Curie sweeps Sports Day!

Yes, after early minor dis­as­ters like for­get­ting the Blue Shirt that would iden­tify Avery as a Curie house mem­ber, and the school’s not let­ting her bring her pic­nic lunch to the park, Curie ral­lied and brought home the Sports Day tro­phy! It was a truly glo­ri­ous sum­mer day in Regent’s Park, per­fectly blue skies, the nice fresh green of June leaves before they’ve been robbed of their glory by traf­fic smog, here in our urban par­adise. I hadn’t real­ized the extent of the com­pet­i­tive spirit among the houses at King’s Col­lege Prepara­tory School, nor the degree to which the fathers got involved. It was pretty funny to see them all in their proper busi­ness suits and ties, glued to their Black­ber­ries and tex­ting away, no doubt chang­ing the course of British com­merce as they did so, only to drop them on the grass and shout “Go Curie! Crush Nightin­gale! Send Franklin back where they came from!” when­ever their pre­cious sprouts in blue stepped up to the line. As you can see from Avery’s expres­sion, it was all about win­ning. Well, in fact she didn’t, but Jade’s father observed, “Not from lack of deter­mi­na­tion.” It was a great day, watch­ing the “ris­ing threes” run their tiny lit­tle race, look­ing oddly ran­dom out of their uni­forms, and the big Form Sixes throw­ing off their lordly big-kid atti­tudes to run their lit­tle hearts out. Mrs D moved regally among the crowds of par­ents, grand­par­ents, teach­ers and kids, unmis­tak­able in her suit of lovely pink flow­ers, admir­ing pic­nic items, chuck­ing lit­tle sib­lings under the chin. Becky and Susan and I spread out our tar­tan pic­nic rugs with the cool rub­berised back­ings, and every­one but Avery had lunch, hers repos­ing at school to be picked up later with Kate, the babysit­ter. I hate it when all my hard-won per­fect plans get ruined by some­one else!

Then I madly dashed to get to my last act­ing class (more on that later), then dashed home to meet up with Avery and Kate and show Kate all over the flat, giv­ing her a sense of how to make things work, and espe­cially how to take care of the kit­ties, when she hous­esits this sum­mer. Then we had the ulti­mate healthy, deli­cious and quick din­ner: lemon sole fil­lets dredged in herbed flour and sauteed, three min­utes per side, in olive oil. I start with the skin side down in really hot oil, and then when I flip it over, I can eas­ily remove the crispy skin that most peo­ple like, but sends shiv­ers down Avery’s spine. With rice it’s the per­fect, nearly instant din­ner, and since John was at a busi­ness do of some kind, fish was a possibility.

Other than that, my life has been taken up largely by try­ing to sort out Wimsey’s issues. I have a cat psy­chol­o­gist on retainer ONLINE, if you can imag­ine. We email back and forth about his behav­ior, our liv­ing con­di­tions, his sib­ling rela­tion­ships, you name it. So far her advice has been to pro­vide him with a lit­ter­box, food and water dishes, all his own. “How will he know they’re for him?” I won­dered, but appar­ently it’s all about offer­ing him the CHOICE. What­ever. If it keeps him happy… so this week­end we must acquire a new lit­ter­box. Where to put it? I have no idea. Then, let’s see, here was a bit of excite­ment: I real­ized that Avery’s library books were either over­due or about to be, so I gath­ered up the pile and headed out, down Dun­raven Street to Woods Mews and planned to make a right on Park Street. How­ever, at the end of the road there was a police tape block­ing off the street and a nice bobby man­ning it. “Sorry, love, you can’t cross this tape,” he said politely. “Why? What’s up?” I asked. “Oh, a bomb in an attache case under a car.” “EXCUSE ME?” I splut­tered, as a lady walked up with a tiny irri­tat­ing lit­tle dog on a lead. “I must get past here,” she said boss­ily, “I’m meant to be meet­ing a friend at 101 Park.” “Well, you can’t, lady, because that’s where the bomb is,” the bobby said patiently. She huffed and puffed. “But I came out with­out my mobile so I can’t tell my friend that I’m not com­ing,” she said petu­lantly. “Con­sid­er­ing the whole block is about to explode, I don’t think it’s an issue!” I said. I couldn’t be both­ered to take it too seri­ously, though, with over­due library books to con­sider, so I skirted the bar­rier and crossed Grosvenor Square, fig­ur­ing the Embassy was prob­a­bly the tar­get and they couldn’t get any closer. By the time I got out of the library, how­ever, the bar­rier was gone and all the excite­ment over. Oh, well, next time.

TGIF, TGIF. I’m bring­ing Anna home from school with Avery, for the last sleep­over of the term, before Anna heads to Scot­land next week and we go to Con­necti­cut. Today is the school­wide Singing Com­pe­ti­tion, with Nightin­gale heav­ily favored to bring home the tro­phy. Poor Franklin loses every­thing. So I’m sure our walk home will be spiced up with sto­ries of who for­got the words to what folk song, how strict Miss P is, what­ever hor­ror the offi­cial Com­mon­wealth Judge chose to wear. Speak­ing of clothes, oh, dear, the Fash­ion Show was last night. What do you get when you put 120 hys­ter­i­cal girls aged 3–11 in a room with all their par­ents and grand­par­ents and nan­nies and sib­lings and teach­ers, no air con­di­tion­ing, and parade them up and down in var­i­ous Vic­to­rian, hippy, flap­per and medieval cos­tumes? Did I men­tion no air con­di­tion­ing? I would rather have stuck hot nee­dles in my eye­balls, but by then I was pinned in the remotest cor­ner of the room, miles away from Avery, much too close to sev­eral par­ents who had appar­ently been very hot with no air con­di­tion­ing all day. Pretty grue­some. There were a few high­lights: Anna looked com­pletely the part of a glam­orous 1930s star­let in a fur wrap, with per­fect makeup. And of course the love of Avery’s life, Ellen looked dar­ling. The tiny Lower Kinder­garten­ers came out in night­gowns with their ted­dies, which if we hadn’t all been drip­ping with sweat and near­ing the end of our oxy­gen sup­ply would have been really dar­ling. Oh, well, the admis­sion charge goes to the British Red Cross. Next year maybe I’ll donate the whole sum anony­mously on the con­di­tion that there is NO MORE FASH­ION SHOW. Except when I said, “Next year let’s get here early to get seats together,” Avery objected, “But no, Mommy, next year I’ll be IN the fash­ion show, I HOPE.” Sigh.

On the way home, cool­ing off as we walked (con­tribut­ing to that sense of false clean­li­ness you get and then for­get to take a bath when you get home), stop­ping at the Wait­rose in the high street for gro­ceries. “Now, Avery,” I said sternly, “I know burg­ers aren’t your favorite thing, but I’ve been crav­ing them and Daddy likes them too.” “Awawah! They are dis­gust­ing!” she wailed. ““Be that as it may, your food tastes have been hijack­ing our din­ner menu for months and years now. It isn’t fair to have you dic­tate what we can and can­not have for din­ner, is it?” “Well, no, I guess not.” “Very well, then, let’s do our shop­ping,” I said, proud of myself for being so firm and rea­son­able. We got home with all our stuff and she went off to read her Amer­i­can Girl mag­a­zine, and then came into the kitchen to get her fruit bowl. “Look in the oven,” I said. And of course there was a roast of filet mignon, her absolute favorite since she was a tiny child. I remem­ber once she had been very sick with some­thing or other, a rar­ity, and hadn’t eaten prop­erly in 10 days or so. When she got her appetite back, I told her she could have any­thing, absolutely any­thing she wanted for din­ner. “Oh could I have that really bloody and expen­sive roast beast thingy?” I am such a sucker.

So I think as a reward for get­ting through an extremely busy week (stud­ded with vis­its to var­i­ous doc­tors to make sure I’m get­ting over this stom­ach thing; I’m much bet­ter), we’ll take Avery and Anna to “The Lucky Spot” for din­ner, get­ting home in time for the first match of the World Cup semi-final. It’s got­ten so pathetic, this new­found inter­est in foot­ball, that we actu­ally know how many yel­low cards the play­ers have, and what sub­sti­tu­tions might occur if so-and-so’s thigh strain isn’t bet­ter. Who would have thought! Eng­land play on Sat­ur­day, against Por­tu­gal. The gov­ern­ing body of the foot­ball teams are con­tem­plat­ing mak­ing a rul­ing that the play­ers can­not do their tra­di­tional shirt-swap on the pitch, but must wait till they get to their lock­ers to do it. Why? The sight of all those ripped abs, be still my heart, is con­sid­ered too risque for tele­vi­sion. Awww, no fair!