exam­i­na­tion nerves set­ting in

And I’m not even the one sit­ting the exam! It’s all an enor­mous cul­tural divide for which I’m thor­oughly unpre­pared. For one thing, where I come from you “take” an exam. Where Avery comes from “one sits” an exam. Luck­ily, she’s per­fectly pre­pared. It’s I who needs a refresher course.

I sat down at my desk this morn­ing know­ing I had one more appli­ca­tion to fill out for Avery’s exam sched­ule in Jan­u­ary. The fifth choice among five, so I was not feel­ing par­tic­u­larly ner­vous, but nev­er­the­less a dead­line is a dead­line, so I filled out the form. Until I got to the line, “Please indi­cate at which school your daugh­ter will be sit­ting this exam.” Because you see, it would be too easy for the child just to turn up at each school for each exam. No, in the attempt to make things sim­pler (!) the North Lon­don Inde­pen­dent Girls’ Schools’ Con­sor­tium (got that?) divided all the schools into two groups, clev­erly called Group 1 and Group 2, and the girls have to sit the exam for each group just once, and then all the schools in that group to which she’s apply­ing look at those results. The schools all assure the par­ents that it makes NO DIF­FER­ENCE where the child sits the exam, in terms of how the other schools where she didn’t sit it view her results. The fer­vor with which the schools express this makes me think per­versely that a child has no chance of get­ting into a school if she didn’t sit the exam there.

Plus, of course, Avery’s apply­ing to one school that doesn’t par­tic­i­pate in either Group 1 or Group 2, so it has its OWN deadly exam. Any­way, there I was, fill­ing the Unde­sir­able School Form, and I sud­denly couldn’t remem­ber where I had said she would be sit­ting that exam. So up comes the phone and I call one of the other schools in the group that she’s apply­ing to, to con­firm that she’s sit­ting it there. “I’m ter­ri­bly sorry, Mrs Fred­er­ick­son, but the paper­work for your daughter’s exam con­fir­ma­tion seems to have been lost in that postal strike in Octo­ber. We have no record of her sit­ting the exam here.”

Major panic! But she could tell, because she kindly said, “Don’t panic, I will merely put another set of papers into the post this evening and you may turn them around as quickly as pos­si­ble.” As kind as this was, how­ever, it merely put me in a swivet of nerves about the state of her “paper­work” at the other schools. So I ended up spend­ing the entire morn­ing at my desk call­ing each school, stam­mer­ing out my dumb ques­tion, get­ting people’s voice mail, leav­ing mes­sages. Gen­er­ally flum­mox­ing myself! I feel cer­tain that the admin­is­tra­tors who took my calls have now ticked the box “loony incom­pe­tent mum” next to Avery’s name. Sorry, dear.

Other than school jit­ters, it has been quiet around here. Vague thoughts of Christ­mas shop­ping (surely I can’t give every­one only books, can I?), plan­ning our return to Con­necti­cut in just three weeks (can that be? where has this autumn gone?). Yes­ter­day was greatly enlivened by the arrival of a belated (another casu­alty of the postal strike?) birth­day present from Jill and Joel and Jane, quite the most elab­o­rate and delight­ful pen­cil case known to man. Do you have a lit­tle pony-mad girl for whom you need a gift sure to please? Try luvponies, with the nicest staff you’ll ever speak to (if the present gets lost in the post), tons of choices and gen­er­ally the magic lan­guage that I don’t speak but my horse-crazy daugh­ter does.

Thanks, guys, for lift­ing the spir­its of your niece who suf­fered might­ily over not get­ting cho­sen to sing the solo of “Once in Royal David’s City” (warn­ing! this link plays delight­ful music, so don’t click it at 3 a.m. with your sleep­ing baby next to you) at the Christ­mas carol con­cert next month. She was in ter­ri­ble spir­its at school pickup, and heaved a huge sigh over hav­ing to do her home­work, so when I saw her slumped over my desk with hor­ri­ble maths prob­lems, it was but the work of a moment to present the excit­ing pack­age and watch her light up! Home­work is much more pleas­ant when done with a pink pen­cil drawn all over with ponies, manes fly­ing in some dream land­scape. Totally turned her mood around! And the next thing we knew she was singing the wretched Christ­mas song all over again, her pique for­got­ten. Would that we adults could spring back from dis­ap­point­ment with such aplomb! It’s prob­a­bly worth not­ing: keep a poten­tially mind-blowing gift aside for just such an occasion.

Mon­day night was enlivened by the arrival my new friend Layla with her cam­era, intent on tak­ing some pho­tographs of food, both ingre­di­ents and cook­ing action. She’s Dalia’s sis­ter, my dra­matic and lively friend of writ­ing classes past and present. So Dalia came along as well at din­ner time, bring­ing her gor­geous, sweet and very Irish hus­band Kevin (he could say absolutely any­thing in that accent and I would be at his feet, very imprac­ti­cal in daily life but a lot of fun as a din­ner guest). Layla is pos­si­bly the most easy­go­ing per­son I have ever met: she meets life head-on with enthu­si­asm and energy, but refuses to let any annoy­ing details get her down. Bul­lies at her child­hood board­ing school? Couldn’t be both­ered to notice them too much. “Years later they wanted to be friends, and I could see that noth­ing had changed! They were still the same peo­ple, so I just got on with it.”

Avery was intrigued by this approach to school drama, and lis­tened with rapt atten­tion to all Layla’s and Dalia’s tales. As well as being fun to have around, I have to con­fess that those two girls are the most beau­ti­ful crea­tures! Long, dark, dra­matic hair, eye­lashes a mile long, the polar oppo­site of my vaguely Scan­di­na­vian aspect, so it was a plea­sure just to look at them. And did they eat? My good­ness, they were my best cus­tomers ever. And I made a vari­a­tion on an old lasagne recipe, which is worth putting down here, I think, as every­one really enjoyed it. It seems that you can cook the noo­dles ahead or not, with­out a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence. If you do cook them ahead, how­ever, be sure to cook your tomato sauce down plenty so there’s not too much juice, since the cooked noo­dles won’t absorb as much liquid.

Super-cheesy Lasagne
(served 6! but you’ll serve more)

12 sheets lasagne noo­dles
1 1/2 pounds tra­di­tional Eng­lish sausage
3 tbsps olive oil
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
3 soup-size cans whole toma­toes
2 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
250 grams each: mas­car­pone, ricotta, grated ched­dar
3 balls moz­zarella, grated
1 cup grated parmesan

In a large skil­let, stir fry the gar­lic and onion in the olive oil until soft. Add the sausage and cook thor­oughly. Then, hold­ing each can over the skil­let, lift out the toma­toes in your hands and crush into the skil­let. Add the juice. Add the sea­son­ing and stir thor­oughly and cook down. Mean­while, spray a 9x13 glass dish with non­stick spray (a must!) and cover the bot­tom with noo­dles. Mix the mas­car­pone with the ricotta and ched­dar. Spread about a third of the mix­ture over the noo­dles, and then spread over a third of the tomato sauce and half the parme­san and half the ched­dar. Keep lay­er­ing noo­dles and sauce and cheese, end­ing with noo­dles. Top with the rest of the grated ched­dar and parme­san and bake for 45 min­utes in a slow-ish oven, per­haps 350 degrees.

***************

Well, it’s a typ­i­cal grey Eng­lish day and my kitchen is filled with the smells of turkey soup, from the enor­mous Thanks­giv­ing bird. Such a twice-a-year aroma, don’t you think? Do you ever cook turkey not on Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas? Nei­ther do I. It will make a per­fect first course tonight at din­ner. Then per­haps to watch an episode of lat­est Eng­lish tele­vi­sion obses­sion? A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie is side-splitting in a com­pletely British way, and such a funny look back at 20 years ago in British com­edy, some­where between Monty Python and… what? I sup­pose there isn’t an equiv­a­lent now, but we do adore QI and “Have I Got News For You.” Last week QI had the con­tes­tants try­ing to iden­tify a pho­to­graph of an island. One answer was “The Island of Inevitable but Reluc­tant Homo­sex­u­al­ity: a school trip gone hor­ri­bly wrong,” which led Stephen Fry to quip, “‘Lord of the Undone Flies,’ was it?” I’m hop­ing these jokes are too sub­tle to get me in trou­ble with any child-safety monitors!

We’re off to this lunch with, doubt­less, a much savvier mum than me. I plan to lis­ten and learn. And then col­lapse with turkey soup and a pony pen­cil case.