Saint Joan, lasagne, and… a new writ­ing course!

All right, it’s an odd com­bi­na­tion of sub­jects. Such is my diverse set of inter­ests these days. First, the play.

I have nev­er read “Saint Joan,” by George Bernard Shaw, and it’s high­ly unlike­ly that I ever will, but the play was an absolute rev­e­la­tion. Now, I con­fess that I was first drawn to see the play because it stars my crush’s wife (well, one has to do what one can to feel close to one’s crush). And I have loved her in Shame­less and The Way We Live Now. She even had a tiny cameo at the end of Notes on a Scan­dal. But she, Anne-Marie Duff, was tremendous.

I feel real­ly remiss that I saw it on the last day, so I can’t send any of you to it. But hon­est­ly, over the sum­mer when I bought the tick­ets from Con­necti­cut, it was sold out every evening and I got mati­nee tick­ets only by the hair of my chin­ny-chin-chin. I thought: three hours long, burn­ing at the stake, maybe NOT the place to take my ten-year-old child? So we went on the last day, just the two of us. And it was shat­ter­ing. From the intro­duc­to­ry music with old-fash­ioned bell-ring­ing and a haunt­ing vocal score by Melanie Pap­pen­heim, through the very dis­turb­ing bat­tle of Orleans, and Joan’s even­tu­al col­lapse at her tri­al, and the last moments of her time at the stake, Duf­f’s per­for­mance was a tour de force of every emo­tion pos­si­ble. She was vul­ner­a­ble, pas­sion­ate, flir­ta­tious, inno­cent, vio­lent sol­dier, reli­gious fanat­ic, and final­ly at the end, a frag­ile vision in white blow­ing ash­es over the audi­ence. Amazing.

See her in any­thing she’s in!

From that it was a bit of a come­down to have ordi­nary life resume, pick­ing Avery up in a rain­storm at Anna’s, home­work super­vi­sion, din­ner prep and the like. But I must tell you while I have always felt I had a good lasagne recipe, I have dis­cov­ered two secrets that I will share with you: and both of them were the result of my lazi­ness. First off, you need to start your toma­to sauce in the after­noon because you won’t be home until 6 and you don’t want to deal with cre­at­ing it that late in the day. The beau­ty of this is that the sauce had time to sim­mer off a large part of its liq­uid, with­out which step I find a lot of lasagne is watery. SO make your sauce at noon or so, and rash­ly leave it out on the stove­top to (you think) shriv­el up and die. But NO. This wait­ing peri­od is a good thing. Then you can turn the heat up under it when you’re ready to assem­ble your lasagne and it is thick and rich and NOT watery.

Sec­ond lazy bit: I was at Marks and Spencer gro­cery shop­ping and there was no ricot­ta. Lasagne with­out ricot­ta! It sure­ly can­not be. But faced with the choice of “make do with some­thing else” and “go some­where else,” I impro­vised. And it turns out: half mas­car­pone cheese and half cot­tage cheese is FAB­U­LOUS. Pro­vides a rich, creamy lay­er among the pas­ta and meaty toma­to sauce, and is sim­ply divine. Give it a try.

Well, let’s see, today it was onto the new writ­ing course. I have been quite devot­ed to CityLit since I’ve been here, tak­ing at least four cours­es in writ­ing var­i­ous things and real­ly enjoy­ing myself. But I decid­ed to fol­low the tutor from last term to Birk­beck where our course was today to begin, and I must say she was mar­velous. My friend Dalia and I signed up togeth­er, and it seemed so strange to me that some­thing planned months ago, in a farm­house in Con­necti­cut, should be com­ing to pass in a Ham­mer­smith school build­ing. I nev­er real­ly believe that the things I’m plan­ning for will come to pass, and feel con­tin­u­al­ly amazed when they do; just think, that in March, when this course ends, we’ll know where Avery’s going to senior school, John will doubt­less have a job after our glo­ri­ous year of no-job, we may even have found a house. It all seems hard to believe.

I con­fess to being com­plete­ly whacked right now, hav­ing con­sumed our din­ner of roast pork fil­let with rose­mary, gar­lic, olive oil and lemon juice, and roast­ed beet­root, sauteed car­rot and aspara­gus, baked squash and mashed pota­to. Can you tell I was clean­ing out the fridge? I sim­ply took care of every last lan­guish­ing raw ingre­di­ent and we ate, dis­cussing Avery’s short sto­ry from class today. Is there any­thing more sen­si­tive than a writ­ing project, hav­ing received a bad mark? I don’t know, but the brave lit­tle soul has revised it to her teacher’s con­tent if not her own, and is tucked up with hot water bot­tles against the ear­ly-chill Sep­tem­ber night. Be cosy, wher­ev­er you are.