Wales redux

Well, my cele­ri­ac soup is on the cook­er for lunch and I’m kick­ing up my heels for 15 min­utes or so, so here I am. With an amaz­ing sto­ry to tell, as it turns out. It starts out very sad, but ends up quite miraculous.

Yes­ter­day was, sad­ly, the first anniver­sary of my dar­ling father in law’s diag­no­sis with can­cer. I felt the day approach­ing and knew it would be a hard one for every­one, espe­cial­ly my moth­er in law who has aban­doned us and gone back to Iowa. Would that she could have stayed for­ev­er! But dur­ing our week in Wales, one day she was prepar­ing for bed and real­ized that her pre­cious gold link bracelet, near­ly a twin to mine and a gift from John’s dad, had dis­ap­peared. We spent all the next day retrac­ing our steps from shop to shop in Lan­gollen and Cor­wen, and report­ing the loss to the police. So sad! It seemed ter­ri­bly hard to have it gone, and although it was insured and Rose­mary had every plan to replace it, it would not have been the same as the orig­i­nal gift from Jack. Much distress.

Well, yes­ter­day we were all feel­ing down and pre­oc­cu­pied and not quite our­selves, when the phone rang near bed­time. It was Rose­mary. “You will not believe this, but I found the bracelet, in the bot­tom of my hand­bag. I had looked, of course, but there it was, under the pile of pens and pen­cils I seem to keep there.” There was a won­der­ful lilt in her voice, such a sense of relief. On the anniver­sary. It’s hard not to believe that some­one some­where decid­ed the loss was just too much, and… put it back. Even my Orig­i­nal Skep­tic Hus­band has suc­cumbed to this feel­ing! How lovely.

Let’s see, I myself reread my Wales post and it made me ter­ri­bly home­sick to go back. There was some­thing quite mag­i­cal about the week: so removed from all the cares of nor­mal life like sched­ules and back­packs and exams. We stayed in a lit­tle 14th cen­tu­ry house called Plas Uchaf, a place John and I had stayed many years ago as new­ly­weds with our adored cat Chelsea. We briefly con­tem­plat­ed tak­ing Tacy, but decid­ed that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her get­ting out and being lost was too much. So it was a cat­less week, but oth­er than that there were no com­plaints. When I describe it to you it will sound like some exer­cise in self-denial: no sig­nif­i­cant sources of heat, no tele­phone, tele­vi­sion, or com­put­er obvi­ous­ly, and for sev­er­al days no hot water in the kitchen tap so that all the wash­ing-up water had to be car­ried from the bath­tub (which itself did not yield any excit­ing quan­ti­ties of the pre­cious sub­stance, I can tell you: hip-baths!). O Pio­neer! But for all that, it was absolute­ly idyllic.

From the evening we arrived, fresh (or not) from a very long dri­ve com­pli­cat­ed by a wreck on the M1, we all breathed a sigh of relax­ation. I had brought along an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese, shades of our Exmoor adven­ture for Avery’s birth­day. The per­fect thing to pop in the oven upon arrival, unpack a bit of lug­gage, and there was din­ner. There’s noth­ing like the smell of bub­bling cheese to make every­one feel at home! And what a home! Rose­mary and Avery head­ed imme­di­ate­ly upstairs to find their bed­room: a mar­vel of antique fur­ni­ture and rugs, with two lit­tle ver­ti­cal win­dows look­ing down into the Great Hall. John imme­di­ate­ly com­man­deered the enor­mous fire­place and from then on was the Com­pleat Pyro­ma­ni­ac, obsess­ing over coals, starter sticks, logs of every shape and size. “This batch of logs is damp,” he would say bit­ter­ly, bran­dish­ing a hap­less chunk. “They should­n’t sell damp wood.” All after­noon he would tend his fire, so that we could eat in the FREEZ­ING Great Hall, watch­ing our breath in lit­tle white gusts, and then imme­di­ate­ly hud­dle around the fire before bedtime.

To sit in bed after a long day walk­ing and shop­ping and cook­ing and explor­ing, and lis­ten to the hum of Avery’s and Rose­mary’s voic­es across the land­ing, chuck­ling and chat­ting, was inde­scrib­ably cozy! After so many weeks and months of fret­ting that we could not take care of her, or just look her in the eye and see how she was doing, it was absolute heav­en just to hear her laugh and peek in at them in their twin beds, tucked up with hot water bot­tles, read­ing the piles of Log Books that all Land­mark Trust hous­es boast: every­one’s accounts of their stays from past years! We even found my orig­i­nal log from 1991! Amazing.

Food shop­ping! I think we patro­n­ised every sin­gle food-pur­vey­ing estab­lish­ment in a 30-mile radius. If you find your­self in North Wales, high­tail it to the Rhug Farm Shop just out­side Cor­wen and get some of the mirac­u­lous lamb, gar­lic and rose­mary pate from Cot­tage Delight. Love­ly for a pic­nic sand­wich! Or even at mid­night on a piece of toast, truth be told.

The sweet lit­tle fruit and veg shop in Cor­wen became our local mec­ca: new own­ers, very anx­ious to please and, I think, slight­ly curi­ous about these Amer­i­can vis­i­tors who seemed to do noth­ing but buy fruit and veg! Try­ing to branch out a bit from our con­stant round of broc­coli, red pep­pers, beet­root, spinach and aspara­gus, I tried a nice cour­gette recipe that, while it did­n’t make Avery sit up and beg, she ate. Warn­ing: you have to like garlic.

Baked Cour­gettes with Gar­lic and Cheese
(serves four)

3 nice skin­ny courgettes
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp sin­gle cream
1/2 cup grat­ed Ched­dar or oth­er strong cheese

Slice the cour­gettes nice and thin and lay­er them in a small glass bak­ing dish. Sprin­kle with the gar­lic and driz­zle with the oil and cream. Scat­ter the cheese across the top and bake in a medi­um oven for about 30 min­utes or until cheese is nice and bubbly.

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This is nice because the cour­gettes keep a lit­tle bit of a bite, and the olive oil is velvety.

Let’s see, dur­ing the week we dis­cov­ered that Avery has an irra­tional fear of walk­ing DOWN hills. I’ve always known her to freak out slight at the top of very steep esca­la­tors, but this time, we were embark­ing on a huge hill just out­side a gor­geous area called Horse­shoe Pass, a val­ley filled with impos­si­ble mist, dot­ted with sheep and the occa­sion­al house. Avery got UP the hill with no prob­lem, leav­ing us elder­ly adults puff­ing in her wake. But then we all reached the top and stopped to admire the view, and she absolute­ly lost it. Near­ly in tears, poor gull. Rose­mary taught her to walk diag­o­nal­ly, but even so, she was just ter­ri­fied. Occa­sion­al­ly she left the path and clung to a scrub­by lit­tle bush, try­ing not to cry. We felt so bad for her! Once we got to the bot­tom we dis­cussed the nature of irra­tional fears (name­ly, they’re irra­tional so peo­ple who don’t share them should stop try­ing to talk you out of them). I thought some of my old fear-of-fly­ing tech­niques might help, like con­tin­u­ing to do the thing and mak­ing your­self notice that noth­ing bad is hap­pen­ing. So the rest of the hol­i­day we spent march­ing her up and down big hills, and I must say she got much bet­ter. Good old cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py at work.

But what real­ly brought her out of her funk that par­tic­u­lar day was the sight of a large and very dirty sheep, stand­ing stock­still in the mid­dle of the road. “It’s escaped from its field!” Avery shout­ed. “We must save it!” So John drove ahead to try to block it, and we saw at the end of a field a gate and thought we might herd the thing toward the gate and let it in. Of course the sheep had oth­er ideas and scut­tled down a lit­tle lane, toward some com­pa­tri­ots in anoth­er field. “We should tell the farmer he’s out,” I said help­ful­ly, so John drove down an even small­er lane toward a house we could see in the dis­tance. As we did so, we noticed a cat­tle grid. “You know what,” John said, “That sheep­’s not lost. All these sheep are MEANT to be over here. I can’t believe we are such city idiots that we thought we need­ed to SAVE that sheep.” So he began to back down the lane, until I sug­gest­ed he turn around and go out straight. Sad­ly, my sense of where the back of the car was could not be trust­ed, and to Avery’s dis­may we near­ly went through a very rick­ety fence and top­pled off a precipice into obliv­ion. “We’re going to die!” she shrieked, and “I’m get­ting out of this car.” So she hopped out, and I hopped out to try to give some direc­tion, but the back wheels were stuck in mud and the car was STRANDED.

Sud­den­ly, from up anoth­er lane came not one, not two or three, but FOUR stur­dy off-road Jeep-like trucks, and out popped four strap­ping young men, shout­ing, “Do you need help?” They just hap­pened to be a Sat­ur­day club of off-road ram­blers, and there they were in the nick of time, to save us. One of the men clev­er­ly dis­cov­ered a winchy thing in the front of the car, and pro­duced a stout rope from his, and before we knew it, he was dri­ving ahead and the protest­ing rental car was saved. We were clear­ly the biggest for­eign idiots that the whole group had seen in some time, and the wives were not too sub­tly whip­ping out their mobile phones and tak­ing pic­tures of us. “BRITAIN RES­CUES AMER­I­CA!” one man laughed, and his wife asked, “So how long have you been here?” and John, think­ing she meant “here in Britain,” answered, “Oh, about two years.” Burst of laugh­ter from all the ram­blers, and anoth­er wife asked, “What, HERE, strand­ed, for two years?” Then we all laughed and I said we some­times sent out for sand­wich­es and it had­n’t been that bad.

And off they went! With a sto­ry to dine out on for weeks, no doubt.

That night we found our­selves with all food stores closed on our way home, and I had to think strateget­i­cal­ly (my favourite Avery word of all time, along with “small­en”) about what to pro­duce from what I already had. What I came up with was a pret­ty good dish if you’re on a diet. It con­tained, amaz­ing­ly for me, no but­ter, no cream, no cheese. Give it a try if you’re feel­ing virtuous.

Miso Mar­i­nat­ed Chick­en With Aspara­gus and Mushrooms
(serves four)

1 pack­et instant miso soup powder
juice of 1 lime
4 chick­en breast fil­lets, cut in chunks
2 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 bunch aspara­gus, cut into bite-size pieces
1 lb but­ton mush­rooms, quartered

Mix the miso with the lime juice and stir to a paste. Pour over the chick­en breasts chunks in a medi­um bowl and stir well to coat. Set aside. Heat the oil in a skil­let and saute the aspara­gus and mush­rooms until the aspara­gus is bright green and the mush­rooms soft. Remove and set aside, leav­ing the oil behind as well as the mush­room liq­uid. Saute the chick­en in the same skil­let, and when it’s done, toss in the veg­eta­bles, stir­ring until they are heat­ed through again. Pret­ty good! Serve with steamed bas­mati rice.

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I’ll nev­er for­get the cozi­ness of sit­ting by the fire chat­ting with John while Rose­mary and Avery set­tled them­selves in their room, and look­ing up to their light­ed lit­tle win­dows to see them wav­ing at us and mak­ing faces. Avery invent­ed a crazy voice in which to say “Hel­lo,” and we all began using it, “Hel­lo? Hel­lo!” And we played end­less, pos­i­tive­ly end­less games of soli­taire, and dou­ble soli­taire, Avery and her grand­moth­er play­ing for hours at the kitchen table while I cooked. And Avery recit­ed the entire­ty of “The Lady of Shalott” for us in a com­plete­ly absurd, fruity Eng­lish accent: “On either side the riv­er lie long fields of bar­ley and of rye,” mak­ing Rose­mary and me laugh until we cried, rolling her Rs and her eyes and milk­ing it for all she was worth. She made Lady Brack­nell look relaxed and down to earth. Too, too fun­ny. And one evening John went out to the back gar­den to throw cof­fee grounds over the fence, to find two sheep with tiny lambs! Avery and I pur­sued them in a gen­tle sort of way, but to no avail. That would have been too perfect.

Well, I think that was our Wales adven­ture. Oh, and a dar­ling lit­tle vil­lage called Llan­r­w­st, no idea how you pro­nounce that with no use­ful vow­els, but pos­sess­ing a won­der­ful shop called Berry, filled with old books. I bought beau­ti­ful copies of lots of clas­sics that I’ve nev­er had time to read, like “Mans­field Park” and “The Scar­let Pim­per­nel,” for Avery to have on our shelves, and the entire huge back of books was 12 pounds! If you find your­self there, do go in.

Sad­ly we had to come home, although frankly my moth­er in law makes Lon­don so much fun it was­n’t a tragedy to have the hol­i­day end. We went to the Tate Mod­ern to see the mag­nif­i­cent Doris Sal­cedo instal­la­tion: a long, long crack in the cement floor, wide enough in some places to lose a foot, nar­row as a piece of yarn in oth­ers. Real­ly impres­sive! And a Juan Munoz exhi­bi­tion of fig­u­ra­tive work that is not my cup of tea, but made Rose­mary real­ly hap­py. And we went to Por­to­bel­lo Road, and the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, and shop­ping for food at Sel­f­ridges and the farmer’s mar­ket, and out to din­ner at the glo­ri­ous “Star of India,” tru­ly the best Indi­an food in Lon­don, I believe. A starter that you must try: light as a feath­er kadek jhin­ga, prawns in a saf­fron bat­ter, with tamarind chut­ney. Gor­geous! And a chick­en dish that made Avery’s heart sing, she who eat mush­rooms in any form, murg khumb bahar, a breast stuffed with chopped mush­rooms and onions, mar­i­nat­ed with yogurt cream and swim­ming in a sauce of wild mush­rooms and cashews. Sim­ply superb. And so nice to have a night off cooking!

Well, it’s John’s birth­day today and I am suc­cumb­ing to some­thing I nor­mal­ly would rather walk across hot coals than pro­duce: tuna casse­role. The notion of tinned tuna served HOT is to me like heat­ing up a can of cat food. Urgh. But every year on his birth­day he asks, and every year I say no. The one year I actu­al­ly agreed to make it, I turned out to dis­cov­er I was expect­ing Avery: right on his birth­day! Isn’t that amaz­ing. So I thought, oh, go all out and make that awful dish as well. But I was so dis­tract­ed by being five min­utes preg­nant that I for­got to cook the noo­dles ahead of time, and just threw them in with the hideous tinned tuna and mush­room soup. The result was some­thing with a, how shall I put it, unique con­sis­ten­cy. Nei­ther wet nor sol­id, with odd crunchy bits that threat­ened to break one’s teeth off, and over­all a per­va­sive odor of… cat food. Ah well, I’ve learned since then. Noth­ing on earth could make me actu­al­ly eat it, but tonight’s ver­sion will be made with gourmet yel­low­tail sus­pend­ed in extra vir­gin olive oil, organ­ic cel­ery, home­made mush­room soup and the best Ital­ian noo­dles. COOKED. Hap­py Birth­day, John!