Quite the Roy­al Concert

Well, I can tell you that as a per­son for whom the sound of chil­dren singing is an instant tear-pro­duc­er, yes­ter­day was quite Over the Top, AND I had no tis­sue, what was I think­ing. Our school had been invit­ed to take part in the third annu­al fundrais­ing con­cert at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Music, an impos­ing struc­ture in the Maryle­bone Road, in aid of a char­i­ty called The Chil­dren’s Trust for Mul­ti­ple Dis­abil­i­ties. I am sap­py enough when it comes to hap­py news and healthy chil­dren, so add the per­spec­tive of chil­dren who have been through life-threat­en­ing dis­abil­i­ties, and I am the orig­i­nal bas­ket case. But it was love­ly. And a more deserv­ing char­i­ty I can­not imagine.

The scene was this: per­haps a dozen schools from around Lon­don had been invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the con­cert, for which tick­ets were sold in aid of the char­i­ty. So we dis­persed the Ava+Anna sleep­over par­ty of the night before; and I do mean night, they were up until all hours, putting on a play in which Avery was the hoity-toity old­er sis­ter of a Vic­to­ri­an fam­i­ly whose par­ents had unac­count­ably dis­ap­peared, leav­ing her in charge. I must say, the cos­tumes were love­ly, hav­ing been culled from all Avery’s pre-uni­form obses­sion with old-fash­ioned gar­ments. Those bits, and a cou­ple of for­mal skirts that have migrat­ed from my clos­et (worn once, at Glyn­de­bourne, in per­haps ten years) com­plet­ed the look. Any­way, we packed Avery off to the Roy­al Acad­e­my with her “immac­u­late win­ter uni­form” as spec­i­fied by Mrs D and a lunch, and we our­selves turned up in the after­noon for a pre-con­cert cham­pagne recep­tion fea­tur­ing excel­lent gos­sip with oth­er par­ents and pos­si­bly the worst canapes I have ever come across, but hey, it was for char­i­ty. There was chick­en on skew­ers accom­pa­nied by a vat of what was clear­ly may­on­naise for, dare I say it, dip­ping? And sim­ply awful sog­gy bli­n­is with not-fresh smoked salmon, need I say more. Maybe I can cater it next year.

Any­way, we trooped upstairs and end­ed up in the bal­cony for pho­tog­ra­phy’s sake. Just look at these faces. So bored! And the pos­ture. The boys above our group were just clas­sic. It is hard to imag­ine, look­ing at ado­les­cent chaps like these, that our girls will ever find, among them, fod­der for romance, but then they’ll be ado­les­cents too, so per­haps it evens out. I can’t see the gor­geous being that was my hus­band at 18, any­where in these boys, just a cou­ple of years younger. But I sup­pose I was drink­ing the kool-aid. In any case, it was a won­der­ful, won­der­ful after­noon. I do find the sight of so many earnest, dressed-up chil­dren and their devot­ed men­tors incred­i­bly sen­ti­men­tal. How hard they have worked! The Latin, the French, the pianis­si­mos and vibratos, the girls’ uni­forms with knee socks at vary­ing lev­els of knee-prox­im­i­ty, the boys with any num­ber of cuff lengths to their ever-expand­ing arms, the slump­ing pos­es, but then the ethe­re­al beau­ty of their voic­es. Our school did very well, but I have to say that the schools who obvi­ous­ly sac­ri­fice a great deal for their music were a rev­e­la­tion. Ful­ham Prep, for exam­ple, have won all sorts of com­pe­ti­tions, and it showed. The pro­fes­sion­al­ism and matu­ri­ty of their per­for­mance was incred­i­ble, plus I am a com­plete suck­er for the sound of 20 voic­es simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­nounc­ing the Eng­lish ver­sion of “water”. I sat there try­ing to think how to spell it, and it’s some­thing like “whoa-tuh.” So pure and gorgeous.

And then a teenage boy got up and read what amount­ed to his life sto­ry: a lit­tle-boy­hood of being the fastest and the best in his class at every­thing, then a trag­ic auto acci­dent, and bang: all over. Or so the doc­tors said, until he reached The Chil­dren’s Trust and was tak­en in hand by every sort of ther­a­pist you can imag­ine, and despite all the ter­ri­ble pre­dic­tions, in a year had learnt to walk, talk, feed him­self, all over again. He is plan­ning to run the Lon­don Marathon next year. Toward the end he could not fin­ish read­ing, and when he sat down there was a moment of stunned silence and then the room sim­ply erupt­ed in applause, and a stand­ing ova­tion. John and I are try­ing to think how we could vol­un­teer for a place like The Chil­dren’s Trust, which is locat­ed too far out of Lon­don to be prac­ti­cal. But I feel sure there must be some­thing like it here in the city, where Avery and I could per­haps read aloud to chil­dren, or help in the kitchens, and John could lend a hand with their com­put­er sys­tems. We must find something.

All the par­ents, milling about after the con­cert, were over­whelmed. “Sort of puts trou­ble with home­work in per­spec­tive, does­n’t it?” Becky mused. “If I ever start com­plain­ing about any­thing, just kick me,” I agreed. Our chil­dren final­ly emerged from the throng, and I have nev­er seen Avery so tired. We spir­it­ed her home and into her sec­ond bath of the day, which she swam about in for about two hours, com­ing out only to swal­low about two bites of din­ner and then lay her head on the table. “Time for bed,” I announced. “But my home­work!” she wailed. “You can tell your teach­ers that your moth­er made you go to bed, and they can take the mat­ter up with me.” Wrapped in a fuzzy throw with about four hot water bot­tles and a tab­by cat, she was good for a chap­ter of “All of a Kind Fam­i­ly,” and then was down for the count, at about 7:30! Like hav­ing a baby in the house. I had for­got­ten, until I was look­ing for a com­fort book, how won­der­ful “All of a Kind Fam­i­ly” is. It was her absolute sta­ple read-aloud as per­haps a kinder­gart­ner, and I remem­ber clear­ly that I had just been anx­ious about why she was­n’t read­ing, some­where around age 5, when I heard her lit­tle voice and real­ized she was read­ing full para­graphs of that book, to her­self. Avery’s way: learn in secret, emerge only when you know how. But get the book (here’s a link for get­ting them in the UK even, that’s how much I care about your read­ing list), do, and then get the sequels. A love­ly sto­ry of five sis­ters grow­ing up in the Jew­ish ghet­to of the Low­er East Side of Man­hat­tan, in the 1920s. It’s all there: sis­ter­ly affec­tion of a Jane Austen sort, thrift, Jew­ish her­itage and cul­ture (plus mouth-water­ing descrip­tions of the food mar­kets). You’ll love them. Plus it’s good to get back to read­ing aloud, I think. Just because she can read, does­n’t mean she always has to.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Oh! The Indi­anapo­lis Colts won the Super Bowl! My fam­i­ly back home are ecsta­t­ic, my par­ents and broth­er actu­al­ly still liv­ing there and my sis­ter and her fam­i­ly pre­tend­ing they weren’t in Con­necti­cut at all, last night dur­ing the big tri­umph. Con­grat­u­la­tions, every­one. Good on you, Colts.

Back on this side of the pond, we’re mak­ing fran­tic plans for our half-term trip back to Con­necti­cut, on Fri­day. There is so much to fit in. Must see Alyssa and her fam­i­ly, Avery’s going to spend a day with Cici at her school (only if she speaks in an Eng­lish accent ALL DAY, John spec­i­fies), must get our immi­gra­tion papers at the British Con­sulate, must see my fam­i­ly who are com­ing to vis­it, must con­grat­u­late Jane in per­son on being two, and see Rol­lie and Judy and the new goat kids, and Anne and David across the road, and of course Avery must be reunit­ed with her sta­ble friends and her beloved Lady­bug, for a nice one-off ride on Tues­day. As soon as they found out we were com­ing (guess how? I mad­ly emailed every­one instant­ly), the barn moth­ers organ­ised a din­ner out at a report­ed­ly fab­u­lous Ital­ian place: one table for the par­ents, and one for the girls. I can’t wait. And some shop­ping, too, prob­a­bly, since the exchange rate is sim­ply hor­rif­ic right now and we can­not buy any­thing here. It should be a great week, cold and frosty with our fires well-stoked and old friends nearby.

Then, believe it or not, we’re plan­ning a pos­si­ble trip to Moroc­co for our friend Vin­cent’s birth­day, in April. That sound awful­ly exot­ic for me, but why not? I think it’s dur­ing Avery’s East­er break (do these schools do noth­ing but break up? it often feels that way). It cer­tain­ly would be, as John points out, the way to do Moroc­co, since Vin­cen­t’s father was a diplo­mat there in the 1970s, and we could find out a lot more with him than we ever would on our own. Some­thing to think about!

But in the mean­time, clos­er to home, let me give you a recipe for a tru­ly com­fort­ing dish in case you have a cold night and three hun­gry lit­tle girls in your house. Or even two. Or just your­self. In fact, it’s com­plete­ly flex­i­ble, as few recipes are, in that you can make a lit­tle or a lot. This recipe was espe­cial­ly hard to write down, as I just made it up along pret­ty clas­sic lines and accord­ing to what I had in my pantry, since all I bought fresh was the beef itself. And cru­cial­ly: it’s not only per­fect as left­overs, the entire dish should be eat­en ONLY on the sec­ond day. Alyssa has long told me this and I did­n’t believe her. On the first night, it’s good, but it’s a bit tough, because after all, it’s about the cheap­est thing you can buy that’s still part of a cow. On the sec­ond night, it’s ambrosial.

Clas­sic Brisket
(this amount serves six)

4 tbsps oil (any­thing light-flavored)
2 lbs brisket (in Lon­don it is called “top­side”)
5 cups beef stock
2 soup-size cans toma­toes (either whole or chopped, as you like)
6 car­rots, sliced
1 dozen pearl onions, peeled
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 cup red wine
4 bay leaves
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped
sev­er­al grinds fresh black pepper
salt to taste

In a heavy, large saucepan, heat the oil and put in the beef. Siz­zle for two min­utes then turn and siz­zle on the oth­er side. Add the gar­lic to the oil on either side of the beef and saute briefly: do not burn!. Pour over the beef stock and toma­toes, and toss the veg­eta­bles, wine and sea­son­ings in. Stir and cov­er tight­ly. Sim­mer high for at least 2 hours, lift­ing the lid occa­sion­al­ly to stir the mix­ture and turn the beef. When ten­der, turn the beef onto a cut­ting board and slice short-wise in slices about 1/3 inch thick. Then replace in the suce, and ide­al­ly, cool with the lid off and leave over night, tight­ly cov­ered once cool. You can, of course, eat it right away, but it’s bet­ter hav­ing rest­ed overnight. Serve the next evening, with noo­dles, rice or mashed pota­toes, and a nice coleslaw of my own design:

Red Cab­bage and Fen­nel Slaw with Tar­ragon Dressing
(make how­ev­er much you like!)

red cab­bage and fen­nel bulbs, in equal pro­por­tion, sliced thin
red onion, sliced thin
bot­tled Russ­ian dressing
fresh tar­ragon leaves, chopped
fresh-squeezed lemon juice
salt and pepper

Com­bine all dress­ing ingre­di­ents thor­ough­ly and toss with cab­bage and fen­nel. The crunch and spice is per­fect with brisket. Heaven.