Perspective.
It’s hard to get sometimes.
Just ordinary daily life sometimes can seem to be quite enough to be going with: the quotidien tasks of sorting out Lost Property at school, looking after my social work family, ringing my bells and trying to keep interesting food on the table feels like a full plate. Feeding 30 Lost Property ladies on a beautiful, sunny, warm spring day is the icing on the cake.
And then just to mix things up, life throws you a curve ball. This time around, it came to me in a text from John.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“The bad news, please.”
“Our landlords are coming back from Sweden and they want the house.”
Our house, that is. Except that it isn’t.
It’s much nicer to own your home, as it turns out. We’ve rented many apartments and houses in our day, and we’ve owned a couple too, and I can tell you that the phone call from real estate agents telling you you’ve got to uproot your lives is one you really don’t want to get. Especially with the garden in a state of loveliness and peace.
So ordinary life, which had until then seemed like plenty, gets shoved aside to be replaced by the familiar hunt (by John) for places to view, the trips around various neighborhoods, analyzing the proximity to public transport, food shops, walking into strange houses and trying to picture our furniture, books, art and cats in the places of other people’s lives.
It’s time suddenly to pack up the cats into their kitty prisons and drag them, their voices raised in woe, to the vet for the vaccinations that will allow them to stay in their kitty hotel for the duration of the movers’ work. They don’t like moving any more than we do.
Time to drag through my memory for the names of the art hanger, the bookshelf installation people, the carpet cleaners. Time to weigh the relative merits of being close to Avery’s school in a not-nice house, or being farther away in a nice house.
“If this house were clean, if the carpets were clean, it would look so much nicer.”
“Yes, and if there weren’t mirrors behind all the bookshelves and there wasn’t water damage to the floor and all that calcium damage to the bathroom faucets…”
The nice house won!
Then it’s time to start getting cautiously excited about starting fresh. Where will the sofa fit, and the long dining room table? Which will be Avery’s room and which the guest room? Will…
In London, that is, belatedly! We are all taking total credit for bringing this lovely warm weather — and sun! — home from our American Easter holiday.
On our…
Roast Chicken with Fennel and Lemon
(serves four with leftovers)
1 medium chicken
2 bulbs fennel, sliced thickly
2 lemons, sliced thickly
6 cloves garlic, minced
handful capers
4 fresh bay leaves
dozen baby tomatoes
drizzle olive oil
handful grated Parmesan
fresh black…
It’s the last day of our spring break here at Red Gate Farm, and you know what that means: packing, doing endless loads of laundry, eating weird combinations of food…
What a madcap ten days we’ve had here!
It’s what happens when we’ve been absent for seven months from our beloved home here in the Connecticut valleys. The birds…
Homemade Mayonnaise
(makes one cup)
1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp salt
pinch cayenne
pinch white pepper
pinch dry mustard
juice of half lemon
1 cup olive oil
With a wire whisk, beat egg yolk with salt, cayenne, pepper and mustard until thick and…
It’s been an extremely busy, at times rather gruelling autumn and winter, spent entirely within the world of London. It’s been seven months of the weekly rounds of social work,…
Red-Cooked Pork Belly
(serves 6)
1 lb/1000 g pork belly
thumb-sized knob/150 g ginger, sliced
2 tbsps peanut oil
1 tbsp sugar
a large/90g scallion, white part cut into 3-inch pieces
3…
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