from the sub­lime to the mun­dane (and even a bit nasty)

Well, after my glo­ri­ous celebrity evening, head in the clouds, I was bumped firmly down to earth yes­ter­day. It was just one of those… you know.

It started off per­fectly all right, even very nice indeed, with some runny-nosed lit­tle Form 3 gulls read­ing to me on the top floor of the school, and a gor­geous bou­quet of flow­ers from Avery’s head­mistress, I can’t really think why! When I ran into her at school I protested, “Mrs D, what on earth are you doing send­ing me flow­ers? But they’re lovely, thank you,” and she put her hand on my arm and said, “Many rea­sons, my dear.” Now that’s a gra­cious lady.

And then, too, a really sweet lunch out with my hus­band (who dressed up in one of his new bespoke jack­ets for the occa­sion, which he insisted on call­ing a “date”). We jaunted off to Wright Broth­ers Oys­ter House, where I’d sam­pled oys­ters on Sat­ur­day, and had such fun. We ordered adven­tur­ously, which meant that some dishes were hits and some misses. I suc­cumbed to curios­ity and had rock oys­ters “Japan­ese style,” which were topped with wasabi, soy and a tiny bit of pick­led gin­ger. Good, but the fla­vors masked the oys­ter. John stuck with a sixer of the spe­cial “Claires” I had the other day, and they were sub­lime (I nicked one from him with his per­mis­sion). Then I had another exper­i­ment, the “Rock­e­fella,” a nice warm but unex­pect­edly raw take on the tra­di­tional cheesy spinach ver­sion, and they were deli­cious. Sub­tle, a nice warm shell but chilly oys­ter and a del­i­cate spinach puree. John had the petit plat de fruits de mer, which would not have done for me because I am a bit squea­mish about some of the things that might have been included (squid, which wasn’t, clams, which were). But he was in heaven, and the chilled poached lan­goustines were com­pletely fresh and deli­cious. I also tried a cold mus­sel and while I didn’t dis­like it, in fact I liked it bet­ter than hot, I wouldn’t cross the road for it.

Then we com­pletely caved to voyeuris­tic nosi­ness and ordered what the two guys sit­ting next to us each had, which our won­der­ful New Zealan­der wait­ress assured us were good, deep-fried white­bait. Now, per­haps the very word “bait” should have been a clue. Not awful, but baity. Sorry, I don’t want to think about eat­ing something’s eye­balls, as it stares up at me through admit­tedly good, crunchy bat­ter. No thanks, but we’re glad we tried them because it was going to hap­pen some­time with that menu, and you might as well get it out of the way the first visit. We’ll def­i­nitely be back. Oh, and an excel­lent green salad with squashed tomato halves soak­ing up a lively dress­ing and lit­tle ten­der beet greens.

Fair enough, until school pickup, then, it was a stel­lar day. See, I’m such a Scan­di­na­vian, that the first seven hours of the day were vir­tu­ally for­got­ten in favor of the fol­low­ing, say, four. I went off for my sec­ond visit to the acupunc­tur­ist at Sen, the extremely chic and posh Chi­nese health cen­tre in South Moul­ton Street, cho­sen for its prox­im­ity to the unaf­ford­able watch shop where I’m attempt­ing to get my ancient watch fixed. And it hurt like bloody HE-double hockey sticks! I thought it wasn’t sup­posed to hurt. It’s this crazy fin­ger I have where every so often, the first knuckle fills up on the inside with a painful bruise, and then the next day it’s so cold I think it’s going to fall off. Granted, I have oth­ers, but it’s annoy­ing, and some­one sug­gested acupunc­ture. I fell for the “book four appoint­ments and get one free” offer, so now I have to use them up. Ouch! And it’s hard to see improve­ment when suc­cess is only… neg­a­tive. In that it hasn’t hap­pened again, YET.

I slunk away feel­ing hard done-by (to pay for pain is annoy­ing), and came in to face Avery’s Extreme Home­work Com­plaints about how, even con­sid­er­ing Leap Year, could a boy reach the age of 8 with only one birth­day? I was stumped, and even more so when the phone rang with my friend Sarah on the other end, and get this: our book has been pla­gia­rized! Yes, it’s not enough that the wretched thing took seven years to write and get pub­lished, and that my roy­alty checks have to roll over onto one another until they reach $50 per quar­ter, because it’s not worth it for Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia to print the smaller checks. No, my “get rich quick scheme,” as John kindly refers to it, is now being not only not bought, but stolen!

Here’s how it hap­pened. Sarah was approached by some jour­nal or other to review an art his­tory book, recently pub­lished by a uni­ver­sity press who, for rea­sons of a poten­tially liti­gious nature, shall remain name­less for the time being. Well, she’s read­ing and read­ing and… hey, she wrote that! Or I did, or both of us, or sev­eral of the con­trib­u­tors to our book. She was in such a state of help­less rage that she could hardly be coher­ent, not to men­tion I con­stantly inter­rupted her to try to stave off Avery’s home­work panic. Finally we agreed she would email our edi­tor and give her a heads up. Whole sec­tions that she says just leap out to her as hav­ing been writ­ten by me, shin­ing from the page, unac­knowl­edged. We’re not even cited in the bib­li­og­ra­phy as a source, even though, mod­esty aside, we’re the author­i­ties on the sub­ject he’s dis­cussing. We are seething.

To add insult to injury, fully a third of the mus­sels I bought to steam for our din­ner were already opened, which makes them ined­i­ble. Good point, that. I always knew that if they didn’t open dur­ing cook­ing, you should throw them out, but I didn’t know until last night (and a hasty google search by John, the intended vic­tim) that if they do open before cook­ing, the same applies. Oooh, not only those mus­sels were steam­ing. I had it com­ing out my ears.

Ah well, by mid­night all had been fed, one had been read to, sung to, and tucked in, every­thing was tidy, John asleep. I came upstairs just to sit in the kitchen, still redo­lent of the thymey, gar­licky, but­tery mus­sel sauce, with a lit­tle hint of toasted cia­batta in the back­ground, and soaked up a lit­tle quiet domes­tic har­mony. I guess life is like that: you’re up in the clouds from your crush, then still pretty high up there with your lovely hus­band slurp­ing down oys­ters, then you’re flat on your back stuck through with nee­dles, then con­tem­plat­ing a law­suit, then all is peace­ful again. Maybe it would be bor­ing with­out the roller-coaster? I’ll think about it and get back to you.