a good film, a fab­u­lous high tea, and an insane­ly sim­ple recipe

Well, we have not been idle since our return from Paris. Avery has spent the bet­ter part of every after­noon at Pony Club, at Ross Nye Sta­bles. She, Ava and Anna have joined with what­ev­er oth­er sta­ble gulls are avail­able and have rid­den, cleaned tack, mucked out stalls, fluffed hay and gen­er­al­ly made them­selves use­ful in the way of small slaves. And then there are the post-Club play­dates, and the post-play­date sleep­overs. So all in all, John (who found a week of leisure to his lik­ing and so took anoth­er!) and I have been tool­ing around town, run­ning errands, fer­ry­ing chil­dren to and fro, and gen­er­al­ly hav­ing fun in a leisure­ly sort of way. We would rec­om­mend to you a new British film called “The His­to­ry Boys,” by Alan Ben­nett, direct­ed by the bril­liant Nicholas Hyt­ner, cre­ative Direc­tor of the Nation­al The­atre where he, SIGH, direct­ed my crush actor Matthew Mac­fadyen and his idol Michael Gam­bon in “Hen­ry V,” just a few unfe­lic­i­tous months before my arrival on these shores.

First “The His­to­ry Boys” began as a won­der­ful book, then a huge suc­cess in Lon­don’s West End and sub­se­quent­ly a huger hit on Broad­way, it has been made into a film. The sto­ry fol­lows the lives of a num­ber of awk­ward but quirk­i­ly intel­li­gent boys try­ing against all odds to get into Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, with no panache, no charm, no pol­ish, but an incred­i­ble grasp of his­to­ry. Now, you ask, could there be a more British sort of project? This film clear­ly comes out of the same cul­ture that spawned the won­der­ful tele­vi­sion pro­gramme “QI” which you sim­ply must see if it plays on BBC Amer­i­ca. Here’s what the offi­cial web­site says about “QI”:

Quite Inter­est­ing — or ‘QI’ to its friends — could loose­ly be described as a com­e­dy pan­el quiz. How­ev­er, none of the stel­lar line-up of come­di­ans is expect­ed to be able to answer any ques­tions, and if any­one ends up with a pos­i­tive score, they can be very hap­py with their per­for­mance. Points are award­ed for being inter­est­ing or fun­ny (and, very occa­sion­al­ly, right) but points are deduct­ed for answers which mere­ly repeat com­mon mis­con­cep­tions and urban myth. (Alan Davies has turned this aspect of the game into some­what of an art­form.) It’s okay to be wrong, but don’t be obvi­ous­ly, bor­ing­ly wrong. In this way, QI tries to rid the world of the flot­sam of non­sense and old wives’ tales that can build up in your mind. QI not only makes us look more close­ly at things, it encour­ages us to ques­tion all the received wis­dom we have car­ried with us since child­hood. Think of the pro­gram as a humor­ous cra­nial de-scaler.

It’s so much fun, in the way that the crazy “Balder­dash and Pif­fle” was last year (haven’t seen if there’s a new series this sea­son). British tele­vi­sion is per­fect if you like to watch peo­ple exer­cise wits much sharp­er than your own. The humor is just what the doc­tor ordered for the increas­ing­ly fast-mov­ing, mind-bend­ing­ly emp­ty cul­tur­al world we live in. OK, one giant step off soapbox.

Any­way, we real­ly enjoyed “The His­to­ry Boys.” There are some won­der­ful comedic scenes in school­boy French, some gor­geous scenic shots of Oxford both inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or. In my new screen­writ­ing mode, it was inter­est­ing to see what is essen­tial­ly an ensem­ble-cast film, and to try to decode who was even slight­ly the main char­ac­ter, what count­ed as plot and sub­plot. I’m about to watch “A Cock and Bull Sto­ry,” which I think will be more of the same. As Abra­ham Lin­coln alleged­ly said, “It’s the kind of thing you’ll like if you like that kind of thing,” an expres­sion that for some rea­son has always delight­ed Avery.

We end­ed up after the film at the St. Christo­pher’s Place out­post of Car­luc­cio’s, a small chain of restau­ran­t/deli/larder-ish shops that can be count­ed on for excel­lent house­made moz­zarel­la and pesto, if you defy my instruc­tions to make your own. I had a pret­ty good sage and spinach ravi­o­li, but John had the real deal: pump­kin risot­to. It did­n’t taste par­tic­u­lar­ly like pump­kin, which to my gen­er­al­ly anti-squash mind­set is a good thing, but it was a beau­ti­ful col­or and topped with a gen­er­ous spoon­ful of sauteed rose­mary and gar­lic. On a cold night, wrapped up in my hus­band’s enor­mous Shet­land sweater, it was a great dish for the out­door table.

Fri­day we spent the morn­ing with Keechie at the vet. She’s real­ly off her rock­er, so along we went with her in the soft-sided kit­ty prison slung over my shoul­der so I could look in on her, pupils enor­mous­ly dilat­ed with fear, poor dear. I mean, the cat’s afraid of the sound of the wash­ing machine door shut­ting, so you can imag­ine the effect that Lon­don traf­fic and con­struc­tion sites had on her. Actu­al­ly, she’s so insane that the stress lev­els were about the same with both expe­ri­ences. She’s now on Val­i­um. Seri­ous­ly. The vet explained quite solemn­ly that tor­toise­shell cats are that sen­si­tive, in pro­por­tion to the bright col­ors of their fur (I’m not mak­ing this up) and that at least she was­n’t fer­al. Well, OK, that seems like an extreme ver­sion of look­ing on the bright side, but what­ev­er. So after two attempts to stuff the pills down her throat by brute force, I have resort­ed to crush­ing them up and offer­ing them to her in a spoon­ful of pot­ted chick­en. Yes, in Eng­land there is such a thing as pot­ted chick­en, and let me tell you it makes her REAL pop­u­lar with her sib­lings. They’re all now try­ing to look anx­ious so as to get in on the goodies.

My reward was to have tea with my friend Twig­gy. Now, when I first met Twig­gy she was intro­duced to me as Trup­ti, and we had our day at Wim­ble­don togeth­er. Her hus­band Ed and John work togeth­er at Reuters, and so what start­ed out as a sort of busi­ness day out became the start of an email friend­ship between us, and sev­er­al scotched attempts to get togeth­er in per­son. We final­ly achieved it, at a tru­ly splen­did place called The Wolse­ley. I got dressed up in my new Paris out­fit and cute knee-length high-heeled boots and was dri­ven in style by John, tak­ing Avery and Anna ice-skat­ing (I know, he’s a saint). I was a bit ear­ly and so got to sit in the cen­tre of the gor­geous room, ceil­ing tow­er­ing over me, carved swirling wrought-iron scroll­work every­where, peo­ple look­ing like they were famous seat­ed all round. The peo­ple who did­n’t look famous looked either like they were about to sign on some dot­ted line or like they were worth a GREAT deal of mon­ey and had decid­ed to invite three of their most beau­ti­ful friends out to lunch. Rachel Hunter was there! And a shaved-head Ralph Fiennes, which unfor­tu­nate hair­do choice took away some of the fun of see­ing this erst­while crush of mine. Note to Matthew: don’t do it.

Twig­gy arrived short­ly and we ordered full-on after­noon tea. I have to go back some­time, how­ev­er, when I don’t have to eat any­thing sweet, because the savory menu looked fan­tas­tic: steak tartare (bet I could learn some­thing there), rack of lamb, all the usu­al sus­pects. But our tea was love­ly: fresh mint-leaf tea served in lit­tle fil­i­greed sil­ver and glass cups, per­fect sand­wich­es of the usu­al vari­ety (ham and cheese, egg may­on­naise, cucum­ber), but the added attrac­tion of a fine­ly chopped cel­ery and soft cheese on a gold­en sun­dried-toma­to bread. Then of course scones and Devon­shire cream and straw­ber­ry jam (our wait­er got very con­cerned that our scones had cooled as we chat­ted, so he marched them away and came back with fresh). Amaz­ing. And Twig­gy made a spe­cial request for her favorite cock­tail, served to her once in Glouces­ter­shire and nev­er forgotten:

The Cow­ley Cooler

1 shot Amaretto
equal parts fresh orange juice and cran­ber­ry juice
a gen­er­ous squeeze of lime juice

Serve over lots of ice in a tall glass, and gar­nish with a twist of lime peel.

It was so refresh­ing, and this from a girl who was taught near­ly 25 years ago that a real drink con­sists of only two ingre­di­ents, and one of them is ice. We chat­ted and chat­ted, cov­er­ing her tra­vails with her new house, locat­ed under Tow­er Bridge, my two writ­ing class­es, her plans for Diwali, the Hin­du Fes­ti­val of Lights and New Year, to be cel­e­brat­ed this week­end. “It’s so nice in this day and age to have a fes­ti­val, and in fact a reli­gion, that isn’t found­ed on con­quer­ing any­one or killing any­one or sac­ri­fic­ing or pun­ish­ing any­one,” she said earnest­ly. “It’s all just a cel­e­bra­tion.” I can sec­ond that. She is such a calm, peace­ful per­son obvi­ous­ly very com­fort­able with her­self and her life, that is was a plea­sure to sit in her com­pa­ny and talk over things hap­pen­ing in our lives and our fam­i­lies. Her soap box? Fresh juic­ing. I can tell I’m ripe for the pick­ing on this sub­ject, because while I get ful­ly half my calo­ries per day in one kind of juice or anoth­er, she has con­vinced me that all the nutri­ents flee the liq­uid with­in three min­utes of being juiced. So I’m hot on the trail. As is usu­al with my food obses­sions, while they don’t always last long, in the mean­time my fam­i­ly will be sub­ject­ed doubt­less to every known sub­stance in liq­uid form. I’ll try to stick to non-meat prod­ucts, for their sake. Duck juice? I don’t think so.

Among Twig­gy’s oth­er con­ta­gious enthu­si­asms (she’s that sort of per­son, in her tiny doll-like beau­ty) is the pho­tog­ra­phy of Yann-Arthus Bertrand. Not being much of a pho­tog­ra­phy fan, this man’s amaz­ing work had com­plete­ly passed me by, and I’m not still sure if I would ever buy a piece, but I can see the appeal: he pho­tographs the earth from the air. Both nat­ur­al sites and cities come under the lens. I’ve post­ed this, one of his best-known images, of a heart-shaped crop occur­ring in nature. Quite inter­est­ing, and worth know­ing more about, clearly.

I float­ed home past the Ritz, through Berke­ley Square crammed with home-going busines peo­ple glued to their mobile phones, and felt very very lucky to have a friend as refresh­ing as Twig­gy, not to men­tion cool enough to get the best table at the Wolse­ley. At home it tran­spired that Avery had achieved her Lev­el 7 Skat­ing Badge! It’s amaz­ing what just a few pri­vate lessons with Nicky have done for her skills. Good on you, Avery. So I dili­gent­ly sewed it to her PE bag which is now begin­ning to look quite like an embroi­dery project. Anna had come home with her to spend the night and although I was full of tea sand­wich­es and amaret­to I nev­er­the­less man­aged to pro­duce food for the hungry.

Yes­ter­day found me at my “cre­at­ing fic­tion” class, shak­ing in my boots and read­ing aloud. I’m hap­py to say it went well! I could have writ­ten the respons­es myself, because I knew it already and they all said essen­tial­ly the same thing: enter­tain­ing, but where’s the plot? I have a plot, actu­al­ly, but every­one was unan­i­mous in say­ing that it needs to rear its ugly head much soon­er, because while they were all lulled hap­pi­ly into lis­ten­ing to all my dia­logue and descrip­tions of places, peo­ple and things, at some point their protest­ing intel­li­gence said, “Wait. Where’s the plot?” So I can take that on board and improve it. What a relief to have it over! Today is a nasty, rainy day, which did­n’t stop me from hound­ing Avery and John into tak­ing me to the farmer’s mar­ket. I came home with ridicu­lous­ly sweet and juicy British cher­ry toma­toes, gor­geous beet­root, a top­side beef roast for tonight, a new kind of apple juice called “Worces­ter and Bram­ley”, some unusu­al­ly dark and dense lit­tle cucum­bers, and a crusty cia­bat­ta. Once at home I shook myself like a dog and made:

Hum­mous
(serves four as an appe­tiz­er with toast­ed bread and crudites)

1 410-gram [soup size] can chick peas (also known as gar­ban­zo beans)
1/2 cup tahi­ni (sesame paste, in for­eign or Mid­dle East­ern sec­tion of shops)
3 whole cloves garlic
juice of 1 lemon
salt to taste
1 cup olive oil, maybe more

Sim­ply put all this in the Cuisi­nart and turn it on, puls­ing occa­sion­al­ly and scrap­ing the chick peas away from the sides. Then, if you want to, pour some more olive oil on the top and leave it. The fla­vors will improve. Go blog or give your cat a Val­i­um or fold laun­dry. But you may not be able to resist dip­ping in right away. Can you imag­ine some­thing so good for you could be so cheap and so quick to make? If you like it thick, use less olive oil, if you like it run­nier, add more. Could it be easier?

Before I go watch my film, I have to tell you what we over­heard in the restau­rant at din­ner last night, although to pre­serve what­ev­er clien­tele the place has, I will with­hold its name. Not good Indi­an food. Any­way, this fel­low over my shoul­der was bemoan­ing the char­ac­ter of the French peo­ple, I know not why, and this is what he said: “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the Frogs: they don’t even have a prop­er word for ‘entre­pre­neur.’ ” Now THAT man will not be appear­ing on “QI” any time soon.