of friends and family

Well, it’s a sad­ly typ­i­cal Lon­don day: gray, cold rain, windy and dis­con­so­late. Every­one back to frown­ing after a week of sol­id sun. The British have an end­less capac­i­ty to dis­cuss the cli­mac­tic con­di­tions of the day, and the sharp con­trast between yes­ter­day’s glo­ri­ous blue skies and today’s down­pour gave the usu­al obser­va­tions an extra lay­er of poignan­cy. “What a chill wind,’ said the ladies in my hair­cut shop this morn­ing. “And after all that SUN!” Then fol­lowed the stiff upper lip brigade, say­ing that actu­al­ly this was prop­er weath­er for April, and they cer­tain­ly did NOT want to use up what­ev­er sum­mer weath­er might be com­ing to us in June, in April. As if it works that way.

In point of actu­al fact, it’s unde­ni­ably more cheer­ful to be sunned upon than to be made slight­ly wet over and over through­out the day. I spent the bet­ter part of the morn­ing becom­ing A More Beau­ti­ful Me, with the longest ses­sion under hairdry­er and fan­cy brush min­is­tra­tions you can imag­ine. I did­n’t have the heart to tell my beau­ty lady that it was all so much point­less devo­tion. With­in ten min­utes of leav­ing the shop, I was all curly again, so annoying.

Much bet­ter to think about the week­end. Fri­day was the famed Lost Prop­er­ty lun­cheon at which I was to be offi­cial­ly put in charge for the first time. I got up bright and ear­ly in the morn­ing to search through my clos­et for some­thing that would clev­er­ly com­bine a mild sort of author­i­ty with spring­like good cheer, as if such a gar­ment would have appeared there with­out my know­ing it. Not to men­tion that I don’t real­ly DO spring­like and cheery, as far as cloth­ing goes. Much hap­pi­er in a black turtle­neck, 365 days of the year. But I was final­ly suit­ably if not inspir­ing­ly attired, and sit­ting at my com­put­er to com­pose my remarks on tak­ing the reins of Lon­don’s coolest school vol­un­teer group (not that there are offi­cial rank­ings for these things… actu­al­ly prob­a­bly there are). I typed the words, “Thank you, Mary, for your years of ser­vice to Lost Prop­er­ty and to the school,” and as they stared at me from the screen I thought “Holy s**t, I don’t have a gift for her!” I shrieked this to John, across the part­ner desk from me, and he said, under­stand­ing­ly, “You’re screwed.” Precisely.

So I did what I always do when faced with my incom­pe­tence and pan­ic. I called Annie. “Right, I’m com­ing straight over and we’re putting togeth­er a par­cel of joke presents from Lost Prop­er­ty.” I raced out to the local florist and found a gor­geous lit­tle plant in a gor­geous lit­tle bag, and when I got back Annie was there with a sheaf of aban­doned home­work (a sta­ple item in Lost Prop­er­ty), a bro­ken mobile phone and glo­ry of glo­ries, a pair (clean) of her son Fred’s Y‑fronts. I myself gath­ered up one lone sock (not hard to do in Avery’s room of unpar­al­leled mess), an emp­ty sun­glass­es case, and my crown­ing con­tri­bu­tion, Avery’s plas­tic lacrosse mouth­guard. We took pity on Mary and left the mouth­guard in its case, although I may say that the gross­est item ever appeared in LP last week: a mouth­guard with a post-it attached to it say­ing lacon­i­cal­ly, “Found in W6.” “Oh, my God,” Annie said. “That’s just the post­code. That means some­one picked this thing up from a ran­dom pave­ment some­where in this post­code, and gave it to US.” Eeww.

So we wrapped every­thing in fes­tive paper, threw a bot­tle of bub­bly in the bag with the plant, and were on our way in Annie’s tiny lit­tle vin­tage orange Mini. The lun­cheon went off with­out a hitch at Mary’s gor­geous house, food all piled up in the incom­pa­ra­ble con­ser­va­to­ry, over­hung with real, fruit-bear­ing grape vines. There was Annie’s gor­geous chick­en with water­cress, orange seg­ments and pump­kin seeds in soy, and my favorite buf­fet chick­en dish, whose ingre­di­ents sound dis­gust­ing but it is actu­al­ly a win­ner with any group, or even just a fam­i­ly din­ner. For a large buf­fet, you can count on a breast fil­let per two peo­ple. Trust me, it’s deli­cious. And inex­pen­sive, and sim­ple, and you can trav­el with it uncooked and slip it into your friend’s hot Aga, should she have one.

Lil­lian Hell­man’s Baked Chicken
(serves 12)

6 chick­en breast fillets
1 cup Hell­man’s may­on­naise (now, you get the name of the dish, which we serve with Dashiell Ham­mett spinach)
1 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 lemon
2 tsps gar­lic pow­der or gran­ules (not gar­lic salt, the cheese is already salty enough)
plen­ty of fresh ground black pepper
2 cups fresh home­made bread­crumbs (the com­mer­cial crumbs are too fine)

Mix all the ingre­di­ents but the chick­en in a shal­low bowl. Place a plate filled with bread­crumbs next to the bowl, and have a large bak­ing dish next to the plate of crumbs.

Smear the chick­en breasts lib­er­al­ly with the may­on­naise mix­ture, then roll in bread­crumbs until thor­ough­ly coat­ed. Lay in the bak­ing dish (they can be quite crowd­ed, don’t worry).

Bake in a very hot oven, around 220C, 450F, or the hottest part of your Aga, for 30 min­utes or until nice and crisp and gold­en brown. Remove to a cut­ting board and cut each fil­let into five slices. Arrange on a plat­ter and gar­nish with some nice water­cress that you’ve pinched from your friend’s sal­ad (thank you Annie!).

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

This went down a treat, every morsel eat­en up. And I man­aged to make my remarks with­out embar­rass­ing myself, and to present Mary with her gifts, which made every­one laugh. Trust Annie to have such an inspi­ra­tion: even bet­ter than a prop­er gift of an engraved paper­weight or spe­cial pen. It turns out that if you have a bril­liant friend, being incom­pe­tent and for­get­ful is actu­al­ly a good thing. Annie’s last-minute pan­ic gift will kill some­thing I’d think of in advance, any time. My excel­lent part­ner in crime.

All the vol­un­teer rotas were duly filled in, all the ladies gos­siped and laughed in the amaz­ing sun­shine, and I got away in time to join John at the pub by school, where he was enter­tain­ing my dear, dar­ling Aunt Mary Wayne and Uncle Ken­ny from Ken­tucky! They are beloved fix­tures from my child­hood: my aunt with a bois­ter­ous, joy­ful laugh that car­ries across a pub gar­den and, along with her tight hug, makes me feel about 12 again: loved and cher­ished and still a child, not the head of Lost Prop­er­ty with a 12-year-old of my own. And my uncle: look­ing so like my moth­er, beau­ti­ful youth­ful skin, a total zest for life, new expe­ri­ences, always a twin­kle in his eye, a bit like a young San­ta Claus, in the off season.

We sat and laughed and laughed and laughed. Over what, I don’t even remem­ber, but it’s what life is always like with those two. How lucky we were, when I was a lit­tle girl, to go to their house for Thanks­giv­ing every year (my par­ents always got lost, always at the same junc­tion get­ting off the high­way, bick­er­ing over “is it this one or the next one?” every sin­gle year). My aunt can nev­er have enough dogs and cats (although they are cat­less now, they report­ed: not for long, I bet), she’s a dot­ing and dot­ed-upon grand­moth­er to her five grand­chil­dren, and my uncle is one of the world’s author­i­ties on all things Civ­il War (on the OTH­ER side, mind you), and also Abra­ham Lin­coln. I don’t think I’m mak­ing up that there was a mus­ket hang­ing over their fire­place, when I was little.

It was won­der­ful, just for a day, to shake off the adult iden­ti­ty that’s right­ful­ly mine these days, and become again the pet­ted lit­tle “Kris­ten Bear” I was in their pres­ence for all those years. Some­times I feel that a cur­tain went down in sort of 1987, when I moved away from Indi­ana, nev­er real­ly to return, and there is a melan­choly dis­lo­ca­tion between that per­son and the Real Me. I sup­pose it’s the feel­ing we all have about the past reced­ing ever far­ther into the dis­tance, but the clar­i­ty of leav­ing, like cut­ting off a piece of string, seems more acute when I’m with some­one from the old days.

Bless their hearts (some­thing my aunt says all the time), they actu­al­ly want­ed to go to the ice rink to see Avery skate. My God, that’s fam­i­ly love. So off we went in a taxi, to Avery’s delight (her par­ents being nor­mal­ly too cheap to catch a cab), and they watched with every appear­ance of car­ing, which is remark­able. Then it was off in the Tube to our house. I looked at them stand­ing up, straphang­ing, chat­ting togeth­er as the train swayed on its way to Ham­mer­smith, and wished for a moment that I had nev­er left home, that I could still see them, have them be part of Avery’s life. “Aren’t they delight­ful peo­ple?” Avery whis­pered to me, to my intense hap­pi­ness. They are, truly.

Home for anoth­er batch of Lil­lian Hell­man’s chick­en (easy peasy to make ahead of time and have my bril­liant hus­band put in the oven for me when we were on our way home), plus pota­toes dauphi­noise and sauteed pep­pers. They brought out presents from Ken­tucky: a real Churchill Downs horse­shoe, still dirty, and a pho­to­graph of the icon­ic mare and foal from the green, green fields near where they live, for Avery. A Ken­tucky Der­by cook­book for me! And a box of Bour­bon Balls for John (he and Uncle Ken­ny shared a very mature laugh over that). A tour of the house, a quick phone call to my dear cousin Amy, their daugh­ter, and one of my best child­hood com­pan­ions. Then they were off again, to tour Lon­don the next day, Ams­ter­dam the next, Bel­gium, Switzer­land, Ger­many, you name it. After ten days they’ll go home via Paris, in, I’m sure, a state of com­plete exhaus­tion. Thank you for tak­ing the time to spend the day with us, you two. We miss you already.

We had din­ner in the gar­den! “I hope you know all your fel­low trav­ellers are hav­ing sog­gy fish and chips some­where, and you’re eat­ing in a real Eng­lish gar­den!” I point­ed out, and it real­ly is a pleas­ant place to be. The next night found us out there once again, with the pier­rade stone keep­ing us warm, enter­tain­ing Avery’s friend Jamie, who spent the time after din­ner indulging her new hob­by: pho­tog­ra­phy! I think this is my favorite pho­to­graph EVER of Avery and me, and she took many more. It just looks the way we are, which is the great achieve­ment of a sen­si­tive pho­tog­ra­ph­er, I think. Of course it helps that Jamie loves us, and we her. This just IS Avery, when I look at it. Thanks, Jamie.

Yes­ter­day I did some­thing com­plete­ly sil­ly, but to my cred­it, I was not alone. My friend Jo came in from Oxford to go with me to haunt the red car­pet at the Baf­tas! The British Acad­e­my of Film and Tele­vi­sion Arts, to the unini­ti­at­ed, sort of the British Emmys, with some film thrown in. Across the riv­er at the Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall, under a flaw­less blue sky, with the Lon­don Marathon run­ners still strag­gling to the fin­ish line on the oth­er side. We met up and vied for a good spot (not hav­ing bought a tick­et, we were the hoi pol­loi and being shoved all over the place). Final­ly Jo spot­ted a tiny lit­tle space right next to the pho­tog­ra­phers’ pool (Jamie’s future haunt, per­haps?) and we squeezed in. And then the stars appeared. We were there osten­si­bly to see Richard Armitage, and there he was, tall and hand­some, in his tuxe­doed glo­ry, but in fact it was great fun to see all the “Spooks” cast, Gregg Wal­lace, the judge of “Mas­terchef,” the dread­ed Alan Sug­ar of “The Appren­tice” and count­less sort of day­time tele­vi­sion bad-fash­ion-sense princess­es. Great fun. We got great pic­tures, but hon­est­ly I think John will divorce me if I post one of them here. Enough is enough. He already thought Jo and I were out of our tiny lit­tle minds even to go. We did look at each oth­er at one point dur­ing the long, long wait for the red car­pet cer­e­mo­ny to begin, and I said, “We real­ly have crossed some kind of line.”

But it was an adven­ture! And some­thing we don’t ever real­ly need to do again. And one of those things you’d feel a com­plete idiot doing alone, so thank you, Jo, for hang­ing out with me. Home togeth­er for din­ner and to watch the awards on the tel­ly, while John dragged Avery away to watch “Top Gear” on their own.

Well, the rain has stopped, too late in the day for the clear sky to be of any use to any­one. I must go pro­duce my salmon din­ner, no eat­ing out in the gar­den tonight, I fear. After all, it IS April, and I should be stor­ing up my weath­er points for June…