I’m busy in the kitchen this sunny Lon­don morn­ing, prepar­ing for a lit­tle din­ner party tonight — my father’s first cousin is vis­it­ing! — at which I’ll serve the nation’s favorite dish.  Curry!  Next week will see Hin­dus cel­e­brat­ing Diwali, the fes­ti­val of lights, and for that rea­son all the telly chefs seem to be com­ing for­ward with their var­i­ous ver­sions of the clas­sic Indian treat.  What Amer­i­cans may find funny is that British “curry” often does not fea­ture… curry pow­der!  Curry pow­der itself is, of course, an amal­gam of many spices includ­ing turmeric, corian­der, cumin and cin­na­mon.  British cur­ries, includ­ing the one I’m mak­ing tonight, fea­ture a paste of lemon grass, chilli, gin­ger, gar­lic and oil.  I’ll start with that and then add spices as I go along.

If you can imag­ine, Avery is on school hol­i­day this week and next!  How on earth, we might well be tempted to ask, can a school sys­tem be ready for a hol­i­day just six weeks after the begin­ning of term?  Until I became the mother of essen­tially a British teenager you could never have con­vinced me that any­one could need a break in Octo­ber.  But we all do!  This par­tic­u­lar year, when Avery and her mates are buck­ling down to what are called GCSEs (the first really impor­tant exams that will occur next year, after which chil­dren can legally leave school).  Home­work lev­els have spiked and there is real pres­sure to pro­duce seri­ous work in sev­eral lan­guages, three sci­ences and (tough­est of all, to my mind) math­e­mat­ics that I can no longer even pre­tend to understand.

Added to this onslaught of work are the rehearsals for “Sweet Char­ity,” the musi­cal Avery will be in next month.  As the days grow shorter and colder, Avery seems to come home later and later, laden with books and files, starv­ing to death, and with a huge work­load before we can hope to sit down to din­ner.  It was a nice break last week to head over to Kingston to hear the Down­ton Abbey cre­ator Julian Fel­lowes talk about his career, the stratos­pheric suc­cess of DA, his future plans — a series about the Titanic next year!

He was sim­ply adorable!  For all the accu­sa­tions that he is a snob, that “Down­ton Abbey” is a snob­bish pro­gramme, I have to admit that I love it all.  I do think it’s a funny con­tra­dic­tion, Amer­i­cans’ atti­tude toward any­thing resem­bling the British aris­toc­racy.  We may well have fled Eng­land our­selves all those years ago seek­ing greater equal­ity and free­dom, but we love noth­ing more than Hello! mag­a­zine, the Royal Wed­ding, and any­one addressed as Count­ess or Lady.  So I enjoyed greatly sit­ting on the dusty floor of the Rose The­atre in the round, and lis­ten­ing to the plummy tones of Mr Fel­lowes describ­ing his life as a drama stu­dent, some 40 years ago.  “We found our­selves between the bril­liance of John Cleese and Monty Python before us, and Hugh Lau­rie and Stephen Fry who came after us.  In short, we were the bread between the jam, as it were.”

“Act­ing is like play­ing ten­nis,” he pon­tif­i­cated.  “You should always pur­sue each activ­ity with peo­ple who are bet­ter at it than YOU.”

Oh, speak­ing of ten­nis, we have had to admit that very shortly, the courts will be too damp, leafy and dan­ger­ous for us to play.  And so we have taken up a new and totally crazy sport: SQUASH.  One les­son at the Barnes Squash Club has con­vinced at least John that we should pur­sue this, so I’m going along with it.

I can under­stand that if I am going to con­tinue to cook for us, we have to find ever more clever ways of burn­ing off all the calo­ries.  But I have to admit I think I’ll always feel more com­fort­able with the sort of squash that takes but­ter and sage and gets pureed with a hand blender.

Roasted But­ter­nut Squash Soup

(serves 4)

1 large but­ter­nut squash

2 tbsps butter

6 leaves fresh sage

500 ml/2 cups chicken stock

driz­zle sin­gle cream

Cut the squash in half length­wise and dot with but­ter and sage leaves.  Roast at 220C/425F for about half an hour or until fully cooked and soft.  Scoop squash into a saucepan and cover with chicken stock.  Sim­mer for five min­utes, then puree with hand blender.  Pour into warm bowls and driz­zle with cream.

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

One of the biggest treats of this autumn has been our trip to Bor­ough Mar­ket.  It’s the way John gets me to accom­pany him on his real-estate for­ays into the East-ish End of Lon­don: the lure of every deli­cious food­stuff you can dream up, under one cor­ru­gated metal roof, high above our heads.  Stalls of pump­kins (speak­ing of squash!)…

And figs, a dis­play of which would bring my mother in law to tears.

But per­haps my favorite stall of all is Gas­tro­nom­ica, that famed Ital­ian seller of all things char­cu­terie (what’s Ital­ian for “char­cu­terie,” any­way?), dairy, cheese… and the best but­ter on the face of the earth.

I brought home a head of cau­li­flower to roast whole, and WHAT a good idea that was.  Sim­ply driz­zled with lots of olive oil and sprin­kled with a good sea salt, roasted in a hot oven for 30 minutes.

For­ti­fied by my cau­li­flower, I’ve been a good girl and done my “pool duty” at Avery’s school, a termly oblig­a­tion which entails pick­ing up the keys to the fab­u­lous old struc­ture at a house nearby, cycling through the autumn leaves over to school, open­ing up the box with its money to pay the life­guard, ask­ing mem­bers to sign in, then breath­ing in the steamy air for an hour and a half while swim­mers trun­dle up and down.  One man came in from the chilly out­side to greet me and the life­guard, who pum­meled him with ques­tions about the foot­ball match going on: Wales — vs– France.  “I can’t believe you’re root­ing for Wales, sir,” said the life­guard.  “Well, nor­mally of course I wouldn’t.  But they’re play­ing FRANCE.”  The lesser of two evils, to the Eng­lish mindset.

On Sun­day we all awoke to a foggy day which I spent mak­ing every mis­take in bell­ring­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make.  I led with the tre­ble very badly, finally learn­ing to fol­low the tenor.  It’s a nice les­son in life: to be the leader, some­times it’s nec­es­sary only to fol­low who seems to be last.  Then it was onto Chiswick where when asked to “ring down” the tre­ble bell, I acci­den­tally pulled it down in two strokes.  Was there ever a scarier moment?  “You got away with that because it was the tre­ble, a tiny bell,” Matt said.  “If you’d had a heavy bell you’d be miss­ing a hand right now.”

And this is my new hobby.  How do I get myself into these situations?

The only way to recover was with a lovely plate of lemon sole, sauteed in olive oil and topped with a dust­ing of crispy Fox Point bread­crumbs.  Ter­ri­bly suc­cess­ful to taste, but not pretty enough to pho­to­graph.  On the other hand, the side dish of juli­enned beet­root, shaped into a cake and fried in duck fat, was beau­ti­ful, with its dol­lop of sour cream.

It turns out that while juli­enned pota­toes will form a cake, beet­root will not.  And beet­root with duck fat is sim­ply gild­ing the lily, as it were.  Cook­ing is not always suc­cess­ful if you make experiments.

Avery’s been exper­i­ment­ing this break, but not with beet­root.  First she spent a day in Tot­ten­ham with her fash­ion designer men­tor Stephane St Jaymes, the bril­liant man who offered her a “Take Your Daugh­ter To Work” day last spring.  I love the out­fit she chose for her day with him this week.

I dropped her off at a photographer’s house yes­ter­day so she could be part of a shoot called “hair before and after,” and look what came home!

 So tomor­row, with her new hair­cut and ready for an adven­ture, we are off on the Eurostar to Paris for an early cel­e­bra­tion of Avery’s birth­day.  More from there!

Autumn is here, my favorite time of year. ’ Tis the sea­son, almost as much as Christ­mas, when all our activ­i­ties get ratch­eted up in inten­sity and it seems there is never a chance to take a deep breath.  In just the last four days, we have been to the Royal Albert Hall to see Idina Men­zel and Mar­vin Ham­lisch in con­cert (beyond amaz­ing, quite sim­ply the best con­cert we’ve ever been to), hosted a din­ner party for 14 (I was wor­ry­ing it was going to be 13 until one fam­ily unex­pect­edly brought their Ger­man exchange stu­dent who spoke no Eng­lish, so it was a bit dif­fi­cult to tell good news from bad), and drove to Kingston to see Jane Asher in “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” our favorite play of all time.

All sim­ply lovely activ­i­ties on their own, but squashed together into too few days has left me feel­ing a bit as if I’ve eaten too much foie gras over too short a period… and in need of a cup of tea.

In the midst of all this, Avery has had a mile­stone.  Those wretched braces, her reluc­tant com­pan­ions for the last two years, are GONE!  She is very happy.

And I spent two lovely morn­ings with my super-volunteer friend Fiona, who last year was kind enough to invite me to take part in one of her ele­gant and yet homely projects: The Queen Mother’s Cloth­ing Guild, which sees hun­dreds of vol­un­teers gath­er­ing together in St James’s Palace in Piccadilly.

We spent the hours sort­ing through thou­sands of donated and pur­chased new gar­ments for needy women and chil­dren.  I wasn’t allowed to take pho­tos inside the Palace, so I can only describe to you the GRANDEUR!  We folded and sorted sweat­suits in a room with ceil­ings four times as high as my own house, looked down on by TWO Joshua Reynolds heroes of the aris­toc­racy.  The room next to us was entirely cov­ered in TAPES­TRY!  The walls were hung with spi­ral­ing arrange­ments of weaponry and her­aldry… and another room adja­cent to ours was the set­ting for William’s and Kate’s engage­ment announce­ment!  It was rumoured that the happy cou­ple were IN the build­ing as we worked, pos­si­bly even had entered through the same cob­ble­stoned court­yard I had myself come through!

What an extra­or­di­nary priv­i­lege to be in such a set­ting, sur­rounded by lovely hard-working women, drag­ging enor­mous boxes of sheets and pil­low­cases from one room to another, buy­ing up aprons embla­zoned with the Guild’s logo as presents for var­i­ous deserv­ing friends at Christmas!

How amaz­ing to take our lunch break and eat our sand­wiches under a giant 25-feet-wide paint­ing depict­ing Queen Victoria’s arrival in India!  And get this: to find the ladies’ room, one had to pass through what is Prince Charles’ favorite room in which to read the paper!  Red bro­cade wall­pa­per and all.  Sim­ply amazing.

If all that grandeur were not enough, last week saw us at the 502nd birth­day party of Avery’s school, in the awe-inspiring envi­rons of St Paul’s Cathe­dral.  How won­der­ful to lis­ten to the choir singing “Lord, gra­ciously hear us,” in a des­cant writ­ten by Avery’s own music teacher, sur­rounded by the mosaic images of the Saints, with the girls and boys fil­ing past in all their young, bril­liant splen­dor.  Sadly, another event at which was strictly enjoined against tak­ing pho­tos, but here is an offi­cial one.

And I have been labor­ing hap­pily in the sup­port of my beloved church, not only bell­ring­ing madly (and with some mar­ginal suc­cess at ring­ing my first method, Plain Hunt on Five, of which I am ridicu­lously proud!) but also tak­ing part in that MOST Eng­lish of all pos­si­ble activ­i­ties: the church cof­fee morn­ing.  Here is the view of the lit­tle cof­fee shop, com­plete with crunchy autum­nal leaves.

I called John up sur­rep­ti­tiously on the day to say that I felt EXACTLY as if I were in an Agatha Christie novel, just wait­ing for the body to turn up in the scullery!  The story was this: one day in the year, on Sat­ur­day as it turns out, the cof­fee shop ladies who nor­mally sell their wares to the gen­eral pub­lic took off their aprons and headed over to the Church Hall to run the Jum­ble Sale.  We the bell­ringers stepped up to run the cof­fee shop in their absence!

I had been put in charge of ask­ing every­one to donate a cake or “bis­cuits” or fairy cakes, and had gath­ered a goodly num­ber.  I myself took a lemon-blueberry cake with driz­zle top­ping, and an apple-banana cake over which I lib­er­ally sprin­kled icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar to us Yanks) in an attempt to make it look more pro­fes­sional.  “Should these be priced at £1, or 50p?” we asked each other, slic­ing up orange-honey cake with a yogurt and pis­ta­chio icing, old-fashioned gin­ger cakes and Vic­to­ria Sponges, arrang­ing cof­fee cups and tea bags and sugar bowls.  This was the scene.

Between plat­ing cakes and mak­ing signs and arrang­ing flow­ers (Matthew came in with an offer­ing of a posy from his gar­den: “These are chamomile…”), we took turns run­ning over to the bell­ring­ing cham­ber to send our peals out over the vil­lage.  How I adore that blue door, with our bicy­cles propped against the wall which so mirac­u­lously pro­tected our beloved bells from the fire in the 1970s.  What happy mem­o­ries I have now of the six months I have been com­ing to the church to learn my art.

What fun it all was.  And no body turned up in the scullery, as far as I know.

Of course, the giant excite­ment of our autumn sea­son has been the Visit of Lau­rie and Chris­t­ian, all the way from South Africa!  Lau­rie is one of my clos­est friends ever, dat­ing back to 1983 when we were excited, ner­vous, chatty, happy fresh­men in col­lege who lived in the same dor­mi­tory for the first year and hap­pily joined the same soror­ity which meant shar­ing EVERY­THING for the whole four years of col­lege.  She hasn’t changed a BIT.  Still the same gor­geous Texas girl of our youth!

Chris­t­ian is her 11-year-old boy, a total joy to have around.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s drop-dead gorgeous.

From the moment of their arrival, our lives were just that much brighter than they had been before.  Lau­rie is a tall girl, with arms that hug you with her whole being.  She has never lost her Texas lilt of voice, her bub­bling way of speak­ing, her bot­tom­less enthu­si­asm for every­thing around her.  Life just sparkles when she is around.

We spent the whole first evening catch­ing up.  “It’s dif­fer­ent, though, catch­ing up in the age of Face­book and email,” Lau­rie observed.  “We know what each other’s houses and kids look like, we’ve had a chance to say we’ve moved house, or changed schools, so it’s a lot eas­ier.”  It was true: we got right down to the nitty gritty of appre­ci­at­ing each other, as we always have.

What is it about old friend­ships?  I have moved house — and indeed coun­try — so many times that I con­sider myself to be an expert at friend­ship.  New friends from new schools, new neigh­bor­hoods, new jobs, new shops, a new church: I am a con­nois­seur of friends.  They come in all shapes and sizes: the friend you see once a year to go to a food fes­ti­val and stuff your­selves with gourmet food, the friend you meet for lunch to cel­e­brate or com­mis­er­ate, the friend who is your child’s best friend’s mother, the friend who teaches you to ring a bell.  I cher­ish them all.

But there is some­thing inde­scrib­ably pre­cious about an old, old friend.  That per­son who knew you 25 pounds ago, who became part of your life when you weren’t old enough to drink but did it together any­way, who knew you before you knew your hus­band whom you feel you’ve known for­ever… that per­son who was at your wed­ding and met your baby when she was tiny, who knew your par­ents when they were the age we are now!  That friend is one you keep, you hold onto, you appre­ci­ate with all your heart and history.

For me, the essence of an old friend­ship lies in the fact that she has seen you at your best, at your worst and every­where in between, and still loves you any­way.  New friend­ships are a bit more lux­u­ri­ous: you can choose to see them only when you’re at your best, or at least pre­sentable.  But when a friend has seen you flat out in tears — the teenage “I’ll never be happy again and ONLY YOU will ever under­stand” sort of tears, and also the adult tears of real heart­break — or des­per­ately hun­gover when you both wake up together in your dorm room, or after you’ve been up for 28 straight hours study­ing for that wretched Ger­man exam (Lau­rie always thought of my Ger­man teacher as HER Ger­man teacher, that’s how sym­pa­thetic she was)… well, then, that friend holds a spe­cial spot in your life.

What adven­tures we had!  The very first day I had to love them and leave them, for my sec­ond day vol­un­teer­ing at the Queen’s Mother’s Cloth­ing Guild (that is fun to type).  So they went off to Green­wich to stand on the median line — bor­ing but nec­es­sary for Christian’s geog­ra­phy home­work! — and to take a boat down the Thames, while I folded scarves and counted t-shirts.  Then we all met up at home where I was busily mak­ing chicken meat­ball soup for Avery’s ail­ing best friend, and chicken-asparagus car­bonara for us.

How we talked and talked and talked.

 And the tourist activ­i­ties that I always get up to when vis­i­tors come… we marched poor Chris­t­ian through THREE muse­ums on Wednes­day morn­ing along!  The Sci­ence Museum (where frankly the shop was our favorite exhibit, I think!), the Nat­ural His­tory Museum, and the V&A, where we sat out­side in the spec­tac­u­lar Indian sum­mer sun­shine, beneath the impres­sive out­door sculp­ture exhibit.

If you ever find your­self in that “Museum Row” in Knights­bridge, let me tell you a lit­tle secret: the cafe in the court­yard of the V&A is a spec­tac­u­lar spot: sim­ple sand­wiches and sal­ads, lovely pas­tries and tea, and you can plop your­self down in the sun­shine around the cen­tral foun­tain and watch the world go by — at least that por­tion of the world that wants to look at Vic­to­rian cast courts and then take a break for lunch.  Oh, those cast courts!  Repli­cas of ALL the great mas­ter­pieces of the medieval-Gothic-Renaissance times in Europe, made out of plas­ter but totally con­vinc­ing as stone, mar­ble and bronze.  So impres­sive.  Fiona had joined us for lunch, and she took us on a tour of those incred­i­ble replicas.

And when you’re ready to plunge into the South Kens­ing­ton Tube, take a tiny detour and blow your cheese bud­get at La Cave a Fro­mage, sim­ply my favorite cheese shop in Lon­don, I believe, partly because they give SAM­PLES!  And they carry what is to my mind the finest of all creamy cheeses: the three-milk Robi­ola (sheep, ewe and goat milk! amazing).

We came home, dumped all our parcels and headed over to the nearby school fields where I had got per­mis­sion for us to watch a rugby prac­tice!  What a glo­ri­ous way to spend a per­fect mid-September late after­noon… sit­ting on a grassy hill, gos­sip­ing with my pre­cious friends, watch­ing young boys try to destroy each other!  Chris­t­ian found an aban­doned ball and had a run around (I’m sure no one minded when one of his enthu­si­as­tic kicks sent the ball over the fence into the road!).  Glo­ri­ous day.

We all piled into our tiny con­vert­ible and headed over to Avery’s school to pick her up and make the trans­fer of soup to her ail­ing friend (I firmly believe that my chicken soup with meat­balls should be patented for cur­ing minor ill­nesses, and even major ill­nesses shouldn’t be ruled out).  Lau­rie and I got per­mis­sion to go on a quick tour of the school, and it was fun to see the pretty 100-year-old cam­pus with new eyes: the fab­u­lously impres­sive Main Hall with its enor­mous Vic­to­rian organ, the play­ing fields stretch­ing out in the sun, the mosaics and engraved names of the “schol­ars” from 100 years of girls’ achieve­ments in the hallway.

Home for that protein-fest din­ner, pier­rade, per­fect in the slightly chilly dusk.

Thurs­day saw us shop­ping in Regent Street, find­ing Christ­mas presents for every­one on Laurie’s list.  Then we had a pic­nic, thought of just that morn­ing as we sur­veyed our trea­sures from “La Cave.”  Robi­ola, Gor­gonzola, Bre­saola and Prosci­uotto di Parma, all with a crunchy baguette, and pile of hard-boiled eggs, a clutch of tiny toma­toes.  We sat on the grass in Hanover Square and watched all the young busi­ness­peo­ple in their suits and ties, scarf­ing down sand­wiches.  They went off to a mati­nee of “War Horse,” and came home blown away, teary and touched, as we all have been after see­ing that mag­nif­i­cent play.  I offered restora­tive fried had­dock and fresh tartare sauce.

I spent Fri­day morn­ing putting my beloved church back together after a busy evening the night before.  “What hap­pened HERE?” I asked when I came in, see­ing over­turned chairs, crumbs, empty wine­glasses.  “We had the hell of a fash­ion show!” answered one of my bell­ring­ing teach­ers, and we all put our heads down to hoover, take out recy­cling, rebuild the altar, replace kneel­ers and can­dles.  I love every­thing I do in that place!

Then home for a HOT HOT after­noon, get­ting ready for our din­ner party that evening.  It was glo­ri­ous fun to have every­one pitch­ing in, putting nap­kins in sil­ver rings, pick­ing up on John’s bril­liant idea to move the enor­mous din­ing table OUT­SIDE in the gar­den!  He mowed the lawn, I cooked — chicken meat­balls in a sour cream-paprika sauce, green beans in gar­lic and lemon — Lau­rie set the table, fill­ing can­dle­sticks, choos­ing wine glasses, chat­ting all the time.  That is just about my favorite time, get­ting ready for a fab­u­lous evening, in our cozy home.

Our guests arrived and a won­der­ful evening began, find­ing out straight­away that one of our guests went to the school in South Africa where Lau­rie has put Chris­t­ian down!  They actu­ally know peo­ple in com­mon, in their lit­tle road out­side Dur­ban.  I would say how unbe­liev­able that is, but such things seem to hap­pen in our lives all the time.

Con­ver­sa­tions flowed as the teenagers at one end of the table ironed out the world’s worth of polit­i­cal issues fac­ing them, Lau­rie and I regaled the adults with silly sto­ries from our teenage years together, our friend James fell under Laurie’s spell…

And James’s wife fell under the spell of my dear friend Shauna!

It was a mag­i­cal evening when all the pieces are in place for every­one to have a good time.  “Look up at all those stars!” Sophie said.  “You never see that many stars in Lon­don, never.”

Lau­rie said seri­ously, “You must visit a place with peo­ple you love who live there, else you will never see the stars in their sky.”

I could not rest on my hostessly lau­rels, how­ever, because Sat­ur­day bell­ring­ing prac­tice waits for no man.  At the end of the prac­tice, Lau­rie and Chris­t­ian turned up for the promised begin­ning les­son I had arranged with my teachers!

And then they were off, given a ride by Laurie’s child­hood friend who hap­pens to live a mile from me!  We promised to return the visit per­haps next fall!  Wouldn’t that be excit­ing, to stay with real South Africans on a game farm?  Watch this space.

Real life has set­tled down again, I sup­pose.  How blue I felt for days after Lau­rie and Chris­t­ian left, bulging suit­cases show­ing the fruits of their shop­ping, bone-crushing hugs and end­less silly jokes.  The only con­so­la­tion for miss­ing them is know­ing how lucky I was to have them here at all.

I will leave you with a recipe I just tried for the first time last night, taken from a cook­book, “Sump­tu­ous,” that Lau­rie brought for me.  Part of her remains here, after all.  Thank you, friends, for an unfor­get­table time!

Aubergine Caviar

serves about 10 as a side dish)

2 medium aubergines/eggplants, whole

2 tbsp olive oil

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

4 salad onions, finely chopped

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp flat leaf pars­ley, chopped

1 cup/250 ml creme fraiche

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Prick the aubergines all over with a fork and rub olive oil onto them.  Roast at 220C/400F for 30 min­utes.  Let cool, then cut in half and scoop the insides out into a medium bowl.  Fold in all the other ingre­di­ents.  Voila! Per­fect with slow-roasted shoul­der of lamb.