Actu­ally, one of the things I like best about Lon­don is that as I was com­pil­ing this list, the num­ber of “things I love about Lon­don” kept grow­ing! I thought I’d bet­ter stop before I got to dou­ble dig­its. That’s for another time.

But we are think­ing a lot about how much we love it here, as we start think­ing about leav­ing. Con­necti­cut beck­ons: the green of the grass (cue Avery moan­ing here, about how pre­dictable I am), the red of the barn, the blue of the sky, the white of the fence… our beloved fam­ily and friends. And we want to go, of course. But there is so much to love about our adopted city, such an idio­syn­cratic lit­tle list this evening, that I thought I’d let you in on some of the best. I’ll warn you: it’s no tourist list. It’s the kind of list you make when you’re fully entrenched some­where, where the tiny bits that make your home love­able are weird, quirky, and all your own.

First, may I say how much I adore the fish­mon­ger who has moved into my neigh­bor­hood? He is Tony of The Fishmonger’s Kitchen in Shep­herds Bush Road, and he’s Aus­tralian, gor­geous, gen­er­ous and funny. For months we and our neigh­bors looked in cha­grin as the fish­mon­ger before him jumped ship (so to speak), and the shop moldered (and molded, prob­a­bly), and the hair­dresser next door reported smells of grim death float­ing under the walls.

And then sud­denly: there was Tony! With his lovely blue-painted chalk sand­wich board out in front, trum­pet­ing “Cooked Lob­sters to Order” and “Why not throw some fish on the BBQ this week­end?” and “We now have fresh sushi!” From Tony I bought the many crabs nec­es­sary for my recent tele­vi­sion sojourn, and the huge slabs of salmon for many din­ners, as well as juicy pieces of yel­low­tail tuna to sear for a week­day lunch with my beloved, and gor­geously fresh king prawns (as you see!) to mar­i­nate in olive oil, smoked paprika and sea salt, to saute for two min­utes and then pull their lit­tle heads off and lick your fingers.

Sauteed King Prawns with Paprika
(serves 4)

2 dozen king prawns, raw with heads and shells on
1 tbsp smoked paprika
6 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp sea salt (or to taste)
fresh-ground black pep­per
a lit­tle more olive oil for the pan
chives to garnish

dip­ping sauce:
1/2 cup may­on­naise
juice of 1/2 lemon
squirt of pre­pared wasabi (as hot as you like it!)
fresh-ground black pepper

Cut each prawn up the back with scis­sors, end­ing before the tail. Place the prawns in as sin­gle layer as you can fit, on a large cookie sheet. Sprin­kle with all mari­nade ingre­di­ents and smoosh them around, mix­ing the paprika with the oil. This releases a mag­nif­i­cently earthy, sen­sual aroma that will get your taste buds kick­ing in.

Sprin­kle a lit­tle more olive oil in a very large skil­let and heat till really hot. Place the prawns in imme­di­ately, all at the same time, and begin turn­ing them as they turn pink. Con­tinue to cook over high heat, turn­ing all the time, until they turn stiff and are com­pletely cooked (2–3 min­utes total time, depend­ing on size of prawns). Do NOT over­cook beyond being JUST done.

Sprin­kle with chives and serve over rice or spaghetti, spoon­ing out all the oil and cook­ing debris from the skil­let and sprin­kling it over. Serve with the dip­ping sauce and pro­vide a large body plate for the shells!

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Thank you, Tony. Hav­ing you there in the road, to chat with on a hot summer’s day, to report on the recipe of the night before, to stop in for some wickedly fresh Cor­nish had­dock for tomor­row night’s fish fry, makes every day just a lit­tle cozier, a lit­tle warmer, and our cor­ner of Lon­don a lit­tle more like a village.

And then there’s Sun­drica, our gor­geous lit­tle Ital­ian deli, for parme­san cheese to make my put­tanesca even saltier than it already was! Never mind, skip salt tomor­row to make up for it. Sun­drica is a tiny lit­tle space next to a flower shop by the Ham­mer­smith tube sta­tions, and is packed to the gills with del­i­ca­cies that you won’t know you needed until you walk through its mag­i­cal doors. Ital­ian tuna in olive oil, duck fat in plump glass jars, giant bowls of cured black olives, long rows of many whole salami, pep­per­oni, chorizo, pates of every descrip­tion, sand­wiches of moz­zarella and basil on arti­san bread, home­made gnoc­chi and ravi­oli… go, do. Pick up a tin of lovely Ital­ian plum toma­toes, a chunk of parme­san, a hand­ful or two of black olives, a packet of spaghetti and a tiny of anchovies and a jar of capers, and you’re good for:

Spaghetti Put­tanesca
(serves 4)

1/2 lb spaghetti
3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 hand­ful (200 grams-ish) oil-cured black olives, pit­ted
1 soup-size can peeled toma­toes, cut in sixths
3 tbsps capers, rinsed if held in salt
6 anchovies, rinsed
1 cup grated parme­san cheese

Boil spaghetti. In the mean­time, mince the gar­lic and onion. Saute in olive oil in a saucepan, then when soft, add the olives, toma­toes, capers and anchovies. Saute till mixed. Throw in the drained spaghetti and serve with cheese.

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

This is wickedly, evilly good: strong-flavored, robust, not for the faint of heart. If you can find a tin of tiny whole cherry toma­toes, get those. They’re whim­si­cal, like slightly col­lapsed red bal­loons. Makes the whole dish even nicer.

Once you’ve brushed your teeth from all that gar­lic and anchovy, go to the Vic­to­ria and Albert and book tick­ets for “Grace Kelly: Style Icon” (you have to book them! there’s no show­ing up on the day, it’s far too pop­u­lar). Take a teenage girl or two: it’s the per­fect event for them to see what glamor was really like. There are her REAL dresses from “High Soci­ety” and “Rear Win­dow”! Avery’s jaw sim­ply dropped at the sight of these iconic gar­ments, with their impos­si­bly tiny waist­lines… and there are lovely videos of her engage­ment announce­ment, her wed­ding, her hon­ey­moon… and enough jew­elled hand­bags, sun­glasses and shoes to make any 13-year-old girl swoon. And the shop! There is noth­ing like the V&A shop. Avery always touches every­thing, and if her Iowa grand­mother is with her, it takes twice as long because they EACH touch every­thing, with each other. Per­fect for birth­day party gifts.

And then, it’s late June in Lon­don, so it’s… Wim­ble­don. Can there be any­thing more sat­is­fy­ing than play­ing a mag­nif­i­cently sweaty game of ten­nis on our grotty local courts, com­ing home to shower and change, and flop­ping down on the sofa to watch a lovely Amer­i­can called John Isner duke it out for over 11 hours with a French­man? Over eight of those hours were SEQUEN­TIAL! The match played out, as you all know by now, over three days, and they are both my new heroes. Now, when­ever John and I are exhausted after our hour, I say, “So let’s do that for seven more HOURS.” It was sim­ply awe-inspiring. The only com­par­i­son I can pos­si­bly even sug­gest to myself is child­birth: at some point, or many points, one says to one­self, “I don’t think I can see this process through. I think I’m done.” And then one’s hus­band says, “No one can have this baby but you. You’ll have to stick it out.” (I’m sure he said it more poet­i­cally and sup­por­t­ively than that, but you get the idea.)

It must have been like that for these two lads: with every impos­si­ble serve, they must have thought on some level, “I really can’t be doing with this any­more,” but what choice did they have? No one but they could fin­ish the match. Truly inspiring!

And then, in my never-ending quest for new things to do that not every­one gets to do: go visit the Law Courts at and around Lincoln’s Inn Fields and… hush hush… get to have lunch in the Mem­bers Com­mon Room! It pays to have illus­tri­ous friends, I do have one, a very cool solic­i­tor friend who is a loyal blog reader and there­fore an unques­tion­ably good per­son, and she kindly invited me along to lunch in the exalted space. It is the orig­i­nal wine cel­lars of the larger din­ing hall upstairs (in order to get into which one must be a bar­ris­ter, which is the Eng­lish type of lawyer who appears in court, not the type who works with the gen­eral pub­lic and is called a solic­i­tor. But she walked upstairs with me after we had our lovely gos­sipy lunch, and we gazed upon the glo­ri­ous vaulted ceil­ing, painted chan­de­liers, long refectory-style tables. “It’s like Harry Pot­ter!” she mur­mured, and exactly so! She described to me the old-fashioned bar­ris­ters work­ing in their Geor­gian offices and then repair­ing at the end of the day to their flats above, with menser­vants, just like Oxford dons…

It was such fun to see some­thing pri­vate and impres­sive and rather secret-feeling, the build­ings soar­ing around the Old Square and New Square, leafy and green, and encap­su­lated by wrought-iron fences to keep out peo­ple like me. I am happy to report that my friend is just as impressed with her sur­round­ings as I was, so we were able to be glee­ful for her together.

And then, of course, there is Avery’s beloved school. I fully real­ize that the clock is tick­ing on my being wel­come there, in fact on her being there at all. Of course come to that, the clock is tick­ing on every­thing, so I don’t know why I should suf­fer par­tic­u­larly over the school, but it is quite the most mag­i­cal place we could ever have envi­sioned send­ing her. This week was the Cel­e­bra­tion for her year mov­ing up into the Mid­dle School from the Lower School, and frankly, the sight of all 100 of them in their teen glory, per­fect bod­ies and hair and gor­geous smiles and all of them just start­ing out, so earnest and yet cool and sophis­ti­cated, was enough to make me want to cry, as usual. I do try so hard not to! Luck­ily I was brought from bathos by the sheer intel­li­gence and charm of their pre­sen­ta­tions: “A Very Civil War: or, The Entire Recount­ing how Charles Stu­art did come to lose pos­ses­sion of both head & crown in a sin­gle stroke with this sorry tale reduced to five min­utes.” If I told you that the girls’ analy­sis of the salient bat­tles was told in football-analysis lan­guage, would you find that as amus­ing as I did?

Sit­ting in the great hall, pan­elled up to the gallery from which girls hang, arms folded, cling­ing to their friends, lis­ten­ing to an excerpt from “The Cru­cible” in which most excite­ment was obtained from a con­certed scream (the acoustics are impres­sive, I found!)… I felt com­pletely happy, in spite of the heat!

(I inter­rupt this paean of love to Lon­don with a brief screech: enough with the heat already! We go to Con­necti­cut for this! Let’s have some nice driz­zly grey for just a day or so, so I can stop being all pink in the face and sweaty, even before I start a game of tennis.)

Finally, tonight we picked Avery up from a cupcake-making birth­day party (she dec­o­rated hers with Doc­tor Who ref­er­ences, per her cur­rent obsession.

She said, “It’s really hard to make a Dalek’s arm out of frosting.”

We smiled at each other. “That’s a good one for the game,” I said, refer­ring to our ongo­ing love affair with sen­tences that we reckon have never been uttered before.

“I know,” she said, as we trooped to the car, she in her beau­ti­ful grey Bon­point dress (dot­ted with choco­late from the cup­cakes and gone sud­denly too short with her shoot­ing up), and a pair of tot­tery vin­tage charity-shop heels. Only Avery could get away with it.

We raced away from the party to my last thing-I-love, and that’s the Old Vic. How many dozens of times we have dri­ven there through town across the West­min­ster Bridge, look­ing up at Big Ben (which Avery always reminds me is not what you can see, not the tower at all, but the bell inside: the tower is St Stephen’s Tower), West­min­ster Abbey and the Houses of Par­lia­ment and the Lon­don Eye. It’s the tourists’ tour, only it’s on the way to the theatre!

Tonight it was “The Tem­pest”, and while it is not my favorite of dear Will’s efforts (I sim­ply can­not keep the plot straight, and Avery and I agree that the Ceres-Juno scene is not just incom­pre­hen­si­ble, but down­right annoy­ing), but it was great fun to see the glo­ri­ous stag­ing, hear the idio­syn­cratic live music com­ing from both sides of the stage, and to revel in know­ing that in this town, Shake­speare is a local play­wright done good. It’s funny how present he is, when you live here. He’s alive and well, and we all feel that he must be read­ing the reviews, shak­ing his head over pedan­tic mod­ern stag­ings, wish­ing he could throw an Eliz­a­bethan ruff over some char­ac­ter dressed as a bicy­cle mes­sen­ger (I’m not mak­ing that up). The Old Vic is sim­ply a cozy, ele­gant, friendly the­atre that sim­ply churns out beau­ti­ful pro­duc­tions: “Gaslight” last year, the never-to-be-forgotten “Six Degrees of Sep­a­ra­tion” this spring, and tonight… I, well, I LOVE it.

And… did you know that when you book tick­ets for a play in Lon­don, the choices of “title” (instead of just Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms and Dr), include “Lady”, “Lord” and “Sir”! I love that too.

And there you have them: eight things I love about liv­ing here. I wish you could do them all with me, but then if you lived here, you’d have your own eight things. That’s what makes this city great. If you ever think you’re a tiny bit bored, all you have to do is look up and there is some­thing to cher­ish, to invite a friend to do, to chor­tle about after­ward, to hold to your heart and enjoy. Now… it can cool off.

Might I inter­rupt what­ever excit­ing activ­i­ties are occu­py­ing you, dear read­ers, at this moment, and ask your opinion?

I am about to meet with a sim­ply SUB­LIME food pho­tog­ra­pher here in Lon­don, about pos­si­bly (so excit­ing!) tak­ing pho­tographs for my even­tual “book.” Now here are some things I am won­der­ing. And the rea­son I am ask­ing you? Because she said, “You must ask your­self who your audi­ence is to be.”

I am hop­ing it will be YOU.

So. Do you like to look at/read/use foodie books that include pho­tographs of ingre­di­ents, or of dishes in progress, or of fin­ished dishes? I sup­pose the ingredient-based illus­tra­tions are more artsy, more for the joy of look­ing, where the dish-in-progress or fin­ished dish might be more instruc­tional. Does that make sense?

For exam­ple, the pho­tographs above give you an idea of the sort of choice I am imag­in­ing. What do you like? One or the other, or both, or some­thing else entirely?

If you have an opin­ion on this sub­ject, do take a moment to let me know. It’s all get­ting stu­pen­dously thrilling. And thank you!

Stop the presses: SUN­BURN! Not a lot, I rush in to say, but today we got… sun­burned. I’m old-fashioned enough to say I put on “sun­tan lotion,” when my PC side knows I really mean “sun­block” or “sun­screen.” But hey, 30 years ago I was slather­ing myself with baby oil and lying on a bed of alu­minum foil, so I think I’m due a lit­tle leeway.

It’s that time of year again, when I look at the cal­en­dar and think, “Really?” Did I really book tick­ets for three more plays, RSVP for Avery for three more par­ties, encour­age her to throw one of her own, and sched­ule two more sales for Lost Prop­erty, not to men­tion out of town guests, doc­tor and den­tist appoint­ments and the vet, all in the three weeks left before we go to the States?

Drinks par­ties, din­ner par­ties, really?

The girls deserve it after the hell­ish week they put in last week, 12 exams in five days! I’m relieved to have it over, and I never even cracked a book! The whole ordeal was brought home to me most visu­ally when Avery held out a pen. “Do you see how there is no ink in this pen?” she asked rhetor­i­cally. “This pen was NEW at the begin­ning of last week!”

This week, we’ve been out and about play­ing ten­nis (I will not suc­cumb to ten­nis elbow, will NOT, I’m sure it feels bet­ter if I play than if I don’t), and see­ing a new bit of the Vic­to­ria and Albert instal­la­tion, of archi­tects using the museum itself to explore architecture’s exper­i­ments and lim­i­ta­tions. “The Ark,” by Nor­we­gian archi­tect Rin­tala Eggerts­son (would you have guessed that was a man? I wouldn’t) com­pletely charmed us: a two-story two-by-gour con­struc­tion, teth­ered to the stair­case by thin metal cables, and sheathed entirely in… paper­back books! A giant book­shelf, going round and round, admit­ting only four peo­ple at a time because it… moves. From side to side, just slightly, but enough to remind you of your own mor­tal­ity. In between con­tem­pla­tions of that, you can sit on the sheep­skin cov­ered seat on floor two, and browse. Really, they invite you to browse! Go, do.

And then onto “The Cru­cible.” At Regent’s Park Open-Air The­atre, one of my most favorite places in the world, where we have seen “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” “Much Ado About Noth­ing,” always in these wan­ing days of the school year before we decamp for our Amer­i­can sum­mer. This year it was “The Cru­cible.” McCarthy­ism! Shades of today’s hys­ter­i­cal shout­ings about Obama, health­care and Com­mu­nism! Every­thing that changes, sim­ply stays the same. The sun beat down, Avery’s class occu­pied the upper regions of the the­atre as we cooked in the “bet­ter seats”, and we rev­eled in the Amer­i­can play play­ing itself out in the Eng­lish atmos­phere. I won­dered how the reli­gious fer­vor would play out in Amer­ica… there was some ner­vous tit­ter­ing as the predominantly-schoolkids audi­ence came to terms with Miller’s deadly earnest treat­ment. “No reli­gion that demands your blood deserves your faith…”

And how dif­fi­cult it is for me to with­hold the secrets of my culi­nary excite­ment of last week­end! Film­ing! Stu­dios! Cars and dri­vers! But my lips are sealed. Until mid-August, when I can reveal all… Stay tuned.

In the mean­time, I await the big reveal of my new blog design. There have been delays, as there always are with big projects, but I am hope­ful of mas­sive excite­ment in a week or so. To deal with this, I had bet­ter offer:

Cucum­ber and Yogurt Salad with Chillis and Lemon­grass
(serves 4)

1 large cucum­ber, outer sides sliced off and seeds left behind, cut into slen­der sticks
1 red onion, diced
1 medium-hot red chilli pep­per, minced
1 stalk lemon­grass, peeled of outer layer, minced
zest of 1 lemon
lots of fresh-ground pep­per
1/3 cup fat-free yogurt, mixed with juice of 1 lemon
Mal­don salt to taste

Mix every­thing but yogurt and lemon juice, then toss with those. Salt to taste.

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

This salad is beau­ti­ful and fresh on its own, but also sur­pris­ingly lovely with a rather heavy main course, as we had this week: beef ribs in a tomato sauce. The two bounce off each other: rich and light, dark and springlike.

I wish you luck in achiev­ing all that June has left for you, as we dance through the excite­ment left for us… then HOME!

It’s a good news/bad news sce­nario, and since I’m Scan­di­na­vian I always want the bad news first: Avery’s long-dreaded end-of-year school exams begin tomor­row morn­ing. Five days, 11 exams, noth­ing else. Just exams.

The good news? She was home all day, every day last week and I sim­ply LOVED it. I try not to think, most of the time, about how much time she spends away from me these days, because I know it’s the wave of the future, it’s healthy, and in the hideous mod­ern expres­sion, “it’s all good.” I hate that phrase because it’s NOT all good. I miss her, and I find myself long­ing stu­pidly for the days when she was far more depen­dent on me, and there­fore within my sight much more than she is now. I real­ize that to have a young lady on the doorstep of being adult, so capa­ble and ele­gant and knowl­edge­able, is “all good.” It’s won­der­ful to drop her off at her act­ing class and see that she no longer has any need of any­one accom­pa­ny­ing her, and her teach­ers have inside jokes with her, and she can be counted on to be a funny, hard­work­ing mem­ber of the group.

And even her rid­ing lessons, where I used to take her, set­tle myself down with a mag­a­zine and sort of sigh at hav­ing to watch her go round and round, being led by one of the big girls… these days SHE’S the big girl at the sta­bles at the week­ends, the one the adults rely on to help the lit­tle ones. There’s no more watch­ing: she’s off in Hyde Park lead­ing the lit­tle ones. I love it that peo­ple have grown to depend on my child, that she’s respon­si­ble and resource­ful. It’s all you wish for, really, as a parent.

Except for more time with her! I wish for that.

So this week, as oner­ous as it was for her, was a delight for me. I pro­vided her with “fre­quent lit­tle meals,” as my friend Shel­ley so lov­ingly once said about feed­ing a kit­ten! Bowls of juicy, blood-red Amer­i­can cher­ries to be gnawed around the pits, bits of toasted baguette spread with salty Nor­mandy but­ter, Dan­ish salami of such a pink­ish hue that we find our­selves won­der­ing if Den­mark feeds its pigs food col­or­ing! And fresh fried had­dock, bat­tered in home­made bread­crumbs, four-cheese lasagne with a sneaky layer of spinach, chicken in sour cream sauce with brandy and a spe­cial paprika pro­vided by my chum Rosie… not to men­tion count­less aspara­gus spears, broc­coli flo­rets, sugar snap peas, and, best of all…

Avery’s Exam-Week Blue­berry Muffins
(makes six medium-sized muffins)

5 oz/150g plain flour
pinch salt
1/2 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1 large egg
1 1/2 oz/40g white sugar
1/2 vanilla pod, scraped
zest of 1/2 lemon
2 oz/50g but­ter, melted
1 cup blueberries

Heat oven to 350F/180C. Line the muf­fin tin with paper lin­ers, or but­ter and flour each muf­fin space.

Sift (or sim­ply shake through a sieve, as I do since I don’t own a sifter) the flour, salt and bak­ing pow­der into a bowl just large enough to hold them. In a larger bowl, stir together the egg, sugar, vanilla pod scrap­ings, lemon zest and butter.

Fold the flour mix­ture into the egg mix­ture just gen­tly, mix­ing until all is JUST wet but leav­ing behind plenty of lumps. Care­fully stir in blue­ber­ries and divide among muf­fin cups.

Bake for 25–30 min­utes, or until just browned and firm. The blue­berry juice will have bub­bled up and may look a bit messy around the edges, but that’s what keeps them juicy and lovely. If you used paper cups, remove the muffins (in their paper cups) from the muf­fin tin right away.

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Can you believe how lit­tle sugar is in this recipe? I was absolutely shocked, but I shouldn’t be sur­prised, because the basic mea­sure­ments of flour and bak­ing pow­der and sugar were taken from Delia Smith, and she is so very sensible.

If you have a hun­gry child around the house, split one of these open while still warm, tuck a nice piece of but­ter inside, put it back together and deliver it, with a good nap­kin to wipe those but­tery fin­gers, and watch the appre­ci­a­tion steal over the lit­tle face. Or not so lit­tle, in Avery’s case.

I hate to think that I equate love COM­PLETELY with food, but I know I come close. Tonight I offered Avery a sort of junk-food choco­late pud­ding with a hot sauce, one of her favorites, and she accepted, say­ing, “First, can I have a huge hug?” Once hugged, she smiled and said, “That’s bet­ter than choco­late. I can save the pud­ding for tomorrow.”

Other than exam hell, we’ve been fairly dull and quiet, accom­plish­ing things like weed­ing the oxygen-rich planted roof of our guest room (I hated to tell John after, but it didn’t look much dif­fer­ent… he did dis­cover some wild straw­ber­ries out there, how­ever, a total mys­tery). And I ruth­lessly cleared out all my kitchen cup­boards, dis­cov­er­ing uncharm­ing things like six dif­fer­ent opened pack­ets of cous­cous (guess what we had for din­ner tonight), at least five opened pack­ets of pinenuts, count­less partly-used pack­ets of mis­match­ing pasta and no fewer than seven dif­fer­ent types of miso soup paste! What on earth? So every­thing has been wiped down, thrown away when absolutely nec­es­sary, con­sol­i­dated and counted up. Remind me not to buy any dried chicken soup for about another cen­tury. The same goes for tinned tuna! I fore­see some odd meals com­ing up. Just wait till I hit the freezer. Fancy some thawed smoked salmon with home­made bread­crumbs and limoncello?

And we’ve been enter­tained by our neigh­bors, both lit­er­ally (a lovely drinks party last night in the gar­den with the first Pimms of the year!) and more acci­den­tally, when Selva appeared out­side in front with a giant elec­tri­cal saw and enough energy to cut our side of the hedge while he cut theirs. Other neigh­bors walked by, weighted down fes­tively with boxes of wine bot­tles, and we all ribbed Selva about his hedge-cutting skills. “I want a top­i­ary chicken, sit­ting on an egg, like that one a cou­ple of streets over,” John said, and I chimed in, “Or a pony, or a kit­ten, please.” Selva didn’t skip a beat. “Actu­ally, it was already in the shape of a chicken, so I have refash­ioned it into a top­i­ary hedge-shaped hedge.”

Lots of par­ties being bandied about: Annie and Keith’s always splen­did drinks with the most tempt­ing and gor­geous small eats you can imag­ine, includ­ing my favorite of smoked salmon mixed with creme fraiche on lit­tle bli­nis… can’t wait for that. And Avery’s giv­ing a party! “Mock­tails” and vin­tage prom dresses, which should be a hoot. I brought home from Indi­anapo­lis a peer­less pink dress made for my MOTHER by my GRAND­MOTHER, a satin top, with lay­ers of tulle skirt and a hugely long sash, and it fits Avery like the prover­bial glove, so that inspired her to ask her friends to look round the char­ity shops and flea mar­kets. They will all sim­ply pile into the sit­ting room with sleep­ing bags after­ward, to watch some­thing involv­ing Grace Kelly, and fall into choco­late sun­daes. I timidly men­tioned the notion of “real food” and pizza was men­tioned, so that should take care of all the basic food groups.

Well, tomor­row Lost Prop­erty beck­ons, which always requires the utmost in my energy. And some­times a face mask, if the lacrosse boots are par­tic­u­larly pun­gent. But you know the best bit? Avery will come to visit while I’m there, I will be able to hear how the morning’s exams went and offer com­fort for the afternoon’s efforts, and for sure, there will be a hug available.