a thou­sand com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent rea­sons why I love this city

But first, before I tell you about any of my adven­tures, much less the most sub­lime and effort­less chick­en dish I invent­ed this week, I must rec­om­mend a book to you: for any­one who loves Eng­land, whether a native or a vis­i­tor, Sarah Lyal­l’s AngloFiles is a must-read. She is the Lon­don cor­re­spon­dent for the New York Times (lucky lady!) and her obser­va­tions are hilar­i­ous, rang­ing from what the dif­fer­ent class­es call a ladies’ room to the aris­toc­ra­cy’s pen­chant for names that are pro­nounced with no rela­tion to how they’re spelled. You’ll love it. I haven’t got to any bits about food yet, but I’m sure I will.

She makes me envi­ous, frankly. What fun to have a sort of JUS­TI­FIED curios­i­ty about every­thing around her, and an author­i­ta­tive stance from which to state her opin­ions! And she has opin­ions. It makes me won­der how her British friends feel about talk­ing to her, but then she can often open­ly say she’s research­ing a piece. Well, hey, could­n’t I say the same? Research­ing for what? Well, my own edu­ca­tion, I sup­pose. Peo­ple are fun­ny about being observed, ana­lyzed and described, though, and I’d say the British are more fun­ny about it than Amer­i­cans, in gen­er­al. I’m being much more open with my new friends about writ­ing my “mem­oir cook­book,” and telling them pret­ty much frankly that every­thing is mate­r­i­al! It was fun­ny: upon leav­ing the school class “cof­fee morn­ing” (a dread­ful time of day for me to get to know peo­ple, I must con­fess, 8:30 a.m.), I left ear­ly to get to my first writ­ing class, and sev­er­al peo­ple said, “Oh, are you writ­ing about us?” Maybe being total­ly open about it will keep me out of trouble.

Devot­ing more and more of my time to writ­ing is mak­ing me much more com­fort­able with telling peo­ple I am a writer. My friend Vin­cent insists on intro­duc­ing me as an “author,” which while strict­ly speak­ing true, might be a bit mis­lead­ing. Hav­ing writ­ten count­less words about art and art his­to­ry does­n’t real­ly have much to do with my cur­rent endeav­ors, which are some­where between Dr John­son and Mrs Beeton!

Can I digress and report the con­ver­sa­tion I just had with the sec­re­tary of our local ten­nis courts? I rang them up to book a court.

“Yes, please, could I book a ten­nis court for 11 a.m. tomor­row, Saturday?”
“What is your mem­ber­ship num­ber?” [fair enough]
I gave it.
“What day did you want?” [had­n’t I just said?]
“Tomor­row, please.”
“The Saturday?”
Yes, please!”
“And what did you want to book for?”
“A ten­nis court!”
“Did you know what time you wanted?”
“Eleven a.m.!”
“And that was to play ten­nis, was it?”

Too fun­ny. We’re booked any­way, finally.

We’ve had our first writ­ing class with the new, small­er, pri­vate­ly arranged group, and it’s going to be very good. I sub­mit­ted my cook­book chap­ter on “Vichys­soise,” and it went down very well, with some extreme­ly help­ful sug­ges­tions as to where it could be expand­ed. The sub­ject came up of recur­ring char­ac­ters: did I want to make sure that the peo­ple who would reap­pear were ful­ly described, tan­ta­liz­ing­ly set out? So I must first check with every­one to make sure it’s all right that I men­tion them, and their recipes, if that’s part of the story.

Today is Fri­day, so it must be time to take Avery skat­ing. Her old friend Jamie has been kind enough (well, her moth­er has!) to dri­ve us each week, which makes a huge dif­fer­ence as I don’t hon­est­ly think we could get all the way there in time for the 5 p.m. les­son. I have such a love-hate rela­tion­ship with that skat­ing rink. On the one hand, it is almost unbear­ably sweet to see the two of them, so sophis­ti­cat­ed in some ways, and grow­ing up so fast, doing their lit­tle jumps and turns. On the oth­er hand… I hate that place. It’s loud, it smells hor­ri­bly of the var­i­ous nox­ious items passed off as comestibles (a war­ring meld of Bel­gian waf­fles, hot dogs, piz­za and cof­fee, just awful). The chil­dren push and shove, the acoustics are mind-bend­ing­ly uncom­fort­able, and both lit­tle girls have devel­oped an atti­tude, unique to the skat­ing rink, that seems to imply that we moth­ers are mere repos­i­to­ries for all their clob­ber, so I live in fear that I will leave behind a back­pack, leg warm­ers, train­ers, eye­glass­es, not to men­tion my own pal­try items. Ah well, we’re due for a break: their beloved teacher Nicky has got her­self a two-week skat­ing job in Amer­i­ca! Oh joy.

Well, enough whing­ing. My point was to tell you about what makes liv­ing here so won­der­ful. But my first nice sto­ry could hap­pen any­where: Sat­ur­day I spent in one of my favorite ways: cook­ing all day long for our first real­ly big din­ner par­ty in our new house! We decid­ed to include every­one who had showed us hos­pi­tal­i­ty in our new neigh­bor­hood, and then add a few more for good mea­sure. The guest list was short­ened by the non-appear­ance of the teenage mem­bers of these fam­i­lies. One moth­er explained to me, “Only our 11-year-old will be join­ing us; the old­er chil­dren will be out drink­ing, smok­ing and hav­ing sex.” And there was only a sug­ges­tion of a laugh. I don’t want to face the teenage years! Any­way, the din­ner was a great suc­cess: ten adults and just Avery and her lit­tle friend Emi­ly. But they were enough to enter­tain each oth­er: they com­plete­ly ter­ri­fied poor Keechie by run­ning up and down the five flights of stairs, claim­ing to see ghosts, to hear mys­te­ri­ous, unex­plained wail­ing, to expe­ri­ence lights turn­ing them­selves off! Final­ly they set­tled down to edit Avery’s mag­num opus, “The Adven­tures of Jazzy.” She is deter­mined to write a real book this time (her draw­ers are filled with the pages of count­less high­ly illus­trat­ed but extreme­ly brief ear­li­er attempts).

We ate every­thing in sight: grilled salmon mar­i­nat­ed in lime juice, gar­lic, olive oil and Fox Point sea­son­ing (a love­ly blend of shal­lot, chive and some oth­er mys­te­ri­ous fla­vors from Pen­zeys), can­nelli­ni beans in a sort of con­fit with olive oil, rose­mary, toast­ed bread­crumbs and parme­san, to die for. And toma­to-moz­zarel­la tow­ers with toast­ed pinenuts and lemon zest. My neigh­bor two doors down brought, at my request, her famous choco­late brown­ies. And the wine! Not being a wine drinker myself I was in a posi­tion to note with sat­is­fac­tion that there were MANY emp­ty bot­tles by the end of the night, and that did not come, dear read­ers, until 12:30 a.m. Yes, even the girls were up until that hour. The British are like the French when it comes to din­ner par­ties, as far as I can see: every­one comes pre­pared to have a good time and to let their hair down. A fab­u­lous, heart-warm­ing evening that real­ly cements my feel­ings that our new neigh­bor­hood is quite wonderful.

And then it was Horse­man’s Sun­day! Anoth­er sun­ny Sep­tem­ber Sun­day, anoth­er bless­ing cer­e­mo­ny. This year the vic­ar seemed mar­gin­al­ly less ter­ri­fied on the back of the trusty steed cho­sen for his trans­port, although he nev­er looks as if he’s hav­ing a good time. We trooped through the streets fol­low­ing the mas­sive queue of hors­es, watched as they were indi­vid­u­al­ly blessed, and then… I start­ed to sneeze. And I real­ly have not stopped. That’s some­thing not to love about Lon­don in the autumn. Real­ly, real­ly (or as my new friend Elspeth says, “rul­ly, rul­ly,” in the most plum­my tones you can imag­ine) mis­er­able. I sim­ply could not stop, and the anti­his­t­a­mine I had thought­ful­ly brought along made not a dent. How­ev­er, our social life stops for no aller­gies, so lunchtime found me at an out­door table at Angelus, adja­cent to the sta­ble mews, with Vin­cent, Peter and John, for a lunch of unri­valled deli­cious­ness. Of COURSE the foie gras creme brulee, quite pos­si­bly my favorite food ever. And then I had a gor­geous­ly pre­sent­ed fil­let of Dover sole wrapped around spinach leaves, stuffed with a lob­ster-scal­lop mousse and sur­round­ed by lit­tle points of sug­ar snap peas and hari­cots verts. Of course I rave about this Lon­don restau­rant when in point of fact I could prob­a­bly get the same meal on every street in Paris. Nev­er­the­less, it was an after­noon to savor: won­der­ful food, best friends, great con­ver­sa­tion rang­ing from pho­tog­ra­phy (of course, with John and Vin­cent there), to Pete’s laser eye surgery… now I’m long­ing to do it myself.

Final­ly, how­ev­er, we had to admit that the after­noon was get­ting on and we need­ed to put in an appear­ance at the annu­al post-bless­ing gymkhana, an event of (like skat­ing) great sweet­ness, but also stun­ning bore­dom. And added to that mix, the inevitable sneez­ing for me. Avery rode around and around on Bar­rie, and then Enig­ma, the very first of the autumn leaves in the park fell and made lit­tle pools of col­or. And of course I got no cred­it with my child for show­ing up, only blame that I missed her on the most impor­tant pony, or the most impor­tant game, or some­thing! Just my luck, really.

Mon­day I was reward­ed by doing one of my very favorite things: food shop­ping, and not alone! My friend Janet, vis­it­ing from Los Ange­les, is the sin­gle most knowl­edge­able per­son about eth­nic ingre­di­ents that I have ever met. Our Chi­na­town adven­ture had giv­en us an appetite for more wan­der­ings, so we met up in a sub­lime (but unas­sum­ing, don’t be fooled) Per­sian super­mar­ket in North End Road, UR Super­mar­ket. Num­ber­less brands of beans, lentils, oth­er puls­es, many, many sorts of yogurt, sauces for every pur­pose you can imag­ine and a lot you can­not, spices of every descrip­tion. And per­haps the best of all: a tru­ly won­der­ful butch­er counter with a love­ly rotund lit­tle man who greet­ed me in French! And sold me a dozen of the best-look­ing lam­b­chops you can imag­ine. When I got home I dis­cov­ered that he had thrown in a pile of what looked at first glance like worth­less bones, but grilled with a lit­tle salt and pep­per, they proved of course to be ribs. Delicious.

Final­ly we repaired to a South Indi­an veg­e­tar­i­an restau­rant in Drum­mond Street near Euston Sta­tion and had my first bhel-poori (a fas­ci­nat­ing cold dish with tiny noo­dles, pota­toes, turmer­ic, car­rots and puffed rice!) and a bit of Janet’s dhosa, which was an enor­mous fold­ed pan­cake-like thing stuffed with pota­toes crushed with spices. A bit bland, but inter­est­ing­ly nov­el. I myself went for the buf­fet and had chick­peas in every guise you can imag­ine, pop­pad­ums and deep-fried cau­li­flower and cour­gettes. most­ly it was heav­en to sit and chat, about pol­i­tics, hus­bands, cook­ing, cats (she is crazy about my Tacy, you might remem­ber). Girl­friends — I’ve said it before — are the staff of life, an absolute neces­si­ty. And here is the kind of per­son Janet is: we had not­ed that the wait staff were, how to put it, unwel­com­ing in a fair­ly amus­ing but off­putting way. Her method of deal­ing with this was to ask, “Are you from Bangladesh?” when our wait­er came to col­lect our plates. He stopped in aston­ish­ment. “Yes, I am.” “Well, I love Bangladesh. Are you from [insert name of town I did not know]?” “Yes! Have you been there?” Long dis­cus­sion ensued of the local gas­works and local cus­toms, and all was well. He beamed at us, bow­ing us out, and Janet said, “That always works. Near­ly all wait­ers in Indi­an restau­rants are from Bangladesh, and since I’ve been there, it breaks the ice.”

That after­noon I ful­filled a rash promise to Avery and took her to that mec­ca of sweet things, Cyber­can­dy in Gar­rick Street. The ground floor is sim­ply filled to the gills with every sort of for­eign (and a few Eng­lish) can­dy you have ever heard of. Super-expen­sive Amer­i­can brands, every type of Hel­lo Kit­ty dis­penser that exists, Dan­ish things and weird Japan­ese jel­lies in fla­vors like lychee and cucum­ber. She stocked up! Then we head­ed to the near­by Water­stone’s where she dis­cov­ered to her cha­grin that her lat­est obses­sion, the “Artemis Fowl” books, is not due for anoth­er vol­ume in the series for a long time, alas. She sim­ply devours them, thanks to our dear friend Olimpia who gave her the lat­est one this sum­mer and then she worked her way up to it once we got home. I must say, our local library is won­der­ful, with a HUGE audio­book sec­tion, to my delight!

Now, Tues­day was a real adven­ture for us, and pret­ty spon­ta­neous, for me. Just the night before, I got an email from my film-the­atre friend Sue, telling me about a read­ing fea­tur­ing one of my favorite new British actors, Ben Whishaw. So young, so vul­ner­a­ble, so tal­ent­ed! He plays Sebas­t­ian Fly­te in the new “Brideshead Revis­it­ed,” which I man­aged to miss in the US and will open here next week. So off we went, right after school, rushed to the Roy­al Court The­atre in Sloane Square, and oh! It was just spec­tac­u­lar. If you can get tick­ets for any of the remain­ing “read­ings” to cel­e­brate the 70th birth­day of play­wright Caryl Churchill, do so. Wal­lace Shawn and Miran­da Richard­son were also part of the cast, and it seemed unbe­liev­able to me when Sue said after­ward that they rehearse for a day and a half ONLY! Avery was the only child there, but it was­n’t inap­pro­pri­ate. What amused me was that the whole under­ly­ing theme of the play, “Ice Cream,” was the dif­fer­ent ways of Amer­i­cans and British. And she under­stood every­thing! She had to explain a cou­ple of the jokes to me because they were things only a British per­son found fun­ny. I am con­stant­ly amazed at the things she knows: why, for exam­ple, does she know what a “shrink” is? Where could she pos­si­bly have come across that notion? Well, we had a superb, sim­ply superb time. At the end, the actors applaud­ed US! Such a joy, and for twelve pounds apiece. Scarce­ly more than a film.

I have con­quered “Lost Prop­er­ty”! I was a lit­tle ner­vous to be all on my own last week, in charge of the whole set of col­or-cod­ed keys, impor­tant note­books, tins of the rul­ly, rul­ly valu­able stuff like an iPod, a mobile phone, a set of house­keys! Oh dear. The girls trooped in and out, some to retrieve actu­al appar­el they had left some­where, and some to shop at the rack of unnamed (as in, no name tape!) cloth­ing. One girl came in and said sheep­ish­ly, “I basi­cal­ly leave every­thing I have some­where, so I have to come in here every day.” I got to see Avery, too, wait­ing for her friends after her deli­cious lunch of rump steak with por­to­bel­lo mush­rooms, AND a choco­late sponge. I can’t tell you what a dif­fer­ence it makes in her, to eat a prop­er meal in the mid­dle of the day. Heav­en­ly to see her, in her own envi­ron­ment, and look­ing so hap­py, too. Although, I must say, the dread­ed acronym “GCSE” has entered her vocab­u­lary, at least two years before I planned to begin think­ing about them! I have for­bid­den her to start obsess­ing. Yet. I must say, the teach­ers are tremen­dous­ly cre­ative with their home­work, and it helps. For exam­ple, this week her piano teacher set her to the task of mak­ing as many words as she could out of the let­ters of the scale! And then, even cool­er, to PLAY the words on the piano. “Mum­my, here is what ‘cab­bage’ sounds like!” she said glee­ful­ly. I cheat­ed and gave her “accede.” Ah well, a lit­tle help now and then…

I have to tell you how dumb I am: with all this dread­ed cred­it crunch reportage in all the news­pa­pers, every time I see the word “Dar­ling” I won­der for a moment who on earth they’re address­ing! Only to remem­ber that Alis­tair Dar­ling is the Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer. I real­ly am dim at times.

Last­ly, in my paean to life in Lon­don, last night Sue and I met up at the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Art in the Mall for… “Spooks: Behind the Scenes.” It was SUCH good fun! The star-stud­ded pan­el includ­ed my for­mer crush (yes, sor­ry, for­mer: now he’s just a guy, sad­ly) Matthew Mac­fadyen, costar Miran­da Rai­son, two for­mer direc­tors, the best writer of the best episodes Howard Bren­ton, just a superb pan­el. There were stun­ning clips (mas­sive­ly impres­sive on the giant screen when I’ve ever only seen them on tel­ly or a com­put­er screen), a Q and A. One hilar­i­ous sto­ry stands out: Matthew explained that in one episode, he had to dial a phone on the wall of a house, and to make it real­is­tic, he dialed in his own mobile num­ber. Some months lat­er, his phone rang. “Is that you?” “Who is this?” “Is that Tom Quinn [the char­ac­ter!]?” “No, it’s not.” “I mean, is that Matthew Mac­fadyen?” “Yes, how did you get my num­ber?” “Well, if you slow down the tape on last night’s episode, it’s easy!”

Laugh­ter. He con­tin­ued, “So I asked the guy if he was a nut­ter and I’d have to change my num­ber, and he said no, no need.” And a guy in the audi­ence raised his hand and said. “That was me.” Well, he’ll HAVE to change his num­ber now, after announc­ing the scheme to a packed audience!

Right, the skat­ing rink beck­ons, poor me. But first, the next time you find your­self in need of a din­ner that cooks itself, while you’re off… watch­ing your child skate per­haps, give this dish a try:

Slow Braised Chick­en With Sour Cream, Toma­toes and Brandy
(serves 4 easily)

1 tbsp butter
1 bunch fresh thyme
1 medi­um roast­ing chicken
1 onion, rough­ly sliced
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 cans whole tomatoes
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup good brandy
salt and pepper

But­ter the bot­tom and sides of a heavy pot with a lid and lay half the bunch of thyme on the bot­tom. Put the chick­en BREAST-SIDE DOWN on the thyme. Scat­ter the onion and gar­lic around the chick­en. Now, crush the toma­toes by hand onto a bowl and add the sour cream and brandy. Mix well. Pour over the chick­en and salt and pep­per the whole lot. Put the lid on tight­ly and braise in a very slow oven, 100 degrees cel­sius or 200 degrees fahren­heit, for at least three hours. You will find that the sauce is rather fat­ty on top when you take off the lid, so in serv­ing, sim­ply reach your ladle down under the sur­face for the less fat­ty bits. The fat won’t hurt you, but it looks nicer if you can leave the fat behind. I think the fat issue could be dis­solved if you skinned the chick­en pri­or to cook­ing, but I wor­ry that it could dry out. I’d rather a bit of fat.

When you get home, the aro­ma of this dish, cook­ing itself with­out any help from you, will make your heart sing. All that’s required is that you boil a few pota­toes and mash them, and saute a pack­age of ten­der­stem broc­coli. Per­fect. And while it’s some­thing I love about liv­ing in Lon­don, it’s also some­thing you can love about liv­ing where YOU do.