sun­shine and ath­let­ics in London

What a day we had Sat­ur­day! Bright, intensely blue skies, not a cloud in sight, and warm. A day that makes you real­ize that in gen­eral, we live in a grey, grey world here in Lon­don. John and I picked Avery up at Anna’s, feel­ing slightly sorry for her par­ents as they headed off to a foot­ball match in Man­ches­ter. It’s one of those activ­i­ties that is prob­a­bly really fun once you get there, and whether or not you like foot­ball it’s excit­ing, no doubt. But a long trip. It turns out, I heard from Becky today, that they arrived at half­time, which doesn’t sound so dis­ap­point­ing until you’re told that each half is only 45 min­utes long and no time outs! So you’ve missed a lot, at half time. And Liv­er­pool won, hap­pily for them since they were seated on the Liv­er­pool side. I had no idea it worked like that, being seated accord­ing to your alle­giance. That’s actu­ally how it was at the show-jumping polo match, must be a ref­er­ence to the foot­ball tradition.

After we picked Avery up we headed to Church Street, off Lis­son Grove, to the long row of antiques shops. Becky and I had checked it out first of all last week, and had found a lovely shop, Andrew Neb­bett, with sev­eral things I liked a lot. One of them was a long wide bench cov­ered in heavy dark leather, from maybe 1930, a gym­na­sium bench-pressing affair. “On hold” for some evil per­son, not that we have any­where to put it. But also from the gym­na­sium sale were sev­eral leather mats that Andrew had had sewn into rugs. Gor­geous! So we came away with a big one for the liv­ing room and a small one for the entry.

Home to put John down for a nap and I took Avery roller-blading in Hyde Park. The weather had held per­fectly, and every­one was out sun­ning them­selves in the lit­tle green-striped deck chairs (like the one Snoopy fights with in the Thanks­giv­ing Spe­cial, remem­ber that?), that you sit in and a Park Deckchair man comes round and charges you a pound fifty for each one. Seems rea­son­able! In New York of course some­one would come round in the night and put them all in vans and sell them on eBay. I shouldn’t be so cyn­i­cal about my native city, but there you go. We sat and recov­ered from her exploits with an iced lolly (always read about them in books but never quite real­ized that they are just pop­si­cles! much bet­ter to call them iced lol­lies), and a cup of milky tea for me. Every nation­al­ity and age and body type under the sun, all sacked out in the park on the green, green grass that doesn’t require spring­time to be green. Why is that? All year long, it’s green.

Avery was def­i­nitely wilt­ing at this point, so a long bath was in order, and then a high-protein blast of a cut of beef called “feather cut.” Don’t know how to define it and will do some research. It’s shaped like sir­loin tips, with a strong cen­tral sinew that was quite edi­ble, and CHEAP. The whole three-person serv­ing was not even 3 pounds total. I sauteed it gen­tly in but­ter and sliced it thin, but it could have been cooked even less. We all went to bed com­pletely worn out!

This morn­ing up hor­ri­bly early (OK, it was 7) to get to the barn in Wim­ble­don in time for a 9 a.m. les­son. Never again! I need my Sun­day rest! But wow, the les­son was amaz­ing. A pony called Bis­cuit, who is too tiny to be rid­den by any­one large enough to be any good! So she has been spend­ing years being trot­ted to and fro on a lead rope, with tiny chil­dren on her doing noth­ing. But when the train­ers saw how Avery was skilled and yet tiny, they decided it was a match made in heaven. So the moment Avery got on Biscuit’s back, and the rope came off, and the hack through Wim­ble­don Com­mon was over and the arena in sight, that pony went BERSERK! Gal­lop­ing like the wind, round and round, the adult rid­ers on their calm horses look­ing on in a mix­ture of hor­ror and admi­ra­tion! I can’t even say that Avery “hung on,” far from it, she rode that pony beau­ti­fully. Totally con­trolled, obvi­ously impressed with the speed that was hap­pen­ing. I remained calm, believe it or not, and John was thrilled. Car­o­line, her new trainer, was unflap­pable, and unmoved. Finally Avery calmed Bis­cuit down and joined the rest of the group, but still through­out the hour every time she got to be by her­self, it was tear­ing off hell bent for leather. Hilar­i­ous! So they’ve decided that if Bis­cuit gets exer­cised more this week she’ll be fine on Sun­day next. It feels ridicu­lously good to have a barn, a pony, a trainer, FRIENDS.

Our friend Jill and her hus­band picked Avery up in the rain out­side Edg­ware Sta­tion, with Anna already in the car, to go with Ava to the Chess­ing­ton Adven­ture Park or some such thing. Jill wailed, “I have a cold, I’m preg­nant, and it’s rain­ing! I don’t believe it.” Later she con­fessed that she made her hus­band drop her off at home and sent him off with the girls alone! John and I walked in the mist to a nice, anonymous-ish Leb­nese restau­rant called Fatoush, in Edg­ware Road, and had lovely fresh hum­mous, falafel, and lit­tle lamb meat­balls with tahini sauce. Sweet lit­tle honey and pis­ta­chio cook­ies after, and home for a nap. The per­fect day for it. We walked to col­lect Avery around 6, and the dad, Mylo, looked as wilted as a man of 6 foot 4 can look. “Did it rain?” John asked sym­pa­thet­i­cally. Mylo gave us a look. “Did it rain?” he repeated. “Did it RAIN.” So after chat­ting for a few min­utes about the mind-bendingly awful-sounding ride and prizes, John said, “Well, Mylo, at least it didn’t rain.”

Well, I’m about to drop dead this evening, hav­ing walked home from school, back again with Avery’s for­got­ten PE kit, back again home, back to school again with Ava’s birth­day present for her party after school, back home again, and back again to col­lect Avery at the party! There was a very scary magi­cian in a tur­ban try­ing to invei­gle the moth­ers into com­ing home with him, and some­how Ava had per­suaded the local ice cream truck to come to her party, so all the chil­dren were drip­ping with ice cream. It felt extremely lovely, and most wel­come, to have moth­ers I knew, to greet and be greeted by, and to have Avery included in a party with her new friends. John’s out at a busi­ness din­ner, so I think I’ll skulk into the kitchen, pour a restora­tive cock­tail, and try to con­vince Avery to watch the Food Chan­nel. How sophis­ti­cated are we?