sen­sory overload

Life has taken on a fre­netic pace lately and I have been sim­ply too over­whelmed to post! Not that I’m com­plain­ing. But hon­estly, since last Thurs­day when I was wax­ing lyri­cal about duck, it’s been all I could do to remem­ber what to pack in Avery’s var­i­ous bags for her var­i­ous activ­i­ties, and get her to them, and to mine in between, much less keep­ing a record of what we’ve been up to. But I’m going to give it a try, because so much inter­est­ing stuff has been happening.

My screen­writ­ing class was a rev­e­la­tion. It’s hard to believe I’ve got the sec­ond class today and can I just con­fess right now that I have not seen a movie in the mean­time? At least, I don’t think col­laps­ing in front of a Lord Peter Wim­sey BBC pro­duc­tion that I’ve seen at least five times counts as “see­ing a movie.” Or “film,” I should say, as the incred­i­bly enthu­si­as­tic peo­ple in my class would do. The first thing, prac­ti­cally, that the instruc­tor said was, “There are some stu­pid peo­ple in this world who think they can write screen­plays with­out going to see films. That’s about as dumb as say­ing you can write a novel with­out read­ing nov­els. They say they don’t want to be influ­enced by some­one else’s style, but that’s rub­bish. They’re just lazy.” Meekly I held up my hand and said, “I’m afraid I’m one of those stu­pid peo­ple.” Films are mostly too scary for me, or too vio­lent, hon­estly. What­ever I see on screen stays in my head for­ever, and most of what’s out there, I don’t want in my head. So war movies are out, gang­ster movies, most spy movies, cer­tainly psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers. For­get all the Armageddon/apocalypse sce­nar­ios. I already think that way! So the films I can see are few and far between. At least I had seen “Match Point,” but not in the the­atre, of course, just on DVD. The last movie I saw in a the­atre? Dopey “Scoop,” the Woody Allen Scar­lett Johanssen vehi­cle this sum­mer. Any­way, it was very much an intro­duc­tory after­noon, where Mike Har­ris, the tutor, told us we’d be writ­ing a ten-minute short film script and an out­line for a full-length fea­ture. Oh really? I got paired up for a char­ac­ter –devel­op­ment skit with a Lebanese girl called Dalia, and we had good fun, so we’re going to pair up again today. I have got to start see­ing some movies, even though my taste is so ple­beian. I remem­ber when we left the the­atre after see­ing Avery’s beloved “Ice Princess,” John com­plained, “It was a lit­tle for­mu­laic.” “John, it was a Dis­ney movie with the word ‘princess’ in the title. I think for­mu­laic is the least of our worries.”

I raced against the clock to meet Avery and her babysit­ter at the sta­ble, and watched Avery jump the tallest jump she’s ever done, two feet high. Alexa, her trainer, has I think accepted her now, which feels good. “Get your Amer­i­can bot­tom back in the sad­dle, Avery, what do you think would hap­pen if she decided to bump you off?” She was rid­ing an enor­mous horse, not even a pony, and insisted that she was very sweet. I could just see LARGE.

That evening John and Avery stayed home while I went to a din­ner party hosted by the head of the “UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.” At least, that is what I was meant to do, but for awhile it was touch and go. No taxis to be found, so at last in des­per­a­tion I jumped into a pedi­cab, one of those bicycle-driven bug­gies run by the Russ­ian mafia. What was I to do? After a per­ilous jour­ney between ginor­mous red buses, the skinny lit­tle kid dri­ver let me off at an address that must, to him, have sounded close enough to the one I wanted, but was in fact at com­pletely the other end of town. “Is the same thing, this road,” he insisted. Wearily I said, “Is not the same thing” and hailed a real taxi, where­upon we got caught up in the after­math of a water-main break in the Bayswa­ter Road, and I was very late to the din­ner. It was the sort of party where you play musi­cal chairs between courses so as to talk to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. At first I sat next to a prop­erty devel­oper who told me all about his extra-curricular project, writ­ing “The His­tory of Cul­ture.” Yep, THE His­tory of Cul­ture. I would imag­ine it’ll take him awhile. Then I was next to the world’s great­est expert on Van Gogh. I’m sorry to say that after a cur­sory dis­cus­sion of the Kandin­sky show (she didn’t like it either so I felt vin­di­cated in my lack of enthu­si­asm) we fell to talk­ing about senior girls’ schools in Lon­don, since she has a girl older than Avery. Then I sat across from a really cool guy, mar­ried to a painter I know slightly, and he was talk­ing about his child­hood in Burma, where he met an expa­tri­ate Ital­ian fel­low mak­ing fresh moz­zarella in the Burmese coun­try­side. Also how he nearly died from eat­ing malaria-infected straw­berry ice cream. Another one of the long list of things that has never hap­pened to me, as my father would say. All in all a lovely evening.

Fri­day after­noon saw me in the pour­ing rain col­lect­ing all Becky’s girls from school, along with Avery, to go ice skat­ing and spend the night so Becky and Mark could get away for the week­end. It was quite some­thing to pile all four girls plus me into a taxi, with four back­packs, PE kits, skate bags, skat­ing out­fits, etc. Of course we had to skirt the same water main break as the night before, but even­tu­ally we got to the rink and the girls spent sev­eral bliss­ful hours going around and around, help­ing Ellie who had never skated before. Avery had an impromptu les­son with a slight blonde girl called Nicola and had the time of her life, so we’ll make it a Fri­day tra­di­tion. Home in a com­pletely cir­cuitous route along Knights­bridge Road, lis­ten­ing to the taxi dri­ver drone on and on about Mini Coop­ers, since I had made the fatal mis­take of telling him we were plan­ning to buy one. What I don’t know about their chas­sis, fuel capac­ity, paint choices and nought-to-sixty in what­ever sec­onds is not worth know­ing. I fed every­one papardelle with fresh tomato sauce, and we tried to watch “Bring­ing Up Baby,” a screw­ball com­edy with Kather­ine Hep­burn and Cary Grant, but some­how it had got down­loaded in Span­ish, or sub­ti­tled, or some­thing, and we had to aban­don it. Ellie decided she was home­sick, so John invented a game where he poked the lit­tle tip of her nose down and said, “Toy,” then let it up again and said, “Girl.” They must have repeated this a hun­dred times, and then it was off to sleep with cozy hot water bottles.

John made break­fast for them the next day and then they were col­lected by another fam­ily to spend the night. How empty and quiet the house seemed when they were gone! We saun­tered off in the direc­tion of Covent Gar­den, pass­ing a lane called “Haunch of Veni­son Yard.” Do you sup­posed at some point it inter­sects with “Leg of Lamb Alley”? I went off to my class at City Lit, which I thought was a day-long sem­i­nar in cre­ative writ­ing, but turned out to be the first of eleven Sat­ur­days! It was great fun, though, so I’m going to con­tinue. I did not find it easy to write fic­tion, I must say. I think I’m going to have to start slow, namely doing what I usu­ally do which is to embell­ish real life, much to John and Avery’s dis­may. “But that’s not what hap­pened!” they bleat. “So what, if it makes a bet­ter story?” is my point of view. It was enter­tain­ing to be in a room with 20 peo­ple all of whom look around all the time for a good char­ac­ter, as I do. At one point dur­ing the day the class­room door opened very, very slowly, and a diminu­tive Asian head peered into the room, looked around at all of us 21 white peo­ple and asked hes­i­tantly, “Is this… Chi­nese?” When she had gone, every­one burst out laugh­ing. I’m not sure non-writers would have found it so funny! The main exer­cise was this: the tutor gave us each a sheet of paper on which was written:

seen on a street in South Lon­don on the morn­ing of Box­ing Day, 2003

perched on the bon­net of a car: a Tele­tubby toy (the green one, Dipsy), rain-soaked but oth­er­wise in good con­di­tion, pos­si­bly new

in the road in front of the car: three plas­tic sun­flow­ers and a bro­ken pot

in the gut­ter nearby: a pair of men’s underpants

No-one about, and no sign of accident

How did they get there, and what happened?

Well, then we had 30 min­utes in which to write a story that encom­passed all these facts! It was jolly dif­fi­cult, I can tell you! At first I thought I sim­ply could not do it. Then some ideas came, and while my effort wasn’t bril­liant, at least I had some­thing to read aloud when my turn came. All the other stu­dents are so very Eng­lish! Their sto­ries were all dis­mal, some­times a bit funny in a ragged pathetic way, all about cig­a­rettes and hang­overs. So many Eng­lishisms: elec­tric fires, “tat,” which means junk, ref­er­ences to knick­ers and ter­raced houses, fairy lights and y-fronts (Eng­lish for tidy-whitey briefs!), going “off my box” and “sort­ing out the children’s breakfasts.”

Then try­ing to line up who would read next week, an orig­i­nal piece of about 2500 words. The tutor asked, “Arthur, can you read?” “Yes, I can read.”

Pause.

“Ah, that’s good. AT LAST.” Every­one laughs.

Sun­day we dropped Avery off at the sta­ble for an after­noon of muck­ing out, mak­ing friends and rid­ing. John made work phone calls and I con­fess I sim­ply col­lapsed, try­ing to rein in and remem­ber all the things I’m sure I’m for­get­ting. Halfway through the after­noon my com­puter exploded, or died, or went off its box or what­ever, the point being that I spent most of Mon­day walk­ing in the rain to and from the Apple Store, first drop­ping off the body and then going back to hear the diag­no­sis. I know I am nearly alone in think­ing this, but the Apple Store is the sev­enth cir­cle of hell. Hun­dreds of peo­ple dash­ing about buy­ing cam­eras, queue­ing up to talk about their lap­tops, find­ing out that if you have the 80-gigabyte or what­ever iPod you could drive from San Fran­cisco to New York 25 times and never have to lis­ten to the same song twice! Not exactly a ring­ing endorse­ment for the prod­uct, from my point of view. Just awful. My reward was to take Avery to the dread­ful bal­let store after school and choose a not-too-dreadful skat­ing out­fit, for her beloved Fri­day after­noons with Nicola. Oh, the whin­ing tod­dlers being kit­ted out with their first tutus, and the spoiled Yummy Mum­mys with the ubiq­ui­tous chunky hardware-covered hand­bags hang­ing over their arms, say­ing, “But dah­hh­ling, the pink one fit­ted you so much bet­ter, now be a good gull and try it on again for Mummy.” Rrrrrrr.

John joined us at the rid­ing ring on Tues­day, since he was work­ing from home that after­noon, and he said, “You know, you’re the only mother here. Don’t you think it’s maybe time for you just to drop her off and go some­where, then pick her up at the end of the les­son?” “Well, no, I just don’t feel ready yet for her to ride and me not be there. What if she had an acci­dent and I wasn’t here?” I rea­soned. “Oh, and you’d be so much help if you were here! What could you do?” “Ride in the ambu­lance with her,” I said. “Please,” he said, and we both looked up to find Avery in the dirt and the pony dash­ing madly about the ring. “What hap­pened?” we both asked Alexa, and she said air­ily, “Oh, he just decided it would be nicer not to have Avery on his back for awhile.” So much for my vigil! She finally falls off and I’m not even pay­ing attention.

Thurs­day morn­ing found us at a sweet senior school tour, at Fran­cis Hol­land Gra­ham Ter­race, dis­tin­guished from its sis­ter school Fran­cis Hol­land Clarence Gate. Founded by some canon or other in 1800-something, it’s a lovely place just off Sloane Square, filled with gulls aged 3–18, in blue and white checked uni­forms. We caught a glimpse of Avery’s beloved crush Edwina, sit­ting in a sci­ence lab. Our tour was run by a per­haps 12-year-old called Amelia, who assured us of her com­plete hap­pi­ness at Fran­cis Hol­land, how friendly the gulls were, how good the food. “When I arrived I was really quite a shy per­son, but now they’re all my friends,” she said, quite touch­ing. The very impres­sive head­mistress gave her talk about league tables and per­cent­ages of grade As, and extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties and so on. A very nice place. On from there to the first of doubt­less many inter­views with Avery’s head­mistress, in her for­mi­da­ble office whose intim­i­dat­ing pro­por­tions are only slightly leav­ened by all the hand­made cards lin­ing the walls, “With love from Ara­bella,” and “Happy Christ­mas from Kate,” etc. She assured us that Avery was doing very well in every­thing, and that we should “aim for the top” when look­ing for the proper senior school. All very nice to hear, but the con­tra­dic­tory nature of her con­ver­sa­tion is amus­ing. “Now, the pres­sure can get quite silly, and I don’t want you get­ting neu­rotic about it. I always say, your job is to sup­port your daugh­ter and pay the fees, to be quite rude about it, and your daughter’s job is to learn. The teach­ers’ job is to teach, and my job is to worry. We all know it’s time to face Armagge­don.” Well, that’s jolly. “Should we apply to a rather eas­ier school, do you think, as a backup in case she doesn’t get into one of the schools you really like?” I asked anx­iously. “Mrs Cur­ran, if Avery doesn’t get into one of the three I men­tioned, some­thing dras­ti­cally dread­ful will have to have hap­pened. I remem­ber one year, three days before the exam, one of our top girls was walk­ing her lit­tle dog, when it was attacked by a larger dog. In reach­ing out for the lead, her hand was sav­aged. And it was her RIGHT HAND. Obvi­ously she could not sit the exam.” There was no mis­tak­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic nature of this story. We can only try not to get a dog before next Jan­u­ary, or if we do and hap­pen to be walk­ing it, just let it get sav­aged rather than sac­ri­fice Avery’s writ­ing hand. For heaven’s sake. “The gulls all know that the real world is beck­on­ing, how­ever much I might pro­tect them like billy-o.” I had never heard that phrase actu­ally spo­ken before.

After school we were all hang­ing about on the pave­ment (of course in New York we’d be hang­ing around on the side­walk, but that’s nei­ther here nor there) when our friend Jill beck­oned to Avery and intro­duced her to an enor­mously tall, impres­sively built man with larger-than-life hand­some fea­tures and quite a lot of sub­tle jew­elry. Who on earth? She intro­duced him with the suc­cinct phrase, “This is Tom, and he rode in the Hamp­ton Clas­sic.” Well, imme­di­ate bond­ing. He’d com­peted in Adult Jump­ing, and wasn’t the weather foul? Did we have a house in the Hamp­tons, did Avery have a pony? I sim­ply can’t fathom who this man is, or how he was related to Jill, but it was a very cool moment, bond­ing with some tall dark stranger intro­duced by our famous artist friend. John and I just sit back and watch in won­der as our child becomes truly cool before our eyes. Of course, to her it’s all nor­mal, but some­where inside both of us is a lit­tle Mid­west­ern kid who was raised on wieners and apple­sauce! How did we get here. We just have to hope that Avery con­tin­ues to let us go along for the ride.