Day Five (we knew it would come)

Some­times it’s good to have a day so unlike anoth­er day, except that they’re both called ran­dom­ly “Fri­day,” that you real­ly have to step back and ask your­self about con­ti­nu­ity. Not to sound too pre­cious (kick me if I do), but con­ti­nu­ity of self is an odd thing, espe­cial­ly, to para­phrase the great short sto­ry writer Ray­mond Carv­er, if you have chil­dren. In fact, for­get “chil­dren”: I don’t even need the plur­al to make my life feel occa­sion­al­ly quite schiz­o­phrenic. One child, plus every­thing else I want to do in this life, is quite suf­fi­cient to make me feel that my arms are being stretched in oppo­site direc­tions. The per­son one is with a child and the per­son one is when said child is out of sight (and out of mind) are two very dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Most of the time it’s pos­si­ble not to notice this dis­con­nect because the fleet­ing no-child moments don’t last very long. One has to learn to func­tion on sev­er­al lev­els at the same time (write all day, then it all ends at pre­cise­ly 3:45 every day to be replaced with lis­ten­ing to tales of school inequities, etc, pro­vide snack, find gym kit). One has to be ready to let go one’s own thoughts on com­mand. And this sev­er­ing can some­times seem to test the notion of iden­ti­ty at all. As Carv­er also said, “One of the things I learned is that I had to bend or else break. And I also learned that is pos­si­ble to bend and break at the same time.”

A bit chill­ing and dire sound­ing, I know. So not me! But at Totleigh I dis­cov­ered what hap­pens if the stretch­es of time one has to one’s pre-par­ent self last for, say, Five Days, it’s some­thing a bit life-chang­ing (my god, how British and dep­re­ca­to­ry that sounds! “a bit life-chang­ing” like “slight­ly preg­nant”). But it is indeed a phe­nom­e­non to cher­ish and to try to bring back to real life. To try to rec­on­cile the two selves. A tough assign­ment, I’m find­ing. And I think all of us at Totleigh would agree that the time there, while chal­leng­ing intel­lec­tu­al­ly and not easy to respond to, was also a sort of bub­ble out of real time, and by Day Five the bub­ble was quite sturdy.

For exam­ple. Last Fri­day, just a week and a day ago, I was in super-self­ish mode: did­n’t do a thing I did­n’t want to do, did lots of things I did want to do, rev­elled in the sen­sa­tion that we were liv­ing in a world apart, a world that would­n’t last but anoth­er sev­er­al hours, like a turn­ing-point ripe fig. And it was all true. This Fri­day, yes­ter­day in fact, I did lots of things I did­n’t want to do, some things I did want to do, and most­ly felt over­whelmed with the end­less vari­ety there is to be had in this life. There’s wildest, remotest Devon where one’s clos­est com­pan­ions on a walk are sui­ci­dal pheas­ants. Then there’s Pic­cadil­ly, where I had to fight yes­ter­day to put my feet down on the pave­ment, where I stopped off to see the Robert Irwin show at White Cube. As an aside I must tell any­one who is in Lon­don tomor­row to go to the last day of the show: born in the same year as Don­ald Judd, Irwin’s work is just as min­i­mal, just as ele­gant, but more clever, fun­nier. Stun­ning­ly per­fect installation.

But I digress. More on the schiz­o­phrenic nature of my Fridays.

The com­pa­ny? There are a bunch of bril­liant writ­ers to hang out with on a sun­ny day in said remote Devon, or a bril­liant, stressed-out hus­band and his bril­liant, end­less­ly opti­mistic busi­ness part­ner in SW1. Both of those choic­es work for me. There’s the life of the high­er mind, where you spend part of a Fri­day dis­cussing what words are accept­able to be includ­ed in food writ­ing, and where in all seri­ous­ness a per­son can ask the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “I know this is a con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject, but where do we all stand on the word ‘morsel’?” And then there’s the life of home­work super­vi­sion where “Bun­sen Burn­ers for Dum­mies” is a real sub­ject, and one’s music home­work can be done in lim­er­ick form. My mind is pret­ty much stretched on ANY of those subjects.

Last Fri­day I ate a meal that I cooked with three heart­warm­ing friends, and last night I was fed very posh food by fire­light, cooked by a love­ly fam­i­ly who looked after my child while I was away self­ish­ly cook­ing for myself. And the three-quar­ter moon we left behind in Devon was full last night, here in London.

So there you go. I realise com­plete­ly that in all these com­pare-con­trast high school home­work sort of essay in the above, one thing stands out: I have absolute­ly no room ever to com­plain about any­thing. I err on the oth­er side, actu­al­ly: hold­ing it all so close that I threat­en to smoth­er every­one and every­thing in my path! Learn­ing to hang back and take it all for grant­ed a bit more is prob­a­bly a good idea for me. This after­noon I added a line to the piece I wrote at Totleigh about our beloved island in Maine, where I describe the chil­dren’s fairy forests, and they are words to live by: “The chil­dren do not mind that these fairy hous­es will be stepped on, will fall apart, will dis­solve in the next rain­storm. It is enough for them to have made them. I know I should feel that way about the things I make.”

So, Day Five came. I knew from the out­set I was in for a treat, for the sim­ple rea­son that there’s no day I like bet­ter than one spent in the kitchen prepar­ing a meal for guests. But nor­mal­ly that means a very soli­tary, if delight­ful day, lis­ten­ing to a book on tape, work­ing at my own pace, queen of my domain. Not last Fri­day. I was put in the very amus­ing posi­tion of being sig­nif­i­cant­ly old­er than, and hav­ing cooked sev­er­al mil­lion more ordi­nary meals than had the chef pre­sid­ing in the kitchen (Edward) and yet being praised for my red onion dice. “Oh, I AM sor­ry,” he said, “I’m being con­de­scend­ing.” You think? But it has to be said: he ran a mon­u­men­tal­ly effi­cient kitchen that after­noon. The four of us: Edward, Char­lie, Roger and I, gath­ered after lunch to dis­cuss our roles, and we all quick­ly realised it was the bet­ter part of val­or to let the only one of us pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained to take charge. Where­upon Roger dis­ap­peared on some mys­te­ri­ous spy errand, and Char­lie was giv­en an enor­mous bowl of egg whites and the slow­est egg beat­er on earth, and I? I picked apples in the glo­ri­ous mid-after­noon sun­shine and felt grate­ful to be there. A beau­ti­ful, blink­ing gold­en blue after­noon… with noth­ing to do but cook.

Roger reap­peared in time to pick the apples requir­ing a tall per­son, and we all began chop­ping, mix­ing, stir­ring, lis­ten­ing to Roger’s Swedish (or was it Nor­we­gian?) girl singer music, all to the relent­less whirring of Char­lie’s egg beat­er! Tamasin came in sev­er­al times and gaped in aston­ish­ment and sym­pa­thy at the con­tin­u­ing whir. I have nev­er known a man so devot­ed to egg whites as Char­lie was, that after­noon. “We’re look­ing for stiff peaks,” Edward advised, and of course the two of them were very mature, snick­er­ing in a way that is uni­ver­sal among men: Amer­i­can or British, cooks or not. That line is always a winner.

Edward went off for his Orlan­do tuto­r­i­al and emerged whole, if not whol­ly unscathed (we would expect noth­ing less intense from our esteemed tutor), and the after­noon sort of dwin­dled away, full of tasks and pots to scrub, desul­to­ry con­ver­sa­tion and lots of silence. Alto­geth­er, I can­not explain why, one of the gen­tlest and most pleas­ant after­noons of my life. I know, you are all think­ing: that is sim­ply pathet­ic! What about shop­ping in Paris, doing research in Moscow, set­ting up a gallery open­ing in New York, you name it? Sure­ly after­noons get nicer than mine last Fri­day? No. They don’t.

We cooked, we served, we ate. Slow-roast­ed pork bel­ly with thyme and olive oil, roast pota­to wedges with fresh rose­mary and sea salt, braised red cab­bage with Bram­ley apples and cloves, and Edward’s spe­cial pud­ding which he is keen to remind me I nev­er EVEN TRIED, apple snow. I do not like Eng­lish pud­dings, for which I am very sor­ry and undoubt­ed­ly mis­guid­ed, but there you go. Then we cleaned up and head­ed over to the barn for the last evening’s readings.

But I’ve for­got­ten to tell you about the amaz­ing trans­for­ma­tion on Day Four of Rosie: into Fox­ie the Par­o­dy Writ­ing Instruc­tor! None of us can remem­ber hav­ing laughed so much for so long… and yet I can’t pick out a sin­gle word of wis­dom to show why it was so fun­ny. All she did (all!) was to read aloud from a tru­ly sick-mak­ing Amer­i­can (nat­u­ral­ly) self-help man­u­al for peo­ple who have writer’s block. And then she insert­ed her own inim­itable, pure­ly British, tongue-in-cheek bits to… help us under­stand the text. There is some­thing so Amer­i­can (well, prob­a­bly Cal­i­for­nia, my New York­er’s iden­ti­ty wants to believe) in the “come on, chil­dren, you can do it, put a lit­tle pow­er to it!” cheer­leader non­sense that the book rev­elled in. And Fox­ie’s deliv­ery? I can­not describe it, but she had a hard time get­ting some of the words out, laugh­ing till she was quite ill, too.

And I’ve for­got­ten the Inter­minable Dawn Death March that was my ear­ly-morn­ing walk with Jen­ny and Louise! I had just come back from a walk all on my own, sen­si­bly on DRY GROUND, when they scooped me up at the kitchen door and said, “Come on, we’ll take the long way around.” I stu­pid­ly for­got to ask, “Around what?” and went off ami­ably enough, in my absolute most favorite Var­da boots from New York… and at first all was well. We went down the lane, up the lane, made a left where I nor­mal­ly car­ry on straight, were giv­en direc­tions by a wiz­ened old man lean­ing out his pic­turesque cot­tage win­dow, and were… prompt­ly set down in a pos­i­tive sea of mud. Jen­ny and Louise had on Welling­tons. I did not. For a mile or two it seemed like a fine chal­lenge for an autumn morn­ing: after all, mud dries, does­n’t it? Final­ly, how­ev­er… “You two, how much longer can this go on?” And Jen­ny said, “It’s not so much how long as how DEEP.” And she was right. At one point I was up to my knees. I want­ed to lie down and sob, but there was cow s*&^t as far as the eye could see. I know, typ­i­cal Amer­i­can, unpre­pared for the elements.

It’s hard for me to be objec­tive about that last evening’s read­ings because I read one of my favorite pieces, about vichys­soise and Avery’s birth­day par­ties where we always served it. I don’t know if it’s a suc­cess­ful piece for any­one else, but as usu­al I found myself vast­ly too emo­tion­al about it to read aloud very well. How do news­read­ers get through the sto­ries that make lis­ten­ers cry? I think I need­ed some dis­tance. But that was a com­mod­i­ty thin on the ground on Day Five. Edward read from “The Lit­tle Prince,” a piece both naive­ly sim­ple and inclu­sive of vast and mys­te­ri­ous emo­tion. Every­one sat as if spell­bound as he read; it’s one of those sto­ries that lets each lis­ten­er escape into a sort of secret room of indi­vid­ual emo­tion. Tamasin said to me lat­er that he wove a Zen-like spell around us, and that is the fairest descrip­tion I can muster. “It is only with the heart that one can see right­ly; what is essen­tial is invis­i­ble to the eye…”

Thank good­ness, Pauline fol­lowed with a food­ie poem of her own design, which she’s giv­en me per­mis­sion to pub­lish here. Its charms may fall under the cat­e­go­ry of “you had to be there,” but I don’t real­ly think so. And then Orlan­do played the piano, we danced, we took one more long walk… And that, dear read­ers, was my week at Totleigh Bar­ton. I need a para­chute to come down. If I decide to.

Writ­ing on Food

For Melis­sa the course proved less than enticing
The moment she found that it wasn’t on icing
She thought she’d be writ­ing on pink birth­day cake
Not lap­top or paper, she felt such a fake

Tubes of colours and sprin­kles crammed into a carton
Weighed down her suit­case at Totleigh Barton
She kept it locked shut, per­cep­tive­ly sensing
That e‑numbers caused a vis­i­ble tensing
In tutors who wor­ried about unre­fined sugar.
This was quick­ly becom­ing a right, roy­al bugger

But fast on the uptake she tried to fit in
And chat­ted ‘bout sausages with Tamasin
At lunch she leant over said “ketchup with that?”
Tamasin faint­ed flat out on the mat

Through lemons and food reviews things just got worse
Melissa’s writ­ing got more and more terse
When asked to rate din­ner the pre­vi­ous night
She wrote “If you’re ask­ing, the salmon was shite”

Orlando’s gougeres didn’t impress her a lot, its
Report­ed she mut­tered she’d rather have Wotsits.
Then lat­er that night after two crates of Becks
She and a fel­low had cred­it-crunch sex

By eight in the morn­ing she’d left with­out trace
Except for a mes­sage of dubi­ous grace
Piped onto a choco­late cake left in the kitchen
(She told tutors both what to do with their pitchin’)

And every­one thought now that that was the end
Of Melis­sa and words that she’d caus­ti­cal­ly penned
There were some who imag­ined she’d end up in jail,
But no, she’s a colum­nist now on The Mail

She writes about food using words like ‘deli­cious’
And restau­rant crits. that are always quite vicious
When asked where she learnt to tell pit­ta from naan
She always says Devon, with friends, in a barn.