the mad whirl of late June

Just look what a May and June full of rain will do for you!  The beau­ti­ful sumac tree in our gar­den sim­ply fell over from the weight of its wet branches and the soggy home of its roots.  The tree sur­geon has come to visit, cluck­ing sadly over the sit­u­a­tion.  “Sumacs are noto­ri­ously shallow-rooted,” he said accus­ingly, although as far as “noto­ri­ous” goes, shallow-rooted is pretty inno­cent.  But with a touch­ing faith in the future, the new buds of the sumac flower have adjusted to sit­u­a­tion, and have grown to point again toward the sky, what­ever the direc­tion of their branches.

Lon­don life has assumed its usual June qual­ity of watch­ing the days fly off the cal­en­dar, packed full with plays and musi­cals to go to, house­guests to wel­come, din­ner par­ties to host, school vol­un­teer­ing to orga­nize, social work, and of course bell­ring­ing.  I gave a big, fes­tive lun­cheon party for all my ring­ing friends, to cel­e­brate my first anniver­sary ring­ing!  A roasted side of salmon, stuffed chicken thighs in Moroccan-spiced yogurt, tomato-mozzarella salad with pine nuts and basil, a huge bowl of cous­cous with pep­pers, olives and grilled hal­loumi.  Laura brought a huge choco­late cake!  Much fun was had by all.

It was a bit of a pre­ma­ture cel­e­bra­tion, as the very next day was a mas­sive mile­stone which could have gone pear-shaped: my first Quar­ter Peal!  Forty-one min­utes of sweaty, exhaust­ing, nerve-wracking con­cen­tra­tion, in my beloved tower at St Mary’s.  My friend Mon­ica, part of the jolly band who rang with me on the day, made a beau­ti­ful card for me to com­mem­o­rate the day.

You knew it was com­ing, I knew it was com­ing, but noth­ing could pre­pare me for the nerves on the day!  I kept look­ing at the clock, all through ring­ing for two Sun­day ser­vices, chok­ing down an egg, fold­ing laun­dry, think­ing, “In four hours/three hours/one hour this will all be over.”  We gath­ered in the bellcham­ber, took up our ropes, and in a moment of impos­si­ble ten­sion, heard, “Treble’s going, she’s gone,” and we were off.  There’s some­thing about know­ing you CAN­NOT STOP that makes you long to stop!  I tried to bend my knees, to remem­ber to breathe, but it was all too much com­pared with the sheer pres­sure of keep­ing on ring­ing, pay­ing atten­tion to the pat­tern, being the last “bong” on that Tenor bell every six blows.

And then it was over!  Never were the words from Mike “That’s all” more music to my ears!  And there were John and Avery, open­ing the bellcham­ber door, smil­ing with cham­pagne and cam­eras and lots of laugh­ter!  I could hardly hold the glass some­one brought from the cof­fee shop!

What a giddy feel­ing!  To think that a year ago I hadn’t even been allowed to make a sound with my bell: all my prac­tic­ing was silent, my bell’s clap­per muted so as not to annoy the neigh­bors!  And here I am today, the proud pos­ses­sor of my first Quar­ter Peal with all its stresses and strains.  “Now you’ll get your fam­ily life back,” and “Have you heard enough about bell­ring­ing to last you a life­time?” was some of the teas­ing ban­ter sent John’s way!

Whew.  Sigh of relief.  To think that there are reg­u­larly reports of ringers’ 1000th Quar­ter Peals, in the “Ring­ing World” mag­a­zine.  Right now, just one is enough for me!

I’ve been very busy with my social work fam­ily, which is going sim­ply bril­liantly.  Some­how, just the pres­ence for a few hours once a week of a per­son NOT in the fam­ily, NOT a real social worker, NOT a doc­tor, but just a per­son who is delighted to sit on the floor and play, has been enough to bring some joy to a house­hold under pressure.

All the feel­ings our train­ing taught us to expect have come true.  “But I’m not even DOING any­thing”, “Why would it make a dif­fer­ence to have a stranger there for just a few hours?”  The answer to these is that you can’t quan­tify the pres­ence of a sup­port­ive, cheer­ful per­son, and I was a stranger for about six min­utes in that house­hold.   Home-Start, I am here to tell you, is a truly pro­fes­sional, valu­able ser­vice and if you ever think you have time to do it, give them a ring.

And cook­ing?  Of course I have been.  Our new favorite (when Avery was away) is a spicy, Thai-inspired seafood treat.

Shrimp Larb in Lettuce

(serves four)

16 very large King prawns (Brit for shrimp)

1 tbsp peanut oil

1 two-inch length lemon­grass stalk, minced tiny

2 cloves gar­lic, minced with lemon juice and sea salt until pulverized

1 tbsp fish sauce

juice of 1 lemon and 1 lime

zest of 1 lemon

1 shal­lot, minced

6 mint leaves, cut in ribbons

hand­ful cilantro leaves, chopped roughly

lots of fresh black pepper

sea salt to taste

about 8 Bibb or but­ter let­tuce leaves (you could also use endive/chicory spears).

Pull the heads and legs off the raw shrimp.  Heat the oil in a heavy pan and fry the shrimp, in their shells, for 1 minute on one side, then about 30 sec­onds on the sec­ond side or until the shrimp are stiff and pink all over, no longer gray.

Let shrimp cool while you pre­pare the other ingre­di­ents.  Peel the shrimp and chop roughly, then mix with all the other ingre­di­ents and serve in let­tuce leaves.

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This dish is the light­est thing you will ever eat.  You will want much, much more, so after you’ve made it once you’ll have to decide whether or not to be a glut­ton and dou­ble it next time!  You can also add roasted chopped peanuts, hazel­nuts or pine nuts, if you want a bit of… nut.

The long-awaited Lost Prop­erty Sale of Used PE Kit to the incom­ing girls came and went, one sweaty, loud, crowded and lucra­tive day in the Hall at Avery’s school.  I find it incred­i­bly heart­warm­ing that a dozen ladies who must have bet­ter things to do with their time (not to men­tion law degrees, med­ical degrees, etc.; one is an actual Rocket Sci­en­tist) turn up with piles of kit they’ve washed and dried at home, patiently to hang them on racks, clus­tered appeal­ingly, and stacks of lacrosse sticks and boots lov­ingly washed of their mud, and then the new girls come flood­ing in with their moth­ers and fathers, look­ing TINY.  The girls, I mean, not the par­ents.  Our elderly mid-teens look like well-worn giants by com­par­i­son with these 11-year-old minia­ture things, so earnest.

What a won­der­ful school it is… a com­bi­na­tion of fright­en­ingly accom­plished staff, sur­pass­ingly ambi­tious girls, and yet all float­ing around in an atmos­phere of mutual sup­port, a crazy sense of humor and a great deal of FUN.  We all just have FUN.

And then there was the Taste of Lon­don, an annual adven­ture in Regent’s Park where dozens and dozens of top restau­rants get together under tents and offer tiny “tastes” of their best dishes.  It’s the equiv­a­lent of eat­ing out at ten of the city’s best places for about £50 each.  Expen­sive yes, but con­sid­er­ing how many ele­phants could go through preg­nancy wait­ing for me to go out to din­ner, it’s worth it.  The best, by far?  Nuno Mendes, the genius behind our favorite restau­rant in Lon­don, the Cor­ner Room, turned up with two of the most deli­cious dishes you will ever be lucky enough to taste: sea bream ceviche with fen­nel,  and Iberico pork roast served (unusu­ally) medium rare with seafood bread pud­ding.  Yes, “seafood bread pud­ding”!  The mag­i­cal man took out time to speak with us.

How heav­enly to be given such beau­ti­ful food — Mendes’s secret is to put together unex­pected fla­vor and tex­ture sen­sa­tions with­out being flash, silly, or just wrong, as so many “dar­ing” chefs end up being.  His dishes sim­ply WORK, no mat­ter how out­landish some of the com­po­nents may sound.  Seafood bread pud­ding!  Go to the Cor­ner Room, do (I’ve said it before!).

Here’s what else we ate, and the restau­rants and chefs.  I would heartily rec­om­mend them ALL: Barbecoa (Jamie Oliver, pulled pork shoul­der, BBQ sauce with cole slaw), Pollen Street Social (Jason Ather­ton, avo­cado, crab, sweet­corn par­fait), Rhodes 24 (Gary Rhodes, white tomato soup), Whitechapel Gallery (Angela Hart­nett, crispy salt and pep­per squid with chilli and pars­ley oil), The Savoy Grill (shrimp, cele­riac and cucum­ber salad with romaine and a Cae­sar dress­ing), Maze (black pep­per squid), Asia de Cuba (Scot­tish salmon ceviche, with salted avo­cado helado, spicy coconut milk and bird’s eye chilli pep­pers), Coq d’Argent (Mikael Weiss, foie gras ter­rine with mush­room mousse, pear and gin­ger chut­ney), Le Gavroche (Michel Roux, Jr, smoked var salmon with cream cheese and chives and truf­fle dressing).

Deli­cious.

And then… I got a bad oys­ter.  One bad oys­ter.  It’s a lot worse than one bad apple, I can tell you that.  We got home, and after rav­ing some more about the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence we had had, Avery came home from school to hear it all told again, and I sud­denly real­ized I did not want to hear one more WORD about food.  Sev­eral hours of mis­ery, an unpleas­ant night.  The oys­ter was the only thing John didn’t share, so it was the cul­prit.  But I did not let it spoil my happy mem­o­ries of Taste of Lon­don.  It’s well worth plan­ning your June so you can go.

As for our cul­tural lives, we’d highly rec­om­mend “Posh,” a rather shock­ing social-commentary play about a men’s social club at Oxford.  It’s reput­edly based on a club to which David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris John­son belonged years ago.  I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s about 10 impos­si­bly beau­ti­ful and priv­i­leged young men tak­ing advan­tage of their priv­i­leges.  The best line?  “I started to go behind the vel­vet rope keep­ing peo­ple out of the din­ing room, and one of the National Trust ladies told me I couldn’t go back there, it was pri­vate.  And I said, ‘This is MY HOUSE!’”

And one last din­ner party before the sum­mer is upon us.  Our gor­geous friends John and Suzanne from next door, Avery’s friend Melanie and her beau­ti­ful mom Eliz­a­beth, and our bril­liant Sarah, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity tour guide of last year, now our firm friend… a won­der­ful time was had by all.

And for once in my life, I man­aged to make a homely, slow-cooked dish PRETTY.  I tried so hard!  Here’s slow-braised ox cheeks, cooked all after­noon in Stout and toma­toes and gar­lic and mush­rooms… then all I had to do was strain the sauce and add pretty veg­eta­bles and lux­u­ri­ous mash.  I was so pleased!

And it tasted deli­cious.  Rich, hearty, com­plex fla­vors.  Don’t be put off by “cheeks.”  Think of it as appre­ci­at­ing the whole animal.

As the month winds down, we start think­ing about “home.”  Avery smiled when I said this. “You mean you think of it as ‘home’?”  I guess I do.  No mat­ter that we live here for much more of the year, and that in any case my fam­ily are scat­tered all over Indi­ana, Iowa and Con­necti­cut.  Some­how our lit­tle farm­house, pro­tected by its white picket fence and tow­er­ing maple trees, is “home.”

Red Gate Farm.  It’s a place of blue skies and hot days (as opposed to the grey skies and sweater-requiring weather that is Lon­don “sum­mer”).  Of course I adore my adopted home­land and it has made me very wel­come.  But it’s beau­ti­ful to go “home.”  It’s corn on the cob, crab salad, steamed lob­sters, farmer’s mar­ket toma­toes, fresh warm peaches, new-laid eggs.  It’s “home friends,” whose lives we peek in on dur­ing the school year, whose kids get impos­si­bly huge in the inter­ven­ing months, and yet with the com­fort­ing same­ness of spirit we look for­ward to all winter.

It’s sprin­klers and tram­po­lines and ten­nis EVERY DAY and fried shrimp and lots of Amer­i­can flags and “Days of Our Lives” on the kitchen tele­vi­sion while I cook.  Records on the old-fashioned record player we’ll bor­row from Anne and David, play­ing Simon and Gar­funkel.  It’s ring­ing in a con­vent tower in upstate New York, instead of my lit­tle Eng­lish vil­lage church.

It’s change, I sup­pose.  A chance to leave behind the par­tic­u­lar joys and stresses of our Lon­don life for a few weeks, to take up the joys and stresses of Red Gate Farm.

Watch this space for tales of our Amer­i­can adventures.