of a Fair, a Fourth, and oth­er July bliss

Once again, we’re in Lon­don for the month of July, and what a parade of fes­tiv­i­ties there has been!  Most elab­o­rate of all, of course, is Barnes Fair, which has grown (from what I hear from long-time natives) from a cou­ple of tres­tle tables sell­ing Pimms and lemon curd, to a full-blown extrav­a­gan­za that draws thou­sands of vis­i­tors from all over south­west Lon­don.  And we had the per­fect day for it.

I vol­un­teered to be part of the Open Tow­er Team, which means that we low­ered all the bells to their safe, down­ward-hang­ing position…

and then wel­come the Gen­er­al Pub­lic to climb the 75 treach­er­ous­ly nar­row treads of our Tow­er steps to the very top, there to be offered beau­ti­ful views of Barnes, Rich­mond and even fur­ther afield.

To think that there were peo­ple stand­ing in that spot, gaz­ing at fields and trees, 800 years ago!

Some­one had to sit in the clock room, too, to make sure no naughty vis­i­tors tugged on ropes or oth­er­wise dis­turbed all the del­i­cate mech­a­nisms of our bell­tow­er.  The Vic­to­ri­an clock work­ings are just beautiful.

And the view from the clock room, through the trap door, down into my pre­cious ring­ing cham­ber… a new perspective!

Of course part of the fun of being on the Tow­er Team is the walky-talky.  “Send­ing four peo­ple up to you, Kris­ten,” says Charles crack­ling­ly.  “Copy that, Charles, I will wel­come them. Over.”

I sat in the humid, stale clock room, smelling of bell ropes and old wood, lis­ten­ing to the vis­i­tors tramp­ing up and down the bell­tow­er steps, lis­ten­ing to the cheer­ful chat­ter through the trap door.  How I LOVE every moment I spend in this qui­et vil­lage church, being a peace­ful part of a rit­u­al and com­mu­ni­ty that seems not to have changed for 100 years.

There was much fuss over the main event of Open Tow­er Day: the Ted­dy Bears’ Para­chut­ing.  It was­n’t easy for Curate Ann and Freya’s mum to sort out the rope pul­ley, for one thing.

But even­tu­al­ly all was ready for the £1‑per-ted­dy adventure!

Of course the Ted­dies’ Adven­tures in Space went extreme­ly well, after all this prepa­ra­tion.  Ann launched them on their journeys.

Some fell onto the roofline and had to be res­cued with long poles, by Vic­ar Richard.  Some had less per­ilous journeys.

Fly­ing down past the ancient tower…

Into ador­ing hands…

Every­one below was sus­pend­ed in anticipation.

The crowds grew!

I sat in the bell cham­ber sell­ing tick­ets, attach­ing “Tow­er Tour” neck­laces to every­one so we could keep track of who was where.  My good friend Col­in was a stal­wart helper, as always.

To tell you the absolute truth, I was very brave even to be IN the bell cham­ber after last week­end’s small acci­dent.  How on earth am I in the posi­tion to teach any­one any­thing?  I real­ly should­n’t be.  When one sweet learn­er lost con­trol of her rope, I strug­gled to know what to do.  I grabbed for the first bit of the rope I saw — the bright­ly col­ored, fluffy sal­ly!  I’m sor­ry to tell you I for­got what would hap­pen to me if I did, even though the results are mem­o­ralised in lead­ed glass in the tower.

I sim­ply flew into the air, per­haps four or five feet above ground, with that damned sal­ly in my hand.  Of course what the love­ly glass image does­n’t show you is the sprained two knuck­les of my right hand, and my sore left shoul­der.  What an idiot!  We all gath­ered around Eddie for a much-need­ed basic les­son in “grab the TAIL” in an emer­gency.  I’m still pay­ing for it all in a sore right set of knuckles.

Avery and John joined me for a late-after­noon walk around the Fair, after my Tow­er respon­si­bil­i­ties were over.  The weath­er was per­fect, the pop­corn delectable.

I’m no lover of Pimms by any means, but I could­n’t resist this sight, the evi­dence of a British out­doors sum­mer par­ty, done right.

This vision of Barnes Pond by late after­noon belies the chaos of the day.

I absolute­ly could not resist this par­tic­u­lar sight, with­in the con­trolled bus­tle of my friend Trisha’s Annu­al Bike Sale, held in the church­yard.  How the dead must have rejoiced!  I would.

We came home, sun-soaked and tired, full of the noise and bus­tle of the fair.  We need­ed the sum­mer seduc­tion of a home-minced beef burg­er, piled with every­thing you can imag­ine.  Sheer sum­mer bar­be­cue joy.

The Fair is only the lat­est of our July adven­tures.  We’ve been inspired by dear Nigel Slater’s new show, “Eat­ing Togeth­er,” a tru­ly love­ly explo­ration of how British cook­ing is influ­enced by its immi­grant pop­u­la­tion.  In this day of threats to all our open coun­tries’ appre­ci­a­tion of the immi­grant joys we’ve all loved, this pro­gramme is a warm com­fort.  The con­cept is to take a cel­e­brat­ed British dish — slow cooked beef and veg­eta­bles, for exam­ple — and see how Britain’s immi­grants have con­tributed to the notion, expand­ed it, and frankly explod­ed it past all recog­ni­tion.  One such exam­ple was a supreme­ly hot Ghana­ian dish by a love­ly young chef, pro­pri­etor of one of the new Brix­ton pop-up restau­rant Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen.

On our vis­it, Zoe’s sis­ter Natal­ie was in charge, and oh my, the FOOD!

The beef and pep­per skew­ers, the red spiced rice, the fried plan­tains, and best, to my mind, the spiced mack­er­el.  We ate it ALL.

The whole of the pop-up estab­lish­ment was won­der­ful­ly ener­getic, fresh and new.  All built of con­tain­ers and sim­ply plopped down in the incred­i­bly vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of Brix­ton, a new place for me.

We wan­dered around after our lunch in search of a fish­mon­ger — and found sev­en or eight of them in shout­ing dis­tance, not to men­tion a dozen butch­ers, fresh fruit and veg­etable dis­plays, spice huts.  I want­ed to move right in.

What a part of this vast Lon­don­ness that I’ve nev­er appre­ci­at­ed before!

In the spir­it of that open­ness and cel­e­bra­tion of dif­fer­ence, then, we approached our Fourth of July cel­e­bra­tions.  The weath­er was perfection.

I made burg­ers, John grilled hot dogs.  We had found prop­er French’s mus­tard, water­mel­ons, fresh corn (it was rather awful) and unearthed John’s mom’s gift at Christ­mas of Fourth of July nap­kins!  We were ready.

Our guests came with appetites: Eliz­a­beth and Mad­die — hap­py to indulge in Moji­tos with Avery — Andrew and Hazel from next door, and Nora’s beau­ti­ful fam­i­ly — two lit­tle boys, about to be three, when she has her new baby in Octo­ber.  The three she has already are just gorgeous.

From the Fourth, we emerged to enjoy anoth­er Lon­don sum­mer tra­di­tion in July, the Roy­al Acad­e­my Sum­mer Exhi­bi­tion vis­it.  We went with my dear friend Sue, who hav­ing had us over for din­ner on THE HOTTEST evening of the year, had some­how in a fit of heat stroke con­vinced us to pop back into Cen­tral Lon­don for the show, the Mon­day after.

I was sor­ry to find that the pieces I loved the best — a vit­rine instal­la­tion and a draw­ing — were by already-famous peo­ple (Anselm Kiefer and Cor­nelia Park­er), rather than the undis­cov­ered gems one is meant to find at the RA Sum­mer show.  But it was glorious.

As was the play the fol­low­ing night, yet anoth­er pro­duc­tion of the Impor­tance of Being Earnest.  How many ver­sions of this deli­cious Oscar Wilde inven­tion can our fam­i­ly ingest?  Of course David Suchet was mar­vel­lous, as expect­ed, but the true joy was in find­ing the actors play­ing Ceci­ly and Gwen­dolyn (“Good heav­ens, Gwen­dolyn!), and Alger­non and Jack so inven­tive, so fresh, so able to invest their roles now over 100 years old with new lay­ers, new laugh­ter.  It was a total joy.

All this was mit­i­gat­ed only by the sor­row of a toothache for John, which kept him from the play.  This com­bined with his hav­ing sprained his toe on a pile of my cook­books led to my com­ing up with sure­ly the WORST pub name in the his­to­ry of Eng­lish pubs: “The Toe and the Tooth.”

He sur­vived by work­ing hard on Pot­ters Fields, with meet­ings here and there, and the plans spread out on the din­ing table, only recent­ly cleared off of Avery’s piles of revi­sion notes.

Oh, the evening when I drove with John to his late-night den­tal appoint­ment in not-so-near­by Har­row, to chat in the heav­en­ly sum­mer sun­set as we went, then read peace­ful­ly in the hos­pi­tal wait­ing room while he was seen to, then dri­ve home again in the balmy night air.  Only to arrive home near mid­night to find out car con­vert­ible roof would­n’t close.  “Bloody hell,” we said in uni­son, as John fetched a cock­tail and a tool box.  Final­ly we left it cov­ered with a tarp until help could come the next morning.

There have been qui­et days of the three of us read­ing in the sun­ny liv­ing room, wan­der­ing into the rather crunchy brown gar­den now and then, with a lawn chair or just a bath tow­el in the sun, watch­ing Tacy eat cob­webs. Which turns out to be a thing.

With the gar­den doors open, Cressie the Vis­i­tor Cat has tried to make inroads.

Avery and I field the dra­mas, which end­ed one night in a slight scuf­fle and a “Keechie’s ear actu­al­ly bled onto my phone!” from Avery, a sen­tence we must sure­ly add to our col­lec­tion of “nev­er been said before.”

Tomor­row is my last day in Lon­don before we all dis­perse for the com­ing six weeks or so.  On Wednes­day, I will take a train to Devon for an overnight bell-ring­ing adven­ture (more on this to be sure!), then to Amer­i­ca for two weeks (dit­to, there will be loads of com­men­tary!).  But I will miss my fam­i­ly din­ners at home.

To mark the occa­sion with a tru­ly deli­cious din­ner, last night saw us with a veg­etable-laden extrav­a­gan­za, inspired by Sue’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty ear­li­er in the month.  I hate peas!  nor­mal­ly.  Famous­ly!  But this dish, raw, fresh and high­ly fla­vored, was a revelation.

Sue’s July Peas

(serves four)

300g/ 2 cups fresh-shelled, raw peas

juice of 1 lemon

2 gar­lic cloves

125 g/4 oz/1 cup grat­ed Parmesan

gen­er­ous driz­zle olive oil

fresh ground black pepper

sea salt to taste

Put all the ingre­di­ents into a small food proces­sor and pulse until a pleas­ant, rough-ground tex­ture is achieved.  Tip into a bowl and sprin­kle with more olive oil and cheese right before serving.

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

This dish, served with roast­ed beet­root wedges with fresh thyme and olive oil, and steamed new poa­toes with pars­ley, but­ter and gar­lic, would have been a per­fect din­ner.  But because it was July, and I’m about to aban­don my fam­i­ly to weeks of their own cook­ing, it seemed only right to com­bine the veg­eta­bles with a gor­geous bar­be­cued pork ten­der­loin, mar­i­nat­ed in a won­der­ful spice blend I found in Brix­ton called “chick­en salt,” plus gar­lic and onion pow­ders, fresh black pep­per, lemon and lime juice, lemon grass, chopped red onion.  This ten­der­loin was left in the fridge to its own devices for per­haps an after­noon, then grilled for what I will for­ev­er think of as “pork 5/5/5.”  This means, high heat for five min­utes, turn over and grill for anoth­er five min­utes, then turn off the heat and shut the grill lid for anoth­er five min­utes.  This serves as the rest­ing peri­od.  Cut thick slices and serve with all the veg­eta­bles you can find.

And enjoy July, on your church tow­er, or wher­ev­er the beau­ti­ful ear­ly month finds you.