adven­tures in babysitting

Remem­ber that movie? I thought Elis­a­beth Shue was the liv­ing end. My good­ness, I’ve just read that some­one is remak­ing that movie. I find it very depress­ing when films from my child­hood are being remade. When is some­one going to remake me?

But I’m get­ting away from the point. I had a love­ly lunch out with my friend Dalia at Zoom in Maryle­bone, shiv­er­ing a bit from the front door that refused to stay shut, but great­ly enjoy­ing my sal­ad of chick­en liv­ers, avo­ca­do, creme fraiche and frisee, and chat­ting up a storm. She is what she described to me as a true Scor­pio, which gives me food for thought since Avery is as well: fiery, opin­ion­at­ed, stub­born and pas­sion­ate. It makes for very good lunch con­ver­sa­tion! She and her hus­band (who she casu­al­ly describes as a for­mer mod­el who once won a “James Dean looka­like” con­test, can you imag­ine? I’ve got to meet this guy) just came back from a hol­i­day in New York, which makes me slight­ly home­sick. But we’re head­ed there for Avery’s half-term break in Feb­ru­ary, which will be fun.

After lunch, I strolled over to school, and the rest of the after­noon turned into one of those sit­u­a­tions when good old Hilary’s “it takes a vil­lage” comes into play. We turned up at school, pet­ted some­body’s fer­ret on a lead, and packed Avery and Kimia into lit­tle Emmy, not easy to do with back­packs, PE kit bags, vio­lins, skates and skat­ing out­fits times two, but in time we were off. The girls took to the ice and up came Becky with her eldest, Ash­ley, plus Anna and Ellie, and Ellie’s play­date Ella. Got that? All were decked out, skates tied up, gloves pulled on, and even John and I got onto the ice. But truth be told, I hate to skate. I real­ly do. My ankles turn in, it’s cold, and I know it’s only a mat­ter of time before I fall and then I’m not only cold, but also wet. So I decid­ed to go keep Becky com­pa­ny look­ing after all the enor­mous piles of stuff that accom­pa­ny six girls. With­in min­utes Ash­ley was strug­gling off the ice, hold­ing her wrist, in tears of pain. “It’s not get­ting bet­ter, it’s get­ting worse,” she sobbed, and Becky told me that she had bro­ken that same wrist twice before, so there was def­i­nite­ly a been there, done that sort of feel­ing to the event. It was clear that a trip to some med­ical pro­fes­sion­al was in the off­ing, so amidst sev­er­al phone calls to the GP, a poten­tial ortho­pe­dist, Beck­y’s hus­band’s office to get him home ear­ly, Ash­ley brave­ly held onto her wrist and lis­tened to my lame attempts to enter­tain her.

In the end, an appoint­ment was secured at the doc­tor’s, plans were made for me to take Avery and Kimia home, and John to get Anna, Ellie and Ellie to their house in time to meet Beck­y’s hus­band, and give him the house keys. John and Becky fought over the mon­ey she tried to give him, and then poor Ash­ley trudged off with her moth­er, and the rest of the girls alter­nat­ed between teach­ing each oth­er com­plex skat­ing moves and com­mis­er­at­ing about their fall­en com­rade. Avery had her les­son with Nicky, but Lev­el 9 is still out there, not yet attain­able. Five girls were giv­en hot choco­late, crois­sants and French fries, count­less nap­kins dis­persed, skates adjust­ed, hair rebraid­ed, falls sym­pa­thised with, ketchup pack­ages opened, socks adjust­ed, tales of oth­er rink users’ iniq­ui­ties absorbed. Then it was down to five pairs of skates being removed, bags packed, coats on and out the door.

Avery and Kimia and I head­ed to La Car­i­catu­ra, a new restau­rant in our neigh­bor­hood, while John took the oth­er girls to Anna’s house, and I admit to a cer­tain ner­vous­ness when both girls in my care sim­ply put their heads on the table and fell silent. That’s Fri­day evening for you, in this world where they all work so hard all week. But food arrived, and John arrived, and every­one perked up con­sid­er­ably. The ser­vice was sim­ply ter­ri­ble, every­thing arriv­ing at dif­fer­ent times, pineap­ple juice instead of apple, piz­zas giv­en to the wrong peo­ple, my “vod­ka on ice” a scary tall glass of some­thing that tast­ed like sac­cha­rin, but the food was love­ly. So we think we’ll give them anoth­er try, maybe wait a bit to let them get their staff under con­trol. I had a deli­cious sal­ad of beef carpac­cio with total­ly fresh rock­et and huge shav­ings of parme­san, Avery had lasagne and Kimia and John each had a wood-oven piz­za, very thin crust, beau­ti­ful toma­to sauce, large fresh leaves of basil.

I can’t actu­al­ly remem­ber the last time I had both lunch and din­ner out! What lux­u­ry. Avery and Kimia recov­ered their ener­gy to the point of singing excerpts from “Joseph” all the way to St. John’s Wood, where we dropped Kimia at home and came home to col­lapse our­selves. And update: Ash­ley’s wrist was only sprained, not bro­ken, thank goodness.

Sat­ur­day we dis­cov­ered, alas, that as much as I adore it, Bor­ough Mar­ket is not for every­one. The trou­ble began when we decid­ed to dri­ve rather than take the tube, and we arrived to find that of course the mar­ket was mobbed and John and Avery (nev­er real­ly farm­ers’ mar­ket devo­tees under the best of cir­cum­stances) went off to park and meet me lat­er at Neal’s Yard. Well, I did some fruit and veg shop­ping, but when I final­ly met up with them they were in a joint foul humour. Car parked far away, too many peo­ple, and some­one jos­tled Avery and made her drop her last bite of cheese­cake. So I packed them off back home and stayed for anoth­er bliss­ful hour on my own! I real­ly don’t mind crowds, espe­cial­ly with inter­est­ing peo­ple to look at, but Avery was so far down that peo­ple just kept step­ping on her.

Can you believe, pur­ple brus­sels sprouts? I think I will sub­mit them to the same treat­ment as at Thanks­giv­ing, shred­ded and sauteed. Oh, and my sus­pi­cion that Cherie Blair’s recipe for sprouts would be heinous was jus­ti­fied: a nasty floury roux and lemon juice, glop­py and not good. Much bet­ter to keep it simple.

I sam­pled every­thing in sight! And came away with glo­ri­ous things. Deli­cious pep­pered smoked mack­er­el, bought from a man in a kilt (I find it tastes bet­ter that way) from Jol­ly’s Fish and Farm Pro­duce, a creamy Caer­philly cheese from Wales, and just lis­ten to the address: Gor­wydd Farm, Lland­dewi Bre­fi, Tre­garon, Ceredi­gion, Wales. It just has to taste good. A new pota­to, called the “Esti­ma,” from my favorite pota­to stand. I can’t say I can tell the dif­fer­ence among them all, but it’s fun to try them. And for tonight’s spaghet­ti with aspara­gus and ham, I bought two lus­cious gam­mon steaks from Sill­field Farm, from a man I wish I could have tak­en a pic­ture of: round, cheer­ful, sim­ply crazy slip­py teeth, the most gra­cious man­ner. “Any two in par­tic­u­lar take your fan­cy, my love?” I want Eng­land always to have a gen­er­ous num­ber of these men, but I don’t know if they make them any­more. Oh, I’ve been reread­ing Helen Hanff’s The Duchess of Blooms­bury Street, and while it’s noth­ing like as won­der­ful as 84, Char­ing Cross Road, it’s a love­ly mem­oir by some­one who may well rival me in my love of Lon­don, and all things Eng­lish. What an evoca­tive book, of a time when Lon­don was chang­ing so quick­ly, and it was so impor­tant to hang onto every­thing that made it Lon­don. I love what she says about Eng­lish mon­ey, and why every­one was so angry to change the sys­tem: “It has to do with the Eng­lish­man’s need to be dif­fer­ent. The dec­i­mal sys­tem is much sim­pler than the old ha’pen­ny-tup­pen­ny guinea ten­ner tan­ner sys­tem, but the old mon­ey was theirs; no oth­er coun­try had it and nobody else could under­stand it.” Can you imag­ine what these love­ly old Eng­lish peo­ple would think of the Euro­pean Union? I myself sim­ply hate the Euro and would pos­si­bly not have moved back to Lon­don had there been no pounds ster­ling. I’m such an old fogey.

Final­ly, what do you think of Avery’s crazy Rai­ha’s-birth­day hair­do? It’s a fun­ny thing for birth­days here: so many girls have hair-and-make­up par­ties where pro­fes­sion­al ladies come in and do them all up. We took her up to St. John’s Wood and dropped her at Rai­ha’s big, gor­geous dou­ble-front­ed brick house, and two hours lat­er Becky dropped her back to us with what you see here. And eye­lin­er! And mas­cara! Tat­toos! They all had a won­der­ful time. Such a fun­ny child: I came down into our bed­room last night to find her, bespec­ta­cled (or “bespeck­led” as some Mrs Mala­prop I know has said), perched on the end of our bed, clutch­ing a bowl of rasp­ber­ries, bananas, pears and blue­ber­ries, avid­ly fixed on “Top Gear,” sigh­ing, “It’s the Ham­ster!” when Richard Ham­monds arrived on set. A new series starts tonight, and I’m sure the stu­dio will be all agog to see him, fresh from his near-fatal acci­dent last sum­mer. She and her father will be in heaven…