Step Away From the Stove

At least, that’s what my friend Amy is try­ing to tell me. Enough recipe test­ing, din­ner par­ties, lun­cheon par­ties. Get your mind around some­thing… intel­lec­tual, they say. (Isn’t this a gor­geous pho­to­graph? It’s by an artist called Frank Tschak­ert, really tal­ented.) Any­way, I made a good stab at using my brain at the school Book Fair on Tues­day, I must say. It was a funny coin­ci­dence: Avery and I had run over to the won­der­ful Daunt Book­shop on Sat­ur­day, just for a good browse, always a good thing. Some­how we ended up at the till with a stack of books, sev­eral for her, two for me (new fac­sim­ile reprints of Agatha Christie clas­sics, in repli­cas of the orig­i­nal dust jack­ets, to cel­e­brate the 80th anniver­sary of Her­cule Poirot’s emer­gence on the mys­tery scene, what fun), and sev­eral for sweet Baby Jane at home in Con­necti­cut (sadly, not a baby any­more). The fel­low behind the till was not at all covertly mon­i­tor­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, which went some­thing like this. “How are we going to explain this to Daddy? We always end up with such a… stack.” “Well, some are for you, some are for me, and some are gifts, and any­way, it’s always good to spend money on books.” “That’s right, it’s not as if it were fash­ion things that will be SO 2007 in about a week, or some fancy roast that will just dis­ap­pear. It’s BOOKS.” The fel­low laughed, and said, “That’s the spirit. And I’ll throw in a nice can­vas Daunt bag, too, to make your pur­chases even more justifiable.”

It was such a nice mother-daughter moment, a real shop­ping spree and a real con­ver­sa­tion, with an actual per­son, not a lit­tle child to be taken care of (as lovely as they are). We walked out, feel­ing pleased with our­selves and a lit­tle naughty. Avery remarked, “It’s nice to be helped by some­one who really likes his job.” So when I turned up at school to help with the Book Fair, the two staff mem­bers from Daunt explained the dif­fer­ent tables of books for dif­fer­ent ages, and lis­tened to Mrs D and me chat­ting about the PGL trip, and the com­plaints about school lunch. They were two lovely peo­ple, the girl, Trina, heav­ily preg­nant and the fel­low, Adam, kind and obser­vant. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that I realised the fel­low was our friend from the week­end shop­ping trip! I told him what fun we had had, and he said, “Now I remem­ber you! I thought at the time how nice it was to see a par­ent incul­cat­ing proper val­ues in her child.” “Spend­ing money, you mean?” “Pre­cisely! On books, that is.”

So the after­noon pro­gressed as all Book Fairs do, with mys­ti­fied Form Three gulls try­ing to get their minds around the prices of books and the rela­tion­ship between that infor­ma­tion and the money they held in their hot lit­tle hands. “Mrs Cur­ran, I have 4 pounds and 3 pence. Can I buy this book?” “Yes, it’s only 3.99, Libby, you have enough money.” “But I have 4 pounds 3 pence,” she said, clearly not happy with the unmatch­ing nature of the two amounts. “You’ll get a penny back, and then you will have four pence.” “But I want to spend it ALL.” And then so happy to give her change to a class­mate, never mind that it didn’t make any dif­fer­ence. It reminded me so clearly of the last Book Fair at PS 234 in New York, when lit­tle Isabella was quite des­per­ate to spend her last dime. “But, sweet­heart, there isn’t any­thing you can buy for a dime. Look at your lovely pile of books, though. You can take your dime home.” “No, I want to spend EVERY­THING!” she wailed. She must have come back to the till four or five times, implor­ing us to find some­thing she could buy for her dime. Finally I had a brain­wave. “I thought of some­thing you can buy with your dime, Isabella,” I said, and gave her two nick­els. Her sigh of relief was so won­der­ful. “At last! I spent it all.”

Then the Form Fives came, a lit­tle more sophis­ti­cated about their money but still need­ing sup­ple­men­tary pounds here and there. “You can find Avery tomor­row and give the money to her,” I assured them. And they needed help decid­ing between Joan Aiken and Philippa Pearce, between Anthony Horowitz and Eva Ibbot­son. I had no idea that Anthony Horowitz wrote, in addi­tion to all the children’s nov­els and the tele­vi­sion series “Foyles War,” the first episode of Mid­somer Mur­ders, and a dozen Poirot screen­plays, includ­ing “Evil Under the Sun,” filmed on Burgh Island where we just had our roman­tic hol­i­day! What would it be like to be that talented?

Then the super-sophisticated Form Sixes saun­tered in, secure in the knowl­edge that they have passed their senior schools exams, their futures are set, and they can devote the remain­der of the school year to find­ing new and cool ways to tie their PE sweaters around their waists and shoul­ders. Max­i­mum bar­gain­ing, bor­row­ing, lend­ing, and a polite dis­re­gard for any­thing we adults, includ­ing the Eng­lish teacher might rec­om­mend. So funny to be 11 and so, so clever.

Well, other than that day of intel­lect, I haven’t made much head­way in being smart. Emily and I think we will make a trip to a gallery in Great Titch­field Street to see some curated stu­dent art, which from the descrip­tion online includes some sculp­ture made from Hoover fluff, a real must-see, I have to say. I can’t be too snooty, how­ever, once hav­ing shown a quilt made of human hair in my own gallery. I don’t feel much like being intel­lec­tual. Maybe it’s spring fever, or maybe it’s the end­less house-hunting get­ting me down, or feel­ing like I’m just sort of good at lots of things, but not really, really good at any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. I’m feel­ing a bit lack­adaisi­cal. Yesterday’s school Spring Fes­ti­val of Thanks­giv­ing at All Souls church was a lovely event, very uplift­ing and sweet, and so hard to believe it’s been a year already since Avery’s first King’s Col­lege Fes­ti­val. Where does the time go, she asks orig­i­nally. I really am dull today!

Well, John has gone off to look at yet another house. Tomor­row, Isling­ton beck­ons, although I really do think it’s too far away. When I say that, every­one sug­gests help­fully that we look at an entirely new set of schools for Avery, all in the north­east cor­ner of Lon­don, instead of the south­west cor­ner I had got my mind sort of com­fort­ably around. Maybe that’s what’s get­ting me down. The con­stant aura of uncer­tainty! At least today I’m hav­ing lunch with Becky, always a calm­ing, cheer­ing influ­ence. Maybe she can get me out of my funk. And keep me away from the stove for one more after­noon! But in the mean­time, do try the side dish we had last night. Then, I promise to stop cook­ing, at least until our… lun­cheon party on Sunday.

Scal­loped Pota­toes
(serves four generously)

6 medium pota­toes, a waxy vari­ety like Char­lotte, peeled and sliced thin
1 cup light cream, plus 1/2 cup skim milk, mixed
salt and pepper

Spray a square glass bak­ing dish gen­er­ously with non­stick spray and cover the bot­tom with sliced pota­toes, fanned out so they over­lap slightly. Pour over the cream mix­ture just to cover, and add salt and pep­per. Layer more pota­toes and pour over cream until the pota­toes are fin­ished. Salt and pep­per the top and bake at 400 for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­ally so that the pota­toes on top do not dry out, but tak­ing care not to break the pota­toes up. In the last 15 min­utes, all the top to brown nicely. You may also add gar­lic in between two of the potato lay­ers or add bread­crumbs and but­ter, or cheese to the top at the last 15 min­utes (I may not because my daugh­ter is a scal­loped potato purist). Deli­cious with braised pork chops and sauteed red pep­per strips.