on the brink

Some­times peo­ple ask me how life in Lon­don is dif­fer­ent from life in New York.  I usu­al­ly answer that life in Lon­don is what hap­pens when you press “play,” and life in New York is when you press “fast forward.”

But life in Lon­don late­ly is what hap­pens when you press that “dou­ble arrow” and every­thing speeds up so that you have to run just to stay in the same place.

Actu­al­ly that’s the prob­lem.  If we were stay­ing in the same place, we’d be all set.  It’s mov­ing house that has us all crazed, run­ning to and fro car­ry­ing piles of books, clothes, CDs, and kitchen uten­sils, wav­ing them about and say­ing, “Where should these go?” We have filled the car with box­es of Christ­mas orna­ments that I don’t trust to the movers, and have installed them in the shed.  We have been giv­en a com­plete­ly impos­si­ble set of keys — it could take the rest of my life to fig­ure out what they all go to.

And in an attempt to cut down on the amount of room I will take up in the new house, I am being dragged kick­ing and scream­ing into the 21st cen­tu­ry: I actu­al­ly suc­cumbed to John’s long-suf­fer­ing sug­ges­tion that he con­vert all my pre­cious books on tape to dig­i­tal files.  Good­bye, beloved boxes.

Our the­o­ry has been that the pain we suf­fer on this end, organ­is­ing every aspect of our lives com­plete­ly, giv­ing away every­thing we don’t absolute­ly love, will be worth it when all our belong­ings sim­ply float effort­less­ly into place in the new house.

Or some­thing like that.

At least it is spring, and the weath­er has coop­er­at­ed, pro­duc­ing our gar­den full of iris­es, the park full of cher­ry trees in bloom…

The gar­den of the new house is full of bam­boo, camel­lias, some sort of bushy red-rose type flower that’s leav­ing its soft petals in piles on the ground, a mys­te­ri­ous pur­ple-sprout­ing tree out­side the front door, and oth­er liv­ing things we can­not iden­ti­fy.  Or at least, my friends have iden­ti­fied this one as a wild sumac.

It seems that Avery has been off school half her life!  She has had three weeks’ hol­i­day this month, so she has been dragged into the house project full speed ahead, going through all her child­hood books, mak­ing piles to go into stor­age (for the myth­i­cal grand­child she insists she is nev­er giv­ing us):

And end­ing up with unrec­og­niz­ably tidy shelves of the Cho­sen Titles to accom­pa­ny her to the new house.

Actu­al­ly, we have had a mar­vel­lous time, in some ways.  It has been fun to have a joint project, all three of us, to review our past lives through the medi­um of our belong­ings, to real­ly look at art hang­ing invis­i­ble on the walls and say, “Should that go over the fire­place, or over the sofa?”  Avery and I have tak­en the time to walk through the park, stop­ping to get her an ice cream cone on the warmest after­noon of the year.

I nev­er get tired of walk­ing over the bridge to the new house, real­ly the pret­ti­est lit­tle bridge in all of Lon­don, I think.

Through it all I’ve man­aged to feed us well, approach­ing my ingre­di­ents with a view to using things up and not hav­ing to move them!  To this end I cre­at­ed a real­ly love­ly dish that will be hard to recre­ate, as I almost nev­er see these gor­geous round courgettes/zucchini, do you?  But stuff them, with what­ev­er you have in your fridge.  So delicious.

Stuffed Cour­gettes

(serves 2)

2 round courgettes

1 pork sausage

1 tsp butter

1 shal­lot, minced

1 large or 2 medi­um mush­rooms (baby porta­bel­la or chest­nut are nice)

2 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 red pep­per, minced

hand­ful fresh breadcrumbs

1 tbsp soft goats cheese

sea salt and pep­per to taste

olive oil to drizzle

Cut the tops off each cour­gette, then chop up the tops finely.

Slip the sausage out of its cas­ing and saute gen­tly, break­ing up into very small pieces.  Add the but­ter and saute the cour­gette tops, shal­lot, mush­rooms, gar­lic and pep­per until soft.  Tip every­thing into a medi­um bowl and add the bread­crumbs and goats cheese, mix well.  Sea­son to taste.

Stuff each cour­gette with the mix­ture and driz­zle gen­er­ous­ly with olive oil.  Bake at 425F/220C for 30 min­utes.  GORGEOUS.

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

And to prove with­out a doubt that we are in Eng­land in the spring­time, I spent five glo­ri­ous evenings watch­ing… “Lamb­ing Live”!  Yes, the BBC actu­al­ly set up shop in a remote Cum­bri­an vil­lage, fol­low­ing one fam­i­ly and its farm through a week of lamb­ing, film­ing and broad­cast­ing, just as it says on the tin, lamb­ing live.  Actu­al lambs appear­ing from their moth­ers, then 20 min­utes lat­er stag­ger­ing to their feet, and bare­ly a week lat­er, bounc­ing across the fields.

Just what the doc­tor ordered.  In the midst of our fran­tic urban adven­ture, it was pure bliss to sit for an hour each evening and watch the antics of the wool­ly lit­tle darlings.

And then for some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, I had a vis­i­tor.  Thir­ty years ago, I spent an oth­er-world­ly eight weeks of sum­mer in Brit­tany, as an hon­ors stu­dent, 16 years old, liv­ing as a daugh­ter in a French fam­i­ly and promis­ing to speak and hear NO Eng­lish.  It was a mag­i­cal intro­duc­tion to Europe, to inde­pen­dence, to baguettes and pain au choco­lat, mak­ing my own sal­ad dress­ing from scratch, and the first friends I ever made out­side my famil­iar child­hood surroundings.

One of these friends was Kather­ine, a girl with an irre­press­ible puck­ish grin, a scat­ter­ing of per­fect freck­les across her nose, eyes that crin­kled when she laughed, and a total will­ing­ness to go along with and invent mad­cap schemes with me.  We were six­teen togeth­er that sum­mer, in love with our gram­mar teacher of course, learn­ing to make eclairs au choco­lat with a friend’s grand­moth­er, mem­o­riz­ing the argot, slang, that was taught to us by  my French broth­ers, shar­ing our first taste of cham­pagne in a Paris hotel!  Pure magic.

Kather­ine and I have seen each oth­er twice in the inter­ven­ing 30 years, once when I vis­it­ed her glam­orous Wash­ing­ton, D.C. apart­ment when she was work­ing as an aide to a Sen­a­tor, and once when she vis­it­ed me short­ly after Avery was born, in New York.  But being sep­a­rat­ed has nev­er inter­fered with our friend­ship, and each time we see each oth­er it is as if we are teenagers again, shout­ing with laugh­ter, slip­ping in and out of French (noth­ing can ever top that method of learn­ing a for­eign tongue: total, anni­hi­lat­ing immersion!).

So last week brought my Kather­ine to me here in Lon­don, fresh from her tri­umph at the Paris Marathon the day before!

We met up at Sel­f­ridges, hug­ging and chortling, and she was JUST THE SAME.  I intro­duced her to Avery, and she said, “Wow, you have the same lips you had when you were a baby!  I can see both your mom and dad in you,” which every par­ent wants to hear, of course.

And a mile­stone: Avery went shop­ping alone and then hopped on the Tube by her­self and got her­self home to Ham­mer­smith!  Well done, to nav­i­gate the trans­port sys­tem of one of the busiest cities in the world!  I was hap­py to get a text from John, “She’s here.”

Kather­ine and I went off on an open-top bus tour of Lon­don, but real­ly, it would­n’t have mat­tered where we were.  We actu­al­ly went off on an open-top tour of the last 15 years, talk­ing over and over each oth­er, dis­cussing fam­i­lies, careers, plans for the sec­ond half of our lives.  It went by far too quick­ly, and then anoth­er bone-crush­ing hug, “a la prochaine, cherie,” and she was off.

Old friends.  There is noth­ing like that warmth.

I need­ed the break, because the last few days have been entire­ly occu­pied with BOOKS.  It’s the price we’re all pay­ing for what’s essen­tial­ly our home­’s great­est dec­o­rat­ing scheme, Avery’s entire home edu­ca­tion, my child­hood on paper…

John, Avery and I sim­ply killed our­selves that day.  It was a mat­ter of bad tim­ing: the shelv­ing peo­ple could come dis­man­tle the shelves on one day, and one day ONLY, but the movers could not come until a week lat­er, so we had no choice but to pack up all the books our­selves.  At least they’re in some sem­blance of alpha­bet­i­cal order, the box­es num­bered in sequence.  It should make the whole reverse process on the oth­er end bear­able.  Except, of course, that the shelv­ing peo­ple can’t come re-install the shelves until a week after we have moved in!  Oy veh.

Keechie is skep­ti­cal about the whole process.

The only thing we could do was… eat a lot of butter.

But­tery Pota­toes with Fresh Sage

(serves 4)

6 medi­um pota­toes, King Edward are a good choice

1/3 cup/80 grams melt­ed butter

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

sea salt and pepper

1 tbsp grat­ed parmesan

6 sage leaves

This is a good recipe for a bor­der­line OCD girl like me.  Of course you could use a man­do­line, but I like to do my pota­toes by hand.  Peel them, then slice them very very thin, as uni­form­ly thin as pos­si­ble.  Place the pota­toes in an over­lap­ping sin­gle lay­er in a round pie plate, then pour over a bit of the melt­ed but­ter.  Scat­ter the gar­lic over, then dust with salt and pep­per.  Repeat with lay­ers of pota­to and driz­zled but­ter until you run out of each.  Sprin­kle with the parme­san and arrange the sage leaves in a flower shape in the center.

Bake at 375F/180C for about 35–40 min­utes, until pota­toes are soft.

I had to cook these pota­toes three times to get the method and pro­por­tions exact­ly right.  It may seem like too much but­ter, but I made one ver­sion with far less, and there just was­n’t the mag­ic.  If you feel you must use less but­ter, cook the pota­toes as direct­ed with the amount I sug­gest, then as soon as you take the dish from the oven, pour off as much but­ter as you can (save it for anoth­er savoury pur­pose).  But real­ly, how often will you have these love­ly lit­tle guys? Enjoy.

Today will be the last vis­it to the new house — tak­ing the din­ing room rug to see if it will real­ly fit — before the movers come on Tues­day.  Last week Avery and I walked across the bridge with a sushi lunch to meet John and the sur­vey­or there, and on the way we saw Saman­tha Bond walk­ing into a pub!  I sim­ply had to stalk her and tell her how much we loved “Out­num­bered” and how close Avery had come to get­ting the part of her step­daugh­ter!  “Oh, that is so sweet!” she cried.  What a nice per­son.  Avery had remained on the pave­ment, main­tain­ing a dig­ni­fied silence, but she was impressed, too.  Then as we walked down the high street, famil­iaris­ing our­selves with the shops, there was Patri­cia Hodge!  Good­ness, we shall be liv­ing in exalt­ed circles.

Enough “me” time, now.  The next time I see you it will be from some­where in the new house.  Such excit­ing times ahead, plan­ning where I shall sit when I blog!