a month of adventures

I am hard put to explain what on earth has been occu­py­ing me for the last month!  Here it is, Octo­ber already, with Avery’s two-week half-term break com­ing along on Fri­day, when in some ways it feels we just stepped off the plane from our Amer­i­can sum­mer.  We have not been idle.

Of course I have been ring­ing!  I would nev­er have dreamed a year ago that I would be capa­ble of ring­ing at a wed­ding, but that’s where I found myself on Sat­ur­day after­noon.  As you see, it was a beau­ti­ful, sun­ny autumn day with blue skies and a fresh breeze in the ancient yew trees in the church­yard.  The bride was Sikh, the groom Eng­lish, the cer­e­mo­ny tra­di­tion­al with “I Vow to Thee My Coun­try” and “Jerusalem” being sung with gus­to.  We rang the bride in, scut­tled away to have cups of tea and gos­sip behind closed doors, then emerged again to ring her and her new hus­band out.  It was a heav­en­ly expe­ri­ence, full of excite­ment, team spir­it and pride.  We’ve been prac­tic­ing like crazy, with real aca­d­e­m­ic lessons com­plete with coloured pen­cils and markers.

Eleanor Roo­sevelt famous­ly said, “Do at least one thing every day that scares you.”  I have no prob­lem accom­plish­ing that!  Every time I hold the rope and hear the tre­ble ringer say, “Look to: tre­ble’s going, she’s gone,” I am filled with a com­bi­na­tion of fear and exul­ta­tion.  It cer­tain­ly keeps one on one’s toes!

The best thing to do to calm down after the extreme chal­lenge, the deep sense of accom­plish­ment, was to take a bike ride around the peace­ful vil­lage, breath­ing deeply of the beau­ti­ful autum­nal air.  How I love our lit­tle pond.

Every evening that we can, we three gath­er at home from our var­i­ous activ­i­ties — social work, the school Christ­mas Fair, Lost Prop­er­ty — and share a savoury din­ner, exchang­ing sto­ries of our day.  A new favorite is this elab­o­rate-look­ing dish, actu­al­ly quite sim­ple, and pure­ly delicious.

Pan-Fried Chick­en Stuffed with Pro­sciut­to, Moz­zarel­la and Spinach

(serves four)

4 big chick­en breast fillets

4 hand­fuls baby spinach

1 large ball buf­fa­lo mozzarella

8 slices prosciutto

1 dozen toothpicks

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp olive oil

sea salt and fresh black pepper

Slice each chick­en breast hor­i­zon­tal­ly, leav­ing one side intact.  Stuff with spinach, moz­zarel­la and pro­sciut­to, then fold the chick­en breast back togeth­er and secure with three tooth­picks each.  In a heavy fry­ing pan, melt the but­ter with the olive oil until it fin­ish­es sput­ter­ing, then place the chick­en in care­ful­ly, sprin­kling with salt and pep­per.  Cook with­out dis­turb­ing on one side for about 4 min­utes, then turn over and cook for anoth­er 4 min­utes, bast­ing with the hot but­ter and oil mix­ture.  Con­tin­ue to cook until you can see that the chick­en is no longer pink inside, and feels stiff to the touch, about 10 min­utes in total.

This dish is super-savoury, rich and pret­ty.  It’s per­fect served with steamed but­tered bas­mati rice, or mashed pota­toes.  Com­fort­ing and yet sophisticated.

Of course, we can’t be at home togeth­er every night.  We’ve been a the­atre-going with a vengeance.  Avery is tak­ing a dra­ma exam in June, one of the eleven great Eng­lish tra­di­tion­al “GCSE” exams after which stu­dents are legal­ly allowed to leave school, with “qual­i­fi­ca­tions.”  The upshot of a dra­ma GCSE is lots of evenings out see­ing plays in this city of ours which is burst­ing with such oppor­tu­ni­ties.  She has seen “Spring Awak­en­ing,” and “Hed­da Gabler,” and we as a fam­i­ly have seen “I Am A Cam­era,” the fizzy play by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood that led to the nov­el “Good­bye To Berlin” and final­ly the musi­cal “Cabaret.”  Avery adores any­thing to do with Berlin dur­ing WWII and the play was a delight, full of over-the-top performances.

Part of the fun of see­ing “I Am A Cam­era” was going to the South­wark Play­house, in the shad­ow of the new Shard Build­ing, around the cor­ner from Bor­ough Mar­ket and of course, just down the street from our new, crazy prop­er­ty.  So of course a vis­it to the Play­house means drop­ping in on our patch of net­tly dirt.  As we approached with our friends Mil­lie and Elspeth, we heard shat­ter­ing screams.  “That sounds like it’s com­ing from our prop­er­ty,” I said, and Avery turned to Mil­lie.  “Wel­come to my neigh­bor­hood.”  We approached with trep­i­da­tion, hop­ing we would­n’t find a mur­der being com­mit­ted behind the hoardings.

And this is what we found, in our front yard.

Yes, there were bungee jumpers, fling­ing them­selves from cages at the tops of two enor­mous cranes, with Lon­don Bridge in the background.

We were trans­fixed.  Jumper after jumper, screams fill­ing the air, we watched with amaze­ment and disbelief!

Well, that’s some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen in South­bury, Con­necti­cut!  We ambled away, exchang­ing views on how much we would have to be paid in order to bungee jump.  There isn’t enough mon­ey in the world for me!  That expe­ri­ence would take “do some­thing every day that scares you” to an unac­cept­able level.

We’ve been to see the incom­pa­ra­ble “Tim­on of Athens,” real­ly my favorite Shake­speare play (I won­der why it is so rarely staged).  Star­ring one of my favorite actors to see onstage, Simon Rus­sell Beale, it was a real tour de force, the most top­i­cal, con­tem­po­rary, hap­pen­ing-right-now play you can imag­ine.  A rich phil­an­thropist, much fet­ed by his syco­phan­tic friends, abrupt­ly aban­doned when his invest­ments go south, leav­ing him along, home­less, bit­ter.  Go if you can!  Although the poor man broke his fin­ger recent­ly dur­ing the sec­ond act!  But he’s back now.  As we drove away from the the­atre after the mati­nee per­for­mance, we saw him traips­ing along the pave­ment, look­ing exhaust­ed but sat­is­fied.  We honked our horn, to Avery’s undis­guised embar­rass­ment, and waved through the con­vert­ible roof at him.  “Thank you, we loved it!” we screeched.  “Let’s go back and get his auto­graph,” I sug­gest­ed breath­less­ly.  “Absolute­ly not!” Avery and her friend Sophie cho­rused.  Ah, youth, so eas­i­ly humiliated.

Autumn has come to our lit­tle back gar­den, although it’s noth­ing to write home about com­pared to the splen­dor that is doubt­less our Con­necti­cut home, across the pond.  One of the few com­pen­sa­tions for Avery’s even­tu­al­ly going off to uni­ver­si­ty will be the flex­i­bil­i­ty we have to go “home” for the fall foliage, some­thing I real­ly miss here in Lon­don.  The trees here are mut­ed glo­ry, but one can find love­ly ivy if one tries.  Here is the house adja­cent to St Nicholas, where I ring in Chiswick.

Are you a fan of David Sedaris?  I will try not to judge you harsh­ly if you say no, but tru­ly he is one of those writ­ers I would walk over hot coals for, just to hear him read aloud.  Of course, in real­i­ty, all one must do is buy a tick­et.  At the love­ly Cado­gan Hall in Chelsea, we set­tled into our sec­ond-row seats for a heav­en­ly 90 min­utes or so of laugh­ing out loud, watch­ing his wry, shy smile when we applaud­ed.  He is a genius.

“I pre­ferred my vil­lains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Drac­u­la rather than Franken­stein’s mon­ster, who ruined every­thing by hand­ing that peas­ant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drown­ing her a few min­utes lat­er, but, stil, you could­n’t look at him the same way again.” (When You Are Engulfed in Flames”)

How won­der­ful it would be to have his tal­ent for pok­ing fun at him­self, for send­ing up his insane fam­i­ly mem­bers, his painful child­hood, his mis­ad­ven­tures in love.  How won­der­ful to see the world through his eyes, with every mis­er­able or embar­rass­ing expe­ri­ence only fod­der for anoth­er fab­u­lous book.  “When I moved to Paris, I could­n’t fig­ure out the gen­ders of any of the nouns.  I was so afraid I’d call the pork ten­der­loin a ‘he’ when it was a ‘she’ that I took to buy­ing every­thing in mul­ti­ples, because the plur­al is so much eas­i­er.  I brought home my pair of pork ten­der­loins and placed them in the refrig­er­a­tor, next to the shelf on which resided my two DVD play­ers and my two irons.”

You just haven’t lived until you’ve heard David read aloud about the taxi­der­mied owl he bought for his boyfriend for Valen­tine’s Day.  If you ever get a chance to hear him, go.

Of course, life would­n’t be com­plete these days with­out our quo­ti­di­en allot­ment of fight­ing over the upcom­ing elec­tion.  It turns out that three peo­ple who actu­al­ly agree on almost every­thing polit­i­cal can still find some­thing to argue about, vir­tu­al­ly every evening at din­ner.  It’s get­ting tir­ing.  But we’ve vot­ed.  The absen­tee bal­lot was tremen­dous­ly impres­sive and exciting.

What will the upcom­ing month bring then, the next busy four weeks?  Well, tomor­row I will say good­bye to my lit­tle social-work fam­i­ly for the last time.  I am in com­plete denial about how this will feel.  I know it was the goal of my work — to help them, to accom­pa­ny them on their jour­ney from insta­bil­i­ty to sta­bil­i­ty, from tears to hap­pi­ness.  It is total­ly nor­mal to say good­bye.  But I don’t want to.

Then there will be Hal­loween, and Avery’s 16th birth­day.  Watch this space for more of our world, banal and thrilling in turns.