It was a dream come true for Avery last night: her end-of-exams reward: a trip to the Vaude­ville The­atre in the Strand to see “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” her all-time favourite play. It all began with lis­ten­ing to a per­for­mance on tape, in the car on our way to see new­born baby Jane three years ago. I was des­per­ate for some­thing to lis­ten to on the two-hour drive, to keep my mind off the near cer­tainty that I would get lost try­ing to find the hos­pi­tal (I did), so I just grabbed the cas­settes and we were on our way. Well, it was the per­fect enter­tain­ment. I can’t even remem­ber who read it, but now I am the proud owner of the 1952 clas­sic radio record­ing star­ring John Giel­gud and Edith Evans. Can’t wait to lis­ten to that!

Any­way, since then Avery’s read the play a thou­sand times (has a copy both here in Lon­don and in our Con­necti­cut house, so she doesn’t get des­per­ate), and adores the copy of Oscar Wilde’s “Epi­grams” that she found in a dear lit­tle book­shop in West Hart­ford, near my sister’s house. Plus she made a spe­cial pil­grim­age to his house in Dublin. “It was amaz­ing!” she told one of her school inter­view­ers. “There was his house, just as if it were an ordi­nary build­ing! Only it had a blue plaque, which I love.”

So last night we ate an early (and may I say mag­nif­i­cent) din­ner of mac­a­roni and cheese (the secret is def­i­nitely two-fold, Dairylea, and stir CON­STANTLY with a whisk mind you), bangers and roasted beet­root, and off we went. Arriv­ing early, we were able to see that as usual with the sorts of plays Avery wants to go to, she’s the youngest in the audi­ence by about 30 years. And the play was LOVELY. You really must go. Pene­lope Keith of “To the Manor Born” fame was Lady Brack­nell, a gen­tler, wiser ver­sion of the char­ac­ter than Judi Dench’s por­trayal in the film. And the two young men, Jack and Alger­non, were cast a bit to sim­i­lar to one another for my taste. But Daisy Hag­gard as Gwen­do­line was quite per­fect, and the SETS! Divinely lux­u­ri­ous. Avery’s lit­tle face when her favourite lines appeared was worth the whole ticket price: “A hand­bag!” “Vic­to­ria Sta­tion: the Brighton line!” She was in absolute heaven. “This makes me all the more deter­mined to be an actress myself,” she said. Her plan now is to nob­ble her teacher gen­tly at act­ing class on Sat­ur­day and see what she needs to do next to make that ambi­tion come true.

Well, a very late night for her, and I con­fess to sleep­ing in, in a most extrav­a­gant way, this morn­ing. As penance I made one of our crazy juices (it’s the only way I’m ever going to eat Tus­can kale or swiss chard, either one, as long as they’re masked by beets, car­rots and pears) and then a really unc­tu­ous soup for lunch. I think I’ve given you this recipe before, but it bears repeat­ing on a cold Jan­u­ary day. Keep in mind: you can use ANY mush­rooms, you can use chicken, veg­etable or beef stock, you can use Madeira, brandy, cognac or cham­pagne. And you can use whole milk, cream or creme fraiche. It’s all these vari­a­tions that keep me from being at all bored with my admit­tedly lim­ited cook­ing repertoire!

Creamy Mush­room Soup
(serves two as a main course)

2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
1 white or yel­low onion, sliced
1 lb mush­rooms (I used chest­nut today)
1 tsp dried thyme
splash brandy
3 cups beef stock
3 tbsps creme fraiche
juice of half a lemon
Mal­don salt to taste

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and saute the gar­lic and onion briefly, then add mush­rooms and stir just to coat with but­ter. Sprin­kle with thyme, splash in the brandy and stir just till it nearly evap­o­rates, then cover with beef stock. Sim­mer until mush­rooms are ten­der, about 25 min­utes. Whiz with a hand blender and stir in the creme fraiche and lemon juice. Salt to taste. Voila!

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This would be so pretty with a driz­zle of extra cream, a sprin­kle of chives, but alas I had nei­ther. Nor had I any day-old baguette to make toast to dip in it, which also would be very nice. I’m sure you’ll be clever enough to have these extras on hand. As it was, I was con­tent because there’s no nicer aroma than cream of mush­room soup, even when it lingers in the house past lunch. It’s a lovely scent.

Do you remem­ber those old ads on the telly for Alka-Seltzer? Well, for­get the plop plop fizz fizz, but OH WHAT A RELIEF IT IS! Exams over. Full stop.

On Fri­day we dropped Avery off at the exalted, dreaded, antic­i­pated and entirely lovely St Paul’s Girls School for her marathon, 6 1/2 hour exam. Her anx­i­ety level was like this: halfway to the school she said mildly, “I’m ner­vous.” Now, in her place I would for one thing not have been able to sleep, wouldn’t have wanted break­fast but if I ate it would have come straight back up again, and would be curled in a mis­er­able lit­tle ball in the back of the car. Not my intre­pid off­spring. Nope, nine hours’ sleep, stuffed full of apple turnover, blue­ber­ries and salami (heav­ens, could that be true?), and one lit­tle vague aside as she approached the ordeal. Oh to be Avery, sometimes!

Well, John and I put­tered around look­ing at our watches and won­der­ing what she was being asked, think­ing of all the won­der­ful exam lore that has been pro­duced dur­ing the last month. “Then this girl next to me found out at the last moment that she had turned over two pages of her maths at once and missed TWELVE QUES­TIONS!” These sorts of com­ments are uttered with a mix­ture of awe, fear and a tinge of smug­ness. “One girl had to be moved because the roof was leak­ing over her desk!” So three o’clock found us sheep­ishly tak­ing our places in the huge pha­lanx of cool par­ents wait­ing for the Actual Suf­fer­ers to be reunited with us. In the enor­mous gym­na­sium the lit­tle things were sit­ting on the ground with their elderly Sixth Form min­ders, under paper signs announc­ing the alpha­bet­i­cal groups, and there was Avery, under a sign that said “Bod­win to Cur­ran.” “Look, my name’s on the sign!” she said glee­fully, as if this was an accom­plish­ment. She appeared to be none the worse for wear, reunited with Jamie at the exit, shrieked and hugged and rocked back and forth. “Wasn’t the maths WICKED?”

Well, there you go. All fin­ished, except that two more schools have writ­ten to sched­ule inter­views. Fine. But no more exams, no more fran­ti­cally wash­ing her and all our hands sev­en­teen times a day with antibac­te­r­ial wipes to ward off the ram­pant Lon­don stom­ach virus. No more wor­ry­ing that she gets enough sleep even on a Sat­ur­day. No can­celling play­dates to observe hideous amounts of exam-prep home­work. No more Eng­lish and maths teach­ers, who retire on Wednes­day. What a relief. Now they can all play.

It’s so funny to hear her speak when she emerges from a long British expe­ri­ence. It’s not that she speaks with an Eng­lish accent, although she can and some­times drops into it if she’s on the tele­phone with an Eng­lish friend, or want­ing to impress with her bilin­gual sta­tus. It’s the expres­sions I notice. I need a long lunch with my friend 6point7 (wait, we just had one! but we didn’t talk lan­guage), because she can always explain the exact cir­cum­stances when cer­tain expres­sions or words are used. Here are a few I noticed in Avery on Fri­day. She always says “bit,” not “part,” as in “there were some really dif­fi­cult bits.” I think “parts” here is used just for raw chicken, and maybe the­atre (or would they say “roles”? don’t know). And “loads of ques­tions,” not “lots of ques­tions.” Is “lots” just for auc­tions here? And “straight­away,” not “right away.” Those are the things one would have to get just right if one were writ­ing an Eng­lish novel as an Amer­i­can. But they come sec­ond nature to Avery.

The one Britishism that is sud­denly get­ting on our nerves is the insis­tence on mis­pro­nounc­ing the name of a par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­can Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. It reminds me of the pro­nun­ci­a­tion “Los Angeleez.” Why? Any­way, here it is “Bear-uck” Obama, with the empha­sis on the first syl­la­ble. Why on earth? No one in Amer­ica has taught any­one to pro­nounce it that way. But this com­plaint is set against the unde­ni­able supe­ri­or­ity of the British news cov­er­age in that they are even both­er­ing to pro­nounce any candidate’s name, or fol­low the elec­tion at all. In Amer­ica I can­not imag­ine that the debate over whether Gor­don Brown should call an elec­tion made it to the nightly news. Of course, per­haps if we could find an alter­nate pro­nun­ci­a­tion for his name we would feel more own­er­ship of his decision-making. I will give it some thought.

There was an almost imper­cep­ti­ble light­en­ing of the spir­its in our house­hold yes­ter­day. After her act­ing class (Avery’s been given the role of an Ital­ian BOY in the class play: that should be inter­est­ing), she came home, sat down with her new Amer­i­can Girl doll from her Nonna, and we didn’t see her for the rest of the after­noon. She gath­ered up her other Amer­i­can Girl para­pher­na­lia (most of it from her two dot­ing grand­moth­ers, thank you!), did all their hair, changed their out­fits, equipped them with their var­i­ous belong­ings, lined them up on her bed, did their hair again. All after­noon. She emerged to have din­ner and a nice piece of:

Nonna’s Banana Bread (although I made it this time)
(two loaves)

2 cups gran­u­lated sugar
1 cup soft­ened but­ter
6 ripe bananas, mashed (approx­i­mately 3 cups)
4 eggs, well beaten
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 tea­spoons bak­ing soda
1 tea­spoon salt

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees.

With elec­tric beater, cream together sugar and but­ter until light and fluffy. Add bananas and eggs, beat­ing until well mixed.

Sift together dry ingre­di­ents three times. Blend with banana mix­ture, but do not over mix.

Pour into 2 lightly-greased loaf pans. Bake for 45 min­utes to one hour, until firm in the cen­ters and the edges begin to sep­a­rate from pans.

Cool on a rack for 10 min­utes before remov­ing from pans. These freeze beautifully.

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

Well, it’s a sim­ply gor­geous day (John really did bring the sun­shine back to Lon­don, thank good­ness), I’ve just drunk an enor­mous glass of beet­root, Tus­can kale, pars­ley, gin­ger, car­rot, pear and cel­ery juice and I feel pretty right­eous. Maybe a nice long walk in the park before we col­lect (there’s a good Britishism for you, as if there’s more than one) Avery from the “sta­ble,” she tells me, not the good old Amer­i­can term “barn.” “Barn means you’re likely to come upon live­stock, Mommy,” she explained. It’s good to have a translator.

Things are, I hes­i­tate to say, look­ing up. Blue skies all day! My best beloved slept from 11 p.m. to 10:30 a.m.! And Avery had her last impor­tant inter­view this after­noon. A school she’s not really inter­ested in wrote yes­ter­day to invite her for an inter­view on Feb­ru­ary 5! Lord have mercy, wasn’t this all meant to be over long before that? I’m not even sure she needs to go.

Tomor­row is, ta dah: the St Paul’s exam for which the poor child has been prepar­ing for a year and a half. We can only hope she remains virus-free for the next 28 hours, and con­tin­ues to be her usual intre­pid self. Her only wish after her inter­view this after­noon was to pick up her dar­ling friend Anna, have a bis­cuit and go play in the Regent’s Park play­ground where they go with their form for PE (and have to share all the desir­able rides with their 25 com­pa­tri­ots). So since the day was fair, off we went. It’s very sat­is­fy­ing to know that she may be seri­ous, hard­work­ing and grow­ing up faster than we ever would have dreamed, but she’s still awfully happy to sit on a merry-go-round with her best friend and gig­gle. They have a com­plex and ongo­ing game called “Shelty” in which Anna plays a Shet­land pony (or puppy? I for­get) and Avery her dot­ing owner. I con­fess to my eyes’ glaz­ing over when she tries to fill me in on the finer points, but it was great to see them can­ter­ing along in the mud and grass.

These inter­views! “Look at this paint­ing of a lady with a let­ter and tell me what you see” was a very lucky draw for Avery. There are very few instances in which a mother with a PhD in art his­tory is of any prac­ti­cal use what­so­ever, but this was one of them! “I won­der if it might be a Ver­meer,” she said inno­cently, and although it was not, she got huge kudos for even won­der­ing. “What is your favorite book?” was another good one, since she just fin­ished “Rebecca” and the inter­viewer also loved it. They dis­cussed char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, descrip­tion and plot (good thing she wasn’t fak­ing it), and then moved on to “What can you tell us about Amer­i­can pol­i­tics?” to which she pro­duced the all-too-telling reply, “I’ve com­pletely given up on them.” Guess what she hears at home? So the lady tried again, with “What are some dif­fer­ences between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans?” and got “Well, it’s mostly to do with what sec­tion of the coun­try you live in,” reveal­ing her New Yorker sta­tus, I’m afraid. I remem­ber after the 2004 elec­tion, the cover of New York Mag­a­zine was black, utterly black, but for the words in white: “Amer­ica to New York: Drop Dead.” Any­way, I don’t think Avery will win any points for her polit­i­cal savvy.

Then another head­mistress showed her a pho­to­graph of a bird turn­ing into ski slopes turn­ing into leaves and flow­ers, and asked her to define the word “meta­mor­pho­sis.” Whew. And told us a funny story, too, about the sys­tem of “coach­ing,” or “tutor­ing” for these exams that a lot of par­ents suc­cumb to. Appar­ently the coaches get to be fairly well known in the school sys­tem, and like a painter with a favorite palette, they reveal their biases and incli­na­tions and meth­ods all too obvi­ously. One appar­ently loves to equip his lit­tle charges with a list of “all-purpose adjec­tives,” which the gulls must plug into their var­i­ous essays and answers. “One year, and I wish I were jok­ing about this, the word ‘melan­choly’ pep­pered at least 20 essays and so we knew they had all stud­ied with that one par­tic­u­lar tutor.” Avery piped up, “Well, it IS a nice word,” and the head looked at her sharply and said, “But not in absolutely any sit­u­a­tion, surely,” and Avery said mildly, “Well, you can always try to say ‘NOT melan­choly’, as well!”

Well, it’s nearly over. The din­ner of cham­pi­ons tonight? This was her request.

Spaghetti Car­bonara with Mush­rooms
(serves 4)

1/2 pound Amer­i­can (streaky) smoked bacon, diced
3 tbsps white wine
2 tbsps but­ter
1/2 pound mush­rooms of any kind, sliced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 1/2 cups light (sin­gle) cream
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
fresh black pep­per
4 tbsps grated parme­san cheese, plus more for sprin­kling
as much spaghetti as you like, per­haps shy of a pound

In a heavy skil­let, brown the bacon to your lik­ing, pour­ing off the fat as you do so. When the bot­tom of the skil­let begins to get too brown with bacon bits, remove the bacon to a dish and deglaze the skil­let with the wine. Add the but­ter and melt, then saute the mush­rooms and gar­lic till soft. Pour in the cream and the egg yolk and mix well over low-medium heat (depend­ing on your cooker), then sprin­kle with the pep­per and the cheese. Set more cheese aside to gar­nish the dish. Take the skil­let off the heat.

Cook the spaghetti and drain well, then toss in the skil­let of sauce and turn up the heat. Toss in the bacon. Stir until thor­oughly warmed and thick, a cou­ple of min­utes. Yum.

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With this she asked for roasted beets with bal­samic vine­gar. What child ASKS for beets? I ask you. And yet will she eat a car­rot? Absolutely not.

And although I left early to make Avery’s inter­view, and the tutor was late, we had a really nice meet­ing of the cre­ative writ­ing class at Birk­beck. My good­ness my class­mates are tal­ented. For var­i­ous rea­sons my own attempt at the home­work was lame by any stan­dards this week, but Keith’s story of a psy­chotic throat-slashing (“their throats grinned up at me” or some such incred­i­ble descrip­tion) and Carol’s of an alien­ated Ukrain­ian park­ing war­den swap­ping his hel­met for a yarmulke for shab­bat… these sto­ries were amaz­ing. So impres­sive, and such nice, sym­pa­thetic peo­ple. I will really buckle down for next week’s home­work. I have neglected it sorely, but then there have been other things on my mind.

Ah well, beets beckon. I can­not describe to you how brave Avery has been through this long prepa­ra­tion, too much com­pe­ti­tion (in my hum­ble opin­ion), pun­ish­ing sched­ule and rig­or­ous exams, plus all the faux-social chitchat of these wretched inter­views. Through it all she has been pos­i­tive and even sunny, focused and ener­getic. ONE MORE DAY! Fin­gers crossed. And then, heaven for­fend, I may have to get a life of my own. Carol asked me today, “Are you a heli­copter mother, Kris­ten?” “What’s that?” I asked, star­tled. “One who hov­ers.” Oh, prob­a­bly. I asked Avery, and she said, “Well, in a GOOD way.” I’m not sure there is a good way to hover, but it’s worked so far and I’m too old to learn new tricks now. Maybe with grandchildren…

Oh, now I’m just being silly (these links are of my trea­sured Linda Lee John­son bracelet, thanks, dar­ling Lulu). Seri­ously, though, I have been learn­ing how to put links to other blogs I like in the side­bar of my front page. Do look. I’m so proud of myself, learn­ing to write lit­tle “html” thingys that make these hot links appear. “Lar­a­land” I love because Lara is a delight (a young exercise-mad mum in Maryle­bone), then “Fayefood” will give you an idea for din­ner nearly every night (plus her lit­tle boy Fer­di­nand gets up to some amaz­ing high jinks and con­ver­sa­tion), and of course my friend Caz’s devo­tion to Matthew Mac­fadyen. “Free Rice” is a totally addic­tive vocabulary-testing site that is char­i­ta­ble as well. Well, any­way, dip in if you like. I’ll keep adding them as I remem­ber places I like.

What I REALLY need to fig­ure out, how­ever, is how to build a recipe index. It’s all very well for me to expect you all to scroll through enor­mously long and bor­ing posts just to get to the recipe embed­ded some­where in it, when all you really want is to know how to make “Kristen’s Pre­ten­tious Meat­loaf.” Well, that’s a bad exam­ple because the recipe appears right at the top of the post. Does any­one out there know how I could build an index? What I want is to have a list, like I have my list of links, and you could click on, for exam­ple, “seafood” and get my fab­u­lous scal­lops recipe, with olive oil and pars­ley. With­out hav­ing to slog through all my descrip­tions of our sum­mer activ­i­ties (although who could resist this Janey facey).

It’s all brought up, how­ever, some thorny issues. Say I wanted to build a recipe index divided into cat­e­gories, like “pasta,” or “seafood.” Does my scal­lops recipe go into pasta because it’s with spaghetti, or seafood because the main ingre­di­ent is scal­lops? And how about mush­room risotto? Is it a side dish, because it’s a starch with some veg, or is it poten­tially a main dish for veg­e­tar­i­ans? I’m get­ting my knick­ers in a twist because every recipe seems to be a mine­field of dan­ger­ous cat­e­gori­sa­tion. Is there a sep­a­rate sec­tion for chicken, or poul­try, or does it all come under the head­ing of “meat dishes”? Or is “meat” only red meat? And is duck poul­try or meat? I cer­tainly can­not have a head­ing “game” with only recipe, that’s for sure.

I think I’m miss­ing the boat here, really. I don’t think my blog, or my future cook­book, is really just a list of recipes. It’s really more of a mem­oir (of, sadly, a com­pletely unre­mark­able life!). Maybe my recipes should be in cat­e­gories like “com­fort food,” although one per­son might grav­i­tate to mac­a­roni and cheese, in that mood, while another whips up lob­ster en gelee. I just don’t know.

Speak­ing of com­fort food, and com­fort in gen­eral, I am find­ing the world so bewil­der­ing lately that I’ve gone all out for din­ner tonight: mac­a­roni and cheese for a main course, and I’m tak­ing my dar­ling friend Becky’s advice and includ­ing some Dairylea, a sort of British baby cheese, for extra creami­ness. I remem­ber liv­ing in France in high school and encoun­ter­ing my first “real” cheese, my expe­ri­ences to date hav­ing been lim­ited to Amer­i­can, Parme­san in a green can, and Velveeta. I found that at age 16 I def­i­nitely pre­ferred all the famil­iar fla­vors and found Brie, Camem­bert and the like com­pletely unpalat­able. As a joke, the fam­ily I was liv­ing with bought me some “La Vache Qui Rit,” known here as “The Laugh­ing Cow,” and expected me to find it totally degeu­lasse (dis­gust­ing) and be con­verted to “their” cheese. No such. I still adore Vache, and Dairylea is very like it, only in slices, just per­fect for that mid­night grilled cheese. With the mac­a­roni we’re hav­ing spe­cial “slow food” bangers from Food Fore Thought, and sauteed red pep­pers and broc­col­ini. I feel a def­i­nite need for all things famil­iar and cosy. I must say, I tried to be a good per­son today and turn around the dif­fi­cult or upset­ting things in my life and see them as… oppor­tu­ni­ties. To achieve some­thing, or get through some­thing, or rise above some­thing. As opposed to just feel­ing over­whelmed! Didn’t have a marked suc­cess, but I shall try again tomor­row. Just for practice.

This after­noon found us all at big King’s Col­lege, the big sis­ter to Avery’s lit­tle prep school, for her inter­view there. A gor­geous Adam build­ing, span­ning actu­ally six houses in Maryle­bone, and the most loqua­cious admis­sions direc­tor (or per­son of any kind, for that mat­ter) that I have ever met. Not one of her sen­tences, once begun, ended in ANY­THING like the sub­ject mat­ter with which she had begun. Com­plaints about the end­less rain became solil­o­quies on her skill with bath­room tiling, con­ver­sa­tions begun with talk­ing about the charm of prep school uni­forms mor­phed into dis­ser­ta­tions on the bad behav­ior of her grand­son (clearly remark­able in every way). She seems rea­son enough to send Avery there! From there Avery was whisked away by the head­mistress and then after a suit­able inter­val, we our­selves were brought in. Such sit­u­a­tions always make me look down at my hands and stam­mer, do you feel that way about female author­ity fig­ures? A for­mi­da­ble woman like the bow of a ship, only with softly quirk­ing eye­brows at some bit of par­tic­u­larly British wit. Very calm­ing. I had no idea: if the child sits the exam at School #1, and is also apply­ing to Schools 2 and 3 in the same group, only School #1 sees the actual exam itself, what they call “the script.” The other schools see merely the score, reported by School #1. So the rules may say that it’s entirely up to you where your child sits the exam, but had I worked out this extra detail ahead of time, I’d have thought, “Hmm, I won­der which school I want to have Avery’s actual SCRIPT in hand, and not just some­one else’s inter­pre­ta­tion of her mark.” Alas, too late. Actu­ally prob­a­bly she sat the exam at the right school any­way, but not through any parental bril­liance on my part.

It’s exhaust­ing. And we don’t even DO any­thing! Poor Avery on parade. She seems to thrive for the most part, and when asked, “What do you look for in a school, Avery?” replied calmly, “I like to meet friendly peo­ple. If I meet some­one unfriendly, I might worry that that was the whole ethic of the school. Not that it’s hap­pened, so far.” Ever the diplo­mat… thank good­ness for her father’s influence.

Righty-ho. I still have my apron on which must mean, gosh, we haven’t eaten yet. Maybe that’s what’s got me ker­fuf­fled: so far my food intake today has been enor­mous glass of juice made of beet­root, cavolo nero, cel­ery, pear and pars­ley. Not exactly the diet of cham­pi­ons, more like a pun­ish­ment for sins as yet uncom­mit­ted. Actu­ally I really like my juices, so tomor­row maybe a lit­tle Dairylea on the side…

Just got back from the Sun­day farmer’s mar­ket where I picked up all my favorites: red-chilli goats cheese, beet­root and cavolo nero and car­rots for juice, Cheg­worth Worces­ter and Bram­ley apple juice, and some sausages for the mac­a­roni and cheese I feel is in our future tomor­row night. Tonight, how­ever, is des­tined to be scal­lops with pars­ley, because they were half price at Waitrose!

Scal­lops with Two Parslies
(serves four)

1 lb spaghetti (I pre­fer De Cecco)

1/2 cup olive oil
6 large sea scal­lops per per­son (slice in half if very large indeed)
5 cloves gar­lic minced
1/2 tsp red pep­per flakes
salt and pepper

1 large hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 large hand­ful curly pars­ley, chopped
1 cup fresh bread­crumbs, toasted lightly

The sauce will cook in just the time your spaghetti needs to boil, so bring the water to a boil and put in the pasta.

Now heat the olive oil and sim­mer the gar­lic, but don’t let it brown. Place the scal­lops in the oil and cook on high heat until they turn opaque (about three min­utes), turn­ing occa­sion­ally. Add the red pep­pers and salt and pep­per, and take off the heat. Sprin­kle the pars­ley on the scal­lops and toss gen­tly. Drain the pasta and add to the scal­lops, then toss with the bread­crumbs. Delicious!

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

And of course on the way home from the mar­ket, it… RAINED. Hon­estly. Isn’t this a charm­ing lit­tle Noah’s Ark? Here’s where you can order one.

Well, John is home safely from Iowa, and for the moment he’s rest­ing. I think there will be a lot of rest­ing in his future. It’s strangely sad­der to have him back than it was to have him gone, but I think it’s only because actu­ally see­ing him makes his dad’s death real, some­how. The whole world feels dif­fer­ent. One friend told me, about death and loss, “it makes the world feel as if it’s in a dif­fer­ent orbit, for a time.” Then I sup­pose one absorbs it into one’s life expe­ri­ence. When we dropped Avery off at the barn, Kirsty asked John how his dad was doing, and when he told her, she said softly, “But remem­ber the mirac­u­lous sum­mer you had.” That is what we need to do.

At any rate, he’s home. And dri­ving! His approach to the whole dri­ving thing is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from mine. He OWNS the road, so every­one else has to make do. He roars down George Street, takes the yel­low light at Edg­ware Road as a green, and roars ahead. It was so nice to be in the pas­sen­ger seat again!

Nice, too, was Avery’s exam on Fri­day. She really does not seem to mind these ordeals! I picked her up in the (yep) rain on Fri­day after­noon, and she reported the oppo­site of last week: this time the maths were easy and the Eng­lish impos­si­ble. So it would seem, between the two exams, no one will have done well because the strong Eng­lish stu­dents will have thrived last week, and the strong maths stu­dents this week. But taken together… and here’s an excit­ing bit of news (at least excit­ing in the exam-obsessed life we are liv­ing right now): City of Lon­don School for Girls has writ­ten to say that based on her excel­lent per­for­mance last week, they’d like to see her for an inter­view on Tues­day. So inter­views Mon­day, Tues­day and Thurs­day, and one more exam on Fri­day and then we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Per­haps the sun will come out? Best not to hope for ridicu­lous mir­a­cles, though.

On Fri­day night Avery spent the night with Anna and I treated myself to a ridicu­lous but so deli­cious extrav­a­gance: din­ner at Nobu! But you know what: have your cock­tail at home before you go. Because while I don’t mind pay­ing lots of money for some­thing I could never have at home, like yel­low­tail tuna with jalapeno, I do mind pay­ing $24 for a mar­tini. Even with what­ever mirac­u­lous sake they use, and the tiny, ten­der lit­tle Japan­ese cucum­bers float­ing on top. Save your money for the spicy tuna roll, and the soft shell crab roll. I did NOT allow my din­ner to be spoiled by the annoy­ing Amer­i­can busi­ness­man sit­ting next to me, over­flow­ing his seat, talk­ing on TWO mobile phones about what­ever busi­ness deal was occu­py­ing his tiny mind. As I sat there he downed an entire plate of Kobe beef with­out chew­ing, as far as I could tell, ignor­ing the gor­geous trio of sauces, the pile of sauteed heir­loom mush­rooms. I couldn’t help steal­ing a glance at his bill when it came: 180 pounds! For one. My, my, I’m not in Kansas any longer.

Do you have an 11-year-old girl who needs a project? Avery’s lat­est obses­sion is latch-hooking. I remem­ber going through a sim­i­lar phase in my long-ago and mis­spent youth, and now she’s caught the bug. She dug out a smiley-face project that my friend Alyssa brought for her last Christ­mas, then laid away and for­got­ten. Fin­ished that, got her friend Anna obsessed as well, and needed another project. So yes­ter­day after­noon found us at John Lewis in the crafty depart­ment that usu­ally brings to me a headache of enor­mous pro­por­tions as soon as I enter it. But this time we had a spe­cific mis­sion, and off we went to become the proud own­ers of an ENOR­MOUS Peter Rab­bit rug-to-be.

Well, I think I hear my long-travelling hus­band stir­ring, so I shall go see what he needs. Enjoy your Sun­day and… don’t for­get your brolly.

Here’s a good Lon­don rid­dle: how soon would I have to stop post­ing on my blog if I couldn’t post on days when it… RAINED? Hon­estly. It’s enough to make me bel­liger­ently stop turn­ing the water off while I brush my teeth. How can we pos­si­bly run out? It’s just awful, I have to say.

One of my writ­ing class col­leagues told me yes­ter­day that she has “Sea­sonal Affec­tive Dis­or­der,” for real, not just feel­ing annoyed that it’s rain­ing AGAIN, but true blues from not see­ing the sun. How could you live here with such a con­di­tion? I even enjoy gray days, I never say, “I’ve got to get away,” or plan hol­i­days on beaches in Feb­ru­ary. I don’t mind the win­ter. But con­stantly being wet is get­ting me down. You can choose from the fol­low­ing wardrobe options: wet tights, or wet trousers. And hair? There’s no point in ever blow­ing it dry. Mine is stick­ing up per­ma­nently now like I had an arti­choke on my head. It’s really demoralizing.

So last night in the, you guessed it, RAIN, I picked up Avery at Anna’s house, turn­ing down Becky’s din­ner invi­ta­tion reluc­tantly because it would have been nice to stay, but I just did not have the where­withal to be friendly. Like an ill­ness with no real symp­toms. On the way home I thought, you know what, for once I’m going to buy some ready-made food that Wait­rose is always tout­ing as “just as good as home­made,” since there was enough left­over creamed chicken for Avery but not for me. Well, never again. Hon­estly, once you’ve unwrapped the food from all the plas­tic and card­board that can’t go in the oven, and placed it all in dishes or on cookie sheets or what­ever, to my mind I’d rather sim­ply have chopped some gar­lic and cooked my own din­ner. I won’t tell you what I bought because you might love it, but suf­fice to say next time I’m in that lazy mood, I’d rather stick a chicken in the oven and leave it for awhile and have some­thing really good. I’ll go this far: I bought prawns. And for the money and the trou­ble, I’d just as soon:

Quick Prawns with Gar­lic and Chilli
(serves one lazy person)

6 giant tiger prawns, raw but shells removed
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
lit­tle shake of pow­dered gin­ger
1 tbsp peanut oil
splash sesame oil
sprin­kle hot chilli flakes
3 spring onions, sliced
soy sauce to taste

Heat the oils in a wok or skil­let and add every­thing else. Stir till prawns are pink. ENJOY.

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

Some­day when I have a proper freezer I am even going to have lit­tle ice cube trays filled with mixed chopped gar­lic and gin­ger. Then I will offi­cially have NO excuse for pre­pared food.

Any­way, Avery took her cozy bath, we ate our din­ner and watched Becky’s gift of “Miss Pot­ter,” which I adore, and that was that. As luck would have it, the tem­ple of Avery’s eye­glasses snapped, totally unac­count­ably, so the poor thing has to do her Harry Pot­ter imi­ta­tion with scotch tape today.

This morn­ing dawned (if you can use such a word for the alarm going off, since there was no actual dawn involved) soggy, but we per­se­vered with a nice crepe filled with Nutella, a cou­ple of slices of fab­u­lous bacon, a juicy Comice pear, and then we were off. And we arrived at South Hamp­stead VERY early. Embar­rass­ingly so, as my almost pre-teenager’s “Oh, Mommy!” pointed out to me. Nev­er­the­less, I left her at the door with some Godol­phin look-alike grownup girls, and slogged home. It’s sort of a relief: by this after­noon she’ll have done all she can to get into five of her six schools. Two more inter­views next week and one more exam and she’s THROUGH. “Then it will be out of your hands,” I said reas­sur­ingly. Or so I thought. “But I’m the sort of per­son who LIKES hav­ing things in my hands, Mommy,” she pointed out. Ah well.

John will be home on Sun­day, which will be glo­ri­ous. No doubt with his arrival the rain will dry up and the sun will shine. Or maybe it will just seem that way. TGIF, everyone.

You know your appetite takes up the two sides of your brain: the one that eats for health and the one that eats for FUN. In my case, the fun isn’t choco­late, or even bis­cuits or candy. It’s CREAM. And but­ter. So I have two sug­ges­tions that, if you fol­low them both, will lead to the per­fect bal­ance of diet. I think.

The first is, and I’m begin­ning to believe it’s the key to all good health, a nice big glass of mixed fresh juice. I got my juicer last year, and while I will never become a fanatic who believes that all food should be eaten raw, I do think there’s some­thing to get­ting the fruit and veg while they’re truly fresh. And, call me nutty, I have yet to come upon a com­bi­na­tion of fruit and veg that isn’t nice together. Plus it’s a good way to use up those bits and pieces in your fridge that aren’t quite nice enough to eat whole. Today was blue­ber­ries, a good hand­ful, a num­ber of slightly shriv­eled baby toma­toes, a whole beet­root, a hand­ful of cel­ery stalks, 3 car­rots, a knob of gin­ger and an apple. Plus a whole bunch of flat-leaf pars­ley which I am assured will com­pletely neu­tral­ize that lovely vodka I had before din­ner last night. Throw them in your juicer, stir it up and down the hatch. I swear, just the vibrant color will put a zing in your step. Truly.

I just came yes­ter­day from my annual doctor’s checkup where I gave most of my blood to be analysed for all the stuff you spend the rest of the year not think­ing about. Mostly cho­les­terol. And nor­mally mine is very nice. So until I find out oth­er­wise, I will con­tinue to believe that one of the ulti­mate com­fort din­ners is:

Creamed Chicken with Single-Malt Scotch and Thyme
(serves two)

1 tbsp but­ter
1 small onion, minced
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 tsps dried thyme
a good splash single-malt Scotch
2 chicken breast fil­lets, cut in bite-size pieces
1 tbsp sweet paprika
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and fresh-ground pep­per to taste
1 cup sour cream

Melt the but­ter in a heavy skil­let. Then gen­tly fry the onion and gar­lic till soft, and add the thyem. Pour in the Scotch and let it evap­o­rate. Then stir in the chicken breasts and toss until nearly cooked through. Sprin­kle with paprika and lemon juice, salt and pep­per, and then stir in the sour cream. Turn OFF the heat. The chicken will con­tinue to cook and not get tough, while you steam some bas­mati rice and broc­coli on the side.

When the rice and broc­coli are ready, turn up the heat under the chicken and stir until bub­bly. Serve over the rice. HEAVEN.

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

Well, I stayed up far too late last night chat­ting with my adored rel­a­tives in Iowa, for which I must now pay the price and take a short nap or I will never make it to my writ­ing class this after­noon. And tomor­row brings another exam for Avery, this one sat at South Hamp­stead High School. I’m try­ing to get up the courage to drive, but some­thing tells me it will be a ruinous cab ride, instead. Wish her luck.

You know you’re scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel of mater­nal reas­sur­ance when your response to your daughter’s ongo­ing exam anx­i­ety is, “Just be glad we can afford to send you to school AT ALL.” This is at din­ner after a water­logged day of inter­view anx­i­ety (it went fine), trans­porta­tion anx­i­ety, topped off with the con­fes­sion that the splin­ters in her feet from Christ­mas still hurt.

OK, here’s where my mother claims her grand­mother would say, “Just be glad you have two feet.” Clearly I come by my con­ver­sa­tional tech­niques hon­estly. But seri­ously. I know a lot more seri­ous things could be going wrong right now, and I keep remind­ing Avery of them. Note to self: this method of par­ent­ing is not effec­tive. Chil­dren don’t care what BIG­GER could be going wrong. The things that are going wrong right now are all that counts.

So I broke down and looked at her splin­ters. And it turns out they aren’t, even, they’re tiny shards of bro­ken glass, I think. I have a vague mem­ory of a bro­ken glass in the kitchen over Christ­mas (was it here, or in Con­necti­cut? I can’t even remem­ber that much) and telling her not to run around bare­foot. Clearly I was too late. Well, the fact that the lit­tle shards, which I can see just under the sur­face of her skin, still are both­er­ing her nearly a month on means a trip to the doc­tor. This on top of every­thing else that is hap­pen­ing just seems like… too much. But off we go today, after school. I decided to kill two what­ev­ers with one what­ever, so I too am under the micro­scope: might as well get all that pesky blood work done so as to start the New Year know­ing that my cho­les­terol is still all right, etc. So no food for me until 4 o’clock this after­noon. WHAT? Now I’m whingeing.

But I must say, the long-awaited inter­view at St. Paul’s was lovely, accord­ing to Avery. “She reminded me of Indi­ana Nona!” she said of her inter­viewer. “It was partly her sweater, which had cats on it, and partly that her eyes crin­kled up when she smiled, and she was NICE to me,” she reported, so that was all right. Instead of being asked to iden­tify a veg­etable or dis­cuss Mideast pol­i­tics, she was shown a paper­weight with a dan­de­lion inside it, and asked to describe what she saw. “I said it looked like the kind of dan­de­lion you blow on to make a wish, only since it was embed­ded in glass it might be like wish­ing on a crys­tal ball.” Sounds good to me. They dis­cussed her favorite books, and the lady asked her to rec­om­mend her two favorite books FOR BOYS. Inter­est­ing. I think it was the offi­cial “Any­thing but Harry Pot­ter” ques­tion, so hap­pily Avery had two unusual books to sug­gest. I see one of them on my desk this morn­ing, so I guess she’s been think­ing about her answer.

I sat in the mas­sive pan­elled entry hall, sur­rounded by oil por­traits of Pauli­nas past, or illus­tri­ous bene­fac­tresses, who knows. Count­less girls rushed around, arms full of books, all dressed in, you guessed it, skinny jeans, bal­let flats, hood­ies and long fringey scarves. They all looked mys­te­ri­ously alike! And LOTS of hair. The dul­cet tones of their posh accents rang through the hall, and I looked intently for signs of eat­ing dis­or­ders, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, social­iza­tion dis­or­ders. None vis­i­ble. In fact, three of the girls came bound­ing up to Avery as we waited and car­oled, “Good luck! You’ll be fine! Wel­come to St. Paul’s!” Very impres­sive. So the lady came up to us and said warmly, “You must be Avery,” and shook my hand, and that was that. Took her away. I tried to read my mag­a­zine, but I was too fas­ci­nated by all the activ­ity around, and also by try­ing, unsuc­cess­fully, to imag­ine Avery as an 18-year-old. What will she be like?

Any­way, the inter­view was fine. “I don’t know what I was so wor­ried about!” she chor­tled, and I strug­gled to find a mes­sage in this. Strug­gled and failed. I feel lately as if every­thing I say were writ­ten in a Chi­nese for­tune cookie, or an astrol­ogy read­ing. Really futile and bor­ing! And any­way she doesn’t hear me. So all the exhor­ta­tions like, “See, then that means there’s no rea­son to worry about the NEXT inter­view,” fall on deaf ears. Or rather ears that lis­ten and then a mouth that says, “But that one will be com­pletely dif­fer­ent, Mommy!” You idiot, is the unspo­ken adden­dum. Sigh.

I’m begin­ning to see the point in a two-parent house­hold. It’s so one of you can walk away, shut the door, turn off the sound of your pre­cious child’s voice, and let the other adult get the brunt of the vent­ing! I am steel­ing myself for the doctor’s office today. Actu­ally, a secret lit­tle part of me is look­ing for­ward to some­one else being in charge: the doc­tor will have to do what doc­tors do. I know Avery is spend­ing her school day imag­in­ing a giant fork dig­ging into her lit­tle foot. I said, “Just enjoy your school day and you can start wor­ry­ing about the doc­tor at 3:20.”

Ah, well, it will all be over soon. Exam Fri­day, inter­view Mon­day, inter­view Thurs­day, exam Fri­day. Done and dusted. We’ll have to think up some mas­sive treat at the end of it all. In the mean­time, be glad you have two… oh, never mind. Be as whingey as you like. I’ll just cover my ears.

I know. In the grand scheme of things, a dri­ving rain­storm at 8 a.m. when you’re try­ing to get your child to school is NOT a tragedy. I agree. But when you’re really not a morn­ing per­son to begin with, and then you’re wait­ing on the cor­ner for a taxi and cars fly by splash­ing you and there are no taxis and THEN your child remem­bers that her back­pack is in the car, two blocks away, and it’s still rain­ing… so you rush to the car, realise that by now you’ll be late if you don’t just DRIVE instead of find­ing a taxi, but then it occurs to you that you can’t read to the lit­tle Form Three gulls that you enjoy so much, because you now have a car that you’ll never find a park­ing spot for in the RAIN… then it offi­cially becomes a day that has not started off auspiciously.

So I drove Avery to school in total silence because she’s 100 pages away from the end of “Lit­tle Women”, and for some rea­son has focused on fin­ish­ing the book before her St. Paul’s inter­view this after­noon. Why? So she can say, in case any­one asks, that she’s read “Lit­tle Women.” I know, I don’t get it either.

Isn’t this a pretty pho­to­graph, any­way? I didn’t take it, but some­one who doesn’t live in Lon­don where rain is not a thing you greet with open arms did, and you can see lots of other lovely pho­tographs on his web­site. The page where I found the pho­to­graph is called “An Appre­ci­a­tion of Rain.” Well, ask any­one in Eng­land right now about rain and you’ll be in for an onslaught of invec­tive. Flood­ing expected today in all the poor spots that were flooded in the sum­mer. This is one of the few days when liv­ing in Lon­don just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It’s going to be one of those days. Two hours and fif­teen min­utes from now will find me back at school try­ing to find her, to get her to Brook Green, find some­thing to feed her so she’s all sparkly, then get to the school for her inter­view at 1:15. I won­der what I should do with myself for how­ever long it takes? Will it have stopped rain­ing by then? I am cha­grined that I have reached a stage in my life where my day con­sists merely of get­ting some­one else to the thing that she needs to do. Do I ever actu­ally DO any­thing myself, or do I merely wash clothes for, feed, and trans­port some­one to do things? This shall remain a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion for today, because right now just fer­ry­ing her where she needs to be and being ready to respond to what­ever hap­pens at 1:15 is task enough. What will it be like, an inter­view at the top Lon­don girls’ day school? Rumours, amount­ing by this point to urban leg­end, are fly­ing around the school. “Lucilla had to iden­tify a pic­ture of a gourd and say what it reminded her of, and she said it looked like her bot­tom,” is one story, and “Juli­ette says she was asked to describe the sig­nif­i­cance of the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict,” and “Have you ever heard of a painter called Gau­guin? Because Molly was shown a pic­ture of a naked lady by him and had to describe the emo­tional con­tent in it,” are some of the choice morsels. These chil­dren are 11 years old!

Ah well, by 3 o’clock, doubt­less, it will all be over. Until the next big exam on Fri­day. The sto­ries sur­round­ing last Friday’s exam are already the stuff of urban leg­end. “If you sneeze, or any­one else sneezes, and you make eye con­tact with another stu­dent, the proc­tor will come and RIP UP your exam, right in front of you,” and “One girl was sit­ting her exam, and the roof started leak­ing, right onto her paper, and they wouldn’t let her move.” Hon­estly, what we will all talk about when this process is over I can­not imag­ine. We may, hor­ror of hor­rors, have to get lives of our own. That prospect is actu­ally begin­ning to sound appealing.

Per­haps the best thing to do is to con­cen­trated on the World’ Great­est Bed­time Snack. As you know, I am a night owl, and it’s very tempt­ing for me to stay up until all hours read­ing, watch­ing Miss Marple’s Neme­sis, talk­ing on the tele­phone to peo­ple liv­ing five or six hours ear­lier than I am. But being in charge of the morn­ing rou­tine has meant a strict cur­tail­ing of all late-night pleas­antries. Well, not quite. Mid­night last night found me with:

Dou­ble Glouces­ter Omelet with Duchy Back Bacon
(serves one mother who should be asleep)

1 tsp but­ter
1 organic Har­vest Moon egg (from the farmer’s mar­ket of course)
1 tbsp sin­gle cream
sprin­kle Mal­don sea salt
a dozen strokes across a grater of Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese
1 slice Duchy Orig­i­nal Back Bacon

Melt the but­ter in a non­stick skil­let (like the mas­sively heavy Le Creuset one you got from your per­fect mother in law for Christ­mas). Whisk together the egg and cream with a fork and gen­tly pour it into one half or so of the skil­let, leav­ing the other half for the bacon. Lay the bacon on that spot. Leave over a gen­tle heat until the egg is nearly cooked (just bub­bling a bit) and grate the cheese over the egg. Turn over the bacon. Now, when the cheese is melted, fold the egg over on itself two times. Turn onto a warm plate with the bacon.

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

Obvi­ously this is not a RECIPE per se. This is a cel­e­bra­tion of per­fect ingre­di­ents, a quiet house­hold, the peace of mid­night, and a wish that you could be there in Iowa with the ones you love to hand them the warm plate, kiss their cheeks and make every­thing all right.

Well, my chores beckon: turn­ing warm cats out of beds and mak­ing them, scrub­bing the omelet skil­let, the inevitable laun­dry. Stay dry, every­one, and wish Avery good luck this after­noon. She may well need it.