change is afoot

You know how much I dis­like change!

And yet I sim­ply can’t seem to stop near­ly every aspect of my life from under­go­ing just such.

When we moved into this house less than two years ago, we expect­ed we’d be able to extend our lease right up until our even­tu­al house — the mas­sive project at Pot­ters Fields! — would be fin­ished.  Of course that sort of sta­bil­i­ty, for our nomadish fam­i­ly, was far too much to ask.  We found out straight­away that our land­lord, buried in the sands of Bermu­da, would want the house back as soon as our two-year lease was up.  Which would have put mov­ing date right dur­ing the month of Avery’s all-impor­tant final exams.  Because, believe it or not, her sev­en years at the school we’ve all become so attached to are near­ly finished.

We imme­di­ate­ly asked to extend the lease beyond the June exams, and thank­ful­ly, the land­lord agreed.  “Stay until after the hol­i­days, if that will make things eas­i­er.”  Yes, it would.

And then on our doorstep over the week­end appeared said land­lord, with his adorable child by the hand and his adorable dog tied to the gate.  “Now, of course I’ll under­stand if you want to stay on as we planned, but it turns out that stay­ing in tem­po­rary hous­ing is being real­ly dis­rup­tive for my fam­i­ly.  Could you pos­si­bly be out by November?”

And so, we find our­selves look­ing around at our beau­ti­ful gar­den with a sense of impend­ing loss.  I hate change!

My beloved wall of book­shelves will not be com­ing with us, to this inter­im house.

We’ll take just what I can’t live with­out, for the two or so years we’ll spend in the Novem­ber house.  Avery will go off to uni­ver­si­ty from one home and come home for Christ­mas to anoth­er.  Luck­i­ly she is extreme­ly adapt­able and quite used to con­stant change.

Of course the even­tu­al rea­son for all this peri­patet­ic activ­i­ty is our dream home, and plans are pro­ceed­ing apace for that.  This month I swal­lowed my fear and went along to a most excit­ing meet­ing: com­ing face to face with our famous archi­tect for the first time.  “Final­ly,” he said, bend­ing over my hand­shake.  Such a feeling!

The atmos­phere of the meet­ing was some­thing I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced before: being The Client.  I intro­duced myself as “The Wife,” but I was quick­ly cor­rect­ed.  “It’s love­ly to meet our sec­ond client,” the Eng­lish archi­tect said with a warm smile.  He showed me the mod­el of our even­tu­al home.

The excite­ment of being The Client made up for the slight anx­i­ety over what our home will be like.  “The archi­tec­ture and the view will be our decor,” John said, but I had to butt in and speak up for our art and my books, which I sin­cere­ly hope will also find a place in our rooms.  “I have a feel­ing that today you went from hav­ing one client to hav­ing two,” I apol­o­gised to the archi­tects.  They smiled.  “When you’re deal­ing with a cou­ple,” Andrew said, “two is the very small­est num­ber of clients you have, and it’s usu­al­ly more.”  It will all work out.

Change.

Lost Prop­er­ty, that absorber of so much of my time, is com­ing to an end.  One last dis­play of col­or­ful, stinky lacrosse boots and their atten­dant sticks.

I’ve cooked my last Lost Prop­er­ty lunch.

The ladies gath­ered on a beau­ti­ful, sun­ny, warm April after­noon in my gar­den, to enjoy our unique blend of friend­ship, a will­ing­ness to tack­le mess­es, our sup­port­ive con­ver­sa­tion right down the years at the school, from the lit­tle 11-year-olds of so long ago, to the 18-year-olds some of us have now.  The joy of shar­ing one last meal with these love­ly ladies.

The fun­ny thing is every­one say­ing, “What will we do with­out you?” and my know­ing quite well from expe­ri­ence that life will go on per­fect­ly smooth­ly with­out me.  It will be me who miss­es the old days.

Thank­ful­ly I will have one main­stay: good old Home-Start!  Even when I move away from deli­cious, famil­iar Barnes where I’ve had such fun, Home-Start South­wark will await me, with plen­ty of local fam­i­lies who need a bit of sup­port, a bit of play.  Some­thing tells me it will all be dif­fer­ent, and yet the same, when I get there.

I have to decide if I am to give up my local bell­ring­ing fun for a new start in the new neigh­bor­hood, or if I’ll make the effort and the train jour­ney to come back here to my mer­ry band.

As if in reminder that while things change, some stay the same, we’ve have a vis­it from old, dear friends from the past.  Kath­leen and John, par­ents of Avery’s best child­hood friend in New York, jour­neyed across the pond to spend a week in Lon­don, and some of it kind­ly with us!  They were hap­py to take a tour of our even­tu­al home.  It all looks quite unbelievable!

After all the dreamy talk about bal­conies and roof ter­races, views and ceil­ing heights, we came home to din­ner with Avery and plen­ty of rem­i­nisc­ing about our fam­i­ly’s long friend­ship.  Avery came out of retire­ment to take a love­ly pho­to, for us to remember.

I’ve invent­ed a love­ly new sup­per dish!  It’s a com­bi­na­tion of so many of my favorite things: the con­sis­ten­cy of a Thai “larb,” fine and del­i­cate, the veg­eta­bles of a stir-fry, the sauce of a cit­rusy satay sauce, the mess of eat­ing things in parcels!  John has chris­tened it:

Minced Asian Chick­en Parcels

(serves 4)

for the filling:

1 tbsp peanut oil

4 bone­less chick­en breast fil­lets, well-trimmed

2 red bell pep­pers, diced

8 chest­nut or but­ton mush­rooms, diced

1 small head broc­coli, sep­a­rat­ed into small florets

6 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly chopped

a bunch spring onions/scallions, sliced, white and green parts

for the sauce:

2‑inch knob gin­ger, peeled

100ml/1/3 cup dark soy sauce (the dark sort real­ly makes a dif­fer­ence, if you can find it, but if you can’t, reg­u­lar soy sauce is fine)

100 ml/1/3 cup Japan­ese mirin or dry sherry

100 ml/1/3 cup clear honey

juice of 1 lime, plus zest

12 tbsps/3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

50 ml/3 tbsps sesame oil

hand­ful cilantro/coriander leaves and stalks

for the parcels:

Chi­nese pancakes

Bibb/Boston/Little Gem let­tuce heads, sep­a­rat­ed into leaves

chopped peanuts, pinenuts or cashews (option­al)

Prepa­ra­tion could­n’t be sim­pler.  Put the trimmed chick­en breasts — cut into man­age­able chunks — through either a mincer/grinder or pulse in your food proces­sor until the tex­ture of minced/ground beef.

Heat the peanut oil in a fry­ing pan and then fry togeth­er the chick­en and veg­eta­bles until the chick­en is just cooked through.  Do not over­cook.  Set aside in a pret­ty serv­ing bowl to cool slightly.

Place all the sauce ingre­di­ents into a small food proces­sor or blender and blend until smooth.  With nice clean hands, toss the chick­en and veg­eta­bles with the sauce, in your pret­ty bowl.

Arrange the pan­cakes and let­tuce leaves on sev­er­al eas­i­ly-reached plat­ters.  Every­one can pile the chick­en mix­ture into these lit­tle con­tain­ers and top with nuts, if using.  Allow plen­ty of nap­kins per per­son as the parcels are messy!

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This dish pleased us enor­mous­ly!  It felt good to make some­thing new, while every­thing else around us is chang­ing too.