Jubilee bells and a birthday

Life has been a whirl­wind here in Lon­don, with all the excite­ment that usu­al­ly fills Octo­ber (Hal­loween!) and ear­ly Novem­ber (Avery’s birth­day!).  But this year of course, there have been a cou­ple of tiny lit­tle events — oh, noth­ing real­ly to speak of — that have added to the fre­net­ic nature of the last few weeks.

Let me explain.

As many of you know, Avery’s school puts on a Christ­mas Fair as a fundrais­er to con­tribute to schol­ar­ships and char­i­ty, once every two years.  I used to won­der why it was­n’t every year, as it’s so much fun!  Gor­geous dec­o­ra­tions, fes­tive food and drink, tons of stalls full of tempt­ing gifts, Christ­mas car­ols around every cor­ner.  How cel­e­bra­to­ry!  What fun!

Yes, well, that was in the hal­cy­on days before John took over as Chair­man of the Fair.  Now our entire fam­i­ly ful­ly under­stands why per­haps the Fair ought to be just once in a decade!  John in par­tic­u­lar and to some extent Avery and I too have been con­sumed by the Fair busi­ness for months.  It will take place a week from tomor­row and if we all sur­vive the day, you may look to your win­dow to see if a pork­er is air­borne.  It is SO much work!

Now, four years ago in advance of the day, I fell down the steps and sprained my ankle.  So I was giv­en the stul­ti­fy­ing job of man­ning the used books and DVDs stall.  For FOUR HOURS.  Chil­dren slept near­by on piles of coats, some­one brought me a sand­wich.  But I nev­er saw the Fair: the hilar­i­ous staff pan­tomime, the girls busk­ing for change with their vio­lin con­certs in hall­ways, the gor­geous dec­o­ra­tions. Then two years ago, I was put in charge of the entry desk. For four hours I stood in the freez­ing wind com­ing in the enor­mous front doors, cajol­ing and chivvy­ing cheap peo­ple to part with £3 in order to get in.  I nev­er saw the Fair, just shiv­ered in the autum­nal afternoon.

This year I along with anoth­er moth­er am in charge of — guess what — the food!  Smoked salmon sand­wich­es, Pros­ec­co, cup­cakes and brown­ies, piz­za, sausages, shep­herd’s pie, mulled wine!  I am gath­er­ing up piles of tacky Christ­mas gar­lands, lights in the shape of cran­ber­ries, bunting and can­dles.  In eight days it will all be over, for anoth­er two years.  Rest assured I shall report all the glo­ri­ous details to you!

In the mean­time, of course, Hal­loween has come and gone.

She looks bloom­ing here, but poor Avery was still recov­er­ing from her school trip to Sici­ly, which cul­mi­nat­ed in a return-trav­el day of food poi­son­ing! Every­one was felled, teach­ers includ­ed, on a day of coach jour­ney, air­plane jour­ney, more coach jour­ney, final­ly to arrive at school in the wee hours of the morn­ing, to picked up by me: DRI­VING!  Aren’t you glad you were blame­less­ly asleep and not out there on the road, with me.  But she had had a won­der­ful time on the trip, until then.

And of course we carved pump­kins, or at least Avery designed pump­kins and John and I carved them!

And then before we could say boo, it was Avery’s 16th birth­day.  I was like peas on a hot shov­el, wait­ing to give Avery her present: a dozen cup­cakes, made by a local bak­er with per­fect, pre­cise, beau­ti­ful icing rep­re­sent­ing twelve of Avery’s favorite books.

John and I arranged every­thing at a love­ly neigh­bor­hood hotel, and wait­ed for Avery and sev­er­al of her friends to walk over from school in the blus­tery autum­nal air.  It was so hard to wait!  “Are you com­ing?” I text.  “On our way!” she replies.

Would she like them?  Did we choose the right books?  Was it enough of a cel­e­bra­tion for a mile­stone birth­day?  We need­n’t have wor­ried.  She LOVED them.  They all did.  Such won­der­ful girls.  I think we’ll be able to pre­serve the tops of the cup­cakes some­how.  I hope so.

And then the fol­low­ing night it was her real present: an evening at “Twelfth Night,” an all-male cast star­ring Mark Rylance and the heav­en­ly, divine Stephen Fry!  You must go if you can get a ticket.

“Yel­low stock­ings!”  What a won­der­ful com­e­dy.  To think I played Vio­la in col­lege.  I could­n’t remem­ber a sin­gle line!

And that was Avery’s birth­day.  How proud we are of the kind, intel­li­gent, quirky, sophis­ti­cat­ed, and tru­ly love­ly per­son she has grown into.  Hap­py Birthday!

Elec­tion Day came.  We stayed up all night!  Till the final result came in!  We sim­ply could not, how­ev­er, stay awake for the con­ces­sion and vic­to­ry speech­es, which had to wait until poor Avery had slogged through her school day and I had lum­bered around like a dead thing star­ing into space here at home.  But the result was worth the wait and we have the Pres­i­dent we love, back for Four More Years.  Here’s hop­ing that Amer­i­ca can keep him safe and sound for him to do his job.

The whole event, the end­less sum­mer polit­i­cal argu­ments back home, the close mon­i­tor­ing of the atmos­phere there once we returned to Lon­don, the puz­zle­ment of our British friends as to the luna­cy of the entire process: exhaust­ing!  I can­not imag­ine actu­al­ly sur­viv­ing being a can­di­date, let along try­ing to be a can­di­date whilst also try­ing to run the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.  Thank good­ness it’s all over, but the three of us crept around for sev­er­al days after our all-nighter, feel­ing like dead things!

And as if all that has­n’t been enough excite­ment, I have had a mas­sive bell­ring­ing adven­ture!  As you may know from my many blither­ings about bell ring­ing, the com­mu­ni­ty of ringers in the south­west of Lon­don is close-knit and mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive.  We race from Ful­ham to Barnes to Chiswick to Rich­mond, prac­tic­ing togeth­er when we can, ring­ing for each oth­er’s ser­vices, wed­dings, funer­als and Quar­ter Peals.  As Hillary Clin­ton has said, “It takes a vil­lage!”  We all depend upon each other.

So it was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ing to have an adven­ture togeth­er, an out­ing to cel­e­brate our com­mu­ni­ty of ringers.  Such was our Octo­ber expe­ri­ence at St James Gar­lick­hythe, in the heart of the City of Lon­don, to ring the famed Jubilee Bells!

These eight gor­geous new bells were cast at Whitechapel Foundry in the months approach­ing Her Majesty the Queen’s Gold­en Jubilee this sum­mer.  They then made their way to a pur­pose-built tow­er in a ware­house in Kent, at Eden­bridge, Fir­croft, where they were installed and test­ed.  From there they were trans­ferred to the barge “Ursu­la Kather­ine” to be part of the Queen’s Jubilee Flotil­la in June, where a Quar­ter Peal was rung on the Riv­er Thames.

The eight beau­ties were then tak­en by water to the church of St James Gar­lick­hythe where they hang now, replac­ing the old 17th cen­tu­ry bells.

Our mer­ry band of ringers from Ful­ham, St Mary’s Rich­mond, and Barnes — some of us (myself) quite silent in intim­i­da­tion and fear of ring­ing such ven­er­a­ble bells! — climbed the three dozen or so steps into the new ring­ing cham­ber on the evening of Octo­ber 23, host­ed by Eddie Hart­ley, Tow­er Cap­tain at All Saints Ful­ham, who has also been instru­men­tal in teach­ing many of us at St Mary’s Barnes to ring.

We were wel­comed by Dick­on Love, Cap­tain of the Roy­al Jubilee Bell­ringers and Tow­er Cap­tain at St Mag­nus the Mar­tyr, as well as being respon­si­ble for the ring­ing of all the bells in the City of London.

He spoke to us through an inge­nious trap door in the floor of the new ring­ing cham­ber (there is an old ring­ing floor 4 feet below the cur­rent floor, Dick­on explains), encour­ag­ing us to enjoy our­selves and the bells, before shut­ting the door and leav­ing us to our adventures.

I can­not say that I cov­ered myself in glo­ry!  The nerves were sim­ply incred­i­ble, to have the priv­i­lege of ring­ing those beau­ti­ful bells.  I was scared to death!  A love­ly ringer from Ful­ham took me under his wing, stand­ing behind me to help me keep my place.

For some odd rea­son, the more dif­fi­cult the chal­lenge, the bet­ter I did.  “Plain Hunt On Sev­en” is my lat­est hur­dle, and thank good­ness it went beau­ti­ful­ly, because the sound had nowhere to hide, in those ancient walls, float­ing out over those ancient streets.  What a beau­ti­ful experience.

With all this dra­ma, of course I have also been in the kitchen.  My beloved Hand­Picked Nation web­site con­tin­ues to keep me busy, report­ing from my beloved adopt­ed coun­try what­ev­er food­ie ideas might be enter­tain­ing.  The lat­est?  Water­cress!

Did you know it has more cal­ci­um than milk, more Vit­a­min C than oranges?  And it tastes so good!

After an entire week of buy­ing, cook­ing, eat­ing and hav­ing Avery pho­to­graph more water­cress than I could have imag­ined exist­ed, the arti­cle has gone off.  The stand­out recipes after all this exper­i­ment­ing?  Well, there’s Water­cress Sal­ad with Beet­root, Ham and Stil­ton (deli­cious com­bi­na­tion), and Water­cress and Hazel­nut Pesto.  Pep­pery, intense­ly green, it’s my new favorite leaf.  Move over, rock­et!  But the best dish?  Vis­it your fish­mon­ger, break out the deep-fry­er, and give this a whirl.

Nobu-Inspired Shrimp Tem­pu­ra with Creamy Spicy Sauce on Watercress

(serves four)

1 1/2 pounds raw shrimp, cut into bite-sized piece, or rock shrimp

about 1/2 cup tem­pu­ra bat­ter mix

enough ice-cold water to make thick batter

oil for deep-frying

sev­er­al hand­fuls fresh water­cress, washed and spun dry

for sauce:

1 egg yolk

½ tea­spoons sea salt

cou­ple grinds of fresh white or black pepper

1 tea­spoon rice vinegar

100 ml grape­seed oil (or oth­er very mild­ly fla­vored oil)

2 tbsps chili gar­lic sauce

sev­er­al shakes Tabas­co, to taste

juice of 1/2 lemon

fresh minced chives

First, make the sauce:

This sauce is basi­cal­ly a fla­vored home­made may­on­naise, so sim­ply fol­low the pro­ce­dure for mayo and add fla­vors to taste.  Nobu’s recipe does not include Tabas­co or lemon juice, but to me, shrimp with­out lemon is… strange!  Whisk togeth­er the egg yolk, mirin, salt and pep­per.  Now very grad­u­al­ly whisk in the oil until ful­ly emul­si­fied.  Then add the fla­vor­ings to your taste, mak­ing it as spicy as you like.  Set aside at room temperature.

Heat the oil until ready to fry, then dip the shrimp in the tem­pu­ra bat­ter and fry for about a minute or until gold­en brown.  Toss the fried shrimp in the creamy spicy sauce and serve in indi­vid­ual bowls, on beds of water­cress, and top with chives.

******

This dish is sim­ply heav­en­ly: if you eat it straight away, the shrimp are quite a mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of slight­ly crisp and yet bathed in the spicy sauce.  Of course it isn’t quite the celes­tial expe­ri­ence of pay­ing gazil­lions of dol­lars or pounds to get it at Nobu, but there was some­thing won­der­ful about being able to recre­ate the com­plex fla­vors, at home.

Home.  It’s hav­ing to pro­vide a haven these days with such busy times.  Watch this space for reports of… the Fair!  If we sur­vive.  Ho, ho, ho!