life after (and before) The Big News

Well, we’ve all taken a deep breath, the dust has set­tled, some of the eupho­ria has dis­si­pated, but Avery’s still pretty thrilled, pretty chuffed at her Big Achieve­ment last week. The gulls have all con­grat­u­lated each other with what looks like gen­uine sup­port and pleas­antry, the news has been extracted from each par­ent like crab­meat from the shell. You have to approach these things del­i­cately. Par­ent Num­ber One sidles over to Par­ent Num­ber Two and there’s a moment of awk­ward silence, then the sidler says to the sidlee, “I didn’t want to appear as if I wasn’t inter­ested in Avery’s ‘choices’ (the catch-all euphemism for ‘where did she get in, any­way??”), so I didn’t bother you.” Then Par­ent Num­ber Two says, “Oh, no, don’t worry! And… what is…er, how did… have you made a deci­sion your­selves?” It would be so much eas­ier just to ask bald­faced, “So where’s Lit­tle Who­ever going to school next year?” But no, one must sidle, or be sidled.

I spent today writ­ing nice lit­tle bread-and-butter let­ters to the schools we’re turn­ing down, and wrote a stag­ger­ing cheque to the one we’re accept­ing. In the inter­ests of pri­vacy (ha!), I’ve decided to call Avery’s school for next year, “St Barn­abas.” Those who know, know, and those who don’t, don’t need to. Sound good to you?

And now we can all relax and think about other things. Like putting you in the pic­ture with all the amaz­ing adven­tures we had on our half-term Welsh odyssey! And all the adven­tures we had in Lon­don with my mother in law Rose­mary, who was an absolute star about get­ting us off our desk chairs and out of our rou­tine, and actu­ally made us do things in Lon­don! Do you find that it takes a vis­i­tor to get you to appre­ci­ate your own home town? I cer­tainly find this. Left to my own devices I would clean the lit­ter­box, gro­cery shop, move Avery’s belong­ings from one flat sur­face to another, and then be absolutely des­per­ate because I haven’t done any­thing blog­wor­thy. But with Rose­mary around, there was no ques­tion of being bor­ing. She wouldn’t stand for it!

So our Land­mark Trust Welsh hol­i­day was COM­PLETELY suc­cess­ful, very heart­warm­ing, just what the doc­tor ordered for all of us. A huge relief to get Rose­mary all to our­selves, feed her, fill her hot water bot­tles, talk about impor­tant things or unim­por­tant things as the whim­sey took us. I had to post this pho­to­graph of the butcher shop because we spent SO much of our time hunt­ing and gath­er­ing for things to eat! And did we eat. The best roast pork EVER (cooked in milk, white wine and rose­mary, with quar­tered onions along­side), which then mor­phed into the best sand­wiches ever, with Welsh goats cheese that was sim­ply to die for. I love this web­site because not only does it extol the virtues of goats cheese, it does so by employ­ing the price­less phrase, “goat man­age­ment issues.” I have always had such a lot of those issues. Then we had the best roast chicken ever which mor­phed into the per­fect chicken stock for an inno­va­tion: cream of mush­room soup with rocket. Yes, I had a half a bag of baby rocket with noth­ing to be done with it and we were leav­ing the house: so, why not? It added a superb piquant flavour and who knows what nutri­ents. A def­i­nite score.

Creamy Mush­room Soup With Rocket
(serves four)

3 tbsps but­ter
1 white onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
1 lb mush­rooms, any sort you like, roughly chopped
4 cups-ish fresh chicken stock
2 tbsps brandy
1 tbsp fresh chopped thyme leaves
fresh rocket, about a cup loosely packed
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
salt and pep­per to taste

The rest couldn’t be sim­pler. Saute the onions, gar­lic and mush­rooms in the but­ter until slightly soft­ened, then pour over the stock and brandy, sim­mer until mush­rooms are soft. Add the thyme and rocket and cook just until rocket wilts, then whizz with your hand blender (I had to buy one in a nearby town!) and add the cream. Sea­son to taste. Divine!

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And did we WALK! Firstly we dis­cov­ered a dar­ling lit­tle vil­lage (not even, a town hall and a pub, a church and the local squire’s mag­nif­i­cent pile, that was all) called Llanel­i­dan, from which and around which we walked pos­si­bly five miles! Up the hill and down the hill, work­ing off the mag­nif­i­cent pic­nic lunch we ate in the ceme­tery: pate and smoked trout sand­wiches, cucum­ber, tomato and moz­zarella salad, yum yum. We walked through sheep fields, over kiss­ing stiles, up enor­mous hills (com­ing once on a very old and almost uniden­ti­fi­able sheep’s car­cass, very dra­matic), past bab­bling brooks and a gor­geous spring, spring­ing into the air! Do take the time to go to Llanel­i­dan if you get a chance and walk through the King George’s Field.

And my favourite lit­tle town of all: Llan­gollen, streets lined with beau­ti­ful UNIQUE shops, like a place that time for­got and the Star­bucks, Mon­soons, and Tescos of the world have never dis­cov­ered. Two butch­ers! Gor­geous delis, pro­duce stands, bak­eries, and a mar­vel­lous book­store where I came away with a lovely copy of “Lit­tle Dor­rit.” I must read it before my dar­ling Matthew Mac­fadyen appears in the upcom­ing BBC series! That’s excit­ing news. It was such a plea­sure to food-shop there that I’m afraid I dragged every­one to far too many lit­tle estab­lish­ments. But they were all kind and said that if I was going to feed them three meals a day, they could put up with a lit­tle shop­ping. Now that’s kind.

Want a break­fast idea for a lit­tle girl who’s tired of eggs, and there are no pre­cious Marks and Spencers apple turnovers to be had? How about goats cheese on toast? Avery devoured slice after slice as the week went on.

And cas­tles! We vis­ited four in the area: Den­bigh (closed for the sea­son, but that didn’t stop us climb­ing over the wall and sim­ply help­ing our­selves! scofflaws, we), Rhud­d­lan (pic­tured here), Caernar­fon and Conwy. Each lovely in its own way: ruined, evoca­tive of the 12th, 13th cen­turies. Now, it’s a mat­ter of taste, obvi­ously, but while the Welsh Cas­tles web­sites all seem to adore lots of com­men­tary, wall text, silly films with actors play­ing war­riors and gift shops, I myself pre­fer stark and lonely, with noth­ing to dis­tract you from the feel­ing of ancient drama. You go on the links above and decide for your­selves which you want to visit.

Lis­ten, I’ve loads more to tell you, but the din­ner hour approaches and there’s gar­lic and gin­ger to be chopped. Before I go, how­ever, let me tell you about the world’s nicest (well, one of them) chicken sal­ads. Now, where Rose­mary says she never met a chicken salad she didn’t like, I must aver that most of them have to my taste far too much may­on­naise, and not enough con­trast of tex­tures. That’s why this one is so nice. You should plan to have it when you have left­over roast chicken, but I am not above roast­ing one espe­cially for it. You can even throw in a bit of the crispy skin for a spe­cial treat.

Roasted Chicken Salad With Pine Nuts
(serves four)

whole breast of roasted chicken, shred­ded by hand
bunch of salad onions, white and green parts, thinly sliced
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 red onion, chopped fine
2 stalks cel­ery, chopped quite small
hand­ful baby rocket leaves
grated peel of 1 lemon
grated peel of 1 lime

spicy dress­ing:
3 tbsps spicy peper­on­cino olive oil
1 tsp bal­samic vine­gar
juice of 1 lemon
tiny dash chilli flakes
1 tbsp may­on­naise
salt and pep­per
dash of dried thyme

Now, mix all the salad ingre­di­ents and shake up your dress­ing in a jar. Toss every­thing together care­fully. You can eas­ily pack up this salad and the dress­ing in its jar and have it on a pic­nic, whether at a cas­tle or in a ceme­tery. It’s LOVELY. The lemon and lime zest add such a fresh appeal that you could almost think it’s spring in February!

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More tomor­row, espe­cially the best story of the entire hol­i­day: what to do when you find your rental car perched on the edge of a precipice with its wheels stuck in the mud? Tune in and find out…