shhh…

Guess what I spent two hours doing yes­ter­day? Shh, don’t tell John; it’s his sur­prise birth­day present, and he’s not going to find out about it until tomor­row at lunchtime. But to you I will con­fess all.

Last thing at night before going to bed I always check my email. You never know. Well, on Wednes­day night I got a mes­sage from Vin­cent, sug­gest­ing spon­ta­neously (as is his wont, unlike plod­ding me) that I come by the next day and let him shoot some por­traits of me, for John. My first reac­tion was, “Why would I sub­ject myself, and ulti­mately poor John, to some­thing so awful?” But Vin­cent is sim­ply a bril­liant pho­tog­ra­pher, with all the proper equip­ment, the stu­dio, every­thing, so I paused. Then I fig­ured, how bad could it be? This restrained enthu­si­asm is, I think, a sad com­men­tary on how dif­fer­ent a 42-year-old is from a 20-year-old (among many such sad com­par­isons!), because I have very vivid mem­o­ries of mod­el­ling nude for a paint­ing class in Flo­rence, dur­ing one won­der­ful col­lege sum­mer spent there. Where has that per­son gone? Well, for one thing she’s twice as old and prob­a­bly a good twenty pounds heav­ier, but no mat­ter. I decided to throw cau­tion to the winds, and so yes­ter­day I packed up one of John’s white shirts, per Vincent’s instruc­tions, and told John I was leav­ing but couldn’t tell him where, and that I’d pick Avery up at school. I must say he is com­pletely mystified.

So I sped over to Lon­don Bridge and was a model! Vin­cent started out with a Polaroid shot of each pose, so I got to see them imme­di­ately and wasn’t too hor­ri­fied. He assures me that the real film shots will be much deeper and more vivid. I felt self-conscious, but his infec­tious good humor could not be resisted, plus his danc­ing to the salsa music ema­nat­ing from the stereo, as well as his run­ning com­men­tary on all the things hap­pen­ing in his life: his hap­pi­ness with his new loft, and with Pete, his fun pho­tograph­ing his two lit­tle girls, his plans for an enor­mous birth­day party in Mar­rakesh! And through it all he took pic­tures. “Did you go to school to learn to do this, Vin­cent?” “No, indeed I am self-taught as they say.” “But all this equip­ment! How did you know what to buy?” He roared at that. “Honey, I have never had any trou­ble know­ing what to BUY.”

Then I thought I had bet­ter get myself off to meet Avery, Anna and Ellie at school and take them rid­ing, but Vin­cent, as is usual, was hav­ing none of my self-imposed duty. “We are going out to lunch,” he announced, and with that phrase I saw col­lapsed all my Puri­tan­i­cal plans to be early, to bring a snack for the girls, all the other good-mother sce­nar­ios I tend to adhere to. Life with Vin­cent is an end­less round of fun. So the three of us repaired to a local Bermond­sey restau­rant called Del­fina, and had a fine time. I don’t know if I would go again, but my hes­i­ta­tion is partly because I’m sure I ordered the wrong things. I started with an interesting-sounding soup (“I hate all soups,” Vin­cent said cat­e­gor­i­cally), and I have to say he was prob­a­bly right in this case. Jerusalem arti­choke, pear and chest­nut puree, with lit­tle fried plan­tain curls on top. The prob­lem? All the ingre­di­ents are the same color (grey­ish) and the same con­sis­tency (mushy) and it was too thick and too salty, I imag­ine to give it more fla­vor than could be had from the too-dull ingre­di­ents. So aside from just being soup, which makes me tend to like some­thing, it didn’t have much to rec­om­mend it. Then I had chicken liver pate to fol­low, which was, unac­count­ably, smeared across a slab of toasted cia­batta. Now, the pate itself was fine, but I really didn’t want it slathered on the piece of toast which, left to its own devices, would have been a nice crunchy accom­pa­ni­ment but, as it was, filled the role of “mat­tress” in “The Princess and the Pea.”

Pete, on the other hand, had an absolutely gor­geous lit­tle fil­let of sea bass, on a bed of shred­ded cab­bage and tiny noo­dles, and it looked divine. I don’t know him quite well enough to ask to have a bite, so I can­not report on its good­ness except to say that he ate every bite. Vin­cent had a pretentious-sounding but very yummy-looking “sumac smoked weiner schnitzel,” and it was enor­mous. Fine for a big strap­ping fel­low, but I could never have worked my way through it. Plus, by the time the main courses came I was in a ker­fuf­fle over being pos­si­bly late to pickup (I have to remem­ber that there’s Green­wich Mean Time, and then there’s Vin­cent Time, in which the clock stops for him to have fun and wrap his expan­sive good humour around every­one in his orbit). So I called Becky, always a main­stay of help with­out mak­ing me feel guilty, and arranged that she’d pick the girls up and I would meet them at the sta­ble with Avery’s stuff. Which was at home. Slight panic! Pete laughed. “I was reg­u­larly left at school. I was the youngest of five, and my mother, after school, would just sort of cock her ear for the level of noise in the house, find it appro­pri­ate for the num­ber of chil­dren she thought were prob­a­bly there, and leave it at that. It was some­times 4:30 before any­one realised I was still at school.” There does seem to be a spe­cial rule that decrees if I get to school on time, she’s late, and if I’m late, she was early, and all the good things I do as her mother fly out of the win­dow as she expe­ri­ences that fate worse than death: Last Child Picked Up.

Mean­while, as only a true foodie can do, even full as a tick, Vin­cent was talk­ing recipes. He is absolutely 100% con­vinced that his ver­sion of any­thing he can cook is the ver­sion you should learn to, so I lis­tened avidly. A souf­fle? To most peo­ple the word strikes fear in their culi­nary hearts, but to Vin­cent it’s “what you cook on a Sun­day night when no one can be both­ered to cook.” And he makes it sound so easy, using up all the ends of the cheeses you’ve had on your cheese­board all week. (Do you have a cheese­board all week? Oh, good, nei­ther do I.) He is, quite sim­ply, the most effort­less cook, and host.

He was still in full cre­ative flow as I pon­dered these ques­tions. “Have I given you my scal­lops in scotch? All you do is throw a knob of but­ter in a skil­let and sear the scal­lops quickly to brown on each side, then add a tub of creme fraiche [“this is Vincent’s diet scal­lop recipe,” Pete teased] and a good dol­lop of single-malt scotch, some salt and pep­per, cook it down, pour it over the scal­lops. Divine.” It sounds it, and when I see him tomor­row I’ll get the real recipe and let you know how it turns out.

So yes, tomor­row will see us hav­ing lunch at Vincent’s house while John looks at the con­tact sheets he doesn’t know exist yet, and chooses which he’d like to have made into prints. I’m so excited. And I made it to the sta­ble on time, in case you wondered.