out and about

Before I tell you all the excit­ing activ­i­ties that have been going on here, let me make a pub­lic Third Men­tal Note. Remem­ber the first one, when I washed all John’s busi­ness shirts with a red pash­mina? And the sec­ond one, the Case of the Explod­ing Pyrex? This one was not a dis­as­ter on the scale of those, but some­thing to remem­ber, nonetheless.

Our din­ner on Fri­day night at the Man­darin Kitchen was so good that I haven’t stopped think­ing about it, each time it’s time to cook my own din­ner at home. So on Sun­day night I bought chicken breasts, and hot chili pep­pers, and chopped up tons of fresh gar­lic and gin­ger, and made a nice mari­nade of mirin (Japan­ese rice wine), soy sauce, honey and sesame oil. Sounds good, right? Well, then I tried to find a recipe for “Dry Fried Chicken,” which was how the sub­lime dish was described on the menu at the restau­rant. A lot of things came up about how to fry chicken with­out it turn­ing dry, and Ken­tucky Fried Chicken, etc. Noth­ing very help­ful. One vaguely advised a quan­tity of hot peanut oil and dredg­ing the chicken in flour. Well, it was awful. I think my stu­pid stove doesn’t get hot enough, or con­cen­trated heat enough, so the oil never got prop­erly hot. Then the flour sep­a­rated from the chicken, fell to the bot­tom of the pot and formed a deep and last­ing rela­tion­ship with the metal. Then in a vain attempt to get the oil really hot, I left the chicken in it far too long and it was every­thing you don’t want in a bite of food: dry, and yet at the same time greasy, tough, taste­less. OK, the pep­pers were good and the mari­nade was at least some­thing to make the bas­mati rice edi­ble. Do I hear any sug­ges­tions? My friend Amy who loves the Man­darin Kitchen informed me at school pickup yes­ter­day that the secret was in mar­i­nat­ing the chicken in chili-infused oil (she has a secret mole at the restau­rant), and also in a super, SUPER hot burner so the chicken cooks almost instantly. Well, the for­mer I can prob­a­bly achieve. The lat­ter, not in my kitchen.

Boo hoo. Then last night I did a fairly good but bor­ing slivered-beef Asian dish. Avery and John scarfed it down, but I was left with the sen­sa­tion that there are some things bet­ter left to the pro­fes­sion­als: cut­ting hair, diag­nos­ing gall blad­der trou­ble, and stir-frying. Sigh. Well, we’re invited to our friend Vincent’s tonight where I am quite sure we will be given some­thing per­fect, which will make me simul­ta­ne­ously happy and envious.

This morn­ing John woke me up (never an easy thing to do) with the sim­ple ques­tion, “Guess what I just saw out­side?” I yawned, stretched and said, “A fox.” Silence. “OK, how did you know that?” he demanded. “Well, what else would you just have seen out­side that would make you inter­ested enough to tell me about it?” “Lots of things!” There have been so many reported sight­ings lately!

Can I just whinge for a moment about the only imper­fect thing about our school? Aside from the “food,” that is. Avery came home with her French home­work last night and was, as is her wont lately, doing it in the kitchen while I cooked my unspec­tac­u­lar din­ner. “Lis­ten, Mommy, it’s a verse of ‘Jin­gle Bells’ in French!” What fol­lowed was the most absurd lin­guis­tic recital ever to have been set to music, resem­bling not at all any of the words I could see writ­ten on the page. My com­plaint begins with the fact that the chil­dren were learn­ing the song by rote, had no idea what any of the words actu­ally meant, but grows with the real­iza­tion that nearly all the words were being pro­nounced wrong. All I can say in Made­moi­selle Stanway’s defense is that while they were all wrong, they were wrong in a way that actu­ally rhymed, surely not an easy feat to accom­plish. “Avery, the word for ‘path’ is not pro­nounced ‘che-mon,’ it’s ‘che-man.’ That way, it rhymes with the word for hand, ‘main,’ in the next line.” “Oh, no, Mummy, ‘main’ is pro­nounced ‘mon’ as well. See, it still rhymes!” Aaargh! Just appalling. It reminded me of the lunch party last win­ter where some­one was com­plain­ing that you can’t expect much of an accent from some­one called Made­moi­selle… STAN­WAY, and another par­ent said, “Well, it beats the Span­ish teacher, Sig­norita… O’MALLEY.” For heaven’s sake. Avery brought up the legit­i­mate point that she would have to choose between sound­ing cor­rect, and sound­ing like the other chil­dren. We decided that just this once, fit­ting in was the bet­ter part of valor.

I had rather a dis­tin­guished day yes­ter­day! My friend Susan had intro­duced me last year to a painter called Melanie Essex, American-born but liv­ing here for 10 years, mar­ried to a really won­der­ful guy called Richard and with two lit­tle girls about Avery’s age, at the fan­tas­tic Bute House school. So yes­ter­day I got dressed in my posh black “I used to own an art gallery” clothes and tod­dled off to 27 Cork Street, where Melanie was hav­ing a new show, and was giv­ing a talk about her work as well. Her own gallery, The New Grafton Gallery in Barnes, had bor­rowed the May­fair space for just a week, to give Cen­tral Lon­don­ers a chance to see these gor­geous new paint­ings. Now, nor­mally I do not grav­i­tate to paint­ing per se, pre­fer­ring work on paper. And nor­mally I don’t go for rep­re­sen­ta­tional work, either. But these paint­ings are very, very lovely, extremely accom­plished, and Melanie spoke very well about her process. Thor­oughly enjoy­able, so stop by in the next week to see them, and then have a nice jaunt to Barnes to see what else the gallery does. It’s inter­est­ing that a prime May­fair gallery space would rent itself out. Maybe some­day I should inves­ti­gate that. My anti-art atti­tude is grad­u­ally wear­ing off, you’ll notice.

After the talk, we headed off to Melanie’s favorite stomp­ing ground, The Grou­cho Club in Soho. In her foot­loose and fancy-free days before chil­dren, Melanie hung out there all the time, even stay­ing in one of their almost-secret inn rooms when between flats. There were just six of us “ladies who lunch,” and the food was lovely. I had foie gras with per­sim­min, apple and sul­tana chut­ney and brioche to start, and then roasted scal­lops with clemen­tine and a tiny bed of chived mashed pota­toes under each scal­lop. It was such fun to sit and chat about art, Lon­don, hus­bands, chil­dren, food, and just relax. It’s always amus­ing to be reminded that how­ever unique and won­der­ful one’s hus­band is, give enough women enough time to talk freely about their hus­bands and it will turn out we’re all mar­ried to the same per­son. Quirky fel­lows, men, aren’t they? Yesterday’s topic was how our hus­bands feel about money. I said that John nearly filed for divorce when he caught me using an ATM that charged a fee, and my friend Sarah said, “When my hus­band retired, I had to put my foot down and ask him to kiss me hello in the morn­ing before he ran to turn down the ther­mo­stat.” We all laughed and Melanie said, “Yes, well, when the Iraq war started, Richard wouldn’t let me buy gas at Elf or Total. They’re French-owned, you know.” “Total inter­dit,” Susan said, with that wicked, clever expres­sion she gets. We had fun.

But 3:20 found me back in mother mode at pickup, and Avery was very pleased with her test results (96 in math and 92 in Eng­lish, I believe!), so it was decided that a reward was appro­pri­ate. She is now the proud pos­ses­sor of both a gold and a sil­ver metal­lic marker. Two for one, can’t beat that. What would we do with­out Ryman, sta­tioner to the stars?

Oh, and speak­ing of stars, we saw Hermione Nor­ris hav­ing a cof­fee in the High Street com­ing home from school today! She is even bonier and scarier in real life than she is on “Spooks”! But I do love a celebrity glimpse.

But the real news was Avery’s field trip today, if you can call such an exalted place a “field.” Form V was invited, along with some 600 other lit­tle school chil­dren, to sing at the Christ­in­gle Ser­vice at West­min­ster Abbey this morn­ing! What a thrill. Becky and I hung around school for our usual read-aloud with the lit­tle gulls, and then met up for cof­fee to kill time before the coach left, with our friends Angela and Amy, whose Form II gulls were also hav­ing a field trip. “Oh, where are you all going?” I asked. Silence. Finally Angela said, “Wait­rose.” “You mean the GRO­CERY STORE? We’re going to West­min­ster Abbey and you’re going to WAIT­ROSE?” “Don’t rub it in.” The coach came and all the gulls got on, look­ing very spruced-up. I just love that an above-ground trip from school to the Abbey is like a free tour bus ride! With the added attrac­tion of over-excited scream­ing children’s voices, that is. Every once in awhile the shrill­ness led even patient Miss Leslie or Miss Clarke to shush them, as we passed Buck­ing­ham Palace, Trafal­gar Square, Big Ben, the Houses of Par­lia­ment. Gor­geous. They were hushed upon enter­ing the church, how­ever, and through­out all the hymns, read­ings, and finally the cer­e­mony of being each given an orange, sym­bol­iz­ing the world, tied with a red rib­bon sym­bol­iz­ing Christ’s blood, and tooth­picks strung with candy, sym­bol­iz­ing children’s love for… candy! Then too there was a can­dle, rep­re­sent­ing the light of the world, each of which were lit, and the chil­dren all stood in a cir­cle around the nave of the Abbey, and sang. It was just lovely. Will Avery remem­ber things like this? More likely her mem­o­ries will be of ponies. Which reminds me, it’s time for riding…