feline anx­i­ety again

Yes, Lord Peter Wim­sey has slipped into recidi­vism over the week­end and is show­ing signs of a decline into ner­vous agi­ta­tion once more. He has anger issues with his sib­lings, appar­ently, and every­one has come under fire, even the nor­mally imper­vi­ous Hermione. So it’s back to the vet late this after­noon, after pickup. Avery can come along and hold his hand. Per­haps it’s time to drop the cosy aro­mather­apy and move into some­thing really effec­tive, like scotch.

And I have an extra hus­band at home today. He was meant to be in India, but for rea­sons lost in the mists of offi­cial­dom, his visa never came through, so he’s perched dis­con­so­lately on the sofa, look­ing oddly out of place on a Mon­day, mut­ter­ing under his breath and feel­ing ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed. Then I came into my study and here is a sad lit­tle arti­cle sit­ting in the printer, all about Ban­ga­lore. Poor guy. But Avery was thrilled to have him here this morn­ing to come with us to school. She was swing­ing her new ten­nis racket and look­ing men­ac­ingly at the sky, dar­ing it to rain and spoil her first les­son at school. Last Mon­day it didn’t so much rain as look as if it COULD all day, so who­ever was in charge can­celled the les­son and boy was she unpop­u­lar for the rest of the week. We have to hope for bet­ter things today.

My agenda today is sin­gu­larly dull: I must put all your names on our change of address card envelopes, not that you’re pant­ing to mail some­thing to me in this day of elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but you never know. Then I have scads of pho­tos to put in my album to bring it up to date after Avery’s birth­day party in Novem­ber. I do this purely for John’s mother, who loves noth­ing more than sit­ting on the floor of the liv­ing room and leaf­ing through album after album, look­ing earnestly at pic­tures she’s seen a thou­sand times, not to men­tion that she took most of them! But this time it will be more fun, because we’ve taken them all and it will all be new. His par­ents are due to arrive in 10 days or so for a long-awaited visit, which will be a spe­cial treat. Fun to show them around our lives. But in the mean­time, these tasks make for rather a limp­ing sort of admin­is­tra­tive day, punc­tu­ated only by laun­dry, whooppee!

But to fin­ish about the horse show. The names of the horses are like music: Cortaflex Amber du Mon­toix, Sodexco Van Essen, Saffier, Van Der Brand Kleek, Roal Von Raphael. We actu­ally rec­og­nized lots of horses and rid­ers from the Sheffield Show, and I can imag­ine you’d eas­ily develop alle­giances if you went to a series of events. And the shop­ping oppor­tu­ni­ties were unbe­liev­able: on either side of sev­eral long grassy avenues were white can­vas tents filled with STUFF. It was very like the Hamp­tons Clas­sic in that way. Had we been in the mar­ket we could have bought Avery an entire hunt habit, com­plete with silk-lined jacket with vel­vet pip­ing. There were sad­dle shops from France, bri­dle com­pa­nies from Italy, every kind of horsey cloth­ing (I mean for peo­ple), jew­elry, car­ry­ing case, boot, you name it, that you could pos­si­bly want. And the hats! You could go to Ascot straight from the show. My favorite item how­ever is the “ship­ping fuzzy.” I want to have a pony and a trailer just so I can buy some ship­ping fuzzies, which are squishy sheepskin-like pads you attach to the pony’s bri­dle so that her face does not get scratched dur­ing the jour­ney in the box to the show. And the peo­ple! There were spe­cial shiny badges that denoted one as “Groom,” “Rider,” “Press,” and most cov­eted prob­a­bly, “Owner.” Some bor­der­line smack­able peo­ple just ooz­ing lux­ury with too much jew­elry and spoiled chil­dren. Lots of tweed and vel­vet and high shiny boots. And tiny, tiny lit­tle girls in reg­u­la­tion yel­low jodh­purs and stubby plaits show­ing under their vel­vet hel­mets, end­ing in lit­tle red rib­bon bows. Appar­ently all rib­bons must be red and sub­dued, unlike the vari­ety and size of the bows at Amer­i­can shows. Very sweet.

The best event was last, the Young Rider Accu­mu­la­tor Show Jump­ing. I remem­bered it from the British Open in Sheffield, the event where each jump is worth pro­gres­sively more than the last and at the end there is a ridicu­lously high jump that can gar­ner the rider 20 points if she’s suc­cess­ful, and get 20 points taken away if she’s not. The drama! There’s noth­ing more excit­ing than a rider who gets all the way through all ten jumps with­out knock­ing any­thing over (and it’s against the clock, which makes it even more nail-biting), and then the announcer won­ders over the loud­speaker, “Will Gemma take the risk? Is the Joker going to make or break this course?” and then we all hang in breath­less silence to see if she goes for the high one, and… a per­fect score! Once again, nearly all girls, and then one won­ders where they all go in the tran­si­tion from Young to Mature rider. A mys­tery to me. And where are all the men train­ing? There aren’t any at Avery’s barn in Wim­ble­don! I mean there are men, but no boys. Some­one must explain it to me someday.

Just at the end of the Accu­mu­la­tor, a light rain began to fall and in the sky above the arena was an enor­mous rain­bow! A fit­ting end to a really excit­ing day. I sped off to the food tent with pock­ets full of money and came away with a sub­limely mature ched­dar cheese wedge, a lit­tle jar of amaz­ing tiny balls of Saint Mar­wenne goat’s cheese sus­pended in spicy sun­flower oil, from the Neet Foods peo­ple at Tre­lay Farm, Marham­church, Bude, Corn­wall. I love addresses like that. The brochure for the Cor­nish farm reveals, “Dur­ing the Cru­sade the Duke of Corn­wall was kid­napped and duly held for ran­som by the Sara­cens. The Sara­cens ran­som demands were met by the peo­ple of Corn­wall who paid for his release with 15 cir­cu­lar Gold Bezant coins. To this day the Cross of Corn­wall depicts 15 cir­cu­lar Gold Bezant coins for this trans­ac­tion. For our Saint Mar­wenne cir­cu­lar balls of cream cheese, we demand noth­ing in return except your plea­sure and appre­ci­a­tion of their dis­tinc­tive taste.”

Well, that and two pounds fifty pence per jar, but who’s being picky now.

Also I picked up a big round sour­dough bread from Dayles­ford Organic, and some beau­ti­ful Scot­tish smoked salmon from The Organic Smoke­house, Clun­bury Hall, Clun­bury, Craven Arms, Shrop­shire. Now why can’t we have addresses like that in Amer­ica? I’m sure it makes the food taste bet­ter. The Smoke­house peo­ple, Michael and Deb­bie Leviseur, were lovely, ask­ing how the jump­ing was going, had the Queen looked to be hav­ing a good day out? “She were here yes­ter­day, which was a treat,” the lady said as she wrapped my salmon. “Sur­rounded by secu­rity she were, and the reporters! You couldn’t shake a stick at them, they were so thick around her.” And the man piped up, “‘Twere a great plea­sure to see her, wasn’t it Deb­bie? You feel as if you know her, don’t you, from all them pic­tures you see in the mag­a­zines. And there is she is, as per­fect as can be. Now Prince Philip, he were here later that after­noon. Just in a tweed cap as I might be myself, all alone. No one noticed him a bit.”

I whee­dled a closed farm­stand into part­ing with a bunch of per­fect toma­toes on the vine, and then they didn’t let me pay for them! The sweet owner, one C.J. Shel­drake of Beau­mont Farm, Priest Hill, Old Wind­sor, Berk­shire, averred, “No, it’s a plea­sure, and a proper end to the day. You enjoy, now.” We trudged rather wearily past the wisteria-covered walls sur­round­ing the cas­tle grounds, and caught the train to Water­loo, then the bus to Mar­ble Arch where we col­lapsed with our pic­nic din­ner and an early bed.