So a week from tonight, I can hardly believe it, I will be far away in a lit­tle vil­lage in Devon all by myself, hav­ing spent my first day at my week-long writ­ing sem­i­nar. I must con­fess that except for one two-night trip to Los Ange­les when Avery was a baby, to try to find a pub­lished for my even­tual book, I have never left home! Can that be pos­si­ble? In nearly twelve years? I guess it can be pos­si­ble. Of course, John often leaves home, Avery reg­u­larly leaves home. But I? As close to NEVER as you can get except for NEVER.

I don’t think of myself as a con­trol­ling per­son, at least in terms of con­trol­ling OTHER peo­ple. But I like to have con­trol over myself! I never don’t know what I am going to have for din­ner, or what color my sheets are (they should be only white, in my opin­ion), who I’ll be spend­ing time with… all strangers! That part actu­ally sounds like fun. Leav­ing behind Avery and John, not so much fun.

But surely I need to do this: a week with other food writ­ers, being taught by pub­lished, famous food writ­ers… and I’m pack­ing up my com­fort nov­els about other peo­ple who have gone off on sem­i­nar retreats and adven­tures. Good­ness! A week with no mobile phone, no inter­net. It all promises to be an adven­ture of comic proportions.

Look at this lit­tle crea­ture! We spent Sun­day morn­ing at the fab­u­lous indoor swim­ming pool asso­ci­ated with Avery’s new school (with glass roof tiles that made me think of the Great Lon­don Expo­si­tions of the late 19th cen­tury!), learn­ing how to receive swim­mers on the rota sys­tem we’ve all signed up for. On the way home, this lit­tle guy emerged onto the pave­ment! “Save him, save him!” Avery cried, so we all tried to lure him onto a leaf to put him up in the grass above the side­walk. Finally John said, “Hey, there’s no rabies on this island,” so I scooped the lit­tle thing up in my hands and turned him out onto the grass. As we did so, a lit­tle boy and his dad walked by. “We just let him out of our house,” they laughed. Avery was in heaven.

So as not to appear cal­lous about the global eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion, I must utter the words “credit crunch,” “700 bil­lion dol­lar bailout,” and “global eco­nomic melt­down,” and take a drink of my cock­tail for each phrase, and then never utter the words again. What I’m wor­ried about, as my friends and I dis­cussed today, are wait­ers and wait­resses, clean­ing ladies, florists, and local shop­keep­ers, not Wall Street. So I did my share today: I left a good tip at lunch with my friend Dalia, I paid my fab­u­lous clean­ing lady for the week, sent flow­ers to my dear hus­band and bought an entire bone­less roast duck at the new Chi­nese gro­cery store, Ori­en­tal City, in Queensway. That, and tak­ing care of my fam­ily, is about all I can do in a world­wide mess of such pro­por­tions that Avery’s ques­tions at din­ner (“what’s wrong with hav­ing a mort­gage?” and “why does any­body in Eng­land care what hap­pens in New York?”) are really insur­mount­able. Even John is stymied. But what lux­ury we live in, not to be panicked.

And then there’s the elec­tion! I keep think­ing, “Why does any­one want an ‘ordi­nary per­son, some­one I can relate to, some­one like ME!’ to be pres­i­dent or vice pres­i­dent?” For heaven’s sake, the last per­son in the WORLD I want in the White House is some­one like me! An ordi­nary per­son? Not on your life! When it comes to peo­ple cut­ting my body open, or fly­ing the enor­mous air­plaine con­tain­ing me and my fam­ily, or run­ning the coun­try, I want EXTRA­OR­DI­NARY peo­ple! The very best, the smartest, dare I say it, the most ELITE peo­ple I can get. How does any­body want every­day peo­ple in charge of such mat­ters? Check­ing out my gro­ceries, my library books, sure. But run­ning the coun­try? No thanks. That’s scary.

Our neigh­bors here in Eng­land are sim­ply agog, and alter­nately com­pletely unsur­prised. “These Amer­i­cans are capa­ble of any­thing,” seems to be the gen­eral con­sen­sus, which is frus­trat­ing when we are liv­ing here try­ing to act like nor­mal peo­ple. It is increas­ingly hard to explain any­thing hap­pen­ing on our erst­while native shores!

Well. All I can do is to immerse myself in the rel­a­tive san­ity of my adopted land (which looks increas­ingly like my per­ma­nently adopted land, if cur­rent trends back “home” con­tinue). We spent Sun­day after­noon, after drop­ping Avery off for her after­noon of slave labor clean­ing tack and scoop­ing poop, at our friends’ Vin­cent and Peter’s loft eat­ing every sort of quiche you can imag­ine. How does Vin­cent just turn out these dishes seem­ingly effort­lessly? But he does. And there was our friend Boyd, from our Morocco adven­tures last year, and Mark, my art installer extra­or­di­naire. I love it when I can intro­duce peo­ple to peo­ple they like. We scared our­selves look­ing through pho­tog­ra­phy books in Vincent’s col­lec­tion, like the work of Loretta Lux, who struck me an a com­bi­na­tion of Diane Arbus, Sally Mann and… some­one else really creepy. Chil­dren dressed in impos­si­bly dated, per­fect cloth­ing, big heads, weird props. And then we repaired to three quiches: one with aspara­gus and fresh cherry toma­toes, one with caramelised onions, goats cheese and black olives, and one with lar­dons and Gruyere cheese. The most PER­FECT lunch. Salad, and then Peter’s home­made ice cream: gin­ger and honey, and hazel­nut. And con­ver­sa­tion? We talk for hours and hours while a bit of me sits back and feels intensely grate­ful for their friend­ship, for the sup­port I feel behind me, should I ever need it: the love of longterm friend­ships, peo­ple who really love you. Irreplaceable.

Thence through the gor­geous late-afternoon skies over Tower Bridge, talk­ing to John’s mom (“I think it’s very cool to be talk­ing to some­body who is cross­ing Tower Bridge!” she says glee­fully), past the Savoy, past the Houses of Par­lia­ment, through Trafal­gar Square… what a day.

This week I’m look­ing for­ward to a book sign­ing by Stephen Fry! A book about his expe­ri­ences in, of all places, Amer­ica. And then there’s the after­noon at a cer­tain Lon­don cathe­dral which shall go unnamed for rea­sons of pri­vacy (ha!) where the girls of Avery’s school will meet up with the boys of the brother school in an atmos­phere of unheard-of (at least in my life) splen­dor… And I must spend plenty of time wor­ry­ing about how my fam­ily will do with­out me, and I with­out them, next week. Wish me luck.

But first, before I tell you about any of my adven­tures, much less the most sub­lime and effort­less chicken dish I invented this week, I must rec­om­mend a book to you: for any­one who loves Eng­land, whether a native or a vis­i­tor, Sarah Lyall’s AngloFiles is a must-read. She is the Lon­don cor­re­spon­dent for the New York Times (lucky lady!) and her obser­va­tions are hilar­i­ous, rang­ing from what the dif­fer­ent classes call a ladies’ room to the aristocracy’s pen­chant for names that are pro­nounced with no rela­tion to how they’re spelled. You’ll love it. I haven’t got to any bits about food yet, but I’m sure I will.

She makes me envi­ous, frankly. What fun to have a sort of JUS­TI­FIED curios­ity about every­thing around her, and an author­i­ta­tive stance from which to state her opin­ions! And she has opin­ions. It makes me won­der how her British friends feel about talk­ing to her, but then she can often openly say she’s research­ing a piece. Well, hey, couldn’t I say the same? Research­ing for what? Well, my own edu­ca­tion, I sup­pose. Peo­ple are funny about being observed, ana­lyzed and described, though, and I’d say the British are more funny about it than Amer­i­cans, in gen­eral. I’m being much more open with my new friends about writ­ing my “mem­oir cook­book,” and telling them pretty much frankly that every­thing is mate­r­ial! It was funny: upon leav­ing the school class “cof­fee morn­ing” (a dread­ful time of day for me to get to know peo­ple, I must con­fess, 8:30 a.m.), I left early to get to my first writ­ing class, and sev­eral peo­ple said, “Oh, are you writ­ing about us?” Maybe being totally open about it will keep me out of trouble.

Devot­ing more and more of my time to writ­ing is mak­ing me much more com­fort­able with telling peo­ple I am a writer. My friend Vin­cent insists on intro­duc­ing me as an “author,” which while strictly speak­ing true, might be a bit mis­lead­ing. Hav­ing writ­ten count­less words about art and art his­tory doesn’t really have much to do with my cur­rent endeav­ors, which are some­where between Dr John­son and Mrs Beeton!

Can I digress and report the con­ver­sa­tion I just had with the sec­re­tary of our local ten­nis courts? I rang them up to book a court.

“Yes, please, could I book a ten­nis court for 11 a.m. tomor­row, Sat­ur­day?“
“What is your mem­ber­ship num­ber?” [fair enough]
I gave it.
“What day did you want?” [hadn’t I just said?]
“Tomor­row, please.“
“The Sat­ur­day?“
Yes, please!“
“And what did you want to book for?“
“A ten­nis court!“
“Did you know what time you wanted?“
“Eleven a.m.!“
“And that was to play ten­nis, was it?”

Too funny. We’re booked any­way, finally.

We’ve had our first writ­ing class with the new, smaller, pri­vately arranged group, and it’s going to be very good. I sub­mit­ted my cook­book chap­ter on “Vichys­soise,” and it went down very well, with some extremely help­ful sug­ges­tions as to where it could be expanded. The sub­ject came up of recur­ring char­ac­ters: did I want to make sure that the peo­ple who would reap­pear were fully described, tan­ta­liz­ingly set out? So I must first check with every­one to make sure it’s all right that I men­tion them, and their recipes, if that’s part of the story.

Today is Fri­day, so it must be time to take Avery skat­ing. Her old friend Jamie has been kind enough (well, her mother has!) to drive us each week, which makes a huge dif­fer­ence as I don’t hon­estly think we could get all the way there in time for the 5 p.m. les­son. I have such a love-hate rela­tion­ship with that skat­ing rink. On the one hand, it is almost unbear­ably sweet to see the two of them, so sophis­ti­cated in some ways, and grow­ing up so fast, doing their lit­tle jumps and turns. On the other hand… I hate that place. It’s loud, it smells hor­ri­bly of the var­i­ous nox­ious items passed off as comestibles (a war­ring meld of Bel­gian waf­fles, hot dogs, pizza and cof­fee, just awful). The chil­dren push and shove, the acoustics are mind-bendingly uncom­fort­able, and both lit­tle girls have devel­oped an atti­tude, unique to the skat­ing rink, that seems to imply that we moth­ers are mere repos­i­to­ries for all their clob­ber, so I live in fear that I will leave behind a back­pack, leg warm­ers, train­ers, eye­glasses, not to men­tion my own pal­try items. Ah well, we’re due for a break: their beloved teacher Nicky has got her­self a two-week skat­ing job in Amer­ica! Oh joy.

Well, enough whing­ing. My point was to tell you about what makes liv­ing here so won­der­ful. But my first nice story could hap­pen any­where: Sat­ur­day I spent in one of my favorite ways: cook­ing all day long for our first really big din­ner party in our new house! We decided to include every­one who had showed us hos­pi­tal­ity in our new neigh­bor­hood, and then add a few more for good mea­sure. The guest list was short­ened by the non-appearance of the teenage mem­bers of these fam­i­lies. One mother explained to me, “Only our 11-year-old will be join­ing us; the older chil­dren will be out drink­ing, smok­ing and hav­ing sex.” And there was only a sug­ges­tion of a laugh. I don’t want to face the teenage years! Any­way, the din­ner was a great suc­cess: ten adults and just Avery and her lit­tle friend Emily. But they were enough to enter­tain each other: they com­pletely ter­ri­fied poor Keechie by run­ning up and down the five flights of stairs, claim­ing to see ghosts, to hear mys­te­ri­ous, unex­plained wail­ing, to expe­ri­ence lights turn­ing them­selves off! Finally they set­tled down to edit Avery’s mag­num opus, “The Adven­tures of Jazzy.” She is deter­mined to write a real book this time (her draw­ers are filled with the pages of count­less highly illus­trated but extremely brief ear­lier attempts).

We ate every­thing in sight: grilled salmon mar­i­nated in lime juice, gar­lic, olive oil and Fox Point sea­son­ing (a lovely blend of shal­lot, chive and some other mys­te­ri­ous fla­vors from Pen­zeys), can­nellini beans in a sort of con­fit with olive oil, rose­mary, toasted bread­crumbs and parme­san, to die for. And tomato-mozzarella tow­ers with toasted pinenuts and lemon zest. My neigh­bor two doors down brought, at my request, her famous choco­late brown­ies. And the wine! Not being a wine drinker myself I was in a posi­tion to note with sat­is­fac­tion that there were MANY empty bot­tles by the end of the night, and that did not come, dear read­ers, until 12:30 a.m. Yes, even the girls were up until that hour. The British are like the French when it comes to din­ner par­ties, as far as I can see: every­one comes pre­pared to have a good time and to let their hair down. A fab­u­lous, heart-warming evening that really cements my feel­ings that our new neigh­bor­hood is quite wonderful.

And then it was Horseman’s Sun­day! Another sunny Sep­tem­ber Sun­day, another bless­ing cer­e­mony. This year the vicar seemed mar­gin­ally less ter­ri­fied on the back of the trusty steed cho­sen for his trans­port, although he never looks as if he’s hav­ing a good time. We trooped through the streets fol­low­ing the mas­sive queue of horses, watched as they were indi­vid­u­ally blessed, and then… I started to sneeze. And I really have not stopped. That’s some­thing not to love about Lon­don in the autumn. Really, really (or as my new friend Elspeth says, “rully, rully,” in the most plummy tones you can imag­ine) mis­er­able. I sim­ply could not stop, and the anti­his­t­a­mine I had thought­fully brought along made not a dent. How­ever, our social life stops for no aller­gies, so lunchtime found me at an out­door table at Angelus, adja­cent to the sta­ble mews, with Vin­cent, Peter and John, for a lunch of unri­valled deli­cious­ness. Of COURSE the foie gras creme brulee, quite pos­si­bly my favorite food ever. And then I had a gor­geously pre­sented fil­let of Dover sole wrapped around spinach leaves, stuffed with a lobster-scallop mousse and sur­rounded by lit­tle points of sugar snap peas and hari­cots verts. Of course I rave about this Lon­don restau­rant when in point of fact I could prob­a­bly get the same meal on every street in Paris. Nev­er­the­less, it was an after­noon to savor: won­der­ful food, best friends, great con­ver­sa­tion rang­ing from pho­tog­ra­phy (of course, with John and Vin­cent there), to Pete’s laser eye surgery… now I’m long­ing to do it myself.

Finally, how­ever, we had to admit that the after­noon was get­ting on and we needed to put in an appear­ance at the annual post-blessing gymkhana, an event of (like skat­ing) great sweet­ness, but also stun­ning bore­dom. And added to that mix, the inevitable sneez­ing for me. Avery rode around and around on Bar­rie, and then Enigma, the very first of the autumn leaves in the park fell and made lit­tle pools of color. And of course I got no credit with my child for show­ing up, only blame that I missed her on the most impor­tant pony, or the most impor­tant game, or some­thing! Just my luck, really.

Mon­day I was rewarded by doing one of my very favorite things: food shop­ping, and not alone! My friend Janet, vis­it­ing from Los Ange­les, is the sin­gle most knowl­edge­able per­son about eth­nic ingre­di­ents that I have ever met. Our Chi­na­town adven­ture had given us an appetite for more wan­der­ings, so we met up in a sub­lime (but unas­sum­ing, don’t be fooled) Per­sian super­mar­ket in North End Road, UR Super­mar­ket. Num­ber­less brands of beans, lentils, other pulses, many, many sorts of yogurt, sauces for every pur­pose you can imag­ine and a lot you can­not, spices of every descrip­tion. And per­haps the best of all: a truly won­der­ful butcher counter with a lovely rotund lit­tle man who greeted me in French! And sold me a dozen of the best-looking lam­b­chops you can imag­ine. When I got home I dis­cov­ered that he had thrown in a pile of what looked at first glance like worth­less bones, but grilled with a lit­tle salt and pep­per, they proved of course to be ribs. Delicious.

Finally we repaired to a South Indian veg­e­tar­ian restau­rant in Drum­mond Street near Euston Sta­tion and had my first bhel-poori (a fas­ci­nat­ing cold dish with tiny noo­dles, pota­toes, turmeric, car­rots and puffed rice!) and a bit of Janet’s dhosa, which was an enor­mous folded pancake-like thing stuffed with pota­toes crushed with spices. A bit bland, but inter­est­ingly novel. I myself went for the buf­fet and had chick­peas in every guise you can imag­ine, pop­pad­ums and deep-fried cau­li­flower and cour­gettes. mostly it was heaven to sit and chat, about pol­i­tics, hus­bands, cook­ing, cats (she is crazy about my Tacy, you might remem­ber). Girl­friends — I’ve said it before — are the staff of life, an absolute neces­sity. And here is the kind of per­son Janet is: we had noted that the wait staff were, how to put it, unwel­com­ing in a fairly amus­ing but off­putting way. Her method of deal­ing with this was to ask, “Are you from Bangladesh?” when our waiter came to col­lect our plates. He stopped in aston­ish­ment. “Yes, I am.” “Well, I love Bangladesh. Are you from [insert name of town I did not know]?” “Yes! Have you been there?” Long dis­cus­sion ensued of the local gas­works and local cus­toms, and all was well. He beamed at us, bow­ing us out, and Janet said, “That always works. Nearly all wait­ers in Indian restau­rants are from Bangladesh, and since I’ve been there, it breaks the ice.”

That after­noon I ful­filled a rash promise to Avery and took her to that mecca of sweet things, Cyber­candy in Gar­rick Street. The ground floor is sim­ply filled to the gills with every sort of for­eign (and a few Eng­lish) candy you have ever heard of. Super-expensive Amer­i­can brands, every type of Hello Kitty dis­penser that exists, Dan­ish things and weird Japan­ese jel­lies in fla­vors like lychee and cucum­ber. She stocked up! Then we headed to the nearby Waterstone’s where she dis­cov­ered to her cha­grin that her lat­est obses­sion, the “Artemis Fowl” books, is not due for another vol­ume in the series for a long time, alas. She sim­ply devours them, thanks to our dear friend Olimpia who gave her the lat­est one this sum­mer and then she worked her way up to it once we got home. I must say, our local library is won­der­ful, with a HUGE audio­book sec­tion, to my delight!

Now, Tues­day was a real adven­ture for us, and pretty spon­ta­neous, for me. Just the night before, I got an email from my film-theatre friend Sue, telling me about a read­ing fea­tur­ing one of my favorite new British actors, Ben Whishaw. So young, so vul­ner­a­ble, so tal­ented! He plays Sebas­t­ian Flyte in the new “Brideshead Revis­ited,” which I man­aged to miss in the US and will open here next week. So off we went, right after school, rushed to the Royal Court The­atre in Sloane Square, and oh! It was just spec­tac­u­lar. If you can get tick­ets for any of the remain­ing “read­ings” to cel­e­brate the 70th birth­day of play­wright Caryl Churchill, do so. Wal­lace Shawn and Miranda Richard­son were also part of the cast, and it seemed unbe­liev­able to me when Sue said after­ward that they rehearse for a day and a half ONLY! Avery was the only child there, but it wasn’t inap­pro­pri­ate. What amused me was that the whole under­ly­ing theme of the play, “Ice Cream,” was the dif­fer­ent ways of Amer­i­cans and British. And she under­stood every­thing! She had to explain a cou­ple of the jokes to me because they were things only a British per­son found funny. I am con­stantly amazed at the things she knows: why, for exam­ple, does she know what a “shrink” is? Where could she pos­si­bly have come across that notion? Well, we had a superb, sim­ply superb time. At the end, the actors applauded US! Such a joy, and for twelve pounds apiece. Scarcely more than a film.

I have con­quered “Lost Prop­erty”! I was a lit­tle ner­vous to be all on my own last week, in charge of the whole set of color-coded keys, impor­tant note­books, tins of the rully, rully valu­able stuff like an iPod, a mobile phone, a set of house­keys! Oh dear. The girls trooped in and out, some to retrieve actual apparel they had left some­where, and some to shop at the rack of unnamed (as in, no name tape!) cloth­ing. One girl came in and said sheep­ishly, “I basi­cally leave every­thing I have some­where, so I have to come in here every day.” I got to see Avery, too, wait­ing for her friends after her deli­cious lunch of rump steak with por­to­bello mush­rooms, AND a choco­late sponge. I can’t tell you what a dif­fer­ence it makes in her, to eat a proper meal in the mid­dle of the day. Heav­enly to see her, in her own envi­ron­ment, and look­ing so happy, too. Although, I must say, the dreaded acronym “GCSE” has entered her vocab­u­lary, at least two years before I planned to begin think­ing about them! I have for­bid­den her to start obsess­ing. Yet. I must say, the teach­ers are tremen­dously cre­ative with their home­work, and it helps. For exam­ple, this week her piano teacher set her to the task of mak­ing as many words as she could out of the let­ters of the scale! And then, even cooler, to PLAY the words on the piano. “Mummy, here is what ‘cab­bage’ sounds like!” she said glee­fully. I cheated and gave her “accede.” Ah well, a lit­tle help now and then…

I have to tell you how dumb I am: with all this dreaded credit crunch reportage in all the news­pa­pers, every time I see the word “Dar­ling” I won­der for a moment who on earth they’re address­ing! Only to remem­ber that Alis­tair Dar­ling is the Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer. I really am dim at times.

Lastly, in my paean to life in Lon­don, last night Sue and I met up at the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Art in the Mall for… “Spooks: Behind the Scenes.” It was SUCH good fun! The star-studded panel included my for­mer crush (yes, sorry, for­mer: now he’s just a guy, sadly) Matthew Mac­fadyen, costar Miranda Rai­son, two for­mer direc­tors, the best writer of the best episodes Howard Bren­ton, just a superb panel. There were stun­ning clips (mas­sively impres­sive on the giant screen when I’ve ever only seen them on telly or a com­puter screen), a Q and A. One hilar­i­ous story stands out: Matthew explained that in one episode, he had to dial a phone on the wall of a house, and to make it real­is­tic, he dialed in his own mobile num­ber. Some months later, his phone rang. “Is that you?” “Who is this?” “Is that Tom Quinn [the char­ac­ter!]?” “No, it’s not.” “I mean, is that Matthew Mac­fadyen?” “Yes, how did you get my num­ber?” “Well, if you slow down the tape on last night’s episode, it’s easy!”

Laugh­ter. He con­tin­ued, “So I asked the guy if he was a nut­ter and I’d have to change my num­ber, and he said no, no need.” And a guy in the audi­ence raised his hand and said. “That was me.” Well, he’ll HAVE to change his num­ber now, after announc­ing the scheme to a packed audience!

Right, the skat­ing rink beck­ons, poor me. But first, the next time you find your­self in need of a din­ner that cooks itself, while you’re off… watch­ing your child skate per­haps, give this dish a try:

Slow Braised Chicken With Sour Cream, Toma­toes and Brandy
(serves 4 easily)

1 tbsp but­ter
1 bunch fresh thyme
1 medium roast­ing chicken
1 onion, roughly sliced
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 cans whole toma­toes
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup good brandy
salt and pepper

But­ter the bot­tom and sides of a heavy pot with a lid and lay half the bunch of thyme on the bot­tom. Put the chicken BREAST-SIDE DOWN on the thyme. Scat­ter the onion and gar­lic around the chicken. Now, crush the toma­toes by hand onto a bowl and add the sour cream and brandy. Mix well. Pour over the chicken and salt and pep­per the whole lot. Put the lid on tightly and braise in a very slow oven, 100 degrees cel­sius or 200 degrees fahren­heit, for at least three hours. You will find that the sauce is rather fatty on top when you take off the lid, so in serv­ing, sim­ply reach your ladle down under the sur­face for the less fatty bits. The fat won’t hurt you, but it looks nicer if you can leave the fat behind. I think the fat issue could be dis­solved if you skinned the chicken prior to cook­ing, but I worry that it could dry out. I’d rather a bit of fat.

When you get home, the aroma of this dish, cook­ing itself with­out any help from you, will make your heart sing. All that’s required is that you boil a few pota­toes and mash them, and saute a pack­age of ten­der­stem broc­coli. Per­fect. And while it’s some­thing I love about liv­ing in Lon­don, it’s also some­thing you can love about liv­ing where YOU do.

Is your gar­den full of these lit­tle guys? For that mat­ter, is your house? Mine are. Yes­ter­day Tacy leapt, from an appar­ently dead sleep, to cap­ture a spi­der on the wall of the din­ing room and wolf it down. Yuck. But bet­ter than just see­ing them crawl about. My friend Toni assures me it is the sea­son, and they’ll stop mul­ti­ply­ing very soon. I seem to walk through the house and gar­den sev­er­ing webs every­where I go, and then have to won­der sick­en­ingly if I’m car­ry­ing the web’s cre­ator in my hair. Tacy!

Well, I am com­ing to the real­iza­tion that my very quiet and soli­tary house is my present, and my future. All those lovely months of hav­ing John at home, all the happy sum­mer weeks of hav­ing at least Avery at home, then both of them at home, have given way to my cur­rent atmos­phere of “now what?” And I have not been remiss in answer­ing the ques­tion! I shook off my dol­drums and joined… The Lost Prop­erty Ladies!

Now, I am going to tell you about this with the assur­ance that I have no inten­tion of men­tion­ing the name of Avery’s school on this jour­nal. At first I thought about just never men­tion­ing any­thing that hap­pens there, for fear of invad­ing someone’s pri­vacy. But now I think that would make me crazy: the gaps in the story, the long­ing to share with some­one how mar­vel­lous the place is. So I came up with the solu­tion that as long as I don’t divulge here what or where the school is, I can still express the won­der­ful details that are mak­ing us wan­der around lately think­ing, “too good to be true, this Shangri-la…” Because it is. Too good to be true.

Last spring when I was feel­ing the upcom­ing sad­ness at leav­ing Avery’s old school there was a meet­ing of new par­ents at her NEW school, invit­ing us all to vol­un­teer for some­thing, just to help out. And I was intro­duced to the head of “Lost Prop­erty,” who I will call Mary. There was some­thing warm and friendly about the way she held out her plate of wal­nut bread, and inquired eagerly about how excited my daugh­ter was to start her new school, that made me ask, “Do Lost Prop­erty need any help?” To be clutched by the hand and told, “My dear, of course! And I will tell you some­thing you don’t know: Lost Prop­erty have a superb lun­cheon to kick off every term, and you can come. In September.”

I nearly cried with grat­i­tude! Some­where to go! Peo­ple to meet, and an occa­sional excuse to visit school and see what’s what.

Well, the first lun­cheon could not have come at a more oppor­tune time: just as my dear house­guests left me on a grey Fri­day morn­ing, I real­ized I had not much time to get myself way down south to Put­ney where the lun­cheon was hap­pen­ing. And of course it rained, all the way there, and of course it turned out I had WAY under­es­ti­mated the dis­tance between the tube sta­tion and the home where the lunch was to be. With John’s advice “Just take a cab” ring­ing in my ears, I slouched toward my des­ti­na­tion, buy­ing flow­ers for the host­ess along the way, feel­ing sorry for myself. But not for long: the wel­come of the other vol­un­teers and the house itself made the whole day worth­while. You could hardly get up the walk for the lux­u­ri­ous, over­tow­er­ing trees, flow­er­ing shrubs and plants at your feet: they all bent under the rain and made you feel as if you were in a fairy story. Then I was greeted and given the task of set­ting one of the tables, and encoun­tered in the din­ing room an enor­mous, fuzzy and wet Maine Coon cat! Per­fect. I car­ried it around, look­ing into var­i­ous rooms filled with ladies arrang­ing a tray of lasagne, glasses of cham­pagne, and, out in a mag­i­cal con­ser­va­tory pos­i­tively drip­ping with grapes on their vines, I encoun­tered a very friendly mother toss­ing a salad of her own design. I had dis­cov­ered as I came in that the food con­tri­bu­tions are on a rota, so I didn’t have to feel guilty for bring­ing flow­ers instead.

This lady fin­ished her task and we chat­ted about our chil­dren, and it was the first of many con­ver­sa­tions I have had that go some­thing like this: “Is your daugh­ter enjoy­ing school?” “Oh, she is absolutely BLOS­SOM­ING! Thriv­ing. How about yours?” “Just loves it.” I know there will, some­day, be some­thing that is not won­der­ful about this school, but for right now I breathe a sigh every day of “thank good­ness this all worked out.” It feels like just the right place, and just the right group of peo­ple. I loved hear­ing the high flutey tones of lots of Eng­lish ladies talk­ing to each other, and the food? Gor­geous lasagne with spinach noo­dles, a Moroc­can chicken dish with olives and pre­served lemons, a lovely salad with mung beans, and very rich cheeses at the end. I had to tell my dear mother in law about the enor­mous tart, the size of a Wall Street Jour­nal opened up, cov­ered with… figs, under a shiny glaze.

So as the rain fell and the day got ever darker, we all exchanged ideas about the school, our own jobs, the schools we had come from, sto­ries about sib­lings and the sum­mer hol­i­days. In short, what one writer I know has called “the com­fort­ing com­pany of women.” Quite so. Then we got down to busi­ness and lis­tened to the joys of man­ag­ing Lost Prop­erty: the girls who typ­i­cally lose every­thing they bring to school every sin­gle day, the girls who come into the Lost Prop­erty office just to… shop! The girls who explain that they think they might have left a black sweater in the the­atre block last March, is this it? We all signed up for our vol­un­teer days. And would you believe who was there? Avery’s new friend Izzy’s mother, from up the street, and our neigh­bor a cou­ple of doors down! “Kris­ten! Do you want a ride home?” Bliss.

Today in my email box I received one of the many mes­sages I still get from Avery’s old school in New York, announc­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the school building’s 20th birth­day! And you know what? I felt only a tinge of sad­ness, because already I feel quite wel­come at the lat­est school, and that things will only get nicer.

It’s nice liv­ing near to school for sev­eral rea­sons: while I am no longer allowed to walk her to school, I can still res­cue her when things go pear-shaped, as the morn­ing I found, in my phone voice­mail, a mes­sage from her piano teacher from the evening before, announc­ing a meet­ing THAT DAY. And as I lis­tened to it, my eyes alighted on Avery’s locker keys, besides her empty break­fast plate. It was but the work of a moment to stuff the keys in my pocket, write a note to Avery about the piano teacher, and walk to school, where I braved the extremely intim­i­dat­ing lady in recep­tion (although her eyes did twin­kle as I chat­tered through my con­fus­ing mes­sage to Avery). She divested me of the enve­lope full of keys, note and pocket money, and said, “I imag­ine we’ll be able to res­cue the sit­u­a­tion.” I stam­mered, “Well, these first few weeks can be hard to man­age, can’t they?” For me if not for you, I real­ized as she merely smiled me out of the room.

And then too there’s the fun of pick­ing her up at the end of the day, which thank­fully she still likes for me to do! We nearly always walk along with her friend Molly who lives just around the cor­ner, and I get to hear about the mag­nif­i­cence of the lunch, the unfair­ness of some sched­ul­ing con­flict, get a report on the crush­wor­thy sci­ence teacher! “Like an atten­tu­ated James MacAvoy!” Avery diag­nosed. I hope I get to meet this hunky paragon at some point. And then there was a funny morn­ing when just as the front door closed behind Avery and her walk-along friend, I heard a taxi pull up and dis­gorge John and his lug­gage. “Run and catch her up to say hi, she just left!” I said, fol­low­ing him out. He ran and caught them up, and I waited on the cor­ner for him to come back and let me in. And I waited. And waited. For heaven’s sake, had he reg­is­tered him­self at school? Had a heart attack? Stopped for a full Eng­lish break­fast? Our neigh­bors came by one by one and asked, “Just hang­ing out here on the cor­ner, Kris­ten?” I laughed and said, “If I’m still here by the time you come home from work, maybe you’ll let me in.” Finally back John came, hav­ing stopped to catch up with a mother at school. Cozy.

And I have not been idle at my com­puter, although I’ve been rub­bish at blog­ging. No, last week I was a good girl and went back over the blog, writ­ing down every sin­gle recipe since I began writ­ing in Jan­u­ary 2006. And you know what: I have 220 recipes. Lots of them, of course, not par­tic­u­larly note­wor­thy, and some a bit repet­i­tive, like how many vari­a­tions of salmon in cream can there be? Or bean salad? But still, that strikes me as enough recipes to thor­oughly dis­pose of any excuses for post­pon­ing REALLY writ­ing this cook­book that’s in my head. And we had the first meet­ing of our new writ­ing class last week and ironed out our plans for struc­ture, and lis­tened to everyone’s expla­na­tions of projects to be worked on. And our hostess’s house­keeper fed us quite the most deli­cious cake I have ever, ever had. And you know how I am about sweets. She has kindly given me the recipe!

Fely’s Banana and Apple Cake
(serves about 8 for tea)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bak­ing soda
1 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1 tsp ground cin­na­mon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup but­ter
1 cup sugar
1 cup mashed bananas
1 cup chopped apples
1 tbsp confectioner’s sugar

Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents. Cream but­ter and sugar, eggs and vanilla. Mix together dry and wet ingre­di­ents and add mashed banana and chopped apple. Bake at 180 c (350 f) for 45 min­utes. Cool slightly and dust with sugar. Serve warm.

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

I imag­ine that given my child’s delight in any­thing sweet and fruity, this cake would make the most wel­come warm break­fast food. I think I’ll try it this weekend.

So far, as far as the cook­book goes and my writ­ing class, I’ve had just two chap­ters to con­tribute: mac­a­roni and cheese, and Moroc­can meat­balls. So this week I worked on “Birth­day Soup.” It’s all about vichys­soise, and boy I wish I had some right now. What I do have is a pot of chicken soup with gar­lic and lit­tle star noo­dles, in which I will poach some tiny lit­tle chicken meat­balls later this after­noon. For some bizarre rea­son I woke up dream­ing of such a soup, and then real­ized I had some ran­dom chicken parts in the freezer, plenty of car­rots and cel­ery, so why not?

We had our rit­ual Sep­tem­ber 11 anniver­sary din­ner last week, which although a tra­di­tion, is chang­ing. For instance, I don’t think any­one men­tioned Sep­tem­ber 11 all evening. We all knew that was why we were together, but… and new friends to add to the guest list! Dear Toni, the neigh­bor with sev­eral cats who threw her­self heart and soul into the “Episode of the Miss­ing Tacy” last spring, came along and brought another friend from our street, Alice, who also… has five cats. So there was an unusual air of appre­ci­a­tion for Tacy and Wim­sey, the two who nor­mally join us on social occa­sions. For a cat lover, I have a strangely high pro­por­tion of friends (and hus­bands, if it comes to that) who are either aller­gic (they say) or down­right unin­ter­ested in cats. So it was a plea­sure to talk cats! And for what­ever rea­son, the chicken curry went down an absolute treat, so I shall give you the super sim­ple recipe now. It is inex­pen­sive and takes no time and very lit­tle effort, which makes the inevitable praise and sec­ond help­ings all the more satisfying.

Per­fect Party Chicken Curry
(serves 10 and then some)

3 tbsps veg­etable oil
1 tbsp each: curry pow­der, ras el hanout, turmeric ground cumin, ground corian­der
8 cloves gar­lic, minced
4 onions, minced
10 chicken breast fil­lets, cut in bite-size pieces
6 col­ored pep­pers: I mixed red, yel­low and orange, cut in bite-size pieces
2 soup-size cans coconut milk
salt and pep­per to taste

In a very large skil­let or paella pan, heat the oil. Add the spices and cook until bub­bling well. This step is very impor­tant. Do not think you can add the spices at any old time, although an adjust­ment of a bit more as you taste is all right. These spices release their fla­vors and at the same time cook off their bit­ter­ness but only if you cook them in the oil first.

Add the gar­lic, onions and chicken and cook, stir­ring well, until the chicken is nearly cooked. Add the pep­pers and stir until well-coated. Pour over the coconut milk, tak­ing care to shake the unopened cans first to blend. Now, turn down the heat and bub­ble very low until the chicken is thor­oughly cooked, about 10 min­utes. Obvi­ously, do not taste the sauce until this point! But now taste away and begin adding salt. It will require quite a bit. Add pep­per to taste. Serve with steamed bas­mati rice. LOVELY.

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

The fra­grance of this curry cook­ing as every­one opens the front door will make instant con­verts of any­one who says meekly, “I don’t really like Indian cook­ing.” And of course you can make it spicy if you are feed­ing peo­ple who like spicy: just as much chilli pep­per flakes or pow­der as you like.

Well, Sat­ur­day found us drop­ping off Avery at her first act­ing class, and then Sun­day to the sta­ble to greet the horses after their sum­mer loung­ing in Sur­rey on the farm. Sadly, old, old Bunny went to his reward over the sum­mer. I think it is extremely healthy that the instruc­tors and barn owner are open with the girls about ponies’ dying, being put down by the vet when their time comes, and that it’s not a tragedy or some­thing they can’t talk about. Very good. John and I had planned to have lunch at Angelus, the superb French place by the sta­ble, but all the lovely out­door tables were taken, and we sim­ply could not sit inside on one of the rare fine Lon­don days, so we ended up at Chez Kristoff, on our cor­ner, shiv­er­ing because the sun was behind the build­ing! Why was it imper­a­tive that we have lunch on that par­tic­u­lar day? Because it was the 25th anniver­sary of our first date, that’s why. There you go. And we had divine steak tartare and quite the best mus­sels mariniere AND the best frites! We will be back.

Mon­day I had a total adven­ture! Has it ever hap­pened to you: that you had a per­fectly good oppor­tu­nity to have a friend, who hap­pened to live next door to you, but you didn’t take advan­tage of the chance until, say, the per­son decided to move to LA? That’s what hap­pened to me with my friend Janet. There she was, next door, host­ing Tacy on reg­u­lar vis­its through the liv­ing room win­dows, but did I ever do any­thing to make friends with her? No, not until she and her hus­band stopped by to tell us they were mov­ing. Then for some rea­son we went out to lunch together, and over sev­eral dishes of unbear­ably spicy Thai food in Uxbridge Road, pro­ceeded to make fast friends. Then she moved away. So when she emailed to say she was com­ing for a visit (appar­ently the car-yoga-sunshine cul­ture of LA is mak­ing her crazy and in need of some traf­fic, grey skies and pes­simism, as only Lon­don can offer), we imme­di­ately made a plan. To go to Chi­na­town! Where I had never been.

And you must. Go, that is. You would sim­ply not believe you were in the West­ern world at all, at all. We met in Leices­ter Square, and then roamed all around Ger­rard Street, Mac­cles­field Street, the quaintly named Horse and Dol­phin Yard. Janet is an old habituee of the area and knew where the best place to get my sprouts would be, the finest sesame oil, the most exotic spicy bean sauces. My bags were so heavy! Think­ing that her hotel would not appre­ci­ate her arriv­ing with an entire deep-fried duck­ling, she let me do the hon­ors on that one. “At least it’s not oily at all,” she laughed as the paper bag imme­di­ately soaked through, to be put into a plas­tic one. Still, even when I tied the top, it was quite a fra­grant com­pan­ion in the bus on the way home!

I bought gar­lic shoots, aged soy sauce the qual­ity of bal­samic vine­gar, bags of rice and bean sprouts. Black bean sauce and chilli oil. We ended up starv­ing at a fan­tas­tic restau­rant called Haozhan, at 8 Ger­rard Street, and I had my first tofu. And, I’m sorry to say, my last, although I think it was as good as tofu gets. Lightly fried, topped with a seared scal­lop and spinach paste and red caviar… I think if I was going to like tofu, that would have been the dish. Unfor­tu­nately the qual­i­ties I didn’t like were the things that make it tofu. As in, slimy. Gooey. But I could see the point of the dish. More to the point for me was the light-as-a-feather soft­shell crabs, in a crunch cream-cracker bat­ter. Oh, if I could pro­duce THAT at home! But I never will, I know. And another scal­lop dish that I really could pro­duce at home: a silky and light oys­ter sauce with sauteed scal­lops, aspara­gus tips and green onions. Go, you’ll be glad to have a des­ti­na­tion when you’ve shopped till you drop.

Her hus­band joined us for tea, and then we made one last pil­grim­age to the Japan Cen­tre in Pic­cadilly, where I bought the cutest thing: empty tea bags! For bou­quet garni, in my Indian biryani. I have, I am ashamed to say, sac­ri­ficed sev­eral lit­tle tea hand­ker­chiefs in the mak­ing of this dish, because the cloves stain the linen and I can never get it out. Now I have lit­tle dis­pos­able fil­l­able tea bags. Happy! I also bought two dif­fer­ent kinds of very thin-sliced beef, one called “shabushabu beef” and one called “sukiyai beef,” although they look iden­ti­cal. I do not really know the dif­fer­ence, but my plan is, tomor­row evening, to mar­i­nate them in soy, sesame, gar­lic and gin­ger and then wrap them around aspara­gus tips, put them on skew­ers and grill them. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Today I am forced to keep myself out of trou­ble and accom­plish­ing things for even longer than usual: Thurs­days are the cov­eted “Gym­nas­tics and Tram­po­line After-School Club” days, and can you imag­ine any­one more deserv­ing of a spot on an offi­cial tram­po­line club than Avery? Does every­one else spend all sum­mer prac­tic­ing? I’ll be glad to get the report. Every day after school brings me a slightly more grownup, more artic­u­late, more ener­getic per­son home with me: I’m aston­ished at the words she chooses to tell me things! Of course right now I can’t think of any, that’s what I get for fail­ing to blog for so long. But I will try to remem­ber and write some down, for “prosperity’s sake,” as my col­lege room­mate used to say.

Good­ness, what a whirl­wind we’ve been in for the past week. No sooner had we set­tled into our post-summer rou­tine than it was… the first day of Avery’s new school. And of course in the tra­di­tion of all first days, John was able to pro­duce his mag­i­cal plate of cin­na­mon toast, albeit chal­lenged by the num­ber of curly let­ters this year! We tried to imag­ine a school that would pro­vide a good acronym for cin­na­mon toast: some­thing like Williams House Trip­tych. But in any case, although Avery said she was ner­vous, and cer­tainly I was for her, she man­aged to wolf down the entire plate of toast as well as all the straw­ber­ries and a nice pile of pro­sciutto. She is def­i­nitely hav­ing a growth spurt: she’s eat­ing every­thing in sight. Plus, to get ahead of my story, the lunch at the new school is SUPERB! She is very sparkly at pickup every day, hav­ing ingested actual food between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Walk­ing her to school was a nice social adven­ture! We were picked up by Elsie, who lives above us in a nearby street, and then we went on to find Holly who is across the first big road to cross (thank­fully there’s a zebra cross­ing which peo­ple seem to observe), then to get Sophia at the top of the next big inter­sec­tion. The actual dropoff was a total anti-climax: barely a kiss and she was up the big front steps and gone. All of us, moth­ers and John, sighed. “Well, that’s that.” So every­one dis­persed: peo­ple to work, Elsie’s mom Annie and me to walk along toward home, chat­ting as best I can at 8:15 in the morn­ing which isn’t say­ing much. And Annie is of course an incred­i­ble morn­ing per­son, filled with verve and fizz and con­ver­sa­tion; what a waste, for her to be sad­dled with ME! But I did lis­ten with atten­tion to her tale of a nearby indoor pool in which I might swim, with her, at some later date (and later time of day, I pray). I turned in at our gate feel­ing that I’d dodged a bul­let: Avery was safely at school and I had met nice peo­ple, and noth­ing ter­ri­ble had happened.

I must explain some­thing. About me and first days, and school dropoff. Although I am get­ting much bet­ter about the anniver­sary this year, I must say that the first full day of Avery’s kinder­garten expe­ri­ence was Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. I am toy­ing with the idea of some­day writ­ing this down, all that hap­pened to us that day, but suf­fice to say that I spent the whole sum­mer before her kinder­garten fear­ing irra­tionally that some­thing ter­ri­ble would hap­pen to her if I left her at school. All sum­mer. Every­one was extremely frus­trated with me, that I couldn’t enjoy the idea of her being at school all day, inde­pen­dent and happy, no, I had to make it into a drama all about ME. And then I left her at school, about six blocks from the World Trade Cen­ter, and that’s when it happened.

Believe it or not, I spent quite a lot of time after­ward think­ing about what was, to me, the obvi­ous con­nec­tion between leav­ing Avery at school and that ter­ri­ble tragedy. I really did con­nect them. And in the inter­ven­ing years I have strug­gled every super-blue-sky-day not to panic, and cer­tainly every school first-day dropoff (and to a minor extent every dropoff, period), not to panic.

But you know what? It gets bet­ter. I was really pretty good about leav­ing her at the new school, and I was also absolutely saved by the arrival, shortly after school dropoff, of my house­guests for the week: Bob, the lovely min­is­ter who mar­ried us, and his dear wife Ann. Bob has turned 80 this year, and retired after 52 years of teach­ing the­ol­ogy, phi­los­o­phy and reli­gion at my alma mater. He mar­ried us! Lo these nearly 20 years ago. And good­ness, I was glad to open my door to them and wel­come them into our abode for the week.

Oh my did we chat! They set­tled into the guest room and then came down to the kitchen to sit and chat. Hours later we real­ized we were starv­ing! It was but the work of a moment to find bean and lentil salad in the fridge, toss in some of the grilled shrimp we’d had for din­ner the night before. And slice some toma­toes and mush­rooms and toss them in bal­samic vine­gar and chilli oil, and put Brie and goat’s cheese on a plate with some Ryvita. Voila, lunch! I will tell you now: if you have bean and lentil salad, you have lunch. Throw in any­thing left­over from din­ner: sliced cold beef, pork or roast chicken, shrimp, scal­lops, any­thing. If you need some extra fla­vor, add a minced clove of gar­lic and some lemon zest. Done. And you’ve cleaned out your fridge.

Sev­eral more hours of catch­ing up, and I real­ized I had lived through the entire hor­ri­ble First Day of School and had given Avery scarcely a thought! How lovely. I ran off to get her and Bob and Ann relaxed at home, enjoy­ing the break in the rain. And can I report, dear read­ers: Avery had a MAR­VEL­LOUS, won­der­ful, glo­ri­ous day. “The sec­ond best day of my life, and I’m not even being fair: I can’t count the day of the school play!” I felt so grate­ful to get her back, hear all of her enthu­si­as­tic account of, guess what most of all: the FOOD. Actu­ally food, to be eaten! “There was steak, with mush­rooms, and CHOCO­LATE CAKE, with warm vanilla sauce!” There’s a big dif­fer­ence between a grow­ing girl who’s spent the whole day using up her admit­tedly lovely break­fast, and one who’s been well and truly fed five hours later. LOVELY. A huge sigh of relief to have her with me, happy, happy. And FULL. More than that, the girls were NICE to her. And the teach­ers lovely and sup­port­ive, the build­ings full of poten­tial for excit­ing getting-losts. Alto­gether, a heart­warm­ing day!

Home for slow-braised chicken with root veg­eta­bles, sim­ply the best cooks-itself din­ner ever. And here’s a hint: braise the chicken breast DOWN. That way, the breast, which tends to dry out, cooks entirely sub­merged in white wine-laced chicken broth. Just lovely. John came home and the con­ver­sa­tion, which had been sort of catch-uppy about what’s hap­pened at col­lege since we were there, turned polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal, you name it! It’s been a long time since my brain was tuned that high. Dis­cus­sions of Niebuhr and Tillich (both of whom fea­tured in our wed­ding cer­e­mony!), abor­tion rights and cre­ation­ism, nar­ra­tive the­ol­ogy and util­i­tar­i­an­ism. Avery’s head went back and forth as at a ten­nis match! Glorious.

The fol­low­ing day found us at.. St Paul’s Cathe­dral. I’ve never, embar­rass­ingly, been. But now Avery is at her new school, I felt we should go, and it was well worth the visit. Gor­geous mosaics, stat­ues, tomb­stones. Just lovely. We climbed to the “Whis­per­ing Gallery,” some 250 steps, and sat for Bob’s lec­ture on the saints pic­tured in the gallery and the “gnos­tics” who inter­preted them. And then would you believe Bob climbed the fur­ther 200-some steps to the very top! Ann and I did not fol­low! A nice lunch and then I was off home… they came back later to join Avery and me in the kitchen, and for Bob to ask a mil­lion ques­tions about the works they had seen in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Tate Mod­ern, across the Mil­len­nium Bridge from the Cathe­dral. I had to put my brain back into art his­tory land, away from recipes, pre-teen book plots, Lon­don friends, Con­necti­cut friends and fam­ily… into that place where, in 1992, I was the King of my own world, knowl­edge­able about every­thing I could have wanted to under­stand about post-structuralism, decon­struc­tion­ism, you name it! To go back and reach into that book list, idea list, com­par­a­tive mind­set… oh it was a stretch!

Bob asked earnestly, “I under­stand the notion of Mod­ernism, Kris­ten, and Post-Modernism in the­ol­ogy, but what func­tion does Post-Modernism serve in the his­tory of art?” And some­how I was able to explain this, and to rec­og­nize the art they had seen from his descrip­tions, and pro­vide names and titles (his eye­sight doesn’t per­mit the read­ing of museum wall text), and some inter­pre­ta­tion. “‘Oh, Kris­ten, where ARE you?’ I kept ask­ing myself,” Bob mourned. I wish I had been there! One of those times when one’s arms are stretched in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. “I haven’t been able to tell you every­thing about my day,” Avery whis­pered, and then John was home want­ing to talk about the elec­tion… !! We finally sat down to grilled salmon, bean salad, roast beets… and more dis­cus­sions, this time of racism in the 1960s in my col­lege soror­ity, the careers of all my for­mer pro­fes­sors. Just wonderful.

Thurs­day saw us at West­min­ster Abbey, in the pour­ing rain! I had never prop­erly been there before, either, just a brief visit two years ago at Christ­mas when Avery’s school sang there. And I can tell you, I have a good piece of advice for any pos­si­ble future vis­i­tors: do your research ahead of your visit and find out what YOU want to see. Because it’s HUGE. We did the tour guide, the audio thingy, and while I was fas­ci­nated by the mosaic floor restora­tion at the Great Altar, and then music of the Boys’ Choir, I could not have cared less about all the royal graves. And then I came upon what I cared about most: Poets’ Cor­ner. Not just poets, but all sorts of artis­tic types, both buried there and merely remem­bered there: Avery’s dar­ling Anthony Trol­lope, Dick­ens, Olivier, Auden, T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, you name it! Very excit­ing, although Bob felt it fol­lowed a cult of the dead per­son almost TOO far. He’s very inclined to be dis­mis­sive of such slav­ish fol­low­ings. Lit­tle does he know how many slav­ish fol­low­ers he will have when he meets his reward. He can’t stop us.

A nice sand­wich lunch across White­hall from the For­eign and Home Offices, and I got to hear the story of their meet­ing: at a Yale-Smith dance… 57 years ago! Just lovely.

Home to get Avery and to put together the Chicken Biryani and cheesy spinach for din­ner, and to hear more from Avery about this shangri-la that is school, and most specif­i­cally the CLOTH­ING the girls wear. “I know you’ll think it’s super­fi­cial of me, Mommy, to care about their clothes, but after all these years of uni­forms, clothes can be very reveal­ing of a person’s per­son­al­ity!” So much fun to hear her going on and on about this or that girl and her tights, skirts, t-shirts, hair­dos… and the class­work sounds OK, too! Avery ended up in a bath while we watched the McCain VP choice speech. In shocked silence. Good­ness. I shouldn’t say more.

We did laugh over Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” take on Joe Biden’s VP speech. Biden had told, in his usual folksy way, the story of his nightly train-ride home, through the small towns, with the houses all lit up on the sides of the tracks, and his imag­in­ing their con­ver­sa­tions, around their kitchen tables. “How are we going to pay the mort­gage?” “How are we going to man­age send­ing Johnny to col­lege?” And Jon Stew­art added to this, “Why do we have to live so close to the train tracks?” his voice trail­ing off in a Doppler effect. Avery has repeated that SO many times. But seri­ously, what one earth is hap­pen­ing to this elec­tion? It’s very odd being here and being expected by our British friends to explain what on EARTH Amer­i­cans are think­ing. It’s cer­tainly not some­thing I can begin to elucidate.

On Fri­day morn­ing we had one more talky break­fast together, talk­ing about par­ent­hood, child­hood test­ing, the future of our uni­ver­sity, their upcom­ing bik­ing trip from Bruges to Ams­ter­dam! I hated to see them go. Enor­mous hugs and assur­ances that we will not let very much time go by before see­ing each other again… and they were off, pulling their lug­gage behind them with their bike hel­mets snicked onto their suit­cases. Remark­able peo­ple. I’m so glad Avery spent time with them. And… he taught Avery to crawl, right on the floor of the Phi­los­o­phy Depart­ment offices, these 11 years ago. He reminds me of John’s dad: stal­wart, trust­wor­thy, strong, right­eous and gentle.

Din­ner tonight was, I must say, just the three of us, and I say mod­estly, totally spec­tac­u­lar. Give it a try.

Pan-Seared Scal­lops with Bacon, Beet­root and Rocket
(serves four)

4 medium beet­roots, roasted 1 1/2 hours at 400 degrees, peeled and sliced
2 tbsps olive oil
16 large scal­lops, roe­less
8 rash­ers (slices) back bacon (Gig­gly Pig, prefer­ably!), trimmed and sliced thin
1 bunch green (salad) onions, sliced thin, both white and green parts
1 bag rocket leaves
hand­ful lentils

dress­ing: whisk every­thing together
3 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 tbsp Japan­ese mirin or other vine­gar (if reg­u­lar vine­gar, use less lemon juice)
1 tbsp grain mus­tard
1 tbsp creme fraiche
juice of 1 lemon
1 clove gar­lic, finely minced
pinch salt
pinch ground pepper

First: arrange sliced beet­root on a large plate.

Next, heat the 2 tbsps olive oil in a large stick­proof skil­let. Cook the scal­lops on one side for 1 minute, then turn over and cook to your lik­ing: another minute for seared, slightly longer for well-cooked. Remove to a plate.

Now add the bacon to the same skil­let and cook till cooked through and slightly col­ored. Add the spring onions and cook till soft. Remove to a medium bowl.

Now to assem­ble: toss the rocket in a lit­tle of the dress­ing and arrange on top of beet­root. Then arrange the scal­lops over the rocket and toss over the lentils. Now toss the bacon and spring onions in the rest of the dress­ing and pour over the scal­lops. LOVELY!

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

I can’t tell you how good this was. And we had it with:

Cau­li­flower Puree
(serves four)

1 medium head cau­li­flower, sep­a­rated into flo­rets
1/2 stick but­ter
cream to taste
salt and pepper

In a large saucepan cover the cau­li­flower with water and sea­son with salt. Bring to a boil and boil high for 10 min­utes. Drain thor­oughly. With a hand blender, blend with but­ter and as much cream as you need to get the con­sis­tency you want: less for thick, more for creamier. Sea­son to taste.

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

This puree COM­PLETELY can­cels out any pur­pose mashed pota­toes have, in my opin­ion! I have never eaten it before, but I read some­where that cau­li­flower was the per­fect part­ner for scal­lops, and it’s true.

OK, enough food and what­ever. Back to… the weather. How many adjec­tives can the British weather peo­ple come up with to describe the rain? Lately it’s been… inter­mit­tent, per­va­sive, per­ni­cious, ever­p­re­sent, drown­ing… it’s too much! I know it sounds like a joke, and I adore my adopted land, but it really does… rain all the time. Good thing we have sun­shine in our souls. Oh, wait, that’s the Repub­li­cans. But maybe they’ll share.