was ready to come out, I’d have stayed there all night.

We had the time of our lives. It started a bit rocky drag­ging a puny, lurgy (great Eng­lish word that; in my fam­ily we say “snorky” but it all means full of some­thing nasty in the head and chest) Avery with us. But she rallied.

I shall have lots more tomor­row, but feast your eyes on these pho­tographs. And feel for­tu­nate that the Irish accent I imme­di­ately devel­oped (“stop pro­nounc­ing all those extras ts, Mummy!” I heard quite soon) doesn’t come through on a blog. We are all col­laps­ing, this misty evening, but I’ll be back in fine form on the mor­row, sure and you’ve been miss­ing me…

Well, just in case you’re not going to the foot­ball on Sat­ur­day (!) there’s some­thing you sim­ply must do. Get in the train and go to Oxford, to the North Wall, and hear Eng­lish Sin­fo­nia play. We went last evening to a con­cert at the Grosvenor Chapel here in May­fair, spon­sored in a very lordly fash­ion by our land­lords the Grosvenor fam­ily, and it was a glo­ri­ous, unfor­get­table evening. We went last year dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son (at least Avery’s grand­mother and I did, the rest of the fam­ily basely aban­don­ing us for I for­get what much less cul­tur­ally enlight­en­ing evening’s enter­tain­ment), so at least I knew what we were in for. And silly John refused to go again! So I took Avery’s great friend Jamie, her­self a pretty mean vio­lin­ist, and could not have had a more appre­cia­tive cou­ple of guests.

We set­tled down in our front-pew seats, fresh (or rather just flus­tered) from get­ting Avery out of rid­ing clothes and into some­thing for the con­cert, and hav­ing Jamie dropped off by her mum right before the con­cert. The church atmos­phere qui­etened us right down, as did the lit votive can­dles all along the stained glass win­dows to either side. Autum­nal flow­ers filled the nave, and lots of posh look­ing peo­ple filled the pews: in par­tic­u­lar a very large, well-upholstered lady very well-dressed, full pow­dered, hair all bee-hived and lac­quered into place. And with her was a tiny lit­tle youngish man, not look­ing at all as if went with her, so I kept my eye on them dur­ing the concert.

A Grosvenor gen­tle­man stood up and announced the con­cert, wel­comed us all, and said that tonight, for the first time ever, a new com­po­si­tion would be per­formed live, and that the com­poser, one Adrian Mun­sey, was in the audi­ence to hear it (he was seated directly behind us). The girls were trans­fixed. Then out came the per­form­ers, and Jamie was thrilled to see that she was close enough to read the music on the stands, “St Paul’s Suite,” by Gus­tav Holst. “I could play some of that,” she said, hushed. Then the first vio­lin­ist came out and they began. I’m afraid I always cry a bit at live clas­si­cal music. What is it? It’s the com­bi­na­tion of sev­eral notions run­ning together: the lives the music has lived, the endurance through cen­turies of notes and arrange­ments cre­ated by some long-dead per­son, the indi­vid­ual griefs and joys of the peo­ple who must have heard it per­formed first. And then I looked at the lit­tle girls with me and thought, “Will this inspire them to play? To lis­ten? Who will be lis­ten­ing to what they com­posed, two cen­turies from now?” Then I hap­pened to look to my right and there was the fancy, well-upholstered lady, with tears run­ning down her pow­dered cheeks. And once in awhile the tiny man beside her handed her another hand­ker­chief. How much we do not know about the peo­ple across the aisle.

Finally the man behind us stood up and came to the aisle, vis­i­bly ner­vous. “They asked if I would like to con­duct this piece, but the play­ers assured me that no one ever pays atten­tion to the con­duc­tor, so I declined. This piece is called “Requiem,” but it is really in the spirit of a sim­ple “Rest in Peace.” And he sat down. The music began, thank­fully (for me) noth­ing dis­cor­dant or mod­ern, but a beau­ti­fully trace­able melody, with horns and wood­winds join­ing the strings. From the cor­ner of my eye I saw the very beau­ti­ful wife of the com­poser reach under his suit jacket and grasp his hand, and he hung on for dear life. And that made me cry too. An Eng­lish gen­tle­man, hav­ing com­posed his peace to honor who knows what loss, “Rest in Peace,” twenty years my senior, hold­ing hands with his wife as he lis­tened to his pre­cious com­po­si­tion being per­formed for the first time.

It was glo­ri­ous. The viola player danced! “He’s nearly danc­ing!” Jamie whis­pered to me joy­fully, and cer­tainly he embod­ied his music. I looked at the wed­ding rings of the musi­cians and thought, “Are you mar­ried to another vio­lin­ist? Or an invest­ment banker? Or a great chef, or a nov­el­ist? Do you under­stand each other?” At the end the Grosvenor chap spoke about a schol­ar­ship to ben­e­fit “young aspir­ing musi­cians,” and of course Avery and Jamie nudged one another in the ribs. What an evening.

From there we met John at a cute French cafe and had steak frites, and John took Jamie home in the crispy atum­nal night air.

Sadly Avery awoke this morn­ing with a nasty sore throat and slight fever (what the heck is 37.3 any­way?? well it turns out to be a bit over 99 degrees). Off to the doc­tor for a throat cul­ture, and back home for a for­tu­itous pot of chicken noo­dle soup I had just hap­pened to start the night before. So the proper nutri­tious, com­fort­ing lunch, an after­noon in bed with hot water bot­tles, and she’s on the mend. No strep, so Ire­land here we come in the morn­ing! You shall hear not a word from me for a week, so enjoy your Octo­ber break, and I’ll be in touch soon about our lep­rechaun adventures!

I absolutely love this supermarket’s slo­gan, in a guilty sort of way, since sadly in my language-limited life it applies to me: “All the Chi­nese You Need to Know.” We maneu­vered our way on Mon­day morn­ing, on our friend Peter’s advice, to Wing Yip’s Chi­nese sup­ply store, because I was frus­trated by my attempts to cook real Chi­nese food with what my Chi­nese friend Amy assured me were vir­tu­ally unrec­og­niz­ably flavoured ver­sions of the ingre­di­ents I needed. And while I can­not lisp the ten­der syl­la­bles of these time-honoured dif­fer­ences in qual­ity, there is no doubt that my night’s attempts to pro­duce a truly mem­o­rable dish of sprouts, noo­dles and beef sup­planted all oth­ers. Let me explain.

I have spent a fair amount of time try­ing to repli­cate my favourite dishes at Man­darin Kitchen in Queensway. The soft­shell crabs, the noo­dles and sprouts. And while what I pro­duced has been good, then really good, then I felt quite deli­cious, it was never the same, shall we say, tenor of what one gets at the restau­rant. And it never will be. But Wing Yip’s is a sub­lime expe­ri­ence in gro­cery shop­ping, should your taste in enter­tain­ment run in that direc­tion. And sadly per­haps, mine does. Mock duck in a tin! Hoisin flavoured duck tongues! Nine kilos of curry pow­der! Cut­tle­fish in every shape and form. Dozens of types of soy sauce. And I did buy some, and sesame oil in a deeper shade than I’d ever seen before, and gar­lic and gin­ger and sprouts. Granted, I had to stop at Wait­rose for the sil­ver­side of beef, but suf­fice to say that the dish Avery and I cooked together that night was miles bet­ter than any other ver­sion. So go, take your­self off to Wing Yip, shop, and learn.

Ah well, it was but a mat­ter of hours before Chi­nese delights turned into a drip­ping wet morn­ing next day and we found our­selves trekking to Hamp­stead to view yet another school choice, and while I often lament my husband’s insis­tence on try­ing every pos­si­bil­ity before mak­ing a deci­sion (his mar­riage being a notable excep­tion, for which I’m grate­ful), I have to admit that this lat­est school has great pos­si­bil­i­ties. South Hamp­stead High School, on a leafy esplanade high up in Hamp­stead a fairly gru­elling walk from the Heath, but there nonethe­less. A glo­ri­ous school filled with gulls of an impos­si­ble self-possession, sense of humour, will­ing­ness to work. A delight­ful deputy head­mas­ter with whom I fell instantly in crush­dom: twin­kling eyes, per­fect Oxford accent, and an unmis­tak­able atti­tude of awe toward these bud­ding adults. It’s a real pos­si­bil­ity for Avery for next year, though by no means a “safety school,” which we’re meant to be find­ing for the even­tu­al­ity that she catches her hand in a dog’s mouth (or some other unan­tic­i­pated semi– demi– hemi-disaster) on the morn­ing of the all-important exams. Good­ness, what this house­hold needs is at least one adult with a job, so as to keep our heads from liv­ing in what can be called only “Com­mon Entrance Hell.”

Well, I could not leave Hamp­stead with­out pay­ing homage to what I firmly believe to be the BEST bread­maker in Lon­don: Gail’s in the High Street. There’s another loca­tion in Not­ting Hill, and I’d say, get there. Potato and rose­mary sour­dough bread, there is noth­ing like it. So sub­stan­tial, real fla­vor, real heft. Great for sand­wiches, toast, you name it. And a delight­ful “break­fast to go” sand­wich of a sweet and crunch hon­eyed bread stuffed with a chive omelet, of all things, plus Brie cheese, spinach and toma­toes. Go, do, and have one.

Well, by then it was POUR­ING rain and really time to go home, but then I passed the best pro­duce shop in Lon­don, I think: Brian Lay-Jones just in Fitzjohn Street as you leave the High Street. Crooked, old-fashioned, nooks and cran­nies, pro­duce piled up and all the staff josh­ing one another about the pre­vi­ous night’s adven­tures. I could have bought a LOT but John was pre­car­i­ously parked and I lim­ited myself to a nice paper bag full of por­to­bel­los for soup on that nasty day.

Well, sleep beck­ons. I’ve a lot to tell you about the con­cert I took Avery and Jamie to tonight, but more than one post a day (and this one has taken some time!) would smack of… self-absorption, and we cer­tainly don’t want THAT. Nighty-night.

Mark your cal­en­dars: next Sun­day, 21st Octo­ber, from 11:30–4, “Apple Day” at Iver Flow­er­land Field, Swal­low Street, Iver. If we were not already sched­uled to be in Dublin for the week­end (oh, poor us!) we’d be there. But we can highly rec­om­mend the apple pick­ing, as it’s being organ­ised by the farm we vis­ited yes­ter­day, Home Cot­tage Farm. Iver is a tiny, sleepy lit­tle ham­let about 45 min­utes’ drive from cen­tral Lon­don, sadly along the hor­rid M40, but I bet there’s a shun-motorway way to go, if you can get your Sat­Nav to tell you how.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing we raced to pick up Avery’s chum Anna, then raced to Kens­ing­ton to retrieve Avery from her sleep­over at Jamie’s, and headed out to pick apples in the coun­try­side. The farm itself is a ram­bling old house sur­rounded by field filled with sheep, chick­ens, guinea fowl and their cock (he lit­er­ally said, “cocka-doodle-do” to the girls’ delight). The elderly farmer lady led us to the till where she weighed our shabby old can­vas bags and pointed out the way to the black­berry bushes, cau­tion­ing that “they’re nearly over now, of course.” But there were enough to fill a lit­tle two-pint con­tainer, and rasp­ber­ries besides. But the apples! Cox, Spar­tan, Rus­set, Blenheim. She had men­tioned that there were other vari­eties on the other side of the car park, but by then the girls could hardly carry their bags and we felt we had enough. A blue sky stud­ded with filmy clouds, holly bushes heavy with red berries, a breeze cool enough to make you glad you had a jacket, but then an hour later you tied it around your waist because the sun was warm­ing things up.

It was a plea­sure to give the girls an expe­ri­ence that didn’t cost any­thing (except to buy the apples them­selves), didn’t involve bat­ter­ies or com­put­ers, and got them out in the fresh air. They raced up and down the orchards, pick­ing apples tiny enough to give to their stuffed ani­mals (they’re still pretty lit­tle, after all, these girls), yelling glee­fully over worm holes, shar­ing the weight of the bag. They had a fan­tas­tic time, and next week­end promises to be even more fun with not just apple pick­ing but… fer­ret rac­ing! Dog agility! Birds of prey, even. I’d go if I were you.

So we handed over our loot to the male ver­sion of the elderly lady farmer, quiet and dig­ni­fied in his jumper all over holes. “How long have you been doing this, sir?” John asked, and he answered with a smile, “Forty years.” I can see that being a very good life, in another life. The girls accom­plished some mild stalk­ing of the guinea fowl, and we headed home. To bake! I have cre­ated some­thing of a cook­ing mon­ster in Avery now, who feels she wants a hand in the cre­ation of all meals now, and sug­gests bak­ing projects at the most inop­por­tune times, as in when I’m tak­ing the main course out of the oven and light­ing the can­dles for din­ner. “May I make a dessert?” Well, no, not right now.

But there was noth­ing to stop Avery and Anna yes­ter­day from invent­ing a very com­plex cake using ALL the items they had picked just min­utes ear­lier. It’s a vari­a­tion on the sim­ple cake we made the other night, and they had a great time doing it, although I realised that I am indulging them ter­ri­bly by doing the dishes behind their backs, so they get all the fun and none of the drudgery. It’s a rev­e­la­tion to cook with chil­dren, because they approach all the tasks with a tremen­dous cre­ativ­ity, as opposed to I who sim­ply wants to get the dish fin­ished. “Look at this flour com­ing out of the sieve, it’s like it’s snow­ing,” and “feel how silky this pow­dered sugar is,” and “ooh, how glossy and shiny the but­ter and sugar and eggs are, and SMELL! Oh, that smells so good.”

Anna and Avery’s Apple Cake with Rasp­berry and Black­berry Fill­ing and Apple Sauce

Sift and then mea­sure 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, add 1 table­spoon bak­ing pow­der and set aside.

Cream 1/2 cup but­ter, 1 cup sugar, 2 tsps vanilla and 2 eggs. Beat light and fluffy. Mea­sure 1 cup milk. Add alter­nately to the creamed mix­ture with about 1/2 cup flour at a time. Stir smooth with each addi­tion. Stir in 5 apples, peeled and coarsely chopped.

Pour into 2 well-greased shal­low pans [I used a spring­form and it was per­fect]. Sprin­kle the top of one cake with 1/2 cup brown sugar, and a mix­ture of cin­na­mon, nut­meg and cloves [to your taste]. On the top of the sec­ond cake, driz­zle the juice of a dozen rasp­ber­ries and a dozen black­ber­ries (pushed through a sieve). Bake at 350 degrees for 35–40 min­utes or until a knife inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean.

Let cool for 10 min­utes. Remove spring­form rims from the cakes and spread apple­sauce made from about 6 apples, cin­na­mon, brown sugar and lemon juice over the top of the cake with the rasp­berry top­ping. Place the brown sugar cake on top, and sprin­kle pow­dered sugar through a sieve on top. Then serve warm. If you like, you may serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

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

Let’s see, Fri­day I was a real grownup. Got dressed up, made a new friend, and stretched my brain a bit with the Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. And unlike my nor­mal inep­ti­tude when I tell you about some­thing I did in Lon­don and it closed that day, you can still get to Frieze today or tomor­row. I met up first with Susan, a lady newly trans­planted from New York, a friend of a friend whose daugh­ter used to ride with Avery in the Bronx in our old happy barn days there. We met at Vil­landry for a bite of lunch, since although it’s prac­ti­cally adja­cent to Avery’s school I don’t get there very often (you’d be sur­prised how cross­ing a sin­gle street can make a place too far away). You can eat either in the sort of com­mu­nal left-hand side of the estab­lish­ment, with long wooden tables and a very buzzy air of con­ver­sa­tion, or as we did in the calmer white-tablecloth side. As always, the ser­vice was very spotty with lan­guid French girls not too inter­ested in help­ing us, and I was very sur­prised when my “chicken club sand­wich” turned out to be may­on­naisey chicken salad instead of the sliced roast I was expect­ing, but it was yummy. Susan had a suck­ling pig sand­wich which looked quite good. Mostly we got to know each other.

There is a cer­tain pro­file of a New York lady that I love: born and raised in Man­hat­tan, highly edu­cated at the best schools, sev­eral impres­sive careers (lawyer, banker, entre­pre­neur), a wry sense of humor and sophis­ti­cated atti­tude toward every­thing from pol­i­tics to food to child-rearing. As she spoke I thought of all the New York friends I have left behind, Francesca, Julia, Alyssa, Liz, and there was some­thing of all of them in her. It made me very home­sick. It felt like putting on an old glove to talk to Susan, even though we had just met, because she reminded me of so many other peo­ple. I sup­pose it’s an amal­ga­ma­tion of the qual­i­ties that make Woody Allen pop­u­lar: super intel­li­gent, with an end­less array of great sto­ries to tell, a New Yorker’s indomitable abil­ity to adjust, fit in, enjoy life, but never suf­fer­ing fools gladly, or at all. At any rate, we had a good time, and then we headed to the art fair. In a nut­shell: a huge array of ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble art punc­tu­ated by a few gems that made my heart go pit­ter pat a bit, and feel nos­tal­gic for my old gallery-owner days in New York.

Susan and I played the ever-entrancing game of “What would I buy if I were buy­ing,” and while she grav­i­tated largely toward pho­tog­ra­phy, I went for my usual: con­cep­tual, min­i­mal­ist, obses­sively repet­i­tive, either sculp­ture or work on paper. There was a sim­ply breath­tak­ing enor­mous Glenn Ligon piece in char­coal, a beau­ti­ful Antony Gorm­ley fig­ure made of artic­u­lated steel cubes, a Carl Andre instal­la­tion of rough-hewn wood (I do love Carl, even if he’s a ques­tion­able bloke in real life), and per­haps most impres­sive, a print by a young Ital­ian artist called Luca Tre­visani. This piece was a sequence of 1200 still shots from a video of ants being attracted to a hole in the ground filled with sugar. He shot the ants, one after another, each the size of a half grain of rice, walk­ing toward the hole, then gath­er­ing around it, then going inside, and then but the film up into stills. Then he placed each still in sequence, then in back­ward order. And then made them into lith­o­graphic sort of stamps, and printed them them. Eeek! So pic­ture an enor­mous piece of white paper, per­haps four feet across and three feet high, cov­ered with tiny, tiny black images that you have to get your face right up against to rec­og­nize as ants, march­ing across the sur­face in a per­fect sequence, mak­ing a beau­ti­ful, abstract but com­pletely geo­met­ri­cally pre­cise pat­tern. Gor­geous! And so FUNNY. Plus frankly I would have been tempted to buy any­thing at ALL from the sub­limely sexy Milanese dealer who explained all this to me in great detail. Ants? Sure, I’ll buy it. Just keep talk­ing, please. And that ges­ture you make with your per­fectly man­i­cured hand against your chin? I’ll take that too.

I haven’t been able to find out a lot about young Luca to tell you, because every­thing is in Ital­ian or very amus­ingly trans­lated. But trust me, those ants are worth a look. But I think I would have seri­ously gone home with two sil­ver gelatin pho­tographs by the tragic sui­ci­dal artist Francesca Wood­man, who my friend Sarah Webb wrote about so beau­ti­fully in her epi­logue to our book. And I would have bought two pieces by the British artist Cor­nelia Parker, although they brought up nasty Holo­caust asso­ci­a­tions for Susan: reclaimed den­tal gold trans­formed into thread-like wire, strung through a golden nee­dle and sewn into beau­ti­ful pat­terns, between two pieces of glass. Stun­ning, but I can see her point. The sec­ond piece was made with a reclaimed bul­let, per­haps less upset­ting. Aes­thet­i­cally, though, just gorgeous.

These few pieces reminded me of how much fun art can be, but the enor­mous pre­pon­der­ance of what was on dis­play annoyed me. Gar­ish, care­less, sloppy and thought­less! Call me old-fashioned, but I need to see effort, pre­ci­sion and skill when I look at art. Ah, well, taste is taste. The humor award went to an artist (didn’t get his name) who cre­ated an instal­la­tion (after a per­for­mance) of empty mus­sel shells in a pile in a cor­ner made by mir­rors. “Let Them Eat Mus­sels,” it was called, after he cooked the mus­sels on site (the recipe was given on the wall text!), gave them to his audi­ence and asked them to throw the spent shells in the cor­ner. Sublime!

Any­way, we had a great time. Go on over and see for your­self. Right now I’m headed to Chi­na­town, for the first time! If I cook some­thing fab­u­lous as a result, I’ll let you know.

Let’s see, what have I been up to this week? Well, first thing that comes to mind was last night’s first singing rehearsal for (we’ve got to find a name for our­selves) The Form VI Moth­ers Choir Ensem­ble! Yes, we really did it; after get­ting all excited at the school’s birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, singing together and really enjoy­ing it, one of the moth­ers actu­ally booked us time with the school music mis­tress and five of us turned up last night to war­ble away. “Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree” (who knew he was one), “Early One Morn­ing,” “Scar­bor­ough Fair,” you name it. I was not too shy to say right out that I’m no soprano, so I was in my famil­iar alto ter­ri­tory, and it was such an unex­pected joy to dis­cover that my (mostly child­hood) musi­cal skills came back to me! There were sud­den sur­pris­ing moments of clar­ity like real­is­ing that I “remem­bered” how it felt to have my voice go up two notes, so that the visual sign from an “e” to a “g” was a per­fectly use­ful sig­nal to me. And I hadn’t for­got­ten how to read music, or to fol­low a part. And from some foggy mem­ory came the absolute cer­tainty that the key we were singing in would include an F sharp: and it did! The older I get the more I regret los­ing skills (although to be hop­ping around turn­ing back­flips at my age would be more than a lit­tle grue­some), so find­ing that all those years spent learn­ing musi­cal sys­tems and skills were not lost after all, just buried under lay­ers of pic­ture book plots, recipes and the finer points of school volunteering.

Here’s some­thing to think about: when was the last time you DID some­thing, just for your­self? And by “do” I don’t mean see a movie, which is just watch­ing some­one else do some­thing, or have din­ner out, which is just eat­ing, only more spe­cial than at home. No, I mean DO some­thing, to express your­self and get out of the every­day mind­set when you can mul­ti­task and walk and talk at the same time and look after other peo­ple? Because when you’re not a very accom­plished singer, and you’re read­ing the music and lis­ten­ing to the other voices and pay­ing atten­tion to the accom­pa­nist, you can’t do any­thing else at the same time. Or think of any­thing else. And to hear lovely sounds come from all our sep­a­rate beings and make some­thing lovely together: it was very sat­is­fy­ing. I think you should all find some­thing sim­i­lar to do, just one hour out of every cou­ple of weeks. Why not?

We had a great time, and the lovely lit­tle teacher had a good time too. “This is my first time teach­ing an adult choir, and teach­ing peo­ple I can meet on eye level. You learn much faster, as well!” A real joy. I keep threat­en­ing Avery that we’re going to buy enor­mous ver­sions of the school uni­form and per­form at the Har­vest Fes­ti­val, but that’s just a threat. Still, it could happen.

It was a very ful­fill­ing end to an already full day: lunch with Dalia at Sagar, a superb veg­e­tar­ian restau­rant in Ham­mer­smith. It’s a def­i­nite keeper, so go on, get your­self there and order some rasa vada, an amaz­ing dish of light-as-a-feather lentil dough­nuts, with a hole in the mid­dle and every­thing, swim­ming in a fra­grant, spicy bath of some­thing called rasam, a toma­toey broth with very com­plex pep­pery fla­vors. So exotic! So deli­cious. Then veg­etable kootu, a liq­uidy curry with a strange but good sort of Indian mar­row, car­rots, beans and coconut. Divine! Next time I will def­i­nitely go for the gar­lic rice, which is described as being made with fresh gar­lic, cumin seeds and dried red chilli, served with raitha, that deli­cious and sim­ple cucumber-yogurt del­i­cacy. We had to roll our­selves to our writ­ing class, where­upon it tran­spired that the tutor was giv­ing us a miss. Just dumped us in favor of, appar­ently, a plumb­ing dis­as­ter, but how she could not have know this until five min­utes after class was meant to begin, we could not fathom. A major irri­tant, and one I remem­ber from this same tutor last spring.

We took a vote and five of us decided to stay and read our pieces to each other, I among them. Dalia took her­self off to accom­plish some­thing, and truly it was a pain, to have arranged to get all the way to Ham­mer­smith and have the class can­celled. But in the end, the five of us decided that it was much the nicest way to have a class! We all lis­tened in turn to each other’s pieces, and then made the usual sorts of com­ments, some sup­port­ive, some crit­i­cal, some merely curi­ous. Since we’re writ­ing auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essays, every­one does want MORE at the end! Did you really spend sum­mers in your grandmother’s gar­den in Bagh­dad? No, you really lived in Ger­many with a host fam­ily who spoke no Eng­lish? And Keith, seri­ously, a real live stage man­ager at the Royal Bal­let in Covent Gar­den? Not to men­tion the lady who joined a bowls team after retire­ment and even bought the uni­form! It turns out that every­one, absolutely every­one, has some­thing inter­est­ing to write about. I felt rather bland with my story, but it turned out that pos­sess­ing the dress that your mother wore for her engage­ment photo in a small town in Indi­ana is very inter­est­ing to Eng­lish peo­ple, for its very for­eign­ness. It was a won­der­ful after­noon, no less so for miss­ing an alleged expert, because all of us seemed per­fectly ade­quate to the task of lis­ten­ing crit­i­cally and responding.

Home in a rush to find my sheet music for singing, and then a quick dash with John to watch Avery ride. It was a superbly autum­nal after­noon, the trees begin­ning to turn and fall in the park. I must con­fess: why do tourists take pic­tures of our chil­dren on horse­back? Not that I mind, par­tic­u­larly, but why? I know why I have hun­dreds of pic­tures of a small girl on horse­back, but some­one else’s child? No thanks. And we reached some­thing, later in the evening, of a behavior/attitude mile­stone. Now, I’m the first to say that Avery has a hard few months ahead of her, prepar­ing for these exams, not get­ting the top mark in the class, not win­ning an elec­tion or two. And of course it’s frus­trat­ing if she doesn’t get to ride the exact pony she wants and gets put on scary Archie who flinches at a pass­ing tis­sue left on the ground.

But I finally put my foot down last night and said, “You can­not hold our entire fam­ily hostage to your neg­a­tiv­ity. Of course school is hard, and there are dis­ap­point­ments, but we all have them. Please take a moment to think and reflect on how incred­i­bly lucky you are to be where you are, and healthy, and with an awful lot to be happy about, and just… be pos­i­tive. Of course you’ll have neg­a­tive thoughts, but don’t let them over­whelm you.” For a moment I thought she was either going to cry, or hurl her pen­cil at me, but won­der of won­ders, the rest of the evening was MUCH nicer. Now I’ve prob­a­bly caused her years of expen­sive psy­chother­apy, but you know what? By then she’ll be out of the house. Call me self­ish, but I just couldn’t take the moan­ing another minute.

And we had a fab­u­lous evening cook­ing together, for the first time! It has occurred to me many times that my practically-perfect mother’s Extreme Dis­like of Cook­ing has played no small part in my own love of it. Strictly speak­ing, my early expe­ri­ences with cook­ing would fall under the cat­e­gory of self-defense, because a per­son who hates cook­ing can­not pro­duce rou­tinely deli­cious food that makes you sit up and take notice. So I had to learn. But lately I’ve been wor­ry­ing that my lov­ing to cook, and always being in charge of the kitchen, could pro­duce a child who can­not open a box of cereal. What I dis­cov­ered were sev­eral things: a child loves to cook! And it’s MUCH slower to cook with her than to get on with it myself. But she fol­lowed direc­tions per­fectly, and was tremen­dously proud of the result. And I learned not to call the salmon “him,” as in “make sure you cover him com­pletely with the sauce,” because in Avery’s world, then she begins think­ing of him swim­ming along with his friends and she doesn’t want to eat him. I mean It.

Avery’s Baked Salmon with Brandy and Creme Fraiche
(serves four)

1 pound salmon fil­let
3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 shal­lots, minced
1/3 cup brandy
1/2 cup creme fraiche
1/2 cup light cream
squeeze of lemon juice
dried thyme (enough to fit in the hol­low of your palm if you cup your hand, is a good mea­sur­ing tool for a lit­tle girl)
sweet paprika, same amount
salt and pep­per to taste

In a heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and saute gar­lic and shal­lots till soft. Now pour in the brandy, tak­ing time to explain “deglaz­ing” to your child. Then whisk in the creme fraiche, creme, lemon juice and herbs. Taste and season.

Place your salmon in a glass nonstick-sprayed dish and pour the sauce over him, I mean it. Bake at 425 for 25 min­utes. Glorious.

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

And to fin­ish, a com­pletely sim­ple apple cake, from my Gladys Taber cook­book (so it counts as research for my edit­ing project). Per­fectly spicy and autum­nal, and I can almost guar­an­tee you you’ll have every­thing you need with­out shop­ping. I’m going to write out this recipe in Gladys’s own style, although I’ve made a few changes (more spice).

Spicy apple cake
(per­fect for after din­ner, and warmed up for breakfast)

Sift and then mea­sure 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, add 1 1/2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der and set aside.

Cream 1/4 cup but­ter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 egg. Beat light and fluffy. Mea­sure 1/2 cup milk. Add alter­nately to the creamed mix­ture with about 1/2 cup flour at a time. Stir smooth with each addi­tion. Stir in 3 apples, peeled and coarsely chopped. Pour into well greased shal­low pan [I used a spring­form and it was per­fect]. Arrange 2 more apples, nicely sliced, on the top of the bat­ter and sprin­kle with 1/2 cup brown sugar, a mix­ture of cin­na­mon, nut­meg and cloves [to your taste], and 3 tbsps melted but­ter. Bake at 350 degrees for 25–30 min­utes and serve warm.

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

Now the sug­ges­tion to have part of the apples in, and part of them on, was Avery’s and a very fine one it was. I think I have a bud­ding cook on my hands. Tomor­row is Moroc­can meat­balls, which should be nice and messy and fun.

Well, we’re about to run off and try a new restau­rant since Avery’s occu­pied at a sleep­over. Her skat­ing les­son today with her beloved friend Jamie was a non-event because guess what one of teenage Lon­don­ers’ favorites to do to cel­e­brate the end of Ramadan is? Yep, ice skat­ing. I’ve never seen so many wacky boys and girls in my life, and they all had sharp blades attached to their extrem­i­ties, so it was but the deci­sion of a moment for Jamie’s mother and me to con­fer with the teacher and decide that we didn’t want to add our chil­dren to the list of those who had already been taken away by ambu­lance. So the two girls have gone off for an evening of bliss­ful play. And so can we…

But before I get to that, pick­ing apples that is, some lovely per­son left a very nice com­ment on my last post, describ­ing one post as “Ram­seyesque.” Anony­mous Reader, would you be so kind as to tell me what this adjec­tive means? I feel very igno­rant and would like not to be. Please?

We will, though, go apple-picking next week­end, I think. Apple (and pear, come to that) pick­ing was a cher­ished tra­di­tion in our New York lives, always shared with Avery’s beloved friend Annabelle’s fam­ily. I remem­ber we began going in Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber of 1999, and the fol­low­ing autumn it was enough of a tra­di­tion that I, the least crafty of all pos­si­ble moth­ers, painted lit­tle tin pails with “Apple Pick­ing With Avery and Annbelle 2000″ the next year, and the girls used them every year after that. I won­der where that pail is now? Some­thing tells me it’s gath­er­ing dust in the cup­board over the refrig­er­a­tor where things we never use can go, because it’s too hard to get to. But I’ve got to dig it out and find some­thing for Anna to use, as well, because she’s going to join us. I’ve found the per­fect farm.

Home Cot­tage Farm have a stand at the prac­ti­cally per­fect Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, and I bought sev­eral vari­eties of apples there this morn­ing, rev­el­ling as I do every Sun­day in the delight­ful atmos­phere of the mar­ket. It’s filled, every week, with good peo­ple mak­ing good food and sell­ing it hap­pily to other nice peo­ple, and their dogs and chil­dren. It reas­sures me that human­ity is not all some­thing scary, to see pur­vey­ors of pro­duce, fishes, duck­lings, every cheese you can imag­ine, bread of every descrip­tion, all smil­ingly hand­ing over their wares and pay­ing their bills and feed­ing their fam­i­lies thereby. Of course, I am a sucker for food-shopping of any kind, but it’s still my favorite hour of the week, just about. So I came away with a vari­ety of apple I had never heard of, Lord Lam­bourne, with a curi­ously waxy (the man behind the stand called it “soapy” skin, noth­ing you need to wash off, just a funny feel­ing that he says keeps the apple itself incred­i­bly juicy, and it was.

So the guy at Home Cot­tage stand tells me it’s a 15-mile drive from where we were stand­ing, and I think that’s our brief for next Sat­ur­day: up at a decent hour, col­lect Anna, and head off, in time to be back for Avery’s act­ing les­son mid-afternoon. She’s lov­ing it: gets dressed up and imag­ines what she would do if some cast­ing per­son came look­ing for a teeny-weeny ver­sion of Scar­lett Johans­son (Avery’s a dead ringer for her). They’re doing all sort of improv, and role-playing, and she’s in the 11–14 age group now, so see­ing as how she’s a month shy of 11, she’s in with the big girls and boys.

I seem to have spent the entirety of last week mak­ing plans for things to do in the future, as opposed to actu­ally doing any­thing right NOW. As a result, we have tick­ets to go to York for Avery’s actual birth­day, and we’re hot on the trail of a tiny, tiny cas­tle in Som­er­set (with a moat!) for the week­end in the mid­dle of the month when half-term will be over and she can take her friends Anna and Jamie off for two days of adven­ture. Her great­est wish is to see Exmoor ponies in the wild, and since her two friends are nearly equally horse-mad, it should be great fun. Then, John got tick­ets for us to go back to Con­necti­cut for Christ­mas with all the fam­ily, and I got tick­ets for us to see the Olympia Horse Show, an annual favorite, right before we fly off. Whew.

I must say, some fes­tiv­i­ties are in order because she is work­ing incred­i­bly hard get­ting ready for these exams in Jan­u­ary. Oh, that’s the other thing I spent last week doing: fill­ing out admis­sions forms for next year’s school, wher­ever it shall be. It strikes me that most of our lives, right now, fea­ture an uncom­fort­able degree of uncer­tainty (I hate uncer­tainty!). John still has no job (not that he minds), we have no house, we don’t know where Avery will be in school next year. I know it’s crim­i­nal to wish any time in this life away, but I will be hap­pier when I know a bit more about how we’re going to be arranged for these sev­eral really impor­tant things. Shiver. In the mean­time, though, every day after school has been a strug­gle, to tell about results on prac­tice exams and be reas­sured that it’s all going to be fine, to hear sto­ries of unfair home­work prac­tices, hor­rid judg­men­tal teach­ers who refuse to acknowl­edge that she’s already per­fect (sigh), reas­sur­ances that com­ing sec­ond in the Poetry Com­pe­ti­tion is not tan­ta­mount to excom­mu­ni­ca­tion from the school (and all of Eng­land, she seemed to feel). She takes every­thing so to heart, poor child. My par­ents laughed when I told them this, ask­ing, “Doesn’t any of this remind you of any­one?” Well, I don’t think I was accom­plished enough at Avery’s age to feel it as intensely as she feels it.

I’m try­ing to use some of my expe­ri­ences at my new writ­ing course to help her accept crit­i­cism from her teach­ers, but so far I have to say my tech­nique is falling on deaf ears. “Look at it this way, Avery: I’m will­ing to PAY peo­ple to lis­ten to my writ­ing and tell me what’s wrong with it. Try to lis­ten to what the teach­ers say so you can improve.” Alas, a piece of Dover white cliff would have been more recep­tive. Sigh. The writ­ing class has been extremely enjoy­able: a large-ish group of peo­ple all seem­ingly quite com­mit­ted to turn­ing up reg­u­larly, pro­duc­ing a piece of writ­ing, being will­ing to read aloud. I walked out after­ward this week with two late-middle age ladies, one from Dublin with a gor­geous lilt­ing accent. She actu­ally said, “Sure, and…” just like in books. We seem to be form­ing a nice sup­port­ive group, ready to fol­low the class rule of “the sound­proof box,” in which the per­son who’s read aloud must lis­ten to all the com­ments made, but any response has to wait till the end of the com­ments. Any­thing the reader would say before the end could not pen­e­trate the sound­proof box! It’s so hard to lis­ten to crit­i­cism and not jump in with “Well, what I MEANT to say…”!

In any case, the best thing to do is look toward the future and some adven­tures to come. This week will bring the first meet­ing of the Form VI Moth­ers’ Singing Group! Becky says she’s get­ting cold feet. What if it’s only five or so of us, and the music mis­tress at school decides we should enter­tain the Christ­mas carol con­cert? I still think we’ll be fine. I for one adore to sing, and I’ve missed singing since my old col­lege days, mak­ing extra money as part of a rather rag-tag but still pretty good band, back in Indi­anapo­lis. I think we’ll have a great time.

I’m sit­ting here sniff­ing as the aroma of day-long-cooking brisket floats into my study. John and I just came back from a five-mile walk through the Park and back, and Avery spent the entire day muck­ing out stalls and can­ter­ing down Rot­ten Row, so I feel fully jus­ti­fied in serv­ing, with my brisket, a nice dish of Shet­land Black Pota­toes, from Morghew Farm, fried in…goose fat. Really. I bought a jar of it at the super­mar­ket and tonight’s the night. I love crazy heir­loom pro­duce, so plen­ti­ful in this coun­try of ours. I will appease my con­science, not that I need to, harumph, with an enor­mous dish of roasted beet­root with bal­samic vine­gar. For some rea­son this veg­etable, so repel­lent to so many peo­ple, is Avery’s near-favorite. Go fig­ure. She’s cozy in a post-barn bath, John and I are about to watch a side-splitting episode of “A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie” (fea­tur­ing two British come­di­ans either of whom would make, most of us believe, a more com­pe­tent Prime Min­is­ter than any can­di­dates we have now). Enjoy your Sunday…

Roasted Beet­root with Bal­samic Vinegar