glo­ri­ous Cotswolds

Why oh why did we ever have to come back! No, that’s not fair. Poor old Lon­don can­not begin to com­pete with the charms of Glouces­ter­shire. But it’s hard to leave the gor­geous coun­try­side, fresh air, deliri­ously good food (and no lit­ter­box, no laun­dry, no beds to make!) of our hol­i­day and on top of that, to have school start today. Alas, real life beck­oned and so we came back. But we had the best weekend.

Lords of the Manor is one of my favorite places in the world, set in one of my favorite places in the world, the Cotswolds. Which means lit­er­ally in what­ever old lan­guage it is, “cuts through hills.” And the land is very, very hilly, mak­ing any drive absolutely stun­ning, with vis­tas of cul­ti­vated green fields, ancient stone walls, hedgerows and plenty of sheep, cows and horses on which to feast the eye. And any walk through the fields is a work­out because the land does go up and down, up and down. So you put together a top-hole loca­tion, per­fect but delight­fully change­able weather, the two peo­ple I like best in the world and a nice added attrac­tion of Avery’s friend Ava, and it was just an idyl­lic weekend.

We picked up Ava on Fri­day after­noon, leav­ing her mother with a cry­ing hun­gry three-week-old baby, poor thing. But she looked pretty thrilled with her lot, and handed Ava over with a bulging knap­sack, rid­ing hel­met and lit­tle hand­bag filled with, as it turned out, a vir­tual elec­tron­ics store of enter­tain­ment items. How long we can hold out against Avery’s hav­ing a Nin­ten­dog, or an iPod, I do not know. We can but try. What with our two bags of clothes, books and rid­ing gear, it was an extremely tight squeeze in Emmy! Not much of a boot. But the girls bun­dled up in their tar­tan rug and we were off, top down and music blar­ing. I have to say right now that the only down­side (a word I really hate, should say “neg­a­tive aspect,” I sup­pose) to the entire was the girls’ obses­sion with a Suzanne Vega track that details her expe­ri­ence in a diner on a rainy day with a cup of cof­fee and some­one comes in with a drip­ping umbrella… argh! It goes on an on. And even worse, she got a whole host of other annoy­ing musi­cians to COVER the drat­ted song in their own even more irri­tat­ing ways. But the girls absolutely love it, and had soon mem­o­rized it all and insisted (in a very charm­ing way of course) on lis­ten­ing to it ad nau­seam, which state I have to admit it didn’t take very long for me to achieve. Oh, what can you do? They’re kids. We stopped in the adorable lit­tle town of Wood­stock, pass­ing the impres­sive gates of Blenheim Palace on the out­skirts, and in def­er­ence to John’s par­ents (whose gift the whole week­end was, thank you), said as they always do, “You know, we should really visit Blenheim some­day.” We have prob­a­bly passed those gates ten times in our 17 years of mar­riage, many times with John’s par­ents in the car, and with­out fail, one of us always utters those words. But we never go.

Now, every Amer­i­can expat liv­ing in the United King­dom has to offer the oblig­a­tory com­plaint each fall that, firstly, the British don’t call it “fall” but instead “autumn,” and then sec­ondly, there isn’t the gor­geous col­or­ful foliage that we’ve all come to count on as the har­bin­ger of what­ever you call the sea­son. It has some­thing to do with the fact that Great Britain, or at least South­east Eng­land, does not get what you’d call a good hard killing frost. I know, I sound like Gar­ri­son Keil­lor, but every once in awhile my mid­west­ern upbring­ing sur­faces with a vengeance. Any­way, as I was say­ing, the frost just never descends here in the way it does in the north­ern bits of Amer­ica. So the leaves do not, in gen­eral, get to be bril­liantly col­ored before they fall. Hey, maybe that’s why they call it autumn: there’s not much to write home about in terms of the leaves actu­ally falling.

In any case, nor­mally I do feel this sort of com­plain­ing home­sick feel­ing about Octo­ber in Eng­land. But in the Cotswolds, and in par­tic­u­lar on the ivy-covered walls of Wood­stock, it was glo­ri­ous. Red, orange, and yel­low ivy fes­toon­ing all the old, old hotels and pubs and yarn shops that peo­ple all the lit­tle towns, and plenty of fallen leaves for lit­tle girls to scuff in. We had a truly awful lunch of watery shepherd’s pie and fish and chips “like hockey pucks,” restau­rant critic Ava pro­claimed, then the girls got ice cream and felt quite fine again. They shopped extremely labo­ri­ously in a dar­ling art sup­ply store, touch­ing I think every SIN­GLE item on dis­play, in search of what­ever was wor­thy of their spend­ing money. John and I took turns super­vis­ing them while the other lucky grownup got to exit the shop and wan­der around the town. John finally made motions through the shop win­dow of peel­ing back his eye­lids and putting hot nee­dles in his eye­balls (he hates shops full of lit­tle things), so we got the girls to decide on var­i­ous mechan­i­cal pen­cils and goo­gly eyes, and were ready to go. We hopped back in Emmy and whizzed along, arriv­ing at the hotel just at dusk, when it was look­ing par­tic­u­larly wel­com­ing. The lovely Julia behind the desk who had helped us with reser­va­tions and the girls’ extra bed came out to greet us by name, which was awfully pro­fes­sional and pleas­ant. In with all our clob­ber and through the remem­bered white-painted, book-lined rooms with mas­sive fire­places, lots of wind­ing hall­ways that ensure I will be lost when­ever I leave the room, and into our bed­room, on two cozy lev­els with a big four-poster for us and a nice plump pull­out sofa for the girls, already made up. And a huge spray of beau­ti­ful flow­ers and a bot­tle of chilled cham­pagne, from John’s parents!

We set­tled in, which meant mostly that the girls went through all the sam­ple toi­letries and divided them up with a min­i­mum of acri­mony and lots of nego­ti­a­tions, where­upon I had to beg for just a tiny bar of soap to wash my hands. Gor­geous dark-red bed appoint­ments, cur­tains and car­pets, and golden wall­pa­per, and dou­ble leaded-glass win­dows open­ing out onto the hedge by the side of the drive. Just per­fect. Avery and Ava quickly switched on the telly to find the usual Fri­day evening’s assort­ment of dread­ful Eng­lish quiz pro­grammes, so they were in heaven. John and I opened the cham­pagne and sighed with con­tent­ment, albeit with the girls’ swing­ing feet clunk­ing us in the head as they lay on their stom­achs on our bed, all agog with details of Welsh his­tory, Latin Amer­i­can geog­ra­phy, and dis­tinc­tions among var­i­ous types of pasta shapes. I espe­cially loved Avery’s wry com­ment, “I don’t have so much com­mon sense. What I have is gen­eral knowledge.”

Then they forced us to watch some­thing called “Strictly Come Danc­ing,” where for the ben­e­fit of some char­ity, celebri­ties learn to dance and then per­form before a panel of delib­er­ately cheeky judges. I was tempted to find out how much they thought they would raise for char­ity and offer to donate the whole thing if only they’d take the pro­gramme off the air. And even worse: we hap­pened upon an “episode” where they wasn’t even any danc­ing! Just inter­views, and analy­sis. I com­plained, “This is just ‘Strictly Come… Chat­ting,’” which cracked the girls up. All was well with the world. Except. I had for­got­ten to book for din­ner! Oh no! And they were fully booked in the hotel’s divine restau­rant. Julia came to the res­cue, how­ever, and booked us at what she described as “a new place, or rather a refur­bished old place,” that the staff had been invited to last week and had reported favor­ably upon. So we headed out cau­tiously, the girls hav­ing got very dressed up in their favorite dresses: Avery in a lettuce-green linen dress that I had made for her one Easter (long ago, she could hardly breathe in it), and Ava in, she informed me, Bon­point from head to toe. Lucky girl. I walked into the shop in New York, on Madi­son Avenue on the hottest day of the year this sum­mer, just for the air-conditioning and had to leave imme­di­ately upon see­ing that the coat I liked for Avery was $978. Oh my. They both looked extremely lovely.

The restau­rant was, well, a pub. “The Coach and Horses,” no less, the most bor­ing of all pub names in a land where “The Slug and Let­tuce” is not con­sid­ered odd. John and I looked at each other in some con­ster­na­tion, not being devo­tees of pubs even now that smok­ing is banned in some of them. I just don’t like watery warm beer and bad steak and kid­ney pie, nor the blare of some sport­ing event on the telly and the sus­pi­cious glances of the inevitable locals, not that I blame them. But there were were, so we descended the steps and went in, to be greeted with fer­vor by the wait­ress who anx­iously assured us the hotel had called and we were most wel­come. Uh oh, I thought, being, as a New Yorker, accus­tomed to the wait staff’s chilly demeanor pro­vid­ing an exact barom­e­ter of the excel­lence of the food. The din­ing room was painfully newly-done up, with glar­ing shiny new wall sconces and a truly repel­lent flow­ered car­pet. And it took the wait­ress a very long time to remove, item by item, all the unnec­es­sary glasses, cut­lery and charg­ers once she’d taken our order. How­ever. The food came and it was sim­ply superb. How­ever this place got its new chef they must do what­ever they can to keep him.

At first glance the menu looked hope­lessly pre­ten­tious, but that was just in con­trast to the sur­round­ings. Actu­ally the food was very sim­ple, and quite, quite per­fect. I ordered some­thing called a “can­non of lamb,” a name with which I wasn’t famil­iar, but hey, lamb is lamb and I can’t have it at home any­more with my soft-hearted daugh­ter. It is essen­tially half a sad­dle, the best part of the fil­let which in my Frenchy expe­ri­ence is called a “noisette.” I have found in trips back to Amer­ica that lamb is really not pop­u­lar and I can never under­stand why. My par­ents report hav­ing it shoved down their throats drowned in mint jelly after being cooked for sev­eral days while the fam­ily went to five dif­fer­ent church ser­vices in a row. Per­haps that has some­thing to do with the country’s gen­eral avoid­ance of the meat. Because of my par­ents’ shared child­hood expe­ri­ences they shielded me from birth from both the Methodist Church and lamb. Now I can­not attest to the lack in my life of Method­ism because I am igno­rant of what I’m miss­ing. To will­fully deprive me of lamb, how­ever, is an action­able offense. And this at the Coach and Horses was the real deal. A long fil­let cut in small slices, pink and juicy and melt­ingly ten­der. The menu John snagged for me claims that it was pre­sented with a rose­mary puree, but this was not true. It was served with the same full-flavoured, tart and com­plex red wine sauce that came with Avery’s fil­let of beef, also per­fectly cooked. John had the lamb as well, and we both savored the but­tery potato puree nes­tled under­neath, but were chilly on the “tian of veg­eta­bles” on the side, an odd sort of ver­ti­cal pile of an aubergine slice, some red onion, and a yel­low cour­gette, topped weirdly with melted cheese. Ah well, we can’t expect per­fec­tion from a pub! Even, as they are known here so pre­ciously, “gas­trop­ubs.” I myself find that des­ig­na­tion impos­si­bly twee, and will not use it. Either you’re a pub with a great restau­rant or a pub with­out a great restaurant.

As it was, this place was like a fancy for­eign cousin recently bereaved of both par­ents and forced to live with poor rela­tions. The locals in the “pub” part of the estab­lish­ment downed end­less pints of lager and looked askance at us, putting their heads to one side and peer­ing around the door­jamb. Some­thing tells me there’s still fish and chips avail­able to them. I can­not see them get­ting on the out­side of “pan-fried sea bass with rata­touille, potato galette and herb oil.” Ava went for tagli­atelle with goat’s cheese (I love the Eng­lish insis­tence on the pos­ses­sive apos­tro­phe, as though the goat might come back for it) and baby cress salad, and while she imme­di­ately dis­man­tled the gor­geous pre­sen­ta­tion with wild mush­rooms piled on top and issued a “yucky” decree, the pasta under­neath was more than accept­able to her. We all hap­pily plun­dered one another’s plates and among the four of us ate every bite. Divine!

Home through the dark curv­ing roads, we dis­cussed accents. Now Ava is full-blown Eng­lish, both par­ents, both sets of grand­par­ents. But she has inher­ited, I think from her urbane and sophis­ti­cated father, an incred­i­ble tal­ent for mim­icry. She can be a per­fectly Eng­lish girl, with cut-glass vow­els. But she can also be quite a good native Moroc­can girl, gleaned from her incom­pa­ra­ble nanny Fati, as well as a good French accent speak­ing Eng­lish. So we decided to ask her some pro­nun­ci­a­tion ques­tions. “Do you say ‘gull’ or ‘gel’ for ‘girl’?” She says “gull,” but I have heard Lord Peter Wim­sey (in his Ian Carmichael incar­na­tion) say quite plainly ‘gel,’ with a hard g. So I don’t know about that. She pro­duced a con­vinc­ing York­shire per­sona, with “ayuh, lass,” rolling out of her throat. She even could pro­vide really good instruc­tions on how to pro­duce cer­tain sounds! Maybe we have a lin­guist, or a speech ther­a­pist on our hands. Although some­thing tells me Ava is des­tined for a more glit­ter­ing future. “Do you say ‘glahhss’ or ‘glass’? ‘Tom­ah­hto’ or ‘tomato’?” Very funny. We stopped at a for­lorn lit­tle petrol sta­tion with a leaky broken-down ice cream freezer, so the girls had to aban­don their plans for ice cream and have choco­late bars instead. Plus horsey mag­a­zines, so that all the con­ver­sa­tion before they went to sleep was read­ing aloud from pony clas­si­fieds. “Oh here’s one, Avery, that you could have. ‘Fine scopey jumper, 13.4 hands, a lovely lit­tle chest­nut mare with 40 rosettes.’ And only 5500 pounds!” Quite the per­fect day.

Sat­ur­day saw us at the lus­cious break­fast pro­vided by the hotel: a cold buf­fet with many cere­als, pas­tries and fruits, includ­ing a really good apri­cot stewed in cin­na­mon and honey. Then I had boiled eggs and toast sol­diers, as did Ava, but she imme­di­ately objected, with a true Eng­lish girl’s speci­ficity, to the width of the sol­diers. “They are too big to get in the egg top!” And of course she was right, plus the bread was very fancy-dancy whole-grain, and I’m sure the proper deal is nice white toast­ing bread from Warburton’s. John had the Full Eng­lish com­plete with black pud­ding, roasted toma­toes, fried eggs, sausage and incred­i­bly fla­vor­ful Eng­lish rash­ers of bacon. Avery con­tented her­self with mas­sive num­bers of pains au choco­lat, and then we ran out into the coun­try­side for the long refresh­ing walk to Lower Slaugh­ter. Because nat­u­rally Lords of the Manor is in… Upper Slaugh­ter. This walk is one of my favorite in the world, pass­ing as it does through sev­eral sheep fields and afford­ing many oppor­tu­ni­ties to chase them. Well, not chase of course because that would be scary and cruel to the sheep. No, we just… pur­sue them dili­gently. But some­one stole a march on us and all the sheep were across an annoy­ing body of water! Ah well, we’ll come back in spring when the lambs are out. Much more trusting.

We passed through all the oblig­a­tory kiss­ing gates, where the per­son passes through and has to offer a good-luck kiss to the one com­ing after. There was much strate­giz­ing about who went in what order to get the desired kisses. On the way we stopped at the Old Mill Museum and Shop and invested in sev­eral 50 pence bags of “duck feed,” and thereby chanced on the sin­gle most sat­is­fy­ing bit of the girls’ entire week­end! Take them to a four-star coun­try house hotel with gourmet food, decked out in French fin­ery, and what do they like best? Yep, a 50-pence bag of cracked corn. They just kept buy­ing more and more, and feed­ing the lit­tle beasts right out of their hands, on the banks of the low beau­ti­ful River Eye that winds through Lower Slaugh­ter. It has been named many times as “The Best Con­served Eng­lish Vil­lage,” and it’s true. Per­fec­tion every­where in the win­dow boxes, front gar­dens, thatched roofs. They even lay on the occa­sional horse­back rider who comes clip-clopping down the street, splashes into the river, and comes out on the other side, send­ing up sparkling droplets into the air. Weep­ing wil­lows line the river which is spanned by sev­eral pic­turesque old foot­bridges, one of which the girls sat on to throw their duck feed. Pretty adorable. “Here’s one hun­gry lit­tle adorable baby, Avery!” “Oh, Ava, this lit­tle white one misses you! Come back!”

Off finally to get in the car and go to their horse­back rid­ing les­son! On the way we stopped to try to have lunch at the Mount Inn, high above dar­ling lit­tle Stan­way, another per­fect vil­lage. But no sooner had John dropped us off and dri­ven away to get cash, than it turned out first there was no fish and chips, and sec­ondly, any­thing we ordered would take 40 min­utes. Grrr. Avery took a spill on the lawn and bruised her coc­cyx, a word that actu­ally made her feel bet­ter. Nat­u­rally the child can ride enor­mous horses over huge jumps, but flat on the ground she gets injured. John picked us up and took us to Jill Carenza’s sta­ble for their les­son and frab­jous day! there was time for a ham and cheese toastie in the barn’s lit­tle cafe. Bliss. Avery got on a nice gray pony called But­tons, and Ava on Blue, and they were off. A good les­son, under at first cloudy then grad­u­ally clear­ing skies. Lots of high jumps! In fact her high­est ever, we think, 30 inches. Quite high enough, thank you.

Back to Lords of the Manor for high tea, a rit­ual when we stay there and even when we’re just pass­ing through. Eclairs, meringues, fruit cake, short­bread, pound cake, and of course scones with clot­ted cream and straw­berry jam. “Kris­ten,” Ava asked earnestly, “Do you say ‘scone,’ or ‘scawn’?” “I have to say I say ‘scawn,’ how about you?” I replied. “Oh def­i­nitely ‘scawn.’ How about ‘the sun shone,’ or ‘the sun shawn’?” “Shawn,” we agreed. The beauty of Eng­lish books on tape: thank good­ness I got it right for Ava!

Well, I am starv­ing so I am going to go make some tuna salad with chick peas and lemon zest, and a side of oven-roasted beets with bal­samic vine­gar. Want to join me?