get­ting out

I don’t know why I’m cel­e­brat­ing the blos­som­ing of ANY grow­ing things, given my sneez­ing activ­i­ties lately, but some­thing about this view in my liv­ing room was irre­sistible. Our land­lords said that if we pulled some of the climb­ing jas­mine plant indoors, it would bloom more quickly, and I can assure you that the scent of climb­ing jas­mine is worth almost any num­ber of sneezes. It’s just mag­i­cal, so I’m sac­ri­fic­ing. Around 3 in the after­noon, these days, the liv­ing room is suf­fused with a warm, cel­e­bra­tory light that shouts, “Spring is here. Enjoy.” We’ve been spend­ing a lot of time in there, and when it’s not sunny, we can light the fire!

I’ve often observed here before that in my life, plan­ning ahead to do any­thing but sit­ting and typ­ing, or read­ing or cook­ing, is absolutely cru­cial, because if I wait to be inspired at the moment, I’ll never leave the house. Never has this been truer than on Fri­day night, which had the temer­ity to fol­low Fri­day day. Let me explain. Fri­day, it rained in the way that it can rain only in Lon­don. All day, relent­lessly, some­times heav­ily so you raise your brolly, some­times in spits and spots that make you lower the brolly and say pathet­i­cally, “I’m sure it’s clear­ing up,” only to find that you’ve become a poo­dle for the six­teenth time that day, hair curl­ing in obnox­ious ringlets and stand­ing out all over your head. The brolly goes back up, you smack some­one in the face com­ing oppo­site you on the pave­ment. Crash­ing bore.

And invari­ably, on such a day, I find that my main goal for the day is to get Avery to the ice skat­ing rink, which is like ask­ing Dante to go get a root canal on his way to the Sev­enth Cir­cle of Hell. It’s just awful under any cir­cum­stances to spend two hours there: scream­ing teenagers, school trips for trou­bled boys, loved-up ado­les­cent cou­ples who think noth­ing of aim­ing their skate blades at my child’s gen­tle head. Above it all floats an inde­scrib­able smell of osten­si­ble food­stuffs: hor­ri­ble waf­fles with fake top­pings, pizza, hot dogs, panini filled with fake cheese… and strobe lights, and loud music. I feel such an old fogey hat­ing it so much, but truth must out.

So Fri­day I got Avery to the rink, suf­fered through the end­less requests for fake fruit slushies to drink, ice cream to eat, pound coins for the arcade (no, no and let me think about it, NO). Watched her go out on the rink and then spend the entire hour les­son glued to the pre­cise four-foot sec­tion of the rink that I couldn’t see, the space between me and it being occu­pied by sev­eral scream­ing French chil­dren whose par­ents had appar­ently left them there as if at a foundling hospital.

By the time we got home on the bus, in the rain, through sev­eral con­struc­tion block­ages, it was all I could do to inject a quick cock­tail into my veins and then head out again to drop Avery at her sleep­over date and try to race to din­ner and the­atre. Wet, wet, wet!

But once we sat down with my friend Jo at Kulu-kulu Sushi, my cur­rent mecca, and fed our­selves from the con­veyor belt with yel­low­tail sashimi, salmon sushi with plenty of wasabi, chilled steamed spinach with satay sauce and a soft shell crab roll, I didn’t care about the rain any­more. It was good to be with her, sit­ting between me and John, appre­ci­at­ing her spe­cial brand of irrev­er­ence, energy, roar­ing laugh and potty mouth. A total infu­sion of humor, even bet­ter than a shot of vodka. The three of us have such fun together: she described John later as “as good as a girl­friend, only mas­cu­line! You are a very lucky woman.” Couldn’t have put it bet­ter myself, my dear.

From there we headed to the Duke of York The­atre and A View from the Bridge, an Arthur Miller clas­sic I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read, or seen before. My God, Ken Stott is tal­ented. Dessi­cated, depraved, yet some­how heroic and ulti­mately true to him­self, this char­ac­ter walks the post­war Brook­lyn streets like a liv­ing cadaver, filled with for­bid­den love for his niece, raised as his daugh­ter, over­come with word­less hatred and jeal­ousy for the boy she’s fallen in love with, and then revenge­ful antag­o­nism for the ille­gal immi­grant sys­tem he’s inad­ver­tently become part of. He was bril­liant: hate­ful and yet pathetic. Go see it.

On a com­pletely dif­fer­ent note: con­grat­u­la­tions to Prince Philip on his slightly creepy mile­stone: the longest serv­ing Royal Con­sort! Imag­ine kneel­ing to one’s wife and swear­ing alle­giance. Actu­ally per­haps that would be a nice addi­tion to the cur­rent rather too lightly observed mar­riage cer­e­mony. I’ll write up a lit­tle speech and see if I can get John to recite it. You know you’re liv­ing in an old, old coun­try when some­one breaks a 191-year-old royal mar­riage record.

Well, we’re fac­ing the last day of this very long, very unevent­ful Easter hol­i­day. Avery has become quite addicted to her days of inac­tiv­ity: learn­ing all the lyrics to “Grease,” finger-knitting, cro­chet­ing, draw­ing fairies, skat­ing and the like. She dreads return­ing to school on Tues­day. I myself think it will be good to get back to a rather more reg­u­lar writ­ing sched­ule: I’ve accom­plished only one chap­ter over the whole three-week hol­i­day. But I did pro­duce tonight Avery’s absolute favorite pasta dish and it’s worth repro­duc­ing, since it’s been a very long time since I told you about it. I invented it many, many years ago as a detox din­ner: try it on your veg­e­tar­ian friends or just after too many evenings of flesh. It’s lovely.

Orrechi­ette With Two Broc­co­lis, Tomato and Pinenuts
(serves four)

1/2 pound dried orrechi­ette (or far­falle or another sort of stubby pasta)
1 tsp but­ter
1 tbsp olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
1 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1/2 cup pinenuts
1 soup-size can plum toma­toes
8 flo­rets broc­coli
8 stems ten­der­stem broc­coli
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan

Put water on to boil for the pasta. It will need to cook for about 12 minutes.

Heat but­ter and olive oil in a shal­low skil­let and cook gar­lic and onion till soft, then add Ital­ian sea­son­ing and mix well. Set aside while in a food proces­sor or blender you mix the pinenuts and toma­toes till com­pletely blended and a pleas­ing sort of red­dish pink. Pour the mix­ture into the skil­let with the gar­lic and onion and heat until bub­bling, then turn off heat.

Steam the two broc­co­lis until they smell good, and like broc­coli. I can’t explain it bet­ter than that: you’ll know they’re cooked (five min­utes or so?) when they smell like you want to eat them. Plunge them in cold iced water and drain.

When the pasta is cooked through, drain it nearly all the way and dump it into the skil­let with the sauce, then throw in the two broc­co­lis and toss all together. Serve with the cheese, and ENJOY.

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Avery ate so much of this tonight, and so quickly, that she then retreated to the sofa and lay like a beached whale, recov­er­ing. John said, “Can you move, please?” and I had to point out that he was speak­ing, essen­tially, to a snake who had swal­lowed a rat, and that we had to give her time to digest the beast. Maybe it will rain tomor­row and we’ll be stuck doing… noth­ing, for one more day. How I will miss her when she’s back in her ele­ment. I told her this and she said sweetly, “Oh, I will miss you too,” and I said, “No, you’ll be too busy at school to mind,” and she put her arm around me and said, “Even when I’m busy dur­ing the day I often think about you and want a hug.” That makes every­thing, even rainy days, worthwhile.