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.