Such pleas­ant Lon­don days as these are, I really have all I could pos­si­bly wish for.  Exam results are trick­ling in — 95% in Russ­ian!  so thrilling -, the sun is shin­ing enough to make it pos­si­ble for us to bike to the ten­nis courts, play as best we can (hav­ing Wim­ble­don cov­er­age to come home to is a bit demor­al­iz­ing), then bike home.  Bell­ring­ing has reached a new mile­stone: I have learned all the phys­i­cal skills I need to do any­thing I ever want to do.  Now, as my tire­less teacher Arnold says, “do that about four thou­sand more times and you’ll be begin­ning to know what you’re about.”

Life is good.

One morn­ing my friend Antonella, knit­ter extra­or­di­naire, stopped by to bring my new jumper: a fine roll­neck in the most beau­ti­ful shade of blue.  We sat for a long time, dis­cussing — as women our age are wont to do — what we are plan­ning to do with the last third of our lives.  Chil­dren fly­ing the coop, hus­bands occu­pied with bank­ing or bar­ris­ter­ing or Bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture, depend­ing on the hus­band, and where shall life take us?  So many moth­ers who threw them­selves whole­heart­edly into their edu­ca­tions, their careers, and then put them on hold to pro­vide three meals a day plus snacks, moral sup­port and home­work super­vi­sion.  Now what?

Now if I were Antonella, I’d be knit­ting up a storm.  Why should I be her first client?  I had bet­ter not be her last.  She has even, as you see, given me a pair of fluffy cabled hand­warm­ers, knit­ted from the left­over wool of my roll­neck.  “Doesn’t it amaze you that you can DO this?” I bleat.  “Not really,” she smiles, com­pletely tak­ing her genius in stride.  Don’t you love the label?  Antonella, too, is a one-off.

More likely than knit­ting, she will become a school coun­selor.  “It’s one of the few pro­fes­sions where it is actu­ally an advan­tage to be our age, and to have had chil­dren,” she explains.  Yes, indeed, how much bet­ter to have a wise, com­pas­sion­ate coun­selor with a few smile lines and a his­tory of guid­ing her own chil­dren through life’s tri­als, than a fresh-faced youth who’s much closer to BEING a child than rais­ing one.

As for me, Antonella thinks I should be teach­ing peo­ple to cook.  There is some­thing in that idea, as I love teach­ing any­one how to do any­thing I know, and my own child has so sur­passed me in skills that I have noth­ing left to offer!  But I could teach some­one to make pizza.

Home­made Pizza With Dol­celatte, Black Olives and Bacon

(dough makes 4 piz­zas, top­pings make 1 which will serve 2 people)

The first thing to learn about mak­ing pizza is that you have to start about four hours before you want to eat, in order to give the dough time to rise, twice.  This means that mak­ing more dough than you need is a very good idea, because then the sec­ond time you want pizza, you have the dough already and can merely pile things upon it.

Mak­ing dough could not be eas­ier.  This recipe will make enough dough for 4 pizzas.

DOUGH:

500 grams/18 ounces plain flour

1 packet dried yeast granules

1 tbsp Ital­ian seasoning

250 grams/9 ounces warm water

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp milk

TOP­PINGS:

250 grams/1/2 pound-ish Dol­celatte or mild Gor­gonzola cheese, crumbled

6 strips streaky (Amer­i­can) smoked bacon

hand­ful black oil-cured olives, pitted

hand­ful grated Parmesan

driz­zle good olive oil

In a very large bowl, mix together with a fork all the dry ingre­di­ents, then mix the water, oil and milk and pour it onto the dry stuff.  Mix with a fork and then your hands, bring­ing together all the bits of flour.  If you need a bit more water, just add it in sprin­kles.  When the dough hangs together and has incor­po­rated all the flour, knead it gen­tly with the ball of your hand, this way and that, turn­ing and squish­ing, until it is a fine smooth blob.  Oil the inside of your bowl com­pletely, put the dough in it and cover the bowl tightly with cling film.  Put in a warm place (the back of the top of an Aga is very good, or your laun­dry room when the dryer is going) for about 2–3 hours until the dough has dou­bled in size.  Uncover and punch the dough down.  Cover again and let rise slightly again, for per­haps 1 more hour.  It will not rise as much this time.

Brown your bacon in a heavy skil­let until crisp, and drain on paper tow­els.  Crum­ble when cool.

Place your pizza stone in your very hot (220C/425F) oven for at least half an hour before the dough is ready.  Now pinch off about 1/4 of the dough and cover your clean coun­ter­top with flour, as well as your hands, and the ball of dough, and your rolling pin.  Roll the dough out, flour­ing lib­er­ally on top and under­neath, until it is the size of your pizza stone.  Take the stone from the oven, place the dough on it and bake for about 10 min­utes or until thor­oughly dry and a bit crisp.

Pile on your top­pings as evenly as pos­si­ble.  Driz­zle the olive oil over all and bake again until cheese is a bit melty, per­haps another 8–10 minutes.

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

I actu­ally offered a day of mak­ing pizza to my daughter’s school raf­fle at Christ­mas, but the stu­dent who won it… never took me up on it.  It would have been such fun!  Make the dough, and mean­while teach them to make pesto, and tomato sauce, how to pre­pare veg­eta­bles for pizza, and then pile on the top­pings and let them eat it when fin­ished!  I still might do that, sometime.

Mostly it is a great com­fort to me to know that all my intel­li­gent, kind-hearted girl­friends are feel­ing much the same way these days, about chil­dren fly­ing the coop.  I actu­ally feel that there is a syn­drome, little-acknowledged, that hap­pens slightly before the famous “Empty Nest.”  My nest isn’t empty yet, and I actu­ally feel I’ll be ready for that when it is.  What I find hard right now is “Slightly Empty Nest,” where my child is going off for ever longer peri­ods of time to do ever more var­ied things with­out me, but she still needs a snack when she gets home and a fully lis­ten­ing ear and a hot water bot­tle in a chilly bed at night.  And some­one to watch the Hyde Park Show, no mat­ter whether it is rain­ing or not.

And just when I think life can’t sur­prise me any­more, as I’m prepar­ing myself for a six-hour day watch­ing Avery watch other peo­ple on ponies, a voice says, “Isn’t that Kris­ten?” and I look up to see my old friend Jen­nifer, a nov­el­ist I met some years ago and had some­how lost touch with!  And so what might have been a rather long day of being sprin­kled on became a catch-up with some­one I really liked, thought of when I shelved her novel on mov­ing day, but for­got to find again.  And there she was, mother of the famous Cal­lum, the ONLY boy at the sta­ble, a source of much inter­est to the girls.

“If I had child­hood to live over again, I’d be that only boy at the sta­ble, with all those gor­geous girls!” John always says.

We talked non­stop about what had hap­pened since we saw each other last.  Var­i­ous stages of writer’s block for both of us, uncer­tainty about what we wanted to do with our writ­ing next, for both of us.  “Have you never thought of turn­ing your blog into a sort of book?” Jen­nifer asked.  Another ambi­tion for those Empty Nest years, I think, to plan over a bowl of:

Creamy Cele­riac Soup

(serves at least 4)

1 head cele­riac (cel­ery root in America)

3 tbsps butter

1 shal­lot, chopped roughly

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

4 cloves gar­lic, chopped roughly

splash left­over white wine or champagne

chicken stock to cover celeriac

cream and milk, to taste

sea salt and pep­per, to taste

hand­ful chives, minced

Peel the cele­riac care­fully and cut into 1-inch cubes.  Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and add the cele­riac, shal­lot, thyme and gar­lic.  Cook until gar­lic and shal­lot are soft.  Pour in splash of wine.  Cover all with chicken stock and sim­mer for 20 min­utes.  Blend thor­oughly with a hand blender, adding cream and milk if it gets too thick, and until you have the con­sis­tency you want.  This soup is VELVETY.

Sea­son to taste and sprin­kle chives over.

This soup was my reward for hav­ing put in a wet, slimy, stinky after­noon at the school Sports Field in order to gather up all the nasty unwanted PE kit we could find, to sort, wash, bleach, dry and iron in order to sell them to the incom­ing New Girls at their Wel­come Tea.  Why all we vol­un­teers at Lost Prop­erty find this to be fun, I can­not really explain, but once the piles of mis­match­ing boots, the wadded up “white” PE shirts, the grimy lacrosse sticks and wrin­kled games skirts had all been cleaned and organ­ised, the sense of sat­is­fac­tion was tremen­dous!  It was a lovely after­noon yes­ter­day, watch­ing the New Girls (and their par­ents, hard to tell who looked more scared!) min­gle in the Main Hall drink­ing tea and eat­ing cup­cakes, then scur­ry­ing back to the tiny lit­tle maths room where my fel­low vol­un­teers were madly sell­ing all the kit!  Avery and her friends cir­cled the Hall as well, chat­ting with teach­ers in an impos­si­bly grownup way, steal­ing cup­cakes, get­ting me to filch glasses of sparkly water for them.  Heaven, just to be there and enjoy it all.

Now, as is my cus­tom in June when every­thing hap­pens far too quickly for me to warn you, I must tell you how much fun “Taste of Lon­don” was, once more!  Put it in your cal­en­ders right now, mid-June in Regent’s Park.  This is an incom­pa­ra­bly deli­cious event where top Lon­don restau­rants gather under tents (thank good­ness, as it was pelt­ing with rain!) to sell tiny “tastes” of their sig­na­ture dishes.  This year, every­thing seemed to be a BURGER!  Shrimp and scal­lop burg­ers from Scott’s, hand-ground beef and mar­row burg­ers from Corrigan’s, spit roasted suck­ling pig and black truf­fle burg­ers from Launce­s­ton Place, and the piece de resis­tance, the best food we have ever tasted in our LIVES, foie gras burg­ers from Club Gas­con!

Quite sim­ply, a SLAB of foie gras topped with sliv­ers of truf­fle and a lightly mayo-ed pickle.  We went back for sec­onds!  Impos­si­bly deli­cious, lux­u­ri­ous, dare I say it, unc­tu­ous.  Sheer gluttony.

Then there was a salt cod bran­dade with crispy squid in a black ink bat­ter, so unusual, from Roux at the Lan­dau, oh oh OH!  And braised pork cheeks with creamed pota­toes and a clove sauce, from Petrus.   The delight of “Taste of Lon­don” for peo­ple like us, who NEVER ever go out to din­ner, is that we had nearly a dozen “tastes” of the best food Lon­don has to offer, for about £25 per per­son.  What a treat, and such fun to share it with John, who’s never been before!  And I must say it’s nice to go with the per­son you feel com­fort­able kiss­ing, because that way you can share everything!

We came away with fresh ingre­di­ents as well: a spe­cial combo of strawberries…

and toma­toes…

From the Good Natured Fruit Com­pany, quite sim­ply the best of what these fruits are that you will ever taste.  Straw­ber­ries as only the British can pro­duce them, red right the way through.  I’d show you, but we ate them all.

But it hasn’t all been about food, this June.  We’ve also been to the the­atre!  Last week was “Antigone” at the South­wark Play­house, with my cher­ished crush, Edward Pether­bridge in the role of Tire­sias.  Now, I hate to tell you that this play is over, but take heart: we should all sup­port the South­wark Play­house with its man­date to show­case young tal­ent.  The play was so, so rel­e­vant, so timely, with lines like “A ruler can­not remain rigid.  Only the trees that learn to bend can sur­vive a storm.  The rigid trees will be uprooted.”  Is Syria listening?

And because it was the birth­day of Dorothy L. Say­ers, whose detec­tive hero Lord Peter Wim­sey was por­trayed so mem­o­rably by Edward  on telly in the 1980s, he spoke after­ward to the mem­bers of the Say­ers Soci­ety who had come to the play.  Was there ever any­one so poet­i­cally artic­u­late as Edward, whose sen­tences are arranged with semi-colons and dashes, sprin­kled with lit­er­ary allu­sions and jokes from his the­atri­cal past… sim­ply magic.  Avery was entranced.  “What chance do peo­ple of my own age have when there is some­one so bril­liant as Edward?”  Long may he have work in the Lon­don the­atre where we can see him, and not be lim­ited to my Wim­sey DVDs.

But it’s NOT too late for you to see “Much Ado About Noth­ing”!  With quite sim­ply the great­est comic duo I can imag­ine play­ing the roles of Beat­rice and Benedick: Cather­ine Tate and David Ten­nant!  I know it is a cliche, but part of what is so stim­u­lat­ing about liv­ing in Lon­don is how PRESENT Shake­speare is here, how the direc­tor chose to place the place in the 1980s, com­plete with dread­ful music, denim play­suits, big sun­glasses, white plim­solls, and how these two actors were able to inject the dia­logue with such con­tem­po­rary mean­ing!  When Benedick has become con­vinced that Beat­rice loves him, and she comes sulk­ily to sum­mon him to sup­per, he rejoices.  “She comes to say, ‘I have been sent to tell you it is time for din­ner.’… Dou­ble mean­ing?!?”  You could hardly believe the words had been writ­ten 500 years ago.

It wouldn’t be an update on life with­out let­ting you know that bell­ring­ing is really going joy­fully.  I have found a tower in which to ring all sum­mer long in Amer­ica!  Just once a week, about a 45-minute drive away from Red Gate Farm, with a very wel­com­ing merry band of ringers who assure me with ABSOLUTELY no irony that they have a group of “11–13 year olds where you’ll fit in perfectly!”

Last week at my 8th-hour les­son with Arnold, I was allowed to ring the bell down, take the inner tube off the clap­per, and then thrillingly, ring the bell UP with proper bell­ring­ing “ding dong” sounds ema­nat­ing from the tower!  This excit­ing mile­stone occurred pre­cisely at 5 p.m. when the Tenor bell was chim­ing the hour.  My own bell picked up right where it left off and the chim­ing sounds wafted out over the Vil­lage.  “The neigh­bors will think there’s a fire,” Arnold joked mildly, but I was THRILLED beyond words.  I suc­cess­fully rang the bell up and, as they say, “set it at bal­ance,” which means it’s up and ready to ring down again.  Then in a fog of hap­pi­ness I put on my jacket and went out, pick­ing up my bicycle.

There I encoun­tered a disheveled, harried-looking father mind­ing two lit­tle boys in a carriage.

“What dar­ling babies!” I said.

“Eigh­teen months,” he said wearily.  “We come here every day at 5 o’clock to hear the five chimes of the bell.  But for some rea­son, today it was 105 o’clock!”

I explained about my first time ring­ing the bell up with sound, and he emerged from his fatigue to rejoice with me.  “That’s a real accom­plish­ment, isn’t it, boys?”

I ped­alled off into the June evening, feel­ing that every­thing was quite, quite right with the world.  And to thank Arnold, on Sat­ur­day I took a plate of very nice lemon bars, if I do say so myself.  It’s a recipe from allrecipes.com, although I altered it by adding lemon and orange zest, and a touch of lemon essence to the base.

Lemon Bars

(makes about 24)

1 cup but­ter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp lemon essence

2 lemons, juiced

zest of 1 lemon, 1 orange

Exams are over!  Avery has put every­thing into her brain that she can.  If you can imag­ine — I can’t, even though I watched her do it — this included Math­e­mat­ics, Music, His­tory, Reli­gious Stud­ies, Geog­ra­phy, Chem­istry, Biol­ogy, Physics, Eng­lish Com­pre­hen­sion, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, French, Latin and Russ­ian.  It is quite a shock to real­ize that she and I have come to a point where the ONLY sub­ject in which I know enough to help her is French.  And even there, although I can per­haps con­verse more eas­ily, she has a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of gram­mar that I either never knew, or have forgotten!

But we did sit together and work on all three lan­guages together.  I was in absolute awe at her abil­ity to con­ju­gate Latin verbs while rec­og­niz­ing how they related to her work in French, and then in turn to switch to Russ­ian.  Did you know that if you’re count­ing 1 thing in Russ­ian, the thing is spelled one way, but if you are talk­ing about 2 or 3 of that thing, the thing is spelled COM­PLETELY dif­fer­ently?  But then between 4 and 21 of that thing are spelled AGAIN com­pletely dif­fer­ently?  Keep­ing in mind, of course, that this is all in Cyril­lic to begin with.  I was very impressed.

If you ever have time to waste, but in a sort of intel­lec­tual way, get your­self on Google Trans­late.  Every once in awhile, she and I dis­agreed about some French tense, or rather I had for­got­ten the cor­rect answer, and we went to Google as the Wim­ble­don umpires go to Hawk­eye.  “Past imper­fect?  What the heck is that?” I grum­bled.  But away we went to ver­ify, and she was always cor­rect, mad­den­ingly so.  Finally, in a state of sheer exhaus­tion, she began play­ing around, in the way that only a mad­den­ing lit­tle brain can.

“Let’s get Google to teach us to say, ‘I sus­pect you of being a KGB spy.  Leave me alone.’”

So we did.  THEN she typed those same sen­tences into Google Trans­late in Russ­ian let­ters, spelling it pho­net­i­cally.  THEN she clicked on the but­ton say­ing, “Lis­ten,” where you can hear the way the words are sup­posed to sound.  And if you type things in pho­net­i­cally, and “lis­ten” to it, you get a com­pletely James Bondish, stereo­typ­i­cal Russ­ian voice utter­ing your sen­tence.  We laughed and laughed.  The sen­tence didn’t sound nearly as funny in Armen­ian, or Ara­bic.  It was a brief funny half hour in what was essen­tially a full week of noth­ing but work, for her.

And then all last week she had her exams, three and four every day, for hours at a time, inter­spersed by the occa­sional hours of MORE revi­sion in between.

Some­times we stopped to smell the roses.

Every day she came home to report the day’s insanity.

“Dur­ing my French oral, the teacher asked, ‘What does your father do?’ and I went com­pletely blank!  ‘Lie,’ the teacher hissed, ‘just lie and say some­thing,’ so I said, “Il est un avo­cat.”

“Daddy is an avo­cado!” we chor­tled.  One of my favorite old French jokes, that “avo­cado” and “lawyer” are the same word.

“And then, in my Russ­ian oral, she asked what color my wardrobe was, and all I could think of was ‘orange.’  ‘Really?!’ she asked.  ‘How about what color is your bed?’  I pan­icked!  ‘Red!’ I said.  ‘What an inter­est­ing room… an orange wardrobe and a red bed.”

All I could do was to feed her.  Her favorite pas­tas, her favorite protein-fest: pier­rade.  Each sep­a­rate bite of duck and sir­loin and hal­loumi cheese — our new favorite! -  cooked on a hot stone, by each of us.

I thought I should cook some­thing that related to her exams, so I asked, “What’s on for tomorrow?”

“Maths.”

“Well, what could I cook that would put you in the mood for that?”

Short silence.

“Pi.”

Since I felt I should at least pre­tend to have my own life while she was going through these tri­als and tribu­la­tions, I have been dili­gently pulling my rope.  I was allowed to go up into the bel­fry to watch Arnold untie the mute for my clap­per, and there was a tiny bell, sus­pended above the others.

What’s that?”

“Oh, that’s the Angelus bell, the bell that calls to wor­ship.  The sanc­tu­ary bell, I call it.  Don’t you have one in your church?”

“This is the clos­est to a church I have,” I confessed.

How won­der­ful that the name of my favorite restau­rant should be a bell!

I’ve had three dif­fer­ent ring­ing teach­ers so far, and their dif­fer­ent styles, their approaches to my learn­ing, have given me a lot to think about.

Andrew believes in let­ting me ring and ring and ring until some­thing goes wrong and I say, “Take the bell, please!”  Then he says, “Take a drink of water.  Here’s what hap­pened just then.”  And once I feel con­fi­dent again, I take up the rope.

Trinny, my sec­ond teacher, believes in just ring­ing per­haps twice, try­ing to get each one per­fect, and then stop­ping before any­thing unex­pected hap­pens.  “We don’t want you feel­ing out of control.”

Everett, the most senior of my teach­ers, believes in still another method.  “I think you should get your­self ready to ring, and not stop for 45 min­utes.  You feel some­thing going wrong, you fix it your­self, you under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing with your bell and you learn to han­dle any­thing that happens.”

I talked to John about the fear fac­tor.  “What’s the worst that can hap­pen?”  And truly, unless some­thing really bizarre were to hap­pen — like my foot get­ting caught in the loop at the end of the rope and my whole body being hoisted by the half-ton weight of the bell — mostly the risk is rope burn if I don’t let go in time.  How bad can that be?

It’s the uncer­tainty that scares me.  I think I have just got out of prac­tice with not know­ing what I need to know, in order to accom­plish what I want to accom­plish.  I’ve for­got­ten that every new skill — rid­ing a bike, dri­ving, play­ing the piano — starts with end­less rep­e­ti­tions of tiny skills, bor­ing as can be imag­ined, per­se­ver­ance with a seem­ingly point­less series of tasks.  Until sud­denly, one day, you turn a cor­ner.  You can DO the thing.

How brave of Avery to per­se­vere with the dozen or so sub­jects she’s being asked to get under her belt!  Start­ing with a new alpha­bet, end­lessly mem­o­riz­ing, so that in the end, she’ll find her­self in Moscow order­ing din­ner.  Or at the very least, telling a spy to leave her alone.

Well, cook­ing com­forts me.  Some­where along the line after num­ber­less cloves of gar­lic mixed, end­less exper­i­ments with what works and what does not, splat­ter­ings of hot oil and fry­ing pans of burnt pinenuts, I can pro­duce a plate of per­fect deep-fried soft-shell crabs and king prawns, and there is noth­ing wrong with that achievement.

Deep-Fried Soft Shell Crabs and King Prawns

(serves 4)

8 soft shell crabs, fresh or frozen (then thawed and WELL drained)

12 king prawns, raw with shells removed but tails on

1/2 cup cornflour/cornstarch

1/2 cup Panko breadcrumbs

1/2 tsp each: pow­dered gin­ger, pow­dered Sumac, pow­dered cayenne, gar­lic salt

rape­seed or canola oil, enough to sub­merge seafood

Dry seafood com­pletely and set on a plate, hav­ing LOTS of paper tow­els ready, stacked up nearby.

Mix flour and bread­crumbs and all seasonings.

Dredge the seafood thor­oughly in the mix­ture, squish­ing it in with your fin­gers.  Not much sticks, but it is the fla­vor that counts.

When the oil is hot enough that a bread­crumb dropped in fries instantly, place seafood gen­tly in the oil in a sin­gle layer, cook­ing for one minute, then turn­ing and cook­ing for 30 sec­onds more.  Drain on paper towel.  Serve with a chilli mayo if you like (sim­ply may­on­naise mixed with chilli sauce to your taste, with lemon juice).

If you have ever been dis­ap­pointed in order­ing any fried food deliv­ered — I have had more such dis­ap­point­ments than in love — turn away and do these at home.  So sim­ple.  Just stand back from the spit­ting oil!

Dur­ing the week we took our­selves off for a wan­der round Barnes Ceme­tery, formed in 1855 and closed in 1950, inex­plic­a­bly com­pletely neglected and over­grown.  This fea­ture only adds to its creepy, touch­ing, very Eng­lish charm.

Think of the lan­guages learned, the bells rung, the meals cooked, the fam­i­lies raised by all the souls rep­re­sented by these graves.  A bit of per­spec­tive, that’s what this week needed.

I need some­thing to cheer me up today, as John’s mom has flown away home and left us alone.  I am very lucky, I know, to have a mother-in-law who is a chum, a com­pan­ion and a friend — not to men­tion a dab hand at minc­ing all the cloves of gar­lic our fam­ily seems to require every evening to keep going.  I get used to hav­ing her here, lis­ten­ing to all the sto­ries that make up my ordi­nary and tran­quil life.  Most won­der­ful, though, is hav­ing an extra per­son in the house to gaze at my daugh­ter with all the admi­ra­tion I feel she deserves!  Hav­ing her here to appre­ci­ate Avery and to take always the best pho­to­graph of us, to cap­ture a moment, is what I miss most when she goes away.

So a lit­tle cherry-picking out­ing in the gar­den seemed in order.  What to make of them?  I would say a crum­ble, but a straw­berry ver­sion I made last week went wrong — rather watery and for­get­table.  I cer­tainly don’t want to waste these lit­tle beau­ties, fresh from my own back­yard.  Maybe just pit­ted, with a lit­tle Demer­ara sugar.

Rosemary’s time here was a truly won­der­ful visit, full to the brim with activ­i­ties, and yet also laced with plenty of hours of quiet as Avery revised for her exams.  Some­times we left her behind when we went on our adven­tures, but there were also times when it was just pleas­ant to sit down with a book, put­ter about in the kitchen, lis­ten to a light rain on the con­ser­va­tory win­dows, curl up with a cat, or indulge in that lovely past­time: watch­ing John’s mom look through the enor­mous pile of photo albums that await her visits.

But most of our time dur­ing her visit was filled with fun.  There was din­ner with our friends with four daugh­ters — one of them Avery’s great friend Meg­gie, home on half-term from board­ing school and so a treat to see — all of them starv­ing, so it is always a plea­sure to pro­duce a plat­ter of plump sausages and a mas­sive dish of five-cheese mac­a­roni and cheese and tuck in.

Unbe­liev­ably, until now I have not offered you this recipe!  How cruel of me, as there is noth­ing more com­fort­ing, more all-pleasing, more savoury and sat­is­fy­ing than a big spoon­ful of cheesy good­ness.  Here are my basic guide­lines, although the beauty of this dish is that you can use any and all cheeses you have lurk­ing in your fridge, mak­ing a clean sweep of the bits and pieces and result­ing always in a lus­cious treat.  I have found that no mat­ter the cheeses I use, pro­vided that one of them is super-creamy like Dairylea or Philadel­phia, the dish tastes the same.  My recipe pro­vides a lot more sauce than most mac­a­roni and cheese recipes, and it is this detail that makes the dish so lux­u­ri­ous, and yet sim­ple and inex­pen­sive.  Perfect.

Lux­ury Mac­a­roni and Cheese

(serves about 8)

1 1/2 lb mac­a­roni, or conchiglie, cooked and drained

3 tbsps butter

2 tbsps flour

1 liter whole milk

skim milk to thin if sauce is too thick

as many cheeses as you have avail­able: Wens­ley­dale, Red Leices­ter, Dou­ble Glouces­ter, sharp Ched­dar, Emmen­thal: total 1 1/2 lb, grated

1/2 cup cream cheese: Dairylea or Philadel­phia or Laugh­ing Cow

dash fresh-ground nutmeg

tiny dash cayenne pepper

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

1 cup fresh breadcrumbs

3 tbsps melted butter

Have the cooked pasta avail­able, spread into a large but­tered dish, large enough to eas­ily accom­mo­date all the pasta and sauce.

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and add the flour, cook­ing together for a bub­bling minute or so.  Whisk in the whole milk, whisk­ing con­stantly and scrap­ing the bot­tom to get all the floury but­ter incor­po­rated.  Cook this white sauce until thick­ened.  If you feel it is too thick, add a bit of skim milk, whisk­ing all the while.

Add all the cheeses together, whisk­ing as they melt.  Sea­son with the nut­meg, cayenne, salt and pepper.

When the sauce is thor­oughly melted and creamy, pour it over the cooked pasta and stir care­fully so that all the holes in the pasta receive the sauce.  Top with bread­crumbs and driz­zle with melted but­ter.  Bake at 350F/180C for about 45 min­utes, or until the mid­dle of the dish is hot through.

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Such fun to see the girls all lap­ping up sec­ond help­ings of this creamy delight, plus savoury pork sausages and piles of fine green beans, sauteed with but­ter and olive oil and gar­lic and lemon zest.  Shout­ing with laugh­ter over all our usual top­ics, espe­cially John’s grief over my insis­tence on tak­ing his Amazon.com sug­ges­tions of books I might like, and run­ning with them to the very pre­cious book­shop in the vil­lage.  “Are you TRY­ING to bank­rupt us?”  “No, I just want the book­shop to stay in busi­ness!”  “Even if WE don’t?!”

The next morn­ing found us in Shored­itch, try­ing to help John find a plot of empty land to buy to develop.  This is his pas­sion these days, and he spends a lot of his time bicy­cling around the East End look­ing for an unap­pre­ci­ated spot to res­cue.  Clerken­well, Spi­tal­fields, Hack­ney, they are all on his radar.  We sat down for a reward to have lunch at the Albion, a spot I nor­mally adore, but I must tell you, the fish and chips were very dis­ap­point­ing: rather soggy and taste­less.  Thank­fully my greedy self also ordered duck liv­ers on toast, and oh my, a savoury delight.  I’m still loyal to the Albion.

And then, my dream adven­ture.  A trip to St Matthews, Beth­nal Green, for a tour of their bell tower!  You all know of my love affair with the nov­els of Dorothy L. Say­ers — after all, I named my cat after her detec­tive, Lord Peter Wimsey!

In 1897, this church, its ring of eight mag­nif­i­cent bells, and its merry band of ringers spent over nine hours ring­ing over 15,000 changes, to cel­e­brate the New Year.  And Dorothy L. Say­ers heard of the feat, and memo­ri­al­ized it for us in “The Nine Tai­lors,” either her great­est detec­tive novel or the most bor­ing book ever writ­ten, depend­ing on who you ask.  You know where I stand.  I adore that book.

Well, in Sep­tem­ber 1940, on the first night of the Blitz, the church was hit and every­thing destroyed.

Except, mag­i­cally, the bells in their tower!  They sur­vived, but have been sorely neglected since.

The empty spot where the church had been was filled with a sad tem­po­rary church until 1961 when it was rebuilt and recon­se­crated, and of course now the 50th anniver­sary of that reded­i­ca­tion has come along.  To cel­e­brate, a restora­tion of the bells them­selves, and their tower, has begun.  And we con­tributed! (You can too.) So a tour was in order.

The dear Bell­mas­ter and Tower Cap­tain Leon was there to intro­duce me to Bell Num­ber 7.  John made the novel sug­ges­tion that the bells should be named after peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who con­tribute to their ren­o­va­tion!  “Here you are, Kris­ten, the Mer­rill Lynch Bell!”  So far, though, just Num­ber 7.

I actu­ally got to ring him!  Just the back­stroke, of course; Leon took care of the sally.  But I was very, very happy.

And he took us up into the roof where, for safe­keep­ing, the peal boards are kept.  These are boards that com­mem­o­rate, in golden paint (under many lay­ers of dirt going back 110 years!) the type of method rung on a given date, the ringers and the length of the peal.  And THIS was, believe it or not, the actual board describ­ing the 1897 peal that inspired Dorothy L. Say­ers.  Unbelievable!

To me, this was like meet­ing a celebrity I had always revered.  It was his­tory — the pecu­liar, par­tic­u­larly Eng­lish, very spe­cific his­tory I love! — come to life.  Sim­ply wonderful.

John and Rose­mary very sweetly smiled upon me and Leon as we bab­bled (I bab­bled, he was very coher­ent) about Sted­mans — a method rung often in St Matthews, named for the man who really invented change-ringing, in the 17th cen­tury.  They did not, how­ever, fol­low along when Leon and I climbed pre­car­i­ously into the actual bel­fry, so I could see Bell 7, my friend.

I came home in an absolute glow.  I know it is a weird obses­sion of mine, but midlife crises come in many forms!  This one is fairly benign, I think.

But I could not glow for long because we were hav­ing guests for din­ner: our old friends from Agate Road, the gor­geous Selva and Sara and Stephanie, our friends whose pres­ence in our old neigh­bor­hood meant din­ners and drinks, par­ties and thank-you notes fly­ing through let­ter­boxes, friends who were will­ing to try a new recipe, take a par­cel from the post­man, keep our spare key, let our cats through their win­dows.  How I miss them all.

Our slow-cooked bone­less ducks, stuffed with rose­mary, gar­lic, lemon and but­ter and rolled and tied by Tony, had been cook­ing all day in the slow Aga oven while I was ring­ing bells, and while they were gor­geous to eat, they were ugly, so I shall not share a photo.  But the cour­gettes, pep­pers and mush­rooms, stuffed with sauteed minced bits of them­selves, plus pinenuts and goats cheese, were beautiful.

But we could not rest on our lau­rels.  The next day we were up and ready for our day out: a tour of Cambridge!

Now, nor­mally when in a for­eign place, John and Avery and I are keen to blend in, to look as if we belong.  But there are times when this sort of dis­cre­tion is just silly and means that you wan­der around look­ing like you belong, but not actu­ally learn­ing any­thing.  So we booked a guide through Oxbridge Tours, and if you can pos­si­bly get Sarah Weaver, DO.  She is bril­liant: a friendly Amer­i­can grad­u­ate stu­dent get­ting her PhD in Eng­lish, spe­cial­iz­ing in Ten­nyson.  Oh, the things she knew!

Did you know that Cam­bridge was founded in a spe­cific year, 1209, in order to flee Oxford!  That brave fact alone makes me feel fondly toward Cam­bridge.  I sup­pose it’s the Amer­i­can rebel­lious pil­grim in me com­ing out, root­ing for the under­dog rather than the author­ity fig­ure.  It’s a village-feeling place, rather than the city feel of Oxford.  I’ll leave you with some images, to inspire you to take your own tour.

Newton’s Bridge

Trin­ity Hall Col­lege (where Sarah goes).

Trin­ity Hall Gardens.

St John’s College.

Cam­bridge punters.

Kings Col­lege.

Lunch in Hall.

Finally, the tiny lit­tle 11th cen­tury St Bene’t’s (short for St Benedict’s) Church.

This church would have been a plea­sure to see in any case: its bell tower dates from 1033: IMAG­INE!  Thirty three years before the Nor­man Con­quest!  It is the old­est build­ing in Cam­bridge.  We went inside and there were its bell ropes, its peal boards, and THEN, most incred­i­ble to me, a plaque hon­or­ing the 300th birth­day of none other than Fabian Sted­man, father of change-ringing.  He was a ringer there, right in St Bene’t’s.  I couldn’t believe my luck.

We jumped onto a train just in time and sat in exhausted awe, back towards Kings Cross, then onto the tube, then into the car in wretched traf­fic home­ward, and to a much-needed super-nutritious din­ner.  A clean-out-the-fridge stir­fry, and I can just tell you that it revived EVERYONE.

Every­thing Stir-Fry with Fried Rice

(serves 4 very hun­gry people)

4 chicken breast fillets

2 fil­let steaks

3 tbsps soy sauce

2 tbsps toasted sesame oil

1 tbsp Mirin (Japan­ese rice wine)

1 tbsp peanut oil

1 bunch spring onions, sliced thin, put into two equal piles

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1-inch knob gin­ger, peeled and minced

1 tsp Chi­nese five-spice

2 orange or red bell pep­pers, cut in mostly chunks, but one hand­ful minced and set aside

2 bunches aspara­gus, cut into bite-sized pieces

hand­ful frozen peas, thawed

1 cup bas­mati rice

3 eggs, beaten

2 tbsps peanut oil

sprin­kle of sesame oil and soy sauce

Cut the chicken and beef into bite-sized pieces and add the soy, sesame, mirin and stir well.  Set aside.

Pour the first table­spoon of peanut oil in a heated wok and cook the pep­per chunks and aspara­gus, and peas, plus one pile of spring onion slices, till they are soft­ened to your lik­ing.  Set aside in a bowl large enough to even­tu­ally hold all the ingre­di­ents for this dish.

Steam the bas­mati rice. Mean­while, pour the chicken and beef plus their liq­uids, and the gar­lic and gin­ger and Chi­nese 5-spice, into the hot wok and cook JUST until done.  Do not over­cook!  Place in the large bowl with the vegetables.

Pour the remain­ing two table­spoons of peanut oil into the wok and saute the sec­ond pile of spring onions, plus the hand­ful minced pep­per.  Add the eggs and scram­ble until done.  Add the steamed rice and sprin­kle on a bit of sesame oil and soy sauce, then toss all together.  Pour in the chicken, beef and veg­eta­bles and toss until well-mixed.

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Sat­ur­day morn­ing I had a thrill that harkened back to my var­i­ous bell­ish adven­tures of the week… Tri­cia, my sec­ondary teacher at church, let me pull a rope with the clap­per free!  And what’s more, I rang proper rounds with all the other ringers, for the first time.  Thrilling.

Sun­day we left Avery to revise, poor girl, and repaired to Angelus in Bayswa­ter for their clas­sic, unfor­get­table foie gras creme brulee, surely our favorite food on earth.  And the usual Angelus con­ver­sa­tions, remem­ber­ing times there in the past (the day Avery received that amaz­ing pile of school accep­tances for her 11+!).  The joy of being together, enjoy­ing ridicu­lously good food that I could never make at home: duck four ways… con­fit of shoul­der, per­fectly pink roast breast, fag­gots and a liver sauce.  Crazy!  Duck, duck… duck.

Once home, we res­cued Avery and headed off for her reward, a shop­ping trip to West­field.  Never my favorite thing, shop­ping, it was nev­er­the­less lovely just to be with my two ladies, watch­ing Avery try on dozens of out­fits, finally choos­ing just a cou­ple of things, plus some makeup she couldn’t live with­out.  The mall closed at 6 and sim­ply kicked us out, into a mas­sive rain­storm!  Oh how COLD it was!  Walk­ing with­out umbrel­las around and around out­side, try­ing to find a taxi!  Shoes squelch­ing, clothes drip­ping.  “Look at my fringe!” Avery wailed, lift­ing up the offend­ing bang, and let­ting it fall, splash­ing mis­er­ably into her eyes.  Finally we ordered a pri­vate cab and stood shiv­er­ing, wait­ing for it to arrive, feel­ing martyred.

Noth­ing ever felt so good as the Aga when we got home!  And noth­ing ever tasted so good as the scram­bled eggs, rich with dou­ble cream, and the bacon — both Eng­lish and streaky! — with crisp rye toast and potato pancakes.

What a won­der­ful time we had, with Rose­mary.  Now we can start count­ing the days until she comes to us, this sum­mer, at Red Gate Farm.