of friends and family

Well, it’s a sadly typ­i­cal Lon­don day: gray, cold rain, windy and dis­con­so­late. Every­one back to frown­ing after a week of solid sun. The British have an end­less capac­ity to dis­cuss the cli­mac­tic con­di­tions of the day, and the sharp con­trast between yesterday’s glo­ri­ous blue skies and today’s down­pour gave the usual obser­va­tions an extra layer of poignancy. “What a chill wind,’ said the ladies in my hair­cut shop this morn­ing. “And after all that SUN!” Then fol­lowed the stiff upper lip brigade, say­ing that actu­ally this was proper weather for April, and they cer­tainly did NOT want to use up what­ever sum­mer weather might be com­ing to us in June, in April. As if it works that way.

In point of actual fact, it’s unde­ni­ably more cheer­ful to be sunned upon than to be made slightly wet over and over through­out the day. I spent the bet­ter part of the morn­ing becom­ing A More Beau­ti­ful Me, with the longest ses­sion under hairdryer and fancy brush min­is­tra­tions you can imag­ine. I didn’t have the heart to tell my beauty lady that it was all so much point­less devo­tion. Within ten min­utes of leav­ing the shop, I was all curly again, so annoying.

Much bet­ter to think about the week­end. Fri­day was the famed Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon at which I was to be offi­cially put in charge for the first time. I got up bright and early in the morn­ing to search through my closet for some­thing that would clev­erly com­bine a mild sort of author­ity with spring­like good cheer, as if such a gar­ment would have appeared there with­out my know­ing it. Not to men­tion that I don’t really DO spring­like and cheery, as far as cloth­ing goes. Much hap­pier in a black turtle­neck, 365 days of the year. But I was finally suit­ably if not inspir­ingly attired, and sit­ting at my com­puter to com­pose my remarks on tak­ing the reins of London’s coolest school vol­un­teer group (not that there are offi­cial rank­ings for these things… actu­ally prob­a­bly there are). I typed the words, “Thank you, Mary, for your years of ser­vice to Lost Prop­erty and to the school,” and as they stared at me from the screen I thought “Holy s**t, I don’t have a gift for her!” I shrieked this to John, across the part­ner desk from me, and he said, under­stand­ingly, “You’re screwed.” Precisely.

So I did what I always do when faced with my incom­pe­tence and panic. I called Annie. “Right, I’m com­ing straight over and we’re putting together a par­cel of joke presents from Lost Prop­erty.” I raced out to the local florist and found a gor­geous lit­tle plant in a gor­geous lit­tle bag, and when I got back Annie was there with a sheaf of aban­doned home­work (a sta­ple item in Lost Prop­erty), a bro­ken mobile phone and glory of glo­ries, a pair (clean) of her son Fred’s Y-fronts. I myself gath­ered up one lone sock (not hard to do in Avery’s room of unpar­al­leled mess), an empty sun­glasses case, and my crown­ing con­tri­bu­tion, Avery’s plas­tic lacrosse mouth­guard. We took pity on Mary and left the mouth­guard in its case, although I may say that the gross­est item ever appeared in LP last week: a mouth­guard with a post-it attached to it say­ing lacon­i­cally, “Found in W6.” “Oh, my God,” Annie said. “That’s just the post­code. That means some­one picked this thing up from a ran­dom pave­ment some­where in this post­code, and gave it to US.” Eeww.

So we wrapped every­thing in fes­tive paper, threw a bot­tle of bub­bly in the bag with the plant, and were on our way in Annie’s tiny lit­tle vin­tage orange Mini. The lun­cheon went off with­out a hitch at Mary’s gor­geous house, food all piled up in the incom­pa­ra­ble con­ser­va­tory, over­hung with real, fruit-bearing grape vines. There was Annie’s gor­geous chicken with water­cress, orange seg­ments and pump­kin seeds in soy, and my favorite buf­fet chicken dish, whose ingre­di­ents sound dis­gust­ing but it is actu­ally a win­ner with any group, or even just a fam­ily din­ner. For a large buf­fet, you can count on a breast fil­let per two peo­ple. Trust me, it’s deli­cious. And inex­pen­sive, and sim­ple, and you can travel with it uncooked and slip it into your friend’s hot Aga, should she have one.

Lil­lian Hellman’s Baked Chicken
(serves 12)

6 chicken breast fil­lets
1 cup Hellman’s may­on­naise (now, you get the name of the dish, which we serve with Dashiell Ham­mett spinach)
1 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 lemon
2 tsps gar­lic pow­der or gran­ules (not gar­lic salt, the cheese is already salty enough)
plenty of fresh ground black pep­per
2 cups fresh home­made bread­crumbs (the com­mer­cial crumbs are too fine)

Mix all the ingre­di­ents but the chicken in a shal­low bowl. Place a plate filled with bread­crumbs next to the bowl, and have a large bak­ing dish next to the plate of crumbs.

Smear the chicken breasts lib­er­ally with the may­on­naise mix­ture, then roll in bread­crumbs until thor­oughly coated. Lay in the bak­ing dish (they can be quite crowded, don’t worry).

Bake in a very hot oven, around 220C, 450F, or the hottest part of your Aga, for 30 min­utes or until nice and crisp and golden brown. Remove to a cut­ting board and cut each fil­let into five slices. Arrange on a plat­ter and gar­nish with some nice water­cress that you’ve pinched from your friend’s salad (thank you Annie!).

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

This went down a treat, every morsel eaten up. And I man­aged to make my remarks with­out embar­rass­ing myself, and to present Mary with her gifts, which made every­one laugh. Trust Annie to have such an inspi­ra­tion: even bet­ter than a proper gift of an engraved paper­weight or spe­cial pen. It turns out that if you have a bril­liant friend, being incom­pe­tent and for­get­ful is actu­ally a good thing. Annie’s last-minute panic gift will kill some­thing I’d think of in advance, any time. My excel­lent part­ner in crime.

All the vol­un­teer rotas were duly filled in, all the ladies gos­siped and laughed in the amaz­ing sun­shine, and I got away in time to join John at the pub by school, where he was enter­tain­ing my dear, dar­ling Aunt Mary Wayne and Uncle Kenny from Ken­tucky! They are beloved fix­tures from my child­hood: my aunt with a bois­ter­ous, joy­ful laugh that car­ries across a pub gar­den and, along with her tight hug, makes me feel about 12 again: loved and cher­ished and still a child, not the head of Lost Prop­erty with a 12-year-old of my own. And my uncle: look­ing so like my mother, beau­ti­ful youth­ful skin, a total zest for life, new expe­ri­ences, always a twin­kle in his eye, a bit like a young Santa Claus, in the off season.

We sat and laughed and laughed and laughed. Over what, I don’t even remem­ber, but it’s what life is always like with those two. How lucky we were, when I was a lit­tle girl, to go to their house for Thanks­giv­ing every year (my par­ents always got lost, always at the same junc­tion get­ting off the high­way, bick­er­ing over “is it this one or the next one?” every sin­gle year). My aunt can never have enough dogs and cats (although they are cat­less now, they reported: not for long, I bet), she’s a dot­ing and doted-upon grand­mother to her five grand­chil­dren, and my uncle is one of the world’s author­i­ties on all things Civil War (on the OTHER side, mind you), and also Abra­ham Lin­coln. I don’t think I’m mak­ing up that there was a mus­ket hang­ing over their fire­place, when I was little.

It was won­der­ful, just for a day, to shake off the adult iden­tity that’s right­fully mine these days, and become again the pet­ted lit­tle “Kris­ten Bear” I was in their pres­ence for all those years. Some­times I feel that a cur­tain went down in sort of 1987, when I moved away from Indi­ana, never really to return, and there is a melan­choly dis­lo­ca­tion between that per­son and the Real Me. I sup­pose it’s the feel­ing we all have about the past reced­ing ever far­ther into the dis­tance, but the clar­ity of leav­ing, like cut­ting off a piece of string, seems more acute when I’m with some­one from the old days.

Bless their hearts (some­thing my aunt says all the time), they actu­ally wanted to go to the ice rink to see Avery skate. My God, that’s fam­ily love. So off we went in a taxi, to Avery’s delight (her par­ents being nor­mally too cheap to catch a cab), and they watched with every appear­ance of car­ing, which is remark­able. Then it was off in the Tube to our house. I looked at them stand­ing up, straphang­ing, chat­ting together as the train swayed on its way to Ham­mer­smith, and wished for a moment that I had never left home, that I could still see them, have them be part of Avery’s life. “Aren’t they delight­ful peo­ple?” Avery whis­pered to me, to my intense hap­pi­ness. They are, truly.

Home for another batch of Lil­lian Hellman’s chicken (easy peasy to make ahead of time and have my bril­liant hus­band put in the oven for me when we were on our way home), plus pota­toes dauphi­noise and sauteed pep­pers. They brought out presents from Ken­tucky: a real Churchill Downs horse­shoe, still dirty, and a pho­to­graph of the iconic mare and foal from the green, green fields near where they live, for Avery. A Ken­tucky Derby cook­book for me! And a box of Bour­bon Balls for John (he and Uncle Kenny shared a very mature laugh over that). A tour of the house, a quick phone call to my dear cousin Amy, their daugh­ter, and one of my best child­hood com­pan­ions. Then they were off again, to tour Lon­don the next day, Ams­ter­dam the next, Bel­gium, Switzer­land, Ger­many, you name it. After ten days they’ll go home via Paris, in, I’m sure, a state of com­plete exhaus­tion. Thank you for tak­ing the time to spend the day with us, you two. We miss you already.

We had din­ner in the gar­den! “I hope you know all your fel­low trav­ellers are hav­ing soggy fish and chips some­where, and you’re eat­ing in a real Eng­lish gar­den!” I pointed out, and it really is a pleas­ant place to be. The next night found us out there once again, with the pier­rade stone keep­ing us warm, enter­tain­ing Avery’s friend Jamie, who spent the time after din­ner indulging her new hobby: pho­tog­ra­phy! I think this is my favorite pho­to­graph EVER of Avery and me, and she took many more. It just looks the way we are, which is the great achieve­ment of a sen­si­tive pho­tog­ra­pher, I think. Of course it helps that Jamie loves us, and we her. This just IS Avery, when I look at it. Thanks, Jamie.

Yes­ter­day I did some­thing com­pletely silly, but to my credit, I was not alone. My friend Jo came in from Oxford to go with me to haunt the red car­pet at the Baf­tas! The British Acad­emy of Film and Tele­vi­sion Arts, to the unini­ti­ated, sort of the British Emmys, with some film thrown in. Across the river at the Royal Fes­ti­val Hall, under a flaw­less blue sky, with the Lon­don Marathon run­ners still strag­gling to the fin­ish line on the other side. We met up and vied for a good spot (not hav­ing bought a ticket, we were the hoi pol­loi and being shoved all over the place). Finally Jo spot­ted a tiny lit­tle space right next to the pho­tog­ra­phers’ pool (Jamie’s future haunt, per­haps?) and we squeezed in. And then the stars appeared. We were there osten­si­bly to see Richard Armitage, and there he was, tall and hand­some, in his tuxe­doed glory, but in fact it was great fun to see all the “Spooks” cast, Gregg Wal­lace, the judge of “Mas­terchef,” the dreaded Alan Sugar of “The Appren­tice” and count­less sort of day­time tele­vi­sion bad-fashion-sense princesses. Great fun. We got great pic­tures, but hon­estly I think John will divorce me if I post one of them here. Enough is enough. He already thought Jo and I were out of our tiny lit­tle minds even to go. We did look at each other at one point dur­ing the long, long wait for the red car­pet cer­e­mony to begin, and I said, “We really have crossed some kind of line.”

But it was an adven­ture! And some­thing we don’t ever really need to do again. And one of those things you’d feel a com­plete idiot doing alone, so thank you, Jo, for hang­ing out with me. Home together for din­ner and to watch the awards on the telly, while John dragged Avery away to watch “Top Gear” on their own.

Well, the rain has stopped, too late in the day for the clear sky to be of any use to any­one. I must go pro­duce my salmon din­ner, no eat­ing out in the gar­den tonight, I fear. After all, it IS April, and I should be stor­ing up my weather points for June…