exam­i­na­tion nerves set­ting in

And I’m not even the one sit­ting the exam! It’s all an enor­mous cul­tur­al divide for which I’m thor­ough­ly unpre­pared. For one thing, where I come from you “take” an exam. Where Avery comes from “one sits” an exam. Luck­i­ly, she’s per­fect­ly pre­pared. It’s I who needs a refresh­er course.

I sat down at my desk this morn­ing know­ing I had one more appli­ca­tion to fill out for Avery’s exam sched­ule in Jan­u­ary. The fifth choice among five, so I was not feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly ner­vous, but nev­er­the­less a dead­line is a dead­line, so I filled out the form. Until I got to the line, “Please indi­cate at which school your daugh­ter will be sit­ting this exam.” Because you see, it would be too easy for the child just to turn up at each school for each exam. No, in the attempt to make things sim­pler (!) the North Lon­don Inde­pen­dent Girls’ Schools’ Con­sor­tium (got that?) divid­ed all the schools into two groups, clev­er­ly called Group 1 and Group 2, and the girls have to sit the exam for each group just once, and then all the schools in that group to which she’s apply­ing look at those results. The schools all assure the par­ents that it makes NO DIF­FER­ENCE where the child sits the exam, in terms of how the oth­er schools where she did­n’t sit it view her results. The fer­vor with which the schools express this makes me think per­verse­ly that a child has no chance of get­ting into a school if she did­n’t sit the exam there.

Plus, of course, Avery’s apply­ing to one school that does­n’t par­tic­i­pate in either Group 1 or Group 2, so it has its OWN dead­ly exam. Any­way, there I was, fill­ing the Unde­sir­able School Form, and I sud­den­ly could­n’t remem­ber where I had said she would be sit­ting that exam. So up comes the phone and I call one of the oth­er schools in the group that she’s apply­ing to, to con­firm that she’s sit­ting it there. “I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry, Mrs Fred­er­ick­son, but the paper­work for your daugh­ter’s exam con­fir­ma­tion seems to have been lost in that postal strike in Octo­ber. We have no record of her sit­ting the exam here.”

Major pan­ic! But she could tell, because she kind­ly said, “Don’t pan­ic, I will mere­ly put anoth­er set of papers into the post this evening and you may turn them around as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.” As kind as this was, how­ev­er, it mere­ly put me in a swivet of nerves about the state of her “paper­work” at the oth­er schools. So I end­ed up spend­ing the entire morn­ing at my desk call­ing each school, stam­mer­ing out my dumb ques­tion, get­ting peo­ple’s voice mail, leav­ing mes­sages. Gen­er­al­ly flum­mox­ing myself! I feel cer­tain that the admin­is­tra­tors who took my calls have now ticked the box “loony incom­pe­tent mum” next to Avery’s name. Sor­ry, dear.

Oth­er than school jit­ters, it has been qui­et around here. Vague thoughts of Christ­mas shop­ping (sure­ly I can’t give every­one only books, can I?), plan­ning our return to Con­necti­cut in just three weeks (can that be? where has this autumn gone?). Yes­ter­day was great­ly enlivened by the arrival of a belat­ed (anoth­er casu­al­ty of the postal strike?) birth­day present from Jill and Joel and Jane, quite the most elab­o­rate and delight­ful pen­cil case known to man. Do you have a lit­tle pony-mad girl for whom you need a gift sure to please? Try luvponies, with the nicest staff you’ll ever speak to (if the present gets lost in the post), tons of choic­es and gen­er­al­ly the mag­ic lan­guage that I don’t speak but my horse-crazy daugh­ter does.

Thanks, guys, for lift­ing the spir­its of your niece who suf­fered might­i­ly over not get­ting cho­sen to sing the solo of “Once in Roy­al David’s City” (warn­ing! this link plays delight­ful music, so don’t click it at 3 a.m. with your sleep­ing baby next to you) at the Christ­mas car­ol con­cert next month. She was in ter­ri­ble spir­its at school pick­up, and heaved a huge sigh over hav­ing to do her home­work, so when I saw her slumped over my desk with hor­ri­ble maths prob­lems, it was but the work of a moment to present the excit­ing pack­age and watch her light up! Home­work is much more pleas­ant when done with a pink pen­cil drawn all over with ponies, manes fly­ing in some dream land­scape. Total­ly turned her mood around! And the next thing we knew she was singing the wretched Christ­mas song all over again, her pique for­got­ten. Would that we adults could spring back from dis­ap­point­ment with such aplomb! It’s prob­a­bly worth not­ing: keep a poten­tial­ly mind-blow­ing gift aside for just such an occasion.

Mon­day night was enlivened by the arrival my new friend Lay­la with her cam­era, intent on tak­ing some pho­tographs of food, both ingre­di­ents and cook­ing action. She’s Dalia’s sis­ter, my dra­mat­ic and live­ly friend of writ­ing class­es past and present. So Dalia came along as well at din­ner time, bring­ing her gor­geous, sweet and very Irish hus­band Kevin (he could say absolute­ly any­thing in that accent and I would be at his feet, very imprac­ti­cal in dai­ly life but a lot of fun as a din­ner guest). Lay­la is pos­si­bly the most easy­go­ing per­son I have ever met: she meets life head-on with enthu­si­asm and ener­gy, but refus­es to let any annoy­ing details get her down. Bul­lies at her child­hood board­ing school? Could­n’t be both­ered to notice them too much. “Years lat­er they want­ed to be friends, and I could see that noth­ing had changed! They were still the same peo­ple, so I just got on with it.”

Avery was intrigued by this approach to school dra­ma, and lis­tened with rapt atten­tion to all Lay­la’s and Dali­a’s tales. As well as being fun to have around, I have to con­fess that those two girls are the most beau­ti­ful crea­tures! Long, dark, dra­mat­ic hair, eye­lash­es a mile long, the polar oppo­site of my vague­ly Scan­di­na­vian aspect, so it was a plea­sure just to look at them. And did they eat? My good­ness, they were my best cus­tomers ever. And I made a vari­a­tion on an old lasagne recipe, which is worth putting down here, I think, as every­one real­ly enjoyed it. It seems that you can cook the noo­dles ahead or not, with­out a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence. If you do cook them ahead, how­ev­er, be sure to cook your toma­to sauce down plen­ty so there’s not too much juice, since the cooked noo­dles won’t absorb as much liquid.

Super-cheesy Lasagne
(served 6! but you’ll serve more)

12 sheets lasagne noodles
1 1/2 pounds tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish sausage
3 tbsps olive oil
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
3 soup-size cans whole tomatoes
2 tbsps Ital­ian seasoning
250 grams each: mas­car­pone, ricot­ta, grat­ed cheddar
3 balls moz­zarel­la, grated
1 cup grat­ed parmesan

In a large skil­let, stir fry the gar­lic and onion in the olive oil until soft. Add the sausage and cook thor­ough­ly. Then, hold­ing each can over the skil­let, lift out the toma­toes in your hands and crush into the skil­let. Add the juice. Add the sea­son­ing and stir thor­ough­ly and cook down. Mean­while, spray a 9x13 glass dish with non­stick spray (a must!) and cov­er the bot­tom with noo­dles. Mix the mas­car­pone with the ricot­ta and ched­dar. Spread about a third of the mix­ture over the noo­dles, and then spread over a third of the toma­to sauce and half the parme­san and half the ched­dar. Keep lay­er­ing noo­dles and sauce and cheese, end­ing with noo­dles. Top with the rest of the grat­ed ched­dar and parme­san and bake for 45 min­utes in a slow-ish oven, per­haps 350 degrees.

***************

Well, it’s a typ­i­cal grey Eng­lish day and my kitchen is filled with the smells of turkey soup, from the enor­mous Thanks­giv­ing bird. Such a twice-a-year aro­ma, don’t you think? Do you ever cook turkey not on Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas? Nei­ther do I. It will make a per­fect first course tonight at din­ner. Then per­haps to watch an episode of lat­est Eng­lish tele­vi­sion obses­sion? A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie is side-split­ting in a com­plete­ly British way, and such a fun­ny look back at 20 years ago in British com­e­dy, some­where between Mon­ty Python and… what? I sup­pose there isn’t an equiv­a­lent now, but we do adore QI and “Have I Got News For You.” Last week QI had the con­tes­tants try­ing to iden­ti­fy a pho­to­graph of an island. One answer was “The Island of Inevitable but Reluc­tant Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty: a school trip gone hor­ri­bly wrong,” which led Stephen Fry to quip, “ ‘Lord of the Undone Flies,’ was it?” I’m hop­ing these jokes are too sub­tle to get me in trou­ble with any child-safe­ty monitors!

We’re off to this lunch with, doubt­less, a much savvi­er mum than me. I plan to lis­ten and learn. And then col­lapse with turkey soup and a pony pen­cil case.