And I’m not even the one sit­ting the exam! It’s all an enor­mous cul­tural divide for which I’m thor­oughly unpre­pared. For one thing, where I come from you “take” an exam. Where Avery comes from “one sits” an exam. Luck­ily, she’s per­fectly pre­pared. It’s I who needs a refresher course.

I sat down at my desk this morn­ing know­ing I had one more appli­ca­tion to fill out for Avery’s exam sched­ule in Jan­u­ary. The fifth choice among five, so I was not feel­ing par­tic­u­larly ner­vous, but nev­er­the­less a dead­line is a dead­line, so I filled out the form. Until I got to the line, “Please indi­cate at which school your daugh­ter will be sit­ting this exam.” Because you see, it would be too easy for the child just to turn up at each school for each exam. No, in the attempt to make things sim­pler (!) the North Lon­don Inde­pen­dent Girls’ Schools’ Con­sor­tium (got that?) divided all the schools into two groups, clev­erly called Group 1 and Group 2, and the girls have to sit the exam for each group just once, and then all the schools in that group to which she’s apply­ing look at those results. The schools all assure the par­ents that it makes NO DIF­FER­ENCE where the child sits the exam, in terms of how the other schools where she didn’t sit it view her results. The fer­vor with which the schools express this makes me think per­versely that a child has no chance of get­ting into a school if she didn’t sit the exam there.

Plus, of course, Avery’s apply­ing to one school that doesn’t par­tic­i­pate in either Group 1 or Group 2, so it has its OWN deadly exam. Any­way, there I was, fill­ing the Unde­sir­able School Form, and I sud­denly couldn’t remem­ber where I had said she would be sit­ting that exam. So up comes the phone and I call one of the other schools in the group that she’s apply­ing to, to con­firm that she’s sit­ting it there. “I’m ter­ri­bly sorry, Mrs Fred­er­ick­son, but the paper­work for your daughter’s exam con­fir­ma­tion seems to have been lost in that postal strike in Octo­ber. We have no record of her sit­ting the exam here.”

Major panic! But she could tell, because she kindly said, “Don’t panic, I will merely put another set of papers into the post this evening and you may turn them around as quickly as pos­si­ble.” As kind as this was, how­ever, it merely put me in a swivet of nerves about the state of her “paper­work” at the other schools. So I ended up spend­ing the entire morn­ing at my desk call­ing each school, stam­mer­ing out my dumb ques­tion, get­ting people’s voice mail, leav­ing mes­sages. Gen­er­ally flum­mox­ing myself! I feel cer­tain that the admin­is­tra­tors who took my calls have now ticked the box “loony incom­pe­tent mum” next to Avery’s name. Sorry, dear.

Other than school jit­ters, it has been quiet around here. Vague thoughts of Christ­mas shop­ping (surely I can’t give every­one only books, can I?), plan­ning our return to Con­necti­cut in just three weeks (can that be? where has this autumn gone?). Yes­ter­day was greatly enlivened by the arrival of a belated (another casu­alty of the postal strike?) birth­day present from Jill and Joel and Jane, quite the most elab­o­rate and delight­ful pen­cil case known to man. Do you have a lit­tle pony-mad girl for whom you need a gift sure to please? Try luvponies, with the nicest staff you’ll ever speak to (if the present gets lost in the post), tons of choices and gen­er­ally the magic lan­guage that I don’t speak but my horse-crazy daugh­ter does.

Thanks, guys, for lift­ing the spir­its of your niece who suf­fered might­ily over not get­ting cho­sen to sing the solo of “Once in Royal David’s City” (warn­ing! this link plays delight­ful music, so don’t click it at 3 a.m. with your sleep­ing baby next to you) at the Christ­mas carol con­cert next month. She was in ter­ri­ble spir­its at school pickup, and heaved a huge sigh over hav­ing to do her home­work, so when I saw her slumped over my desk with hor­ri­ble maths prob­lems, it was but the work of a moment to present the excit­ing pack­age and watch her light up! Home­work is much more pleas­ant when done with a pink pen­cil drawn all over with ponies, manes fly­ing in some dream land­scape. Totally turned her mood around! And the next thing we knew she was singing the wretched Christ­mas song all over again, her pique for­got­ten. Would that we adults could spring back from dis­ap­point­ment with such aplomb! It’s prob­a­bly worth not­ing: keep a poten­tially mind-blowing gift aside for just such an occasion.

Mon­day night was enlivened by the arrival my new friend Layla with her cam­era, intent on tak­ing some pho­tographs of food, both ingre­di­ents and cook­ing action. She’s Dalia’s sis­ter, my dra­matic and lively friend of writ­ing classes past and present. So Dalia came along as well at din­ner time, bring­ing her gor­geous, sweet and very Irish hus­band Kevin (he could say absolutely any­thing in that accent and I would be at his feet, very imprac­ti­cal in daily life but a lot of fun as a din­ner guest). Layla is pos­si­bly the most easy­go­ing per­son I have ever met: she meets life head-on with enthu­si­asm and energy, but refuses to let any annoy­ing details get her down. Bul­lies at her child­hood board­ing school? Couldn’t be both­ered to notice them too much. “Years later they wanted to be friends, and I could see that noth­ing had changed! They were still the same peo­ple, so I just got on with it.”

Avery was intrigued by this approach to school drama, and lis­tened with rapt atten­tion to all Layla’s and Dalia’s tales. As well as being fun to have around, I have to con­fess that those two girls are the most beau­ti­ful crea­tures! Long, dark, dra­matic hair, eye­lashes a mile long, the polar oppo­site of my vaguely Scan­di­na­vian aspect, so it was a plea­sure just to look at them. And did they eat? My good­ness, they were my best cus­tomers ever. And I made a vari­a­tion on an old lasagne recipe, which is worth putting down here, I think, as every­one really enjoyed it. It seems that you can cook the noo­dles ahead or not, with­out a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence. If you do cook them ahead, how­ever, be sure to cook your tomato sauce down plenty so there’s not too much juice, since the cooked noo­dles won’t absorb as much liquid.

Super-cheesy Lasagne
(served 6! but you’ll serve more)

12 sheets lasagne noo­dles
1 1/2 pounds tra­di­tional Eng­lish sausage
3 tbsps olive oil
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
3 soup-size cans whole toma­toes
2 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
250 grams each: mas­car­pone, ricotta, grated ched­dar
3 balls moz­zarella, grated
1 cup grated parmesan

In a large skil­let, stir fry the gar­lic and onion in the olive oil until soft. Add the sausage and cook thor­oughly. Then, hold­ing each can over the skil­let, lift out the toma­toes in your hands and crush into the skil­let. Add the juice. Add the sea­son­ing and stir thor­oughly and cook down. Mean­while, spray a 9x13 glass dish with non­stick spray (a must!) and cover the bot­tom with noo­dles. Mix the mas­car­pone with the ricotta and ched­dar. Spread about a third of the mix­ture over the noo­dles, and then spread over a third of the tomato sauce and half the parme­san and half the ched­dar. Keep lay­er­ing noo­dles and sauce and cheese, end­ing with noo­dles. Top with the rest of the grated ched­dar and parme­san and bake for 45 min­utes in a slow-ish oven, per­haps 350 degrees.

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

Well, it’s a typ­i­cal grey Eng­lish day and my kitchen is filled with the smells of turkey soup, from the enor­mous Thanks­giv­ing bird. Such a twice-a-year aroma, don’t you think? Do you ever cook turkey not on Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas? Nei­ther do I. It will make a per­fect first course tonight at din­ner. Then per­haps to watch an episode of lat­est Eng­lish tele­vi­sion obses­sion? A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie is side-splitting in a com­pletely British way, and such a funny look back at 20 years ago in British com­edy, some­where between Monty Python and… what? I sup­pose there isn’t an equiv­a­lent now, but we do adore QI and “Have I Got News For You.” Last week QI had the con­tes­tants try­ing to iden­tify a pho­to­graph of an island. One answer was “The Island of Inevitable but Reluc­tant Homo­sex­u­al­ity: a school trip gone hor­ri­bly wrong,” which led Stephen Fry to quip, “‘Lord of the Undone Flies,’ was it?” I’m hop­ing these jokes are too sub­tle to get me in trou­ble with any child-safety monitors!

We’re off to this lunch with, doubt­less, a much savvier mum than me. I plan to lis­ten and learn. And then col­lapse with turkey soup and a pony pen­cil case.

Well, as much fun as we had on Thanks­giv­ing (more on that later), my diges­tion is object­ing. So it’s back to the alkaline/acid aware­ness diet for me. Con­se­quently, I had an amaz­ingly var­ied lot of foods in the bag on my shoul­der walk­ing back from the farmer’s mar­ket this morn­ing. I suc­cumbed hap­pily to the prod­ucts of a new farm in the place, Fac­ing Heaven, who make inno­v­a­tive and deli­cious sal­sas and pestos. Jeremy Green, the pro­pri­etor, has a run­ning pat­ter of knowl­edge­able and seduc­tive infor­ma­tion that makes it impos­si­ble not to take advan­tage of the 4-for-a-tenner offer. I came away with a beet­root and black bean salsa, rich with olive oil and lime juice, and a spicy harissa that Jeremy advised cut­ting with yogurt (which I hap­pily did, with buf­falo yogurt from Alham Wood Cheeses, sim­ply deli­cious), as well as a red pep­per pesto and a proper basil pesto made, he assured me, from really spe­cial basil and an Eng­lish parme­san (!) from Sus­sex. Who knew? These choices spread in a nice organic Ital­ian bread, along with a goats cheese with herbs and chill­ies from Rowan Tree Goat Farm, and a lovely cucum­ber from Sun­ny­fields, made a very nice lunch indeed.

Any­way. The run-up to Thanks­giv­ing this year included a bizarre celebrity sight­ing (a dou­ble bill!) at Apos­tro­phe in Grosvenor Street with my pal Dalia and her adorable sis­ter Layla. First sighted: one of the blonde twins who so dis­ap­point­ingly didn’t win “The Restau­rant” with Ray­mond Blanc, and then, dis­tress­ingly, David Gest! Strangely he looked more inter­ested in us than we were in him, and cer­tainly his cologne was off-putting and enough to make me even more nau­se­ated than I already was by my not-decaf latte. I just can’t do caffeine.

Well, Thanks­giv­ing itself was lovely. I had every­thing com­pletely under con­trol until… I didn’t. Partly my chaotic sit­u­a­tion was due to the fact that the school Book Fair took place the very after­noon. Thanks­giv­ing gets no respect here, so I wasn’t sur­prised at the dou­ble book­ing, and noth­ing could make me miss the Book Fair. I love help­ing the lit­tle sprouts choose books and dol­ing out secret pounds and pence to sup­ple­ment the parental limit (strictly for­bid­den, that, but too bad). I had lunch in the cafe­te­ria at school with the librar­ian, Mrs Palmer, and Adam (who I made fast friends with last year) and Nicola, the two book elves from Daunt Books who pro­vide the mer­chan­dise. They are just about my favorite com­mer­cial (ish) estab­lish­ment in Lon­don, com­pletely quirky, unpre­dictable and jus­ti­fi­ably proud of their shop.

Per­fect slice of Thanks­giv­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Eng­lish peo­ple: “So Kris­ten, is there any par­tic­u­lar story that is asso­ci­ated with the first Thanks­giv­ing?” “Well, of course, there’s the story of Miles Stan­dish, who loved Priscilla Mullins only he was too uncer­tain of him­self to tell her so. So he enlisted the help of his friend John Alden, who unfor­tu­nately for Miles also loved Priscilla. Halfway through his proxy pro­posal, John came to his senses and spoke for him­self, and of course it turned out Priscilla loved him too, so John won the day,” I explained. Mrs Palmer laughed slightly and said, “What a typ­i­cal Amer­i­can story.” “Why? What would an Eng­lish­man have done?” I asked in amuse­ment. Adam said promptly, “He would have hemmed and hawed and walked away leav­ing the woman he loved for some­one else. The sort of com­mit­ment and energy that made this coun­try great.” We all laughed, but I did think it a funny com­men­tary on the Eng­lish per­cep­tion of Amer­i­cans: just barge in, cheat and come away with the prize. Unfor­tu­nate, but prob­a­bly not so far off the mark as we’d like to think. Then there are those of us who are per­fectly proud of that sort of reputation!

I also learned some­thing, that after­noon, about the British spirit of friend­ship. Last year, my first with the Book Fair, Mrs Palmer and Adam were very nice to me. Very appre­cia­tive that I was there to take money, give advice, field mul­ti­pli­ca­tion queries from girls, etc. They were very polite, and said thank you, and I had a lovely time and came away very happy that I’d been there and that they were so pleas­ant and made me feel at home. How­ever. After­noon Num­ber Two together had a very dif­fer­ent feel. Adam actu­ally said, “Can I be com­pletely indis­creet and say how much nicer it is this year with­out that witchy Eng­lish teacher?” I love it! That teacher was a beast to Avery, so I told him so. And Mrs Palmer was lovely and let me hide behind the desk when the one mother I can­not abide came in and clearly wanted to chat.

By the end of the after­noon, after we had dealt with all 200 girls and their needs, and I was ready to go, both Mrs Palmer and Adam said the very same thank you they’d said last year, but then they each added, “Really. Thank you.” And I recog­nised that there is a First Encounter British level of polite­ness and cour­tesy, and it can look to an out­sider who wants to fit in as a ges­ture of friend­ship. But the Sec­ond Encounter is a dif­fer­ent thing alto­gether. It’s as if by being there a sec­ond time, you’ve estab­lished your­self as a real per­son, like order­ing chicken feet in a Chi­nese restau­rant. It’s the begin­ning of a real friend­ship, not just per­fect polite­ness. Like the French mov­ing from “vous” to “tu,” only that takes even longer. It’s only Amer­i­cans, I think, who have no such bound­ary, no line to cross before you are treated dif­fer­ently. I still have to process how I feel about it all. But mostly, at the Book Fair, I was flat­tered beyond belief.

Book Fair chaos over, I took up the four girls in my charge: Avery, Anna, Ellie and Sophia, and grabbed a taxi for home. They made a stab at set­ting up the pony jumps in the gar­den and play­ing for a bit, but this served only to make the sun set even faster than it nor­mally does, and mostly what they accom­plished was to track an enor­mous trail of muddy leaves through my bed­room and up the stairs. Then they did their home­work while I sup­plied them with pop­corn. “And apples!” Anna chor­tled. “That’s what we had on our very first play­date, and now it’s a tra­di­tion!” A fine one. Still, things seemed under con­trol. I strained the turkey cook­ing juices and made a gor­geous gravy. I boiled the pota­toes, set the table, counted out lovely linen nap­kins, moved the kitchen table to the liv­ing room for the chil­dren, began sautee­ing the brus­sels sprouts in sesame oil with pine nuts and soy sauce. No prob­lem. At 5 o’clock I pan­icked that there wasn’t enough food and sent John out for a nice gam­mon joint which was actu­ally lovely and a nice addi­tion to the turkey. But not enough food? Ha!

I even had poured a glass of wine and brushed my hair! Set the car­rots to sim­mer­ing in but­ter and brown sugar. Well done! Then, the door­bell rang and life was never the same. Becky had brought, bless her, at least as many dishes as I had going myself! And all everyone’s favorite things! Sweet pota­toes with marsh­mal­lows, sweet pota­toes with a crunchy pecan crust. Cheesey grated pota­toes. A choco­late pie, a chess pie. And the most glo­ri­ous cheese straws, just for me because I have no sweet tooth. The door­bell con­tin­ued to ring as we searched fran­ti­cally for hor­i­zon­tal real estate. Find­ing none, we started shov­ing things under tables and between bot­tles, just to get some space! Then we needed room for both our fam­i­lies’ cher­ished dress­ing recipes. And it was time to mash the pota­toes! Drinks, any­one? The door­bell rang again. Our friend Lau­rie and his wife Linda, with gor­geous flow­ers and Arma­gnac. Our friend Andrew and his wife Laura who is a high-up at Burberry, bear­ing Burberry gifts! My friend Susan, Sophia’s mum, with wine, and gor­geous pump­kin pies requir­ing yet more flat sur­faces. sob. John’s friend Stephanie who pro­vided a refresh­ing single-person air of relax­ation: no cook­ing, no chil­dren, no wor­ries about “school nights,” etc.

But finally I just threw cau­tion to the winds and insisted we all eat, if only to empty out the kitchen of all its lovely peo­ple. To sit hap­pily for a cou­ple of hours at the long din­ing room table with can­dles and the dar­ling paper autumn leaves my mother in law sent me (all right, she sent them to Avery, but I appro­pri­ated them for my table). And just to eat and enjoy con­ver­sa­tion! Andrew is an amaz­ing racon­teur, clever, witty, and Laura clearly grooves to her role as straight man, as well as source of a lot of appre­cia­tive laugh­ter. Lau­rie and Linda, as the only Eng­lish guests, seemed to get into the spirit of Com­pet­i­tive Eat­ing,” and we all had to be rolled away from the table. The evening was late, but Avery tum­bled into bed in time to get a decent-ish sleep for Fri­day prac­tice exams at school. I made a res­o­lu­tion: the next big party I need some­one to help me in the kitchen just to stay a step ahead of, or at least in step with, the con­stant flow of dirty dishes and cut­lery. I just don’t have enough sup­plies to give every­one a fresh plate and fork, etc., for 15 peo­ple. Just don’t. So next year I’m pic­tur­ing some happy kitchen elf. I’m tak­ing all offers under advise­ment! Unlim­ited turkey of course.

As it was, it took me until this morn­ing, Sun­day, to have the kitchen fully back to nor­mal and the din­ing room table all cleared again. Sigh! It’s the one hol­i­day, too, that makes me home­sick, because what you’re accus­tomed to on Thanks­giv­ing is fam­ily, LOTS of fam­ily. What the day is here is basi­cally a really nice din­ner party, albeit with tra­di­tional foods, and also with a lit­tle thread of resent­ment that your child’s been in school all day and will have to go the next day too. But it was great to intro­duce new peo­ple to each other, and nobody got hurt. And to have had a sec­ond year with true friends, as well, is com­pletely lovely.

Time to col­lect Avery at the barn this grey Sun­day late after­noon. I’ll leave you with the sim­plest hors d’oeuvre idea in the world, and you will be pop­u­lar beyond your wildest dreams with your guests. And when you drop the extra two pounds of them off with your school sec­re­tary the next morn­ing, com­plete with a note that says, “For the staff,” you’ll make a whole other group of peo­ple very happy. Happy Thanksgiving!

Mixed Nuts with Rose­mary and Brown Sugar
(serves a LOT)

1 kilo mixed roasted salted nuts (cashews a MUST)
a stick (or half a cup) but­ter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp fresh rose­mary, chopped very fine, or 1 1/2 tsp dried rose­mary
dash cayenne pep­per, to taste

Melt the but­ter in a heavy large saucepan and add brown sugar. Stir until the brown sugar melts, but don’t expect it to emul­sify with the but­ter, because it won’t. You’ll have a nice sludge of melted sugar in the cen­ter sur­rounded by a but­ter slick, like a sunken oil tanker of the finest variety.

Add the nuts and stir thor­oughly, then sprin­kle with the rose­mary and cayenne and stir thor­oughly again. Remove from heat and let sit for awhile to cool off. Just before serv­ing, toss thor­oughly again because some sugar will stick to the bot­tom. These can be kept in a ziplock bag for a few days, but my advice is: indulge the temp­ta­tion only once! Then be a good girl and give them away.

Well, after a lovely cosy evening with the girls tucked up with hot water bot­tles, a chill air with­out and Cal­va­dos and Rebecca within, we all slept like babes and woke to a gor­geous, blue-sky day (at first, although later the winds swept up some clouds). I awoke to find all chil­dren and John off on a walk, so I fol­lowed suit and took the cam­era. Through the lovely old town of Stogursey (“Stoke de Courcy”, the church notes informed me, some old fam­ily of de Courcy hav­ing founded the vil­lage in 14-something). A change­able, typ­i­cally Eng­lish sky of grey, blink­ing blue, scud­ding clouds, this moment a ter­ri­bly threat­en­ing black bank against the house, the next a cloud­less expanse, promis­ing a per­fect day.

Home and I had no sooner brewed a cup of tea than the kitchen was over­run by a band of starv­ing girls, even though they’d already had a first break­fast of waf­fles and maple syrup. By the next half hour they had all con­sumed their weight on fried eggs, toasted bagels, cream cheese, goats cheese, smoked trout, smoked salmon and straw­ber­ries. It must have been SOME early walk.

After that we were hot on the trail of the Holy Birth­day Grail: Exmoor Ponies. Now if life has taught me any­thing, it has been to over-prepare. So I had researched the Exmoor Pony Cen­tre, the res­cue arm of these wild species, run­ning about on the moors. This way, even if we ended up not track­ing (I didn’t say “stalk­ing”) ponies in the open, at least we’d see them in semi-captivity. And after some inter­est­ing adven­tures with the Sat­Nav we’ve chris­tened Davina (“wait, Davina, we can’t ALWAYS be one mile away from our des­ti­na­tion!”) we arrived. A lovely young employee, far too shy to be ques­tioned as to her name, showed us around and most impor­tantly intro­duced us to the ponies them­selves, hav­ing been labo­ri­ously gath­ered off the moor after their birth last sum­mer. Unbe­liev­ably fluffy, cosy and curly, they stood eat­ing their hay inter­minably while she described their liv­ing con­di­tions. I could see that, as cold, damp and lonely as this girl appeared, any of our three chil­dren would have traded their lives for hers in an instant.

From there we repaired to the moor itself where we tried, unsuc­cess­fully, to find some ponies in the wild, just on their own. I had found a mes­sage online earnestly ask­ing peo­ple to stop leav­ing treats on a cer­tain spot, as it was becom­ing a tar­get for “overly aggres­sive ponies,” and had sheep­ishly ear­marked this spot as our des­ti­na­tion (really, the car­rots in John’s pocket were for… us!). No go. As it tran­spired, the car­rots WERE for us, as we saw nary a pony in the long windy walk we under­took. But it was LOVELY, the scrubby under­brush stud­ded with yel­low flow­ers and the occa­sional clear­ing where it was obvi­ous a pony or two had cleared the grass. Darn. No ponies.

We stopped off in the really cute town of Dul­ver­ton for a lunch at the Court­yard Cafe, and then the girls were off to the local needle­work shop to find a project to keep them occu­pied should the next day prove rainy (it was). I vis­ited the local butcher for mince for spaghetti and meat­balls, and then we were off home again, to read, play cards, and most impor­tantly write in the Land­mark Trust Log­book, where so many sto­ries, true and tall, are writ­ten by all guests about every prop­erty they own. I con­fess to hav­ing pro­duced some extremely unlikely tales in logs I have writ­ten (a secret pas­sage under the Pineap­ple House in Scot­land? don’t think so), so I was com­pletely empa­thetic with the girls’ ener­getic project to pro­duce “the best log entry ever.” Draw­ings of Fred and Gin­ger, of ponies, and a cer­tain account of a pas­sage­way under the moat ensued. Every­one happy.

Sun­day they did their home­work like good girls and worked on their needle­point, albeit cre­at­ing rather more, shall we say, lib­eral? ver­sions of the kits they had bought than the mak­ers intended. “I have SO MUCH respect for Indi­ana Nona now!” Avery said, her room boast­ing a sam­pler made by my mother. Me too! The rain came and went, and at one point we took a walk to what turned out to be the largest known mud stream and they JUMPED. As you can imag­ine, they have never been mud­dier. Awash with mud, straight into their boots and all through their jeans. The per­fect relax­ation for hard-working ten and eleven year olds. Now and then the girls repaired to the cas­tle keep to run pony games, feed the geese, what­ever else took their fancy. Left­over mac­a­roni and cheese for lunch, hor­rid pack­ing, and then it was, sadly, time to take our leave of the glo­ri­ous place.

Well, since then it’s been laun­dry, laun­dry, laundry.

And Thanks­giv­ing prep! Lest it be feared that we expa­tri­ots have for­got­ten our roots, I must assure that I spent my entire late after­noon shred­ding brus­sels sprouts, peel­ing and slic­ing car­rots, sim­mer­ing mush­rooms, gar­lic, fresh sage, onions and cel­ery for stuff­ing. And cran­berry sauce! And John tore out the insides of count­less loaves of Ital­ian bread for the stuff­ing. Tomor­row is the day. Gob­ble, gob­ble, every­one. We miss you terribly.

Well, the week before Avery’s birth­day adven­ture was com­pletely mad. We had no sooner seen off John’s sis­ter Cathy than it was onto one of the busiest weeks I’ve ever had. Did I accom­plish any­thing? Not really, but all my friend­ships are intact, not to men­tion my sam­pling nearly every place to get cof­fee or lunch within a mile of my house. Cof­fee with Dalia before writ­ing class (she couldn’t even make class but drove across town for cof­fee together, a true friend), cof­fee and intense life con­ver­sa­tion at the Royal Insti­tute of British Archi­tects across from school (an unex­pect­edly nice place to go on a frosty morn­ing, with a superb book­shop) with Becky, then lunch at The Nat­ural Kitchen with Susan (a few com­plaints: they sim­ply can­not get their wait staff in line, nei­ther of the two spe­cials was actu­ally avail­able, but the orange cake alone was worth a visit), then early-morning tea with my dear friend Lara. It’s hard to believe that we have met only a cou­ple of times, hav­ing encoun­tered each other’s blogs last year. Some­how our friend­ship has blos­somed in emails so that the few times we actu­ally see each other, we feel as if a tremen­dous amount has been said. A lovely time, at Pain Quo­ti­dien in the high street, always a safe bet in the morning.

Finally, whew, lunch at Biben­dum Oys­ter Bar with a new friend called Gigi, a lively New Yorker who left a com­ment on my blog say­ing that she too was a for­mer pro­fes­sor liv­ing in Lon­don with a lit­tle daugh­ter! It seemed fated for us to meet. A hilar­i­ous lunch with a lot of shared rem­i­nis­cence of aca­d­e­mic life: I forced her to explain her spe­cial sub­ject of Pla­tonic phi­los­o­phy, just to dust off that dis­ser­ta­tion, but she also regaled me with sto­ries of her days writ­ing copy for the JCrew cat­a­logue (a nat­ural choice of career when one is in pos­ses­sion of a PhD from Stan­ford). “I don’t know if he was ever aware of the sub­text of what he was telling us to write,” she said, laugh­ing about the founder, “but seri­ously: under­wear in ‘stretchy cot­ton for when the action gets fast and furi­ous?’ Did he really think that would sound like he was writ­ing about… row­ing action?” Lunch was deli­cious. I always for­get between vis­its how much I love Biben­dum. Superb seared tuna with a honey dress­ing and radishes. Lovely, and so nice to make a new friend.

Wednes­day night, then, saw Avery and me with all of her Form Six at the Royal Albert Hall for an incred­i­ble evening of “Music for Youth.” Five thou­sand peo­ple squished into the Hall, most of them fam­ily mem­bers of the school­child­ren who gave the con­cert. Per­haps 20 orches­tras, bands, cham­ber groups and other assorted musi­cians, from all over Great Britain, per­form­ing their hearts out. So inspir­ing, and to think it’s the tip of the ice­berg as far as child­ish tal­ent goes. Every­thing from clas­si­cal strings to soul, to jazz and steel drums and aca­palla singing. What an event to chap­er­one! It was a total plea­sure to see the girls all in their “own clothes,” hair down, relaxed, as opposed to the level of stress and anx­i­ety they’ve been liv­ing under with all this crazy exam prep. Def­i­nitely book your tick­ets for one of the three nights of MFY next year. At the end of the per­for­mance I had my first expe­ri­ence of “Pomp and Cir­cum­stance” and “The Land of Hope and Glory” in the great British tra­di­tion: com­plete with the rather impe­ri­al­is­tic text and every­one wav­ing British flags. A bit of a cul­ture shock to see my child singing at the top of her lungs; she cer­tainly does not know the Amer­i­can national anthem! But this tune, yes. “God Save the Queen,” no problem.

Thurs­day we all rose, I know not how, to attend the Michael­mas Fair at school. Absolute pan­de­mo­nium on all floors in both build­ings: scream­ing chil­dren of every size and shape, the Toy Tombola, the Santa’s Grotto (“Santa is somebody’s grand­fa­ther,” Becky hissed to me, “and since we don’t really know him, there are two moth­ers just hang­ing out with him”), the Cake Room (Avery was in charge of teach­ing the lit­tle tiny chil­dren to dec­o­rate some­thing or other), the Lucky Dip, you name it. Finally we repaired to the Assem­bly Hall, flung open the win­dows to get some much-needed fresh air, and under­went the Raf­fle. Mrs D absolutely bel­lowed the ticket num­bers and prizes: “A Day With Mrs M’s Chauf­feur For Christ­mas Shop­ping, Ticket 527…” I won a hideous hand­bag and hap­pily swapped it with Analee’s mother for a bot­tle of Veuve Cliquot. Whew. Home exhausted!

Finally we were at Fri­day, the long-awaited birth­day trip day. I spent the morn­ing mak­ing mac­a­roni and cheese and a lemon birth­day cake (the cake was not mem­o­rable, but it served the pur­pose). I organ­ised lit­tle White Com­pany party bags with tiny sil­ver pic­ture frames, sparklers (these were, moth­ers note, a HUGE hit for very lit­tle expense), a bis­cuit and apple juice, and a lit­tle clutch of white tulips, and it was up to school to pick them up in the rental car John got, a Mini Cooper not being quite up to the task of trans­port­ing three girls with all their STUFF.

There was a pos­i­tive fever pitch of excite­ment. Jamie, Anna and Avery set­tled down in the back­seat for the long drive, and we soon realised it would have been very wise to bring a book on tape. As it was, con­ver­sa­tion soon dwin­dled to be replaced by an ener­getic ren­di­tion of EVERY SONG they know. And they know a lot of songs. At one point Jamie asked, “Does any­one else smell… cheese?” I toyed with the idea of just let­ting her think she was hav­ing some sort of olfac­tory hal­lu­ci­na­tion, but I gave in and said, “There’s an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese sit­ting here at my feet.” For some rea­son Jamie’s ques­tion struck the other girls as com­pletely hilar­i­ous and they spent a lot of the rest of the jour­ney ask­ing at inter­vals, “Does any­one smell… cheese?”

Really quite sweet, but we were all relieved when the three-hour-ish drive was over and we arrived in the dark in Stogursey, a tiny vil­lage near Bridg­wa­ter in Som­er­set. Since it was pitch dark we had no idea how to approach the cas­tle where we were stay­ing, and even the direc­tions of the lovely house­keeper who gave us the keys weren’t much help. We inched along in the dark, and came to a body of water. “It’s the MOAT!” the girls shrieked, and John said, “I don’t know, is this it?” We stopped beside an ancient, square stone build­ing with, as far as I could see, no win­dows. A bit taken aback, I demurred, “Ooh, I don’t think so,” then John said, “I think I have to brave this water and just cross over to that road,” which elicited another shriek, “We’re going to drown in the moat!” Another few feet, across the water (which turned out in day­light to be a very shal­low stream), and sud­denly ahead of us was a blaze of light: the guard­house of the cas­tle, our destination!

There was an actual work­ing moat! And two enor­mous white birds appeared from the dark­ness. “We have swans!” John yelled. “Uh, John, those are geese,” the knowl­edge­able Anna cor­rected him. Sure enough, the cas­tle geese. The girls promptly named them Fred and Gin­ger and were devoted to them for the dura­tion of our stay.

We dragged our bags in and the girls opened every door, exclaim­ing in total delight over their cosy medieval bed­room, the enor­mous fire­place, the cross-shaped bat­tle­ment win­dows. We tucked into the mac­a­roni and cheese and red pep­pers, and then the birth­day cake. This pho­to­graph isn’t even a good one, but I couldn’t resist because of the utter hap­pi­ness of their expres­sions. It’s a cliche, but I did think: life is hard at times for every­one, and filled with pres­sure and chal­lenges and dis­ap­point­ments and fear, and to be able to give three lit­tle girls such an expe­ri­ence of togeth­er­ness, adven­ture and fun was a very sat­is­fy­ing thing.

More on Som­er­set soon. I must buckle down now, though, to an enor­mous gro­cery shop. This lovely coun­try may not observe Thanks­giv­ing, but that doesn’t mean that twelve peo­ple aren’t com­ing to my house on Thurs­day for turkey. So I have my work cut out.

Much more tomor­row (or the next day, as some­thing reminds me that I promised a friend to help her cater some enor­mous polit­i­cal event tomor­row?!). Since I wrote last I’ve had count­less teas, cof­fees and lunches with blog­wor­thy friends, we’ve been to an amaz­ing con­cert at Royal Albert Hall, sur­vived Michael­mas Fair, and of course…

We have had a fab­u­lous birth­day cel­e­bra­tion week­end for Avery in Som­er­set (10th cen­tury cas­tle ruins as our venue! guarded over by a 14th cen­tury house that we actu­ally stayed in, guard­ing my first real… MOAT). The girls came, they unpacked with aban­don, they saw Exmoor ponies as you see, and they jumped in sloshy mud to the extent that their boots had to be… poured out, upside down. I have never seen such mud.

I must col­lapse. We dropped off one girl, then Avery and me, I rushed to bake chicken, steam broc­coli, soak some beets in bal­samic vine­gar, mash pota­toes, and DIN­NER once Avery was scraped clean-ish in her bath. Now we’re all wilt­ing. But what a week­end. I wish we could keep Anna and Jamie, her intre­pid girl­friends, forever.

I do know now where the poppy ref­er­ence comes from, thanks to you at this web­site, but I still do not know why we observe the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Can some­one help? Is it the ori­gins of the phrase “the eleventh hour,” as in, “the last pos­si­ble hour one could have done some­thing to help?” I think it must be.

What I know is that I buy a poppy, and always have done since liv­ing in Eng­land dur­ing our first sojourn here or dur­ing this, and I wear it, think­ing that I never had a rel­a­tive who sac­ri­ficed a life dur­ing a war, not for cow­ardice (far from it, I’m sure, think­ing of some of my brave and hot­headed young ances­tors!) but for birth dates and edu­ca­tion and dis­abil­ity… but I do always think of it. Thank you. Not just for the British, but for the Amer­i­cans and every­one else. Thank you, how­ever com­pli­cated things after YOU things may become.

Just one of the won­der­ful ques­tions our guide yes­ter­day at the Globe The­atre tells us gets asked dur­ing his tours! Let’s see, what else? “Who painted the sky?” Reminds me of the Amer­i­can tourist at Wind­sor Cas­tle who, watch­ing yet another air­plane cross the sky, asked a guide “why the Queen built the cas­tle so close to Heathrow?” Dear me. One wor­ries a bit.

It’s shame­ful that we’ve lived her for close to two years and it took an out-of-town vis­i­tor to get us to the Globe. But that’s often the way, isn’t it? I never vis­ited Ellis Island until my par­ents came to visit, nor the Empire State Build­ing or other New York attrac­tions. Thank good­ness for John’s sis­ter Cathy who arrived yes­ter­day for a quixotic, whirl­wind 24-hour stay to gain, what else, fre­quent flyer miles! And to see her fam­ily, of course.

The evening before, I con­fess, I felt a bit down, not to say bored with what I had been up to all week, namely laun­dry, cook­ing, organ­is­ing the house includ­ing dis­man­tling piles of books from all the place and shov­ing them into book­shelves, get­ting a royal soak­ing on Thurs­day on the way to Avery’s rid­ing les­son, watch­ing her skate, the usual. Dull! Repet­i­tive! Really bor­ing. Finally, Fri­day saw a cel­e­bra­tory birth­day lunch with my dear friend Becky and a cou­ple of her friends (among them Kristin from the fab­u­lous Maze birth­day lunch!), which helped my mood tremen­dously. What would one do with­out girl­friends? Just to have peo­ple to talk to about chil­dren, hus­bands, travel, future plans, to bounce ideas off and learn from. We had a won­der­ful time, at L’Entrecote in Maryle­bone Lane. It’s such a funny restau­rant (Becky’s all-time favorite): there is no choice on the menu, unless you include how well-cooked your steak is. It’s green salad with wal­nuts, rump steak, with a “secret sauce” (a bit of a cur­ried mus­tardy vinai­grett?), and French fries. That’s it! Plus adorable lit­tle French wait­resses in sort of French-farce black dresses with white ruffly aprons. Like lunch with girl­friends, the place is com­fort itself. And they let us sit over the bill and chat, even though the place was quite full. Happy Birth­day, Becky.

Some­how, then, I got down again between lunch and school pickup, a mood not notice­ably enhanced by the whingey, moan­ing, over­whelmed lump of human­ity that is my child by Fri­day after­noon. Noth­ing suits her! Hun­gry, cold, tired, and tired of being asked, “Where is your…” The evening before she had man­aged to mis­place no fewer than the fol­low­ing items: eye­glasses, vio­lin, win­ter coat. Grrr! In the mood she was in, noth­ing is good news. Even a skat­ing les­son with her beloved friend Jamie is but a brief chink of blue in the cloudy sky of her exis­tence. Rats.

But by Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and John’s sister’s arrival, I was ready for a change of pace, big time. And far from being jet­lagged and unen­er­getic, Cathy was rar­ing to go. We bun­dled up and jumped in the Mini and top-down (Novem­ber wind notwith­stand­ing) we were off to the Globe.

First we needed lunch, and I was glad I had done a bit of research on where to go. There’s only one real choice: The Swan at the Globe, and it was lovely, lovely, lovely! Before it makes you as crazy as it made me, the music play­ing on their web­site is “Comp­tine d’un autre ete,” from the sound­track of Amelie. How’s this for cus­tomer ser­vice: I was dri­ven so crazy by this music that I emailed the restau­rant, and some­one amaz­ing called Joanne in man­age­ment actu­ally replied and sent a file of the song. How crazy help­ful is that? But I digress.

The food was so sim­ple, and so good, that I want to go back and have more things imme­di­ately. Cathy is a strict veg­e­tar­ian and we were very pleased to see that among the starters there was a veg­e­tar­ian but­ter­nut squash soup, and a beet­root, cured salmon and fen­nel salad. But in the end she suc­cumbed to goat’s cheese Welling­ton with fig puree, and loved it. I had duck ter­rine (with a glo­ri­ous vein of pure foie gras run­ning through it), and John, being a big­ger boy, had a main course of hal­ibut steak with a caper mous­se­line and one of those clever lat­ticed stacks of chips so pop­u­lar these days. Avery ordered a “young din­ers” por­tion (so respect­ful, that phrase!) of mac­a­roni cheese and not only was it del­i­cate, per­fectly fla­vored and nicely browned, but HUGE! We all tucked in. All in all, a good enough rea­son to cross the river even if you’re not inter­ested in Shake­speare. But we were.

The museum exhi­bi­tion is very absorb­ing and could eas­ily have pro­vided food for though for over the amount of time we had before the tour, so allow at least 45 min­utes. And our tour guide! Totally crush-worthy, was David. So many funny sto­ries, ges­tures of his ele­gant actor’s hands (must be, we decided), evoca­tive Eng­lish school­boy floppy hair and an immac­u­late trench­coat, he owned the Globe with his sto­ries and energy. We were all imme­di­ately inspired to see a play there, although the sea­son is regret­tably short (due to its open roof, hence the joke about “who painted the sky”), run­ning only from May-October, and since our sum­mers aren’t spent in Lon­don, we’re a bit lim­ited. But it would be sub­lime. I think it’s a mir­a­cle that an Amer­i­can actor was moti­vated to recon­struct it, that the archi­tects were wise enough to leave it sim­ple, and beau­ti­fully pared-down.

From the Globe, John peeled off to take Avery to act­ing (newly moti­vated, of course!) and Cathy and I hit the under­ground for a visit to Char­ing Cross Road, since she’s a bib­lio­phile after my own heart. Sadly, how­ever, the extra­or­di­nar­ily crummy exchange rate was a deter­rent although she did suc­cumb to a nice vol­ume of Joseph Conrad.

After a brief rest, we were off to din­ner at one of our old, old favorite stomp­ing grounds from our new­ly­wed days in the early 90s, Star of India in South Kens­ing­ton. Family-owned since 1954, it was won­der­ful 40 years later, but is even more won­der­ful now hav­ing been recently refur­bished in a min­i­mal­ist style (but retain­ing the beloved fres­coed ceil­ing, thank you!) and the food has gone from family-homey to light and sophis­ti­cated. The saag paneer I always doted on is still pleas­ing, although Avery missed the old chunks of cheese (now float­ing ten­drils), and I did miss com­fort­able chana masala, my favorite chick­pea dish, but per­haps it’s not cool any­more. But the green-curry chicken dish (I can­not remem­ber its name! but yogurty and with a slight kick) was divine, and Cathy had an aubergine dish that I did not sam­ple, but which John said was good. I just dived in with my usual bossy nature in a restau­rant where we’re shar­ing, and ordered lots of dif­fer­ent things, and we were com­pletely happy. Excel­lent cucum­ber raitha, really first-rate, and the best pop­pad­ums in Lon­don, I’m sure.

We had such a happy, com­fort­able time. Cathy is one of those peo­ple whose qual­ity of lis­ten­ing makes you feel much more inter­est­ing than you know you are: she is com­pletely focused on what you’re say­ing, com­pletely sin­cere, and asks thought-provoking, con­cen­trated ques­tions, all over­laid with a bub­bling laugh and warmth that makes her the per­fect sister-in-law, and aunt. She treats Avery in that way that you’d think comes nat­u­rally to peo­ple but doesn’t that often: like a real per­son whose opin­ions are to be taken seri­ously. Not in an affected or pre­cious way, but with gen­uine inter­est and respect. And she stayed awake through din­ner! No jet lag gets in the way of her whole­hearted appre­ci­a­tion of life.

This morn­ing, sadly, she was off early to the air­port. And our ordi­nary lives, infused briefly with energy and new things, set­tled back down to… nor­mal. Safe trav­els, Cathy.

Ask a child what she wants to do for her birth­day and you may well be sur­prised by the answer. Zoo? A big party with a gooey cake? No, my child wanted to go to York to visit the Viking archae­o­log­i­cal dig. Hmm. So we did.

It’s a lovely his­toric town with some­what less than its fair share of chains, mean­ing it’s retained more of its par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter than I would have expected, given its promi­nence as a tourist des­ti­na­tion. I’m always thrilled at a paucity of Star­bucks, so to find fewer of other seem­ingly uni­ver­sal stores as well (Mon­soon, River Island, all the givens of a British high street) was a relief. Really beau­ti­ful old streets, the River Ouse a glo­ri­ous sun­speck­led shin­ing rib­bon, and rais­ing a sort of pro­tec­tive pater­nal spire over all, the com­pletely gor­geous York Min­ster Cathe­dral.

The train ride was just lovely, through the flat­test coun­try­side I have ever seen in Eng­land (since my expe­ri­ences have typ­i­cally taken me to hilly Devon, the Cotswolds and such), one picture-postcard farm­house after another, on a day shot through with both sun­shine and golden cloud. We played “Go Fish,” Avery taught Anna to play Soli­taire, and I read a com­pletely junk-food but enter­tain­ing book called “Me and Mr Darcy,” in which a New York bookshop-manager’s love life on a Jane Austen tour mim­ics Eliz­a­beth Bennet’s rela­tion­ship with Mr Darcy, but of course only the reader can see it until the end. I amused myself in a com­pletely obnox­ious way by flag­ging all the lit­tle instances where the narrator’s voice (meant to be Amer­i­can) gives her­self away as reflect­ing her Eng­lish author, Alexan­dra Pot­ter. Only in the UK is it “the” menopause, with hot “flushes” instead of “flashes.” But you’ll love it. Clever, a really fast and charm­ing read.

First stop was, believe it or not, Pizza Hut, for the worst lunch ever (the girls were in heaven) and then off to the Jorvik Cen­tre, where a dis­cov­ery of a Viking town under­ground from 966 has been made into a truly… dis­gust­ing dis­play! Why on earth was this my daughter’s choice of a birth­day treat? You and your fel­low tourists are bun­dled into a room and sat down in front of a video dis­play that, accom­pa­nied by lots of bench-shaking from where you sit, shows the way cloth­ing changed from 966 to the present day, back­wards. Does that make any sense at all? Then just as you’re feel­ing rather nau­se­ated and dizzy, you’re herded into plas­tic cable cars, a bit like ski lifts only they move hor­i­zon­tally instead of up, and dri­ven through a recon­structed town from the 10th cen­tury. Peo­pled by creepy bulky fig­ures who occa­sion­ally raised a hand hold­ing a tool or piece of crockery.

There were stuffed dead ani­mals bit­ing each other, sim­ply grue­some and not at all child-friendly scenes of Taxi­dermy May­hem: dogs rip­ping each other’s bloody feet off and other dogs with bared teeth about to cap­ture a ter­ri­fied cat. What about this edi­fies one as to life in the 10th cen­tury? I could not say. And, I am not mak­ing this up, it’s com­plete with SMELLS. All bad. First there’s the fish­mon­ger, then the hide-tanner, then the met­al­worker, then, believe it or not, an out­house com­plete with a cur­rent cus­tomer, and I will not, in the inter­ests of del­i­cacy, describe for you here the sound effects. Suf­fice to say, there ARE sound effects. Just awful.

There was one fas­ci­nat­ing bit where the exca­va­tors had sim­ply left the wall they found intact, and another com­plete skele­ton left in the ground. Those bits made me wish the archae­ol­o­gists (or more like the money-hungry attrac­tion cre­ators who came after them) had just exca­vated every­thing, cov­ered it with plex­i­glas, and let vis­i­tors walk around in clean-aired silence. I know I can be a cur­mud­geon about what I feel are overly interfered-with arte­facts from cen­turies gone by, and I nearly always feel that less, in this sit­u­a­tions, is more. But in the case of Jorvik, I think I might advise that you skip the Time Machine and move directly, if the pow­ers that be will let you, to the rooms of arte­facts them­selves which are really stun­ning in their simplicity.

The sight of tiny, per­fectly pre­served coins and jew­elry is very affect­ing, and even the World’s Largest Pre­served Piece of Poo didn’t bother me ter­ri­bly, as it didn’t get up and dance, or give off lit­tle puffs of steam to imply smell, as the old Lon­don pave­ment signs used to: “Do Not Foul the Foot­path,” com­plete with a pic­ture of a really naughty-looking dog and a pile of feces with lit­tle wavy lines float­ing upwards. What ever hap­pened to all those signs? They were here in 1992, but they seem to have dis­ap­peared. I’m pretty sure the statute of lim­i­ta­tions is up, so I’ll tell you: my sis­ter stole one in the dark of night to take back to Amer­ica with her, she was that taken with them. But I digress.

The girls were com­pletely thrilled with the gift shop, com­ing away with feather quills and bot­tles of ink and a set of play­ing cards with scenes of York on them. Off we went along the river to the Cathe­dral itself, and the bells were peal­ing the three-quarters hour when we got there, just stun­ning. The stained glass just as glo­ri­ous as you’ve ever read about, and the dec­o­rated ceil­ing made acces­si­ble by a stand with a mir­ror on it, so you can, dizzy­ingly, look into the mir­ror and be trans­ported hun­dreds of feet in the air. A man on an old upright piano out­side the cathe­dral was play­ing var­i­ous show­tunes, rag­time, Christ­mas car­ols, you name it, and we had another lovely foray into the quasi-Cathedral gift shop across the way and bought Christ­mas orna­ments and music. But I think the high­light of our little-girl shop­ping after­noon was a two-way tie: John Bull Con­fec­tion­ers (since 1911), and Stonegate Teddy Bears. The for­mer is a truly charm­ing old-fashioned candy and bis­cuit shop, where I bought what turned out to be the best York­shire bis­cuits I have ever had: not too sweet, crunchy, full-flavoured.

And the girls bought some­thing called York­shire Rock, which solved a mys­tery for me. John rec­om­mended a book for me that’s turned out to be com­pletely addic­tive bed­time read­ing. It’s Eat­ing for Eng­land, by everyone’s favourite Nigel Slater, and is noth­ing more or less than a sequence of mus­ing lit­tle para­graphs about typ­i­cal, iconic, some­times dis­ap­pear­ing tra­di­tional Eng­lish foods. And the cover shows piles of long hard candy with all dif­fer­ent phrases on the bot­toms, includ­ing in the cen­tre, one say­ing “Eat­ing for Eng­land.” It turns out, with a lit­tle assid­u­ous googling, that one can order “rock” to say any­thing one would like! The mind bog­gles, doesn’t it?

Well, let’s see, has any­thing else inter­est­ing been going on besides a visit to York? Well, we came home to have Anna sleep over, and then in the morn­ing it was, as you see, onto enjoy­ing Avery’s birth­day present from us: mini-jumps for the gar­den! They were dressed to go to the sta­ble any­way, and it was a beau­ti­ful blue-sky day, so they jumped to their hearts’ con­tent. Tacy con­sented to be taken over the jumps pre­cisely ONCE, after which we were all throughly scratched and spat on and she dis­ap­peared with tail held high. And as I pre­dicted, it was the pas­sage of but a few hours before the poles were in the hands of our lit­tle neigh­bor boys and being used as swords. As far as I can see, any­thing longer than it is wide is, far from Sig­mund Freud’s analy­sis, a sword.

Oh, I’ve been read­ing a lot, and it occurred to me that the sea­son of fran­tic gift-giving is approach­ing, so I thought I’d give you a cou­ple of very Eng­lish rec­om­men­da­tions. Remem­ber “Two Fat Ladies”, the won­der­ful cook­ing pro­gramme that sort of ush­ered in all other won­der­ful (and not so) cook­ing pro­grammes? Well, the sur­viv­ing fat lady Clarissa Dick­son Wright (and who knew the title comes from a bingo call indi­cat­ing 88? I didn’t) has writ­ten her mem­oirs, and while it isn’t par­tic­u­larly felic­i­tous in its writ­ing style, the sheer fas­ci­na­tion of her life makes it a worth­while read. It’s called “Spilling the Beans,” and any­one who’s inter­ested in British life over the last half-century or so will find some­thing of inter­est, espe­cially the his­tory of British food pro­duc­tion, and thorny issues of hunt­ing and cours­ing. And sur­viv­ing a child­hood of abuse and an adult­hood of alco­holism, if it comes to that (not so Christmas-cheery, that bit, but still fascinating).

Or how about the new biog­ra­phy of Agatha Christie? Agatha Christie, An Eng­lish Mys­tery, by Laura Thomp­son, is a painstak­ingly researched and really beau­ti­fully writ­ten por­trait of the author, with lots of atten­tion to her famous dis­ap­pear­ance. My only beef is (as a for­mer his­to­rian myself) the author’s insis­tence on a one-to-one rela­tion­ship between Christie’s life and the events in her nov­els. I’ve always been a lit­tle wary of that ten­dency among biog­ra­phers or even tan­gen­tial ana­lysts (as I was of artists) of cre­ative peo­ple. It always seemed to me a bit dan­ger­ous to imag­ine that the only fod­der an artist of any kind had for cre­ativ­ity was his or her own life. But I quib­ble, it’s a really well-written and engag­ing book.

Then there’s the sub­limely clever “new” Lord Peter Wim­sey mys­tery, “A Pre­sump­tion of Death,” writ­ten by Jill Paton Walsh from ideas left after death by his orig­i­nal cre­ator, Dorothy L. Say­ers. As you know, I am inter­ested in (all right, obsessed with) Lord Peter and his por­trayer Edward Pether­bridge, so I was thrilled to get my hands on this World War II vil­lage mys­tery. How can a fresh new corpse in an out­house also be some­one who died weeks before in a far-off sea?

Any­one in the mood for cook­ing a really light dish that involves a fair amount of fid­dling? This is the sort of recipe I invent when I’m in the mood for putting in a good book on tape (this time The Thanks­giv­ing Day Mur­der by Lee Har­ris) and doing a lot of prep. I know this is an odd mood to get into, but I do. Avery and John both wanted more… sauce, or bind­ing of some kind, but num­ber one, I dis­agreed on light­ness prin­ci­ples, and num­ber two, it was so beau­ti­ful to look at it, just as it was. Give it a try and see what you think. The recipe involves sev­eral steps of cook­ing and set­ting aside, and at any of these stages you can help with home­work, do laun­dry, blog, rinse a lit­tle girl’s hair, etc.

And you could actu­ally do it all ahead of time, save boil­ing the spaghetti, and then assem­ble it in your large skil­let just before serv­ing, so it would be nice dou­bled for a small din­ner party of peo­ple on diets? Just thinking.

Spaghetti with Chicken, Red Pep­pers and Aspara­gus with a Goats Cheese and Fried Sage Gar­nish
(served 4)

2 tbsps but­ter
20 sage leaves
4 chicken breast fil­lets, skin­less and well trimmed
2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 red bell pep­pers, sliced
1 bunch aspara­gus, cut into tips and same-size stalk bites
1/2 white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 1/2 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 small log goats cheese
1/2 pound spaghetti
1 cup fresh grated pecorino or parmesan

Now then. In a large heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and then arrange the sage leaves in as close to a sin­gle layer as you can man­age. Fry over medium heat, watch­ing fairly care­fully that they don’t scorch, until they’re crispy, a few min­utes. Remove care­fully and place on paper tow­els. Now place the chicken breasts in the same skil­let and saute, turn­ing fre­quently. When they are NEARLY cooked through (still a bit of pink vis­i­ble in the cen­ter, which is vis­i­ble even with­out cut­ting into it), deglaze the skil­let with the white wine and chicken stock and lemon juice, and bub­ble down a bit. Don’t let the chicken get tough, and remem­ber the breasts will con­tinue to cook slightly when you take them off the heat. Remove them to a carv­ing plat­ter with a groove around the edge to catch the juice and set aside, leav­ing the sauce in the skillet.

Put your pasta water on, and when it’s boil­ing, dump in your spaghetti. Then, in a fresh skil­let, add the olive oil and stir fry the gar­lic, red pep­pers and aspara­gus. Sprin­kle on the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and toss well.

Slice the chicken breasts thin-ish and throw them and their juice into the skil­let with the sauce. Throw the pep­pers and aspara­gus into the skil­let too, and turn the heat up fairly high. Drain your cooked spaghetti and throw it in the skil­let too. Toss every­thing together with tongs until thor­oughly mixed. Then just with your hands, crum­ble the goats cheese over all and toss lightly.

Place in a pretty, shal­low serv­ing bowl and slightly crum­ble the sage leaves over top. Don’t crum­ble them too small or you will miss the fla­vor and crunch which are DIVINE. Like sage-flavoured potato chips (my child adores them). Voila! This dish is just beau­ti­ful: green, red, yel­low, white, and so GOOD for you.

Home from York for Avery’s 11th birth­day. John stayed home with a nasty fever, the kind that makes you (him) run for a cab when he’s let us go off on our own, only to be glad later on that one didn’t come and he could stay in bed and sleep it off.

I’ve spent the late evening read­ing one of those things that if you knew what you were get­ting into you wouldn’t read on your child’s birth­day, and yet some­thing you admire so much you know you’ll be order­ing many copies for every­one you know. Adam Gop­nik knows way too much about the pre­cious­ness of a New York child­hood (part of his book, A Home in New York: Through the Children’s Gate, being post Sep­tem­ber 11th). All I could do after sob­bing a bit was to creep into Avery’s room and absolutely savor the sight of her sleep­ing soundly, shoul­ders humped away from her beloved best friend Anna, who was clutch­ing a stuffed pony in her arms (a guest sleep­over object, what­ever she had brought being hid­den under the cov­ers), and echo Adam’s thoughts: just let them stay this age, let them stay lit­tle, in my house, under my wing. And know­ing it’s so far from reality.

Happy Birth­day, Avery.