life, in moments

“Oh if life were made of moments

Even now and then a bad one–!

But if life were only moments,

Then you’d nev­er you know had one.”

Stephen Sond­heim, Into the Woods

Ear­ly Jan­u­ary in Lon­don typ­i­cal­ly has very lit­tle to rec­om­mend it: in the first few days there is the das­tard­ly com­bi­na­tion of jet­lag, unpack­ing, clean­ing up the crunchy Christ­mas tree, more jet­lag.  Avery and I suf­fer par­tic­u­lar­ly as nightowls.  We stay up far too late, span­ning those five hours’ dif­fer­ence we’ve lived with over the hol­i­day, strug­gling to get up at a remote­ly decent hour.

John brave­ly car­ried on meet­ing at Pot­ters Fields, I yawned through play­ing with my Home-Start babies, we even booked a fan­cy lunch at a swanky restau­rant in the Shard, the tallest build­ing in Europe.  As you can see above, it was a spec­tac­u­lar­ly gloomy after­noon, even the fab­u­lous view dimmed by rain.  Some­how that grey­ness con­veyed itself to all three of us as we sat at the table try­ing to have fun.  Between cours­es, Avery’s head dropped slow­ly to the table.

We gave up and came home on the cosy lit­tle South­west train to Barnes in the ear­ly twi­light, feel­ing it would be bet­ter just to crawl into a burlap sack with the top tied shut until we got over jetlag.

Final­ly, we woke up.  Avery got into Oxford, which was a good thing.  And because life nev­er runs on only one track, final work on get­ting “Tonight at 7.30” out into the world has con­tin­ued unabat­ed.  Get­ting to the end of this gar­gan­tu­an task is like herd­ing cats: because my book is most peo­ple’s first expe­ri­ence with crowd-fund­ing, and also with elec­tron­ic books, there have been hun­dreds of inter­ac­tions with peo­ple com­ing to grips with which appli­ca­tion runs the book on which device, how to down­load the book, how to login to Kick­starter to pro­vide their address­es.  Every day my inbox is full of anx­ious queries, eas­i­ly answered, but a heck of a lot of work.

The poor thing, I left it in my bicy­cle bas­ket overnight, in a rain­storm!  Hap­pi­ly it sur­vived intact, a good sign for when it’s opened up on peo­ple’s kitchen coun­ters being splat­tered with olive oil and duck fat.

It’s all worth it when I can show the one advance copy I have left, to all my friends.  What a com­plete thrill to take it to St Mary’s for ring­ing practice.

What a moment.  My Home-Start fam­i­ly turned up to hear the bell prac­tice, and the mum picked up the cook­book, exclaim­ing over its beau­ty.  My ring­ing friends rejoiced with me over Avery’s news, offer­ing their own anec­dotes about Oxford.  It was quite sim­ply the per­fect day, com­bin­ing near­ly all my Lon­don worlds — Avery, cook­book, ring­ing, Home-Start — in one place, under one auda­cious blue sky.

We cel­e­brat­ed every­thing with com­fort food.  Is there any­thing more won­der­ful than break­fast for din­ner, eat­en on laps in the liv­ing room, with can­dles and some­thing on the tel­ly?  An omelet with Boursin (“Euro­pean Velvee­ta,” I’ve heard it called), roast­ed ham, crisp “streaky” bacon, roast­ed toma­toes, a ripe avo­ca­do and but­tered toast.  Heaven.

Anoth­er unfor­get­table moment: the arrival of my beau­ti­ful cousin Katie Jane, with her par­ents Sarah and Steve, for an after­noon’s fun at the Olympic Cafe, trip to the book­shop, a walk down the Barnes High Street and Pond.  Avery cap­tured her perfectly.

It felt so fun­ny, see­ing child­hood (in my cousin Steve, com­pan­ion on count­less fam­i­ly vaca­tions when we were lit­tle), Sarah, his beau­ti­ful wife, and the future in lit­tle Katie Jane.

And this moment, yes­ter­day after­noon with the wan win­ter sun com­ing through the liv­ing room win­dows.  Nap­kins for our launch par­ty!  Because of course, we’re hav­ing one.

We admired them, last night, a brief relax­ing image in the morass of deci­sions and work that is launch-plan­ning.  It will be on my 50th birth­day, ear­ly next month.  Watch this space.

For the books have land­ed at their UK port!  They are safe­ly on land, some­where between Portsmouth and my house, to arrive “o/o/a” (car­go-speak for “on or around”) Thurs­day of this week.  There was a momen­tary scare last week when I got a call say­ing, “Your EORI num­ber is not acti­vat­ed.”  I bet you did­n’t even know I HAVE an EORI num­ber.  It’s a high­ly-cov­et­ed thing to pos­sess, prov­ing that I’m not a human traf­fick­er, that my books are a legit­i­mate import from Chi­na.  After a flur­ry of emails, every­thing turned out all right.  Anoth­er heart attack nar­row­ly averted.

“If life were made of moments…”  It’s impor­tant to remem­ber them, because they all add up to Life.