life, accel­er­ated

Oh, the mem­o­ries these horsey rosettes bring back.  How many week­ends spent dri­ving up and down the East­ern Seaboard, with lit­tle Avery in the back­seat, hair in rib­boned plaits, lit­tle mono­grammed shirt and jacket, jod­phurs and gloves.  The hours we spent sim­ply watch­ing her go round and round on a pony, and at the end of the day, her lit­tle hands were filled with the silky, brightly col­ored proof of her achievements.

Since New York, these rosettes have been strung up around her room, added to as each show went by, sym­bols of her horse-obsessed childhood.

And now, in advance of our move next week, they have all been taken down and packed away into a robin’s-egg-blue hat box, which in turn was placed in her old sta­ble trunk, which in the old days was filled with pony treats, dirty boots, hair ribbons…

From the heart-wrenching good­bye to the rib­bons, we moved on to the toy box.  No one really wanted to dis­card any of these old friends, so they made a brief foray into fresh air, then set­tled back to sleep in their wicker home, to be moved lock, stock and bar­rel to the new house next week.

And no new bed­room would be com­plete with­out the assort­ment of fuzzy lla­mas from Peru, bought over a period of many snowy, windy weeks out­side Avery’s bal­let class in Green­wich Vil­lage.  “Will the llama sales­man be there again, Mommy, because I really liked the kneel­ing one he had last week…”

Life just seems to be mov­ing awfully quickly, and trad­ing in an old, happy home, for a new, unknown home at the same time I seem to be trad­ing in my old, famil­iar child for a new, older, more sophis­ti­cated ver­sion is a bit over­whelm­ing, to be hon­est.  Why is it all hap­pen­ing at the same time?

I’ll tell you why.  Because some­thing funny hap­pens when you assess your belong­ings with an eye toward leav­ing things behind, giv­ing them away.  You ask your­self, “How much of myself is in this stack of books, this moth-eaten sweater, this pile of Christ­mas cards, this col­lec­tion of horsey rib­bons?”  And when you ask your­self those ques­tions, and get down to the answers, you find that your teenager is really quite ready to leave behind the parts of her child­hood she’s out­grown.  It’s me who has a hard time with the doll’s dress her beloved grand­mother made for her Amer­i­can Girl doll, to match her Lon­don school uni­form at age nine.  Actu­ally, she got a bit sen­ti­men­tal over the doll’s dress too, truth be told.

So we are all ana­lyz­ing our lives and iden­ti­ties through the prag­matic process of mov­ing.  And some­how, on the other side of the river, we’ll take those cho­sen items out of the boxes, repo­si­tion them in new places, and we hope our lives and souls will re-emerge too, in a dif­fer­ent pat­tern, but just as sweet.

Mean­while, what on earth hap­pened the last time we moved?  Where was all the paring-down then?  Our sys­tem three years ago seems to have been some­thing along the lines of:

“Let’s just take bloody every­thing with us.”

We are find­ing crazy things like Avery’s home­work from Year Five, now five years ago, and clothes for a per­son surely half the size she is now, not to men­tion six dif­fer­ent sorts of razors, but some­how six OTHER SORTS of blades, none of which fit the razors we have?  Pre­scrip­tions for face cream guar­an­teed to stop me being pink, but dated 2005?  Why?

The Win­ner of Least Desir­able Object emerged over the week­end, how­ever, as we decided to clean out the dreaded two condi­ments shelves in the fridge.  This process reminded me of the con­ver­sa­tion I had with John three sum­mers ago at Red Gate Farm.

“I’m going to the gro­cery, don’t let me for­get to buy pick­les.“
“But you have pick­les,” he said.
“No, I don’t, I’m sure we’re out.”

Where­upon he went silently into the kitchen and came back out to the ter­race with no fewer than eight jars of pick­les in his arms.  Gherkins, dill, half-sour, sweet crinkle-cut, you name it.

This time here in Lon­don we found at least five jars of half-portions of anchovies — since my only two recipes involv­ing anchovies always require half a jar and I am never orga­nized enough to cook them two nights in a row.  And there were three half-empty jars of pre­pared horse­rad­ish, three tubes of Wasabi paste, and some spec­tac­u­larly furry lime chutney.

But the piece de resis­tance was the bot­tle of molasses.

“My God,” I said, “the price tag on top is from Jin Mar­ket.  That’s a whole coun­try and five apart­ments ago!  This molasses has come with us from two apart­ments ago in Tribeca, across the ocean.”

All this fran­tic mov­ing activ­ity is thor­oughly rout­ing the lovely, relaxed feel­ing we built up last week.  On the Sat­ur­day, John and I put Avery on a school coach bound for the Euro­tun­nel, Bel­gium, France, and a detailed, emo­tional tour of the bat­tle­fields of World War I.  Know­ing she was accounted for for the week­end gave me an extra­or­di­nary sense of well-being, added to by know­ing that my sis­ter and her dar­ling daugh­ter were vis­it­ing my fam­ily in Indi­ana, so all those peo­ple were accounted for and happy too.  Bliss!  Plus, we had signed our lease, at LONG last, and so we piled into the con­vert­ible and headed out for a week­end of unheard-of lux­ury at the coun­try house hotel presided over by my friend Orlando Mur­rin, cook­ery writer, my adored writ­ing tutor dur­ing my Devon adven­ture years ago.  And the most superb hote­lier, along with his part­ner Peter.

Lang­ford Five­head.  How the name rolls trip­pingly off the tongue, res­onat­ing with medieval charm and mod­ern cook­ery, per­fect bed linens and a bath deep as a river, flick­er­ing fires and pleas­ing fel­low guests.  Most of all, the unex­pected beauty of being looked after.  Being “not in charge.”

I think most wives and moth­ers (how old fash­ioned of me!  prob­a­bly all spouses and par­ents feel this way) will iden­tify with the slightly bur­den­some feel­ing of respon­si­bil­ity that comes upon one after months and even years of unre­lieved “being in charge.”  Respon­si­ble for three meals a day plus snacks, laun­dry, bed-making, home­work super­vi­sion and the sub­tle job of being a nice wife, and fit­ting in what­ever life-fulfilling activ­i­ties like writ­ing, around those things when one gets a chance.  I can’t even imag­ine the stress of peo­ple who do all this PLUS work out­side the home.  Ban­ners and tro­phies there.

To be relieved of ALL these things for two days and nights was a dream come true.  We drew up out­side the front door.

We were wel­comed by Peter and taken into the kitchen where I found not only Orlando pre­sid­ing, but my dar­ling Arvon friend Sam!  What a dream, the kitchen smelling of cheesey gougeres, twi­light deep­en­ing out­side the win­dows, time for a bath and a relax­ing glass of champagne.

And my dears, the food!  I had never eaten smoked eel before and was a bit wary, but Sam assured me it was his own cre­ation, this salad, and the fish tasted quite sim­i­lar to smoked trout or smoked had­dock.  Gen­tly smoked, from the Brown and For­rest Smok­ery, a 29-year fam­ily busi­ness which we vis­ited on our way home later that week­end.  Grace­fully arranged with baby spinach, toasted hazel­nuts, hard-boiled ban­tam eggs.  Dressed in a del­i­cate olive oil-lemon juice and honey con­coc­tion, per­fectly light.

After the salad was roast hog­gat, which is noth­ing more or less than an ani­mal older than a lamb but younger than mut­ton.  Very finely fla­vored, more highly tasty than lamb.  This was served with a per­fect wedge of creamy pota­toes Dauphi­noise, and a bed of but­tered baby leeks, which I had never con­sid­ered as a veg­etable, but now I will.

Our din­ner com­pan­ions, fam­ily style around a mas­sive oak table, were two elderly cou­ples who had been one another’s best men and brides­maids 51 years ago!  Lovely peo­ple, a food writer, a wine writer, and two peo­ple who fol­low horses through coun­try events!  And late in the evening, a lovely young cou­ple delayed in Lon­don traf­fic.  Gor­geously relaxed and friendly.  And to sleep.  Here was my view of our ceil­ing, if you can believe it.

In the morn­ing we took an hour-long up-and-down walk and then came back to be served a ridicu­lously, per­fectly sump­tu­ous brunch.  Twice-baked cheesy pota­toes, a kedgeree with smoked trout and salmon, peas and scram­bled herby eggs, Bram­ley apple sausages, fresh pineap­ple.  And then off we went to visit local places of interest.

Top down in the glo­ri­ous spring weather, we drove to Bar­ring­ton Court, a most fas­ci­nat­ing Tudor House that was owned and restored by Sir Arthur Lyle, of sugar-baron Tate and Lyle fame.  What makes this house worth vis­it­ing?  Two things: Sir Arthur was obsessed with pan­elling, believe it or not, AND the fact that the National Trust which owns the house decided to show it com­pletely empty.  Now, the first con­sid­er­a­tion means that you walk through the house pet­ting the walls, each of which stands out as the most beau­ti­ful piece of wood you’ve ever seen.

Can you imag­ine this carv­ing?  Like lit­tle scrolls of parch­ment, each one slightly dif­fer­ent from the last.  And then, mar­quetry inlays in the attics, if you please, where the lit­tle boys who were evac­u­ated there dur­ing the war played cricket.  Was it lost on them?   You could eas­ily miss it your­self if you don’t look closely.

What joy it is to see an empty stately home.  Much more excit­ing to tour it as if you were with an estate agent and plan­ning where to put your fur­ni­ture, I think, than to see it filled with period pieces and mak­ing you feel ner­vous.  And the grounds?  Just gor­geous, daf­fodils as far as the eye can see, and pol­larded fruit trees of some sort.  Ah, the Eng­lish coun­try­side.  Nar­row paths were mowed so we had a place to walk, but the rest of the grass just grew and grew.

Then, for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent, we were on to Mon­ta­cute, a Renais­sance and Eliz­a­bethan house.

The house was, sadly, lived in by many gen­er­a­tions of the same fam­ily until they were made des­ti­tute by death duties and the loss of income, until finally one lone daugh­ter was left who took it upon her­self to gather and save all the fam­ily papers.  Diaries and pho­tographs of her coming-out year… records of the sale of sil­ver, and land, in order to pay for that debu­tante year… very touching.

For me, the house was filled with too much pre­cious fur­ni­ture and far too many (for this for­mer art his­to­rian) Eng­lish por­traits.  Some­thing in me gets itchy and sleepy when I am faced with too many paint­ings all fea­tur­ing peo­ple with ruffs.  I’m not sure I would have been able to iden­tify this feel­ing so exactly, but for the expe­ri­ence of the proud and empty house we saw before.

But the grounds!  How on earth to explain this shrubbery?

Sim­ply bizarre, like peo­ple and ani­mals inside were push­ing to get out!  Strangely, the back side of the shrub­bery was per­fectly flat.  A mystery!

Alto­gether worth a visit just to have a wan­der on a beau­ti­ful Eng­lish day.  Traf­fic sounds roared in the dis­tance and John asked, dead­pan, “Why on earth did they build this house so close to the motor­way?”  That’s one of the rea­sons I love him.  Believe it or not, Amer­i­can tourists have been known to ask guides at Wind­sor Cas­tle why the queen built it so close to Heathrow.  I wish I were mak­ing that up.

Back to Orlando’s hotel, where John took a nap and I curled up in the sit­ting room with my com­puter, enter­ing recipe con­tests and meet­ing the new guests for the evening, a very cool cou­ple both of whom turned out to be rather famous and impres­sive in the field of jour­nal­ism, but who were com­pletely down to earth and friendly, look­ing the place over as a poten­tial site for their upcom­ing wedding.

Din­ner that evening was another com­plete tri­umph for Orlando and Sam: a tomato and potato frit­tata (would love to learn to make that) fol­lowed by a chou far­cie, a whole cab­bage stuffed with sausage and other savoury things, sit­ting on a bed of roasted red pep­pers and toma­toes.  Gor­geous.  And even I ate dessert: a mocha souf­fle and home­made mint ice cream.  After­wards we all repaired to the sit­ting room and talked over our lives, we two prob­a­bly fif­teen years down the road from the lovely young cou­ple who revealed they were expect­ing their first baby, and per­haps ten years on from the cou­ple plan­ning their wed­ding.  They were kind and let us wit­ter on about Avery, who had ignored all our texts ask­ing, “Safely there?”  No reply!

Before bed I had a chance for a nat­ter with Orlando about the cab­bage recipe — to add pinenuts per­haps? — exchang­ing ideas in the glow of can­dle­light, stand­ing on the flagged floor of the entry­way.  Along­side us stood the side­board cov­ered with notes of con­grat­u­la­tions at the launch of the hotel, thanks for the wel­comes they had given.  One note from a Countess!

In the morn­ing we were ush­ered into the kitchen where Orlando scram­bled goose eggs for us, piled onto home­made whole­meal toast.  Then it was good­byes all round, so grate­ful for that break from hec­tic every­day life.  It is a real gift to be able to offer the sort of effort­less, gen­er­ous, ele­gant but hilar­i­ous hos­pi­tal­ity that Orlando is able to give.  You feel you’re his friend and his guest, but then he dis­ap­pears from view and works behind the scenes with all his energy to pro­vide you with every­thing your heart desires, and you’re not allowed to help!  A glimpse into pure relaxation.

Which promptly dis­ap­peared upon our return home, when we picked up Avery off the coach at school, all the girls tum­bling out, dirty, exhausted and excited as always after one of their mag­nif­i­cent school trips.  And she took such beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing photographs.

The sheer scale of the loss must have been pal­pa­ble, walk­ing through those ceme­ter­ies.  The mes­sages, such poignant reminders of fam­i­lies’ strug­gles to accept what had hap­pened to them.

And the words of King George V… to think his son would have to go through the very same ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ences just two decades on.

We unpacked her, did laun­dry and repacked her, and in the morn­ing, with the tra­di­tional dish of mac­a­roni and cheese for our coun­try­side adven­tures at my feet, headed off in the con­vert­ible once again west­ward, to Wales for our Easter-ish holiday.

It was a good thing I had had my pam­per­ing break, because upon arrival at the very starkly mod­ern house John had rented I was faced with one of those new­fan­gled induc­tion hobs, the com­plex­ity and non-intuitiveness of which make me want to scream.  No flame!  Just a flat ceramic sur­face that I had to bow down and mur­mur incan­ta­tions to in order to get it to heat.  I can tell you that cook­ing three meals a day on that thing was enough to do my head in.

The house itself was not my style, but John was in heaven.  All mod­ern mate­ri­als and hugely high ceil­ings, glass everywhere.

We had stopped on the way at the Welsh Veni­son Cen­tre, a lovely farm shop near Blwch (gotta love Welsh names) with deer (ouch) run­ning in the grounds, and I picked up a ham hock for the pot au feu I was plan­ning to make next day, as well as a lovely piece of beef brisket.  Gor­geous smoked Welsh salt, local but­ter, eggs with the most golden yolk in the world.  In Bre­con, the near­est town to the house, we vis­ited — over the course of the next few days — every SIN­GLE food-purveying estab­lish­ment on the streets.  Such a joy­ous way to shop!  If you find your­self in Bre­con, march straight to the Mar­ket Arcade and visit S.J Matthews High Class Fruit and Veg, for the ulti­mate mush­rooms, red pep­pers, rocket, and chives, and then head along to P.J Sweeney butch­ers for mar­row bones and goose eggs, then out into the town to Mor­gan Fam­ily Butcher for a large chicken to roast.

Have you ever cooked a goose egg?  Nei­ther had I, until this hol­i­day.  Very dif­fi­cult and pow­dery to crack, just a hint, so when you do, crack it over a dif­fer­ent bowl from the one you intend to put the egg into, and brush off the crack to get the dusty par­ti­cles off.  It’s worth it for the intensely creamy result.  They’re huge!  One will serve two peo­ple, scrambled.

And what did we do with our four days?  Let’s see, we read, day and night, in that glo­ri­ous liv­ing room…

We played soli­taire (Avery ran a new scam where she charged John, rather briskly I thought, 35p to set up each game for him, and she had two games run­ning so he never had to wait to play!  We worked a labo­ri­ous puz­zle of Jane Austen quotes, we took walks in the coun­try­side where we encoun­tered the local flora and fauna… includ­ing the little-known Welsh body­less dog.

I sin­cerely hope he was not stuck.  He didn’t look distressed.

And every­where we went, there were lambs!

Dri­ving around from cas­tle to cas­tle… par­tic­u­larly Car­reg Cen­nen and Dyne­fwr Park…

We talked with Avery about her ambi­tions.  This is an amaz­ing age, a van­tage point from which she can see the lives we have led, the accom­plish­ments and achieve­ments (“you mean you guys were ALIVE when the Bea­t­les were a band??”) and dis­ap­point­ments, and she can fore­see her own future, the paths she wants to open up for her­self.  A mag­i­cal series of dis­cus­sions: pho­to­jour­nal­ist, spy, foren­sic psy­chol­o­gist, Russ­ian lan­guage inter­preter for the UN?  Any­thing seems pos­si­ble.  And right now, it’s all up for grabs.  Some­times you need a fam­ily hol­i­day just to put you in the right frame of mind to see life with a long lens.

And through it all, I cooked.  Red pep­per soup, mush­room soup, roasted beets with fig bal­samic vine­gar, chicken roasted with mush­rooms and Marsala and goat cheese tucked under the skin, pota­toes sliced super thin and cooked lay­ered with but­ter and cheese and gar­lic.  The first new Eng­lish aspara­gus!  Just lightly sauteed with olive oil and salt.

But the stand­out dish was among the sim­plest: a per­fect pork tenderloin.

Per­fect Roast Pork Ten­der­loin with Gar­lic and Rosemary

(serves 3)

1 pork ten­der­loin, all sinews and mem­branes removed

2 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 stalk rose­mary, leaves only, minced

zest of 1 lemon

1 tbsp olive oil

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

Sim­ply lay the pork in a dish and rub all the ingre­di­ents over it, except the salt and pep­per.  Let sit out on the counter for an hour.

Saute in a fry­ing pan until seared on all sides (stand back!), then lay the pork in the mar­i­nat­ing dish again and roast in a hot oven, 220C/425F, for 25 min­utes.  The meat will be ten­der, pink and lus­cious.  Let sit for five min­utes, cov­ered with foil, then slice thickly and sea­son to taste.

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

And now I must love you and leave you.  Today we vis­ited the new house with tape mea­sures and every object we own danc­ing in our heads, and deci­sions must be made.  Watch this space for the newest adven­ture of our lives.  Fin­gers crossed it’s a happy one.