putting the pieces back together

Now, as you know, I rarely let neg­a­tive things enter my blog world.  This is as much for me as it is for you, my read­ers.  I often reach back into past posts to relive a gen­tler time, or a par­tic­u­lar mem­o­ry, and the last thing I want is to mix those mem­o­ries with upset or controversy.

That being said, we are not liv­ing in nor­mal times.  There isn’t any point in my pre­tend­ing that recent events have not left me depressed, dis­ap­point­ed, even dis­traught.  The world does­n’t look or feel quite right to me.  While I know in my heart that my two coun­tries con­tain more good peo­ple than trou­bled peo­ple, more gen­er­ous than self­ish, more inclu­sive than exclu­sive, I am giv­ing myself a bit of time to feel upset right now.

The best thing I can do is to wake up each day deter­mined to turn toward light.  For me that means my fam­i­ly, my friends, my beloved social work chil­dren, my bell­ring­ing friends, my cook­ing experiments.

Every once in awhile I get a glimpse of what I know my real world is — warm, chal­leng­ing, gen­er­ous in spir­it, pre­dis­posed to say to a mum on a bus, “What a gor­geous baby,” or to help some­one up a Tube stair­case with a bug­gy.  A world where my door­men give me hugs when I come in wet and disheveled from an after­noon out, try­ing to rid the world of unkind­ness in my lit­tle patch, one lit­tle kid at a time.  A world where a morn­ing spent match­ing tiny shoes at the Sal­va­tion Army pro­vides an amulet against feel­ing like every­thing is going down­hill, fast.

A morn­ing spent with 30 or so small chil­dren, near­ly all immi­grants, many refugees, with every lan­guage under the sun spo­ken but a mum-led agree­ment that Eng­lish should pre­vail in the big group, gives me hope that all is not lost.  Every­one, how­ev­er dif­fer­ent in every oth­er way, is eager to learn “The Incy-Win­cy Spi­der” and to share a bis­cuit, and a chat.

Of course the great­est reas­sur­ance that the world is in fact a good place is Avery.  We vis­it­ed her on her birth­day in Oxford, tak­ing along, as one does, the cat.

A day with Tacy pro­vid­ed warmth, prompt­ed vis­i­tors (how else are we going to meet Avery’s new friends, after all!  Tacy is a mag­net), made us all won­der what it would take for Tacy to be des­ig­nat­ed a “com­fort ani­mal.”  Lord knows we all need one.

This mag­i­cal pho­to­graph was tak­en by Avery in the days before she went back to Oxford, out­side the Tate Mod­ern.  He is, of course, Tate Fox.

And there is nat­u­ral­ly, as well, Tate Mouse.

He is/they are (there are sev­er­al, and now a baby) res­i­dents of the Tate Cafe.  Shhh!  Don’t tell any­one!  We have seen some evil traps in there of an evening, but we live in hope that Tate Mice will be clever enough to avoid them, will feast hap­pi­ly on the crumbs left behind after a busy tourist day, and will be there every evening to glad­den our hearts on our night­ly walks.

In an effort to absorb all the calo­ries I pour into us with my culi­nary exper­i­ments, we are try­ing to get our dai­ly 10,000 “steps” (in fact John is a bit obsessed and will take any bait to leave the house, iPhone in hand, to get the req­ui­site num­ber or even more).  Oh, the trips we have tak­en in order to come upon this view, the “Wob­bly Bridge,” my favourite in all Lon­don.  The tiny pedes­tri­ans cross­ing, against the divine sky, nev­er cease to enchant me.

Because noth­ing makes me hap­pi­er than a par­ty, I decid­ed that my first-year anniver­sary ring­ing in the impos­si­bly charm­ing tow­er at Fos­ter Lane need­ed a cel­e­bra­tion.  So many won­der­ful peo­ple were able to come at short notice, even though it was Guy Fawkes’ Night.  We had a fab­u­lous time.

Book­shelves were perused, plates of John’s divine 48-hour pas­tra­mi and my cheesy spinach devoured.  Friends were made.

It was sim­ply heav­en­ly.  I wish the evening could have last­ed for a week.

We even set off fire­works in the lawns of the Tate!  Sure­ly this can­not have been legal.  But we did­n’t care.

Because the sub­ject of “bangers” was intro­duced in a cer­tain text mes­sage to me, and I am not flu­ent in Eng­lish, I thought sausages were indi­cat­ed.  So I obliged.

Bangers, it turned out, meant fire­works.  Oh well, the authen­tic Lin­colnshire sausages, deemed by my authen­tic Eng­lish guests to be very good, were speed­i­ly eaten.

And there has been, in our beau­ti­ful Bank­side gar­dens, actu­al fall “foilage,” as one of my friends who shall remain name­less loves to call it.  Quite pret­ty, by mut­ed Eng­lish standards.

Ring­ing has pro­ceed­ed apace.  We are in the sea­son now when arrival at Mon­day night prac­tice means total dark­ness, and thus this incom­pa­ra­ble view of St Vedast, Alias Fos­ter Lane.

One Sun­day I arrived for ser­vice ring­ing to hear the sopra­no in the upper choir, practicing.

How lucky I felt, that Sun­day morn­ing, to be in a place where such sounds occurred, and I was wel­come to sit for a few sec­onds before ring­ing, to listen.

There was the Lord May­or’s Show!  And to cel­e­brate, there were two Fos­ter Lane quar­ter peals, one of which includ­ed me, as the tre­ble.  One friend once referred to me acci­den­tal­ly (but appro­pri­ate­ly) as the “Trem­ble.”  Trem­ble I did, but I man­aged this view from our cham­ber before we began to ring.  We had suc­cess!  A full peal at St Paul’s on their twelve bells fol­lowed — over four hours’ ring­ing!  I could bare­ly man­age my 48 min­utes or so on our six.  Baby steps.

In response to my ongo­ing wor­ries about what the polit­i­cal mood in my two coun­tries will mean for the vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren all around me, I’ve plunged into a new vol­un­teer job.  This involves man­ning the after-school play­group at a school in a neigh­bor­hood called, rather apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal­ly I think, “Mile End.”  It is in fact a place of gen­uine warmth, ded­i­ca­tion and sheer fun.

The kids range from intense­ly adorable four-year-olds to bur­geon­ing pre-teens, of whom I was rather scared at first.  What on earth do I know about 11-year-old boys?  It turned out (after a morn­ing of sheer antic­i­pa­to­ry ter­ror) to have been a dod­dle.  The boys are warm, fun­ny, kinet­ic, inclined to beat each oth­er about the head and shoul­ders and then in the next minute hug delight­ed­ly.  And they were total­ly hap­py to tell me their names over and over (uni­forms don’t help!), and to include me in their games of Jen­ga, Tick-Tack-Toe (here called “Noughts and Cross­es”) and Lego.  I have been twice so far, and have been the recip­i­ent of sev­er­al heart­felt and wel­come hugs.  It’s nice, and now I’m not a stranger anymore.

And my pre­cious Home-Start char­i­ty, defund­ed as it is, has come up with some des­per­ate mon­ey to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing their most vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies.  Last week I met my new fam­i­ly — very ear­ly new­born twins, with a slight­ly old­er sis­ter, an immi­grant fam­i­ly from who I am ful­ly plan­ning to wrest their culi­nary secrets.  It will be sheer heav­en, to spend three hours a week giv­ing that exhaust­ed mum an extra pair of hands.

Cook­ing, of course, pro­vides me with night­ly com­fort.  No mat­ter how tired out or dispir­it­ed I feel, the night­ly rit­u­al of light­ing the can­dles and begin­ning to chop and stir gives me hope.  Each evening I open the cook­book to the appro­pri­ate page, prop it up in a Lucite stand, and get down to work.  There are the fab­u­lous scal­lops just bare­ly cooked in olive oil, gar­lic, chilli flakes and two kinds of pars­ley, then topped with crisp breadcrumbs.

And what would life be with­out mac­a­roni (in the shape of conchiglie) and cheese?  Of course I pro­vide coloured things on the plate as well, but we all know who the star of the show is.

Fur­ther com­fort is offered by the kit­ties, who unac­count­ably are attract­ed strong­ly to poor John, who’s just try­ing to read “The New York­er” online.

Life has been fur­ther enlivened by the third birth­day (how is that pos­si­ble!) of the best twins in the world, Fred­die and Angus.  We were the old­est by far of the birth­day guests, and the only ones to show up with­out chil­dren, and we were so flat­tered to be there.

What has not been an unfet­tered suc­cess, and in fact is dri­ving me quite up the wall, is my ongo­ing strug­gle with sour­dough.  I went on my course, I came home brave­ly armed with my “starter.”  I exper­i­ment­ed.  The first loaf of bread was quite good, the sec­ond an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter.  Piz­za dough, pret­ty deli­cious, even though I lat­er realised, in the mid­dle of the night, that I’d used the bread recipe for the piz­za.  It was lovely.

The next loaf of bread was a howl­ing success.

The next one after that a flop.  I did­n’t even take a pic­ture, so demor­alised was I.  It is appar­ent­ly a tri­al and error sort of endeav­our, and one I’ve dis­cov­ered has cre­at­ed a whole WORLD of peo­ple intent on help­ing me suc­ceed.  The trou­ble is, all the advice is con­tra­dic­to­ry.  I shall not give up.

Indeed, we none of us will give up, at any of our attempts in each of our sep­a­rate (and com­bined) ways, to make this bro­ken world of ours a bet­ter place.  As long as Vidal Sas­soon hair con­tin­ues to thrive, and to fea­ture Avery in its world, there is hope.

I leave you, in an air­plane as I am on my way to my father’s memo­r­i­al, with the beau­ti­ful sen­ti­ments of Leonard Cohen, who under­stood that even a bro­ken world is the only one we have.

ring the bells that still can ring

for­get your per­fect offering

there is a crack, a crack in everything

that’s how the light gets in

“Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen