autum­nal swings

What a dif­fer­ence it makes to have our fam­ily com­plete again!  Since we are both work­ing from home these days, John and I have become com­pletely spoilt in the amount of time we spend together, nat­ter­ing across the part­ner desk in the front study, send­ing each other emails as we speak, gro­cery shop­ping together, run­ning Avery to and from her var­i­ous activ­i­ties, always both of us.  Why?  Because doing things with John ele­vates them from just tasks, just errands, to lit­tle spe­cial occa­sions, infused with his own spe­cial brand of good humor, his bound­less energy, opti­mism, self-confidence and gen­eros­ity of spirit.  “Let me carry that for you,” or “Do you need any help with that?” are the sorts of things he says all day, because that is how he sees life.  There must be some­thing he can do to help.

So Avery and I returned to Amer­ica with­out him with heavy hearts, a bit, but a lit­tle ashamed, because we used to do with­out him all the time, when he was on long busi­ness trips, or just long hours at the office.  Why is it so much eas­ier to get used to good things than to bad things?  There is a philo­soph­i­cal dis­ser­ta­tion in that.  We have all got used to being together much eas­ier than we learned to accept being apart.  Of course, hav­ing the big kids around made every­thing a bit bet­ter… here they are, three Three Mus­ke­teers (Tacy refuses to join them, too princesslike is she).

And Avery and I did all right by our­selves!  Even with my stom­ach bug, and jet­lag and not being a morn­ing per­son in any case, under the best of cir­cum­stances, we did just fine.  It was actu­ally kind of fun to get both the pre-school morn­ing accounts of what was to come, and the post-game analy­sis at the end of the day.  It was sort of sweet both to make the rasp­berry crum­ble for her break­fast late at night, and be up to warm it up for her the next day.

One day last week, I got more than a day’s worth of exer­cise in that most time-honored of all ways, which all par­ents will rec­og­nize… walk­ing to and from school.  Once to and from first thing in the morn­ing (find­ing Avery’s PE shoe on the way home, so actu­ally a lit­tle extra that trip), then back for Lost Prop­erty duty at noon, and home again.  Back to pick Avery up at the end of the day, home with her.  THEN back again for the Par­ents’ Guild meet­ing at 6.  I say my piece at the meet­ing, vote on some things, lis­ten to some debate, then sneak out to meet Orlando, my dar­ling tutor from our Arvon writ­ing class, for din­ner.  I dial his num­ber to say I’m ready.

“This num­ber is not in ser­vice.  Please check your infor­ma­tion and try again.”

Grrr.  I try again.  Same again.

I dial up Avery, at home, to get her to check my email to find the right number.

“You have reached Avery.  Please leave a num­ber at the beep, at least I think it’s a beep, I don’t really know.”  Beep.

In frus­tra­tion I leave my mes­sage but then real­ize I must go home AGAIN to get the proper phone num­ber if I’m ever going to see Orlando, have a bite of sup­per, and get home AGAIN to get Avery to bed.  I get home.

“Avery, why aren’t you answer­ing your phone?  I needed you to check my email so I didn’t have to come all the way back.”

“Uh… I think it doesn’t have any bat­tery.”  Grrr.  I repro­gramme the num­ber, the phone rings, it’s Orlando already AT the restau­rant, so I speed off again.

If you are a car­ni­vore, and ONLY if, The Pope­s­eye in Ham­mer­smith is for you.  To say the menu is lim­ited is to utter an under­state­ment.  It’s steak.  And chips.  And salad.  That’s ALL.  Sir­loin, rump, rib­eye, fil­let.  All dif­fer­ent sizes.  But that is all.  White paper table­cloths, lots of can­dles every­where, a glo­ri­ous wine list, appar­ently, and the best steak you could ever want, plus a charm­ingly enor­mous tray full of every condi­ment known to man and some unknown.  Horse­rad­ish, mus­tard, ketchup, check.  But the other six glass bowls?  No idea.

Furi­ous chat­ting.  I love Orlando, and his lovely friend Susie, and the hour and a half at my dis­posal sim­ply sped by.  And ONE MORE walk home.  I think five trips in one day is a record.  I plan that it shall remain so.

And the next day I man­aged to get ready for the famed Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon all by myself, haul­ing extra chairs down from the top floor of the house, and the big ugly buf­fet table up from the cel­lar.  Once I dragged the table out to the gar­den, how­ever, and cov­ered it with a thick old white linen cloth, it looked quite dis­tin­guished, and not at all as if it had a plas­tic top and fold­ing metal legs.

But I was defeated by the kitchen island, made of a heavy Vic­to­rian wrought-iron base and an unat­tached 2-inch-thick slate top.  I sim­ply could not budge it, which John had warned me.  “Get Selva to help you,” he advised.  Well, get­ting Selva to help me do any­thing is a com­plete joy, not only because he is my dear neigh­bor and a really sweet man, but because he is drop-dead gor­geous.  I have con­fessed my weak­ness to his beau­ti­ful wife Sara, who must hear such things every day, or at least wit­ness them as the path before Selva is lit­tered with the help­less bod­ies of females who can­not resist his urbane charms.  He just can’t do any­thing about it.

So it was but the work of a moment to accost him with his fam­ily on the way to school and plead my case, and barely an hour later, there he was, ready to roll his sleeves up and drag that puppy across the kitchen floor.  “How many peo­ple did you say were com­ing?” he asked, clearly think­ing I had lost my tiny mind, look­ing around the kitchen at the neat piles of plates, glasses full of upended knives and forks, straight rows of cham­pagne glasses.  “Thirty,” I said, “and I know you won’t believe me when I say it’s the most relax­ing after­noon of the year.”

But it is true!  There are many rea­sons for this.  I love to have a party, and this is the best kind: it’s filled with peo­ple who have great atti­tudes and charm and will­ing­ness to help.  It’s in the after­noon so you can have a lovely time and then still be on time for pickup, and it’s potluck, which means the kitchen counter is filled to capac­ity with the gen­er­ous and deli­cious dona­tions of other peo­ple.  All I con­tributed was stuffed mush­rooms (they were very nice).  Oh, and a gor­geous bowl of potato salad which… I for­got about, and found only after every­one had left.  Rats!

The ladies arrived, some bring­ing lit­tle presents, some flow­ers, like this gor­geous dis­play of very posh hydrangeas in dusty, muted tones of rosy gray.  They brought sal­ads of rocket and salmon, of beet and chard leaves with sun­flower seeds, a huge plat­ter of smoked had­dock cakes with a tatziki dip, chicken with pre­served lemons, olives and cous­cous, an enor­mous cheese plate, and a choco­late and rasp­berry Pavlova, deca­dent with both meringue AND whipped cream.

It’s one of the great plea­sures of life, I think… time to talk with like-minded moth­ers about the things that mat­ter to us: what books we read over the sum­mer, how our girls are adjust­ing to the new school year, David Cameron’s new baby, and of course Lost Prop­erty itself.  How to get the girls to stop leav­ing their house­keys, their bus passes, their asthma inhalers, their father’s cash­mere sweaters, ALL over the school to be sorted through and reassigned?

Through it all the sun appeared and dis­ap­peared in a sky that threat­ened rain now and then.  We sat on with our cheese plates and gos­sip, sim­ply enjoy­ing each other’s company.

And being the sort of ladies they are — prob­lem solv­ing LP ladies, that is — they left the kitchen in a state of absolute pris­tine per­fec­tion, dish­tow­els hung in front of the stove to dry, plates neatly stacked, glasses back in their card­board boxes ready to be hauled down to the cel­lar again.  My dear friend Sally even brought her own apron to wrap her­self in as she washed count­less plates and forks, chat­ting all the while, and giv­ing me a ride to school after­ward.  How I love those ladies.

Avery and I more than ready to col­lapse that evening with a pizza, and spin out the hours till John came home, and before mid­night, he did!  Fill­ing the house with his big pres­ence, his jolly laugh, draw­ing the cats to him as they tried to remem­ber who he was, devour­ing a piece or two of pizza while he filled us in with last details of the house, Con­necti­cut life, his good­byes to our friends.  I laughed and told him that my friend Tri­cia had said on his last night there, “I think you left some­thing behind in Con­necti­cut, and it’s LONELY.”

We had all been a bit lonely!

So life took off again in its usual Sep­tem­ber fash­ion.  Sadly, of course, one of the rit­u­als included in this unfold­ing of the month is the awful anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11.  This year we went to the Memo­r­ial to British vic­tims, in Grosvenor Square, where the Amer­i­can Embassy crouches heav­ily over all the green.  We went, and remembered.

And that night we went to see the best play any of us can remem­ber see­ing!  “Death­trap”!  An old clas­sic, but well worth revis­it­ing.  Actual scream­ing from the audi­ence, and TWICE, if you can believe it.  We were all sur­prised out of skins TWICE.  Go, do.

And on the Sun­day we went to Hyde Park to try to rent bicy­cles in the new Bike Hire scheme, intent on get­ting some exer­cise.  Alas, the scheme requires sign­ing up ahead of time by com­puter, and although John whipped out his trusty iPhone, the web­site was down.  But what a clever idea: once signed up, all you have to do is turn up at one of the hun­dreds of sites around the city, with bikes teth­ered elec­tron­i­cally to stands, enter your infor­ma­tion, and bob’s your uncle… you have a bike for as long as you want it!  Then you return it to any of the sites, anywhere!

All we could do was to wan­der around in the blinky sun­light, and alight on some chairs by the Round Pond (guess why it’s called that) and read for a bit.  A slow wan­der back home, and would you believe that dur­ing all this activ­ity, din­ner was cook­ing itself.

Slow-Cooked Shoul­der of Pork with Beets and But­ter­nut Squash

(serves at least 8, or 4 with left­overs for sand­wiches)

1 shoul­der of pork, boned and tied

hand­ful each: fresh rose­mary, fresh thyme, fresh marjoram

3 large beets, peeled and halved

1 large but­ter­nut squash, peeled and cut into large chunks

1 head gar­lic, cloves sep­a­rated and peeled

driz­zle olive oil

2 tbsps butter

sea salt and pepper

Sim­ply lay the herbs in a large bak­ing dish and lay the pork on top.  Arrange the beets, squash and gar­lic around the pork, driz­zle olive oil on veg­eta­bles and smear but­ter over top of the pork.  Sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and wrap the whole dish in a piece of heavy foil, try­ing your best to seal it.

Roast at 110C/220F for six hours.  Remove foil and lift veg­eta­bles onto a serv­ing dish.  Return pork to oven for one more hour.  Fall down in heav­enly happiness.

That’s autumn, on a plate.   And next day, get your­self a nice floury cia­batta, slice the left­over pork, a lit­tle sharp Ched­dar cheese.  Spread some home­made salsa verde on one half of the bread and some mayo on the other half, then pile on some sliced red onion and a hand­ful of rocket.  There will be no bet­ter sand­wich than that.   Enjoy yours…