a great good­bye pic­nic and play

Praise me, please: for once I’m telling you about a play JUST as it opens, so you can all go to see it. “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” a play so dat­ed it is time­less, is play­ing now at the Regen­t’s Park Open Air The­atre, and it is pure delight. A fab­u­lous mir­rored set (so clever, with all the dou­ble iden­ti­ties going on in the play), a curi­ous klesmer group that I’m not sure added any­thing to the evening, some hilar­i­ous mishaps with a gar­den full of wav­ing ros­es that each had to be “plant­ed” indi­vid­u­al­ly dur­ing the inter­val, and then were stepped on and tripped over in the sec­ond act! It was the first night, so we have to imag­ine they’ll work out the kinks in the com­ing days. And there were some trou­bles with bits of the floor not fit­ting prop­er­ly as the set was changed and hav­ing to be stuffed in by the admirably cool back­stage crew. “I don’t think you real­ly want to have your stage crew get applause,” Avery whis­pered. “They should be invis­i­ble, really.”

But this is all churl­ish com­men­tary on what was a tru­ly charm­ing and very fresh ren­di­tion of Avery’s absolute favorite play. The girl play­ing Ceci­ly was com­plete­ly adorable, and there is one scene between her and Alger­non that was a com­plete­ly orig­i­nal inter­pre­ta­tion involv­ing a giant doll­house: I won’t spoil it for you!

The trees waved, the sun set, the fire­flies and swal­lows cir­cled above us. As always, a beau­ti­ful night, and we were so lucky with the weath­er! Take along a pic­nic and have your­selves a gor­geous sum­mer evening.

Our pic­nic, eat­en in the set­ting sun on the grass of Regen­t’s Park on a funky lit­tle blue plaid rug was this: Gig­gly Pig Welsh Drag­on sausages with Maille Dijon mus­tard, Pave d’Affi­nois cheese, cor­ni­chons, pota­to sal­ad with cilantro, yogurt and red onion, egg sal­ad with cur­ry, Span­ish cher­ries and Eng­lish meringues for Avery, Ketel One vod­ka in my sil­ver flask, Fever Tree ton­ic: such a Euro­pean feast!

It did make me shake my head, aim­ing as we are today for Amer­i­ca and for Amer­i­can food: beef­steak toma­toes, basil, crab­meat, lob­ster from Maine, sweet­corn in all forms (just off the cob, scal­loped with cream and cheese, in sal­ads with black beans and red onions and sug­ar snap peas), baby back ribs, rock oys­ters for broil­ing with cheese and spinach, chick­en breast sal­ad with spinach and pine nuts…

By the time we arrive, the love­ly Amer­i­can Andy Rod­dick will or will not have trounced the arro­gant Roger Fed­er­er with his pre­ten­tions of gold­en robes (in his case, waist­coats, t‑shirts with gold-lined col­lars, sneak­ers with gold­en rack­ets rep­re­sent­ing the num­ber of times he’s won some­thing or oth­er). We’ll be in New Jer­sey in time for fire­works, for the first time in four years! There has always been some­thing a lit­tle… off, about spend­ing the Fourth of July with Avery in school and NO cel­e­bra­tions (fair enough).

I must just set down here what a fun­ny time I had at my pool recep­tion duty this week. Avery’s friend Mer­rie came by with her house­guest Jonathan, a 17-year-old boy, son of friends of her par­ents. He was so touch­ing, tee­ter­ing on the brink between child­hood and man­hood, smil­ing fond­ly on the “lit­tle” girls, shak­ing hands with me very charm­ing­ly, then start­ing vis­i­bly when he saw the life­guard, daugh­ter of one of my Lost Prop­er­ty moth­ers. “I met her at a PAR­TY last night!” he whis­pered in some mix­ture of excite­ment and dis­may. “Well, go and say hel­lo,” I encour­aged, “she’s a nice respon­si­ble girl and if you fall in, she’ll res­cue you. What are you doing in town with Mer­rie’s fam­i­ly, any­way?” “Oh, we don’t have a house right now, so they’re tak­ing us in,” he explained. Mer­rie and I said at the same time, “Don’t tell her that!” “Well, we do have a house in the South of France…” he hes­i­tat­ed. “Tell her that!” we chorused.

So he went in and they all swam, and he spent quite a bit of time on the life­guard’s bench, chat­ting up his prey. I could NOT believe that as a per­son just a year old­er than he is, I was ready to choose my life’s mate! And I did an awful­ly cred­itable job, to be sure. But still. Heavens.

They all came out, drip­ping and pulling on their going-home clothes. Mer­rie took one look at Jonathan, wear­ing a tow­el as a sort of sari, and said, “I’m not walk­ing home with you look­ing like THAT,” and he looked down. “What’s wrong, because I’m wear­ing a tow­el, you mean? Let go of your self-con­scious­ness, Mer!” he called after her as she stalked out of the build­ing. I said, “She can’t let go of it yet, she just got it, you know,” and he said, “True, true,” look­ing down at Amy, Mer­rie’s lit­tle 8‑year-old sis­ter. Amy chimed in, “I’m not self-con­scious!” “Yet,” I said.

Jonathan looked sud­den­ly quite old. “Would­n’t it be nice if they could stay that way,” he said. What a dear. The future has a brighter look than I thought, with boys like that com­ing up. If only I could put a sort of hold on him for Avery, in ten years’ time or so. Ten? Who am I kid­ding? It’s right around the cor­ner, with her teenage years loom­ing in just November.

Right, we’re off to Heathrow. Hap­py Fourth of July, every­one, and we’ll see you from Connecticut!