sen­so­ry overload

Life has tak­en on a fre­net­ic pace late­ly and I have been sim­ply too over­whelmed to post! Not that I’m com­plain­ing. But hon­est­ly, since last Thurs­day when I was wax­ing lyri­cal about duck, it’s been all I could do to remem­ber what to pack in Avery’s var­i­ous bags for her var­i­ous activ­i­ties, and get her to them, and to mine in between, much less keep­ing a record of what we’ve been up to. But I’m going to give it a try, because so much inter­est­ing stuff has been happening.

My screen­writ­ing class was a rev­e­la­tion. It’s hard to believe I’ve got the sec­ond class today and can I just con­fess right now that I have not seen a movie in the mean­time? At least, I don’t think col­laps­ing in front of a Lord Peter Wim­sey BBC pro­duc­tion that I’ve seen at least five times counts as “see­ing a movie.” Or “film,” I should say, as the incred­i­bly enthu­si­as­tic peo­ple in my class would do. The first thing, prac­ti­cal­ly, that the instruc­tor said was, “There are some stu­pid peo­ple in this world who think they can write screen­plays with­out going to see films. That’s about as dumb as say­ing you can write a nov­el with­out read­ing nov­els. They say they don’t want to be influ­enced by some­one else’s style, but that’s rub­bish. They’re just lazy.” Meek­ly I held up my hand and said, “I’m afraid I’m one of those stu­pid peo­ple.” Films are most­ly too scary for me, or too vio­lent, hon­est­ly. What­ev­er I see on screen stays in my head for­ev­er, and most of what’s out there, I don’t want in my head. So war movies are out, gang­ster movies, most spy movies, cer­tain­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers. For­get all the Armageddon/apocalypse sce­nar­ios. I already think that way! So the films I can see are few and far between. At least I had seen “Match Point,” but not in the the­atre, of course, just on DVD. The last movie I saw in a the­atre? Dopey “Scoop,” the Woody Allen Scar­lett Johanssen vehi­cle this sum­mer. Any­way, it was very much an intro­duc­to­ry after­noon, where Mike Har­ris, the tutor, told us we’d be writ­ing a ten-minute short film script and an out­line for a full-length fea­ture. Oh real­ly? I got paired up for a char­ac­ter ‑devel­op­ment skit with a Lebanese girl called Dalia, and we had good fun, so we’re going to pair up again today. I have got to start see­ing some movies, even though my taste is so ple­beian. I remem­ber when we left the the­atre after see­ing Avery’s beloved “Ice Princess,” John com­plained, “It was a lit­tle for­mu­la­ic.” “John, it was a Dis­ney movie with the word ‘princess’ in the title. I think for­mu­la­ic is the least of our worries.”

I raced against the clock to meet Avery and her babysit­ter at the sta­ble, and watched Avery jump the tallest jump she’s ever done, two feet high. Alexa, her train­er, has I think accept­ed her now, which feels good. “Get your Amer­i­can bot­tom back in the sad­dle, Avery, what do you think would hap­pen if she decid­ed to bump you off?” She was rid­ing an enor­mous horse, not even a pony, and insist­ed that she was very sweet. I could just see LARGE.

That evening John and Avery stayed home while I went to a din­ner par­ty host­ed by the head of the “UK Friends of the Nation­al Muse­um of Women in the Arts.” At least, that is what I was meant to do, but for awhile it was touch and go. No taxis to be found, so at last in des­per­a­tion I jumped into a pedi­cab, one of those bicy­cle-dri­ven bug­gies run by the Russ­ian mafia. What was I to do? After a per­ilous jour­ney between ginor­mous red bus­es, the skin­ny lit­tle kid dri­ver let me off at an address that must, to him, have sound­ed close enough to the one I want­ed, but was in fact at com­plete­ly the oth­er end of town. “Is the same thing, this road,” he insist­ed. Weari­ly I said, “Is not the same thing” and hailed a real taxi, where­upon we got caught up in the after­math of a water-main break in the Bayswa­ter Road, and I was very late to the din­ner. It was the sort of par­ty where you play musi­cal chairs between cours­es so as to talk to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. At first I sat next to a prop­er­ty devel­op­er who told me all about his extra-cur­ric­u­lar project, writ­ing “The His­to­ry of Cul­ture.” Yep, THE His­to­ry of Cul­ture. I would imag­ine it’ll take him awhile. Then I was next to the world’s great­est expert on Van Gogh. I’m sor­ry to say that after a cur­so­ry dis­cus­sion of the Kandin­sky show (she did­n’t like it either so I felt vin­di­cat­ed in my lack of enthu­si­asm) we fell to talk­ing about senior girls’ schools in Lon­don, since she has a girl old­er than Avery. Then I sat across from a real­ly cool guy, mar­ried to a painter I know slight­ly, and he was talk­ing about his child­hood in Bur­ma, where he met an expa­tri­ate Ital­ian fel­low mak­ing fresh moz­zarel­la in the Burmese coun­try­side. Also how he near­ly died from eat­ing malar­ia-infect­ed straw­ber­ry ice cream. Anoth­er one of the long list of things that has nev­er hap­pened to me, as my father would say. All in all a love­ly evening.

Fri­day after­noon saw me in the pour­ing rain col­lect­ing all Beck­y’s girls from school, along with Avery, to go ice skat­ing and spend the night so Becky and Mark could get away for the week­end. It was quite some­thing to pile all four girls plus me into a taxi, with four back­packs, PE kits, skate bags, skat­ing out­fits, etc. Of course we had to skirt the same water main break as the night before, but even­tu­al­ly we got to the rink and the girls spent sev­er­al bliss­ful hours going around and around, help­ing Ellie who had nev­er skat­ed before. Avery had an impromp­tu les­son with a slight blonde girl called Nico­la and had the time of her life, so we’ll make it a Fri­day tra­di­tion. Home in a com­plete­ly cir­cuitous route along Knights­bridge Road, lis­ten­ing to the taxi dri­ver drone on and on about Mini Coop­ers, since I had made the fatal mis­take of telling him we were plan­ning to buy one. What I don’t know about their chas­sis, fuel capac­i­ty, paint choic­es and nought-to-six­ty in what­ev­er sec­onds is not worth know­ing. I fed every­one papardelle with fresh toma­to sauce, and we tried to watch “Bring­ing Up Baby,” a screw­ball com­e­dy with Kather­ine Hep­burn and Cary Grant, but some­how it had got down­loaded in Span­ish, or sub­ti­tled, or some­thing, and we had to aban­don it. Ellie decid­ed she was home­sick, so John invent­ed a game where he poked the lit­tle tip of her nose down and said, “Toy,” then let it up again and said, “Girl.” They must have repeat­ed this a hun­dred times, and then it was off to sleep with cozy hot water bottles.

John made break­fast for them the next day and then they were col­lect­ed by anoth­er fam­i­ly to spend the night. How emp­ty and qui­et the house seemed when they were gone! We saun­tered off in the direc­tion of Covent Gar­den, pass­ing a lane called “Haunch of Veni­son Yard.” Do you sup­posed at some point it inter­sects with “Leg of Lamb Alley”? I went off to my class at City Lit, which I thought was a day-long sem­i­nar in cre­ative writ­ing, but turned out to be the first of eleven Sat­ur­days! It was great fun, though, so I’m going to con­tin­ue. I did not find it easy to write fic­tion, I must say. I think I’m going to have to start slow, name­ly doing what I usu­al­ly do which is to embell­ish real life, much to John and Avery’s dis­may. “But that’s not what hap­pened!” they bleat. “So what, if it makes a bet­ter sto­ry?” is my point of view. It was enter­tain­ing to be in a room with 20 peo­ple all of whom look around all the time for a good char­ac­ter, as I do. At one point dur­ing the day the class­room door opened very, very slow­ly, and a diminu­tive Asian head peered into the room, looked around at all of us 21 white peo­ple and asked hes­i­tant­ly, “Is this… Chi­nese?” When she had gone, every­one burst out laugh­ing. I’m not sure non-writ­ers would have found it so fun­ny! The main exer­cise was this: the tutor gave us each a sheet of paper on which was written:

seen on a street in South Lon­don on the morn­ing of Box­ing Day, 2003

perched on the bon­net of a car: a Tele­tub­by toy (the green one, Dip­sy), rain-soaked but oth­er­wise in good con­di­tion, pos­si­bly new

in the road in front of the car: three plas­tic sun­flow­ers and a bro­ken pot

in the gut­ter near­by: a pair of men’s underpants

No-one about, and no sign of accident

How did they get there, and what happened?

Well, then we had 30 min­utes in which to write a sto­ry that encom­passed all these facts! It was jol­ly dif­fi­cult, I can tell you! At first I thought I sim­ply could not do it. Then some ideas came, and while my effort was­n’t bril­liant, at least I had some­thing to read aloud when my turn came. All the oth­er stu­dents are so very Eng­lish! Their sto­ries were all dis­mal, some­times a bit fun­ny in a ragged pathet­ic way, all about cig­a­rettes and hang­overs. So many Eng­lishisms: elec­tric fires, “tat,” which means junk, ref­er­ences to knick­ers and ter­raced hous­es, fairy lights and y‑fronts (Eng­lish for tidy-whitey briefs!), going “off my box” and “sort­ing out the chil­dren’s breakfasts.”

Then try­ing to line up who would read next week, an orig­i­nal piece of about 2500 words. The tutor asked, “Arthur, can you read?” “Yes, I can read.”

Pause.

“Ah, that’s good. AT LAST.” Every­one laughs.

Sun­day we dropped Avery off at the sta­ble for an after­noon of muck­ing out, mak­ing friends and rid­ing. John made work phone calls and I con­fess I sim­ply col­lapsed, try­ing to rein in and remem­ber all the things I’m sure I’m for­get­ting. Halfway through the after­noon my com­put­er explod­ed, or died, or went off its box or what­ev­er, the point being that I spent most of Mon­day walk­ing in the rain to and from the Apple Store, first drop­ping off the body and then going back to hear the diag­no­sis. I know I am near­ly alone in think­ing this, but the Apple Store is the sev­enth cir­cle of hell. Hun­dreds of peo­ple dash­ing about buy­ing cam­eras, queue­ing up to talk about their lap­tops, find­ing out that if you have the 80-giga­byte or what­ev­er iPod you could dri­ve from San Fran­cis­co to New York 25 times and nev­er have to lis­ten to the same song twice! Not exact­ly a ring­ing endorse­ment for the prod­uct, from my point of view. Just awful. My reward was to take Avery to the dread­ful bal­let store after school and choose a not-too-dread­ful skat­ing out­fit, for her beloved Fri­day after­noons with Nico­la. Oh, the whin­ing tod­dlers being kit­ted out with their first tutus, and the spoiled Yum­my Mum­mys with the ubiq­ui­tous chunky hard­ware-cov­ered hand­bags hang­ing over their arms, say­ing, “But dah­hh­ling, the pink one fit­ted you so much bet­ter, now be a good gull and try it on again for Mum­my.” Rrrrrrr.

John joined us at the rid­ing ring on Tues­day, since he was work­ing from home that after­noon, and he said, “You know, you’re the only moth­er here. Don’t you think it’s maybe time for you just to drop her off and go some­where, then pick her up at the end of the les­son?” “Well, no, I just don’t feel ready yet for her to ride and me not be there. What if she had an acci­dent and I was­n’t here?” I rea­soned. “Oh, and you’d be so much help if you were here! What could you do?” “Ride in the ambu­lance with her,” I said. “Please,” he said, and we both looked up to find Avery in the dirt and the pony dash­ing mad­ly about the ring. “What hap­pened?” we both asked Alexa, and she said air­i­ly, “Oh, he just decid­ed it would be nicer not to have Avery on his back for awhile.” So much for my vig­il! She final­ly falls off and I’m not even pay­ing attention.

Thurs­day morn­ing found us at a sweet senior school tour, at Fran­cis Hol­land Gra­ham Ter­race, dis­tin­guished from its sis­ter school Fran­cis Hol­land Clarence Gate. Found­ed by some canon or oth­er in 1800-some­thing, it’s a love­ly place just off Sloane Square, filled with gulls aged 3–18, in blue and white checked uni­forms. We caught a glimpse of Avery’s beloved crush Edwina, sit­ting in a sci­ence lab. Our tour was run by a per­haps 12-year-old called Amelia, who assured us of her com­plete hap­pi­ness at Fran­cis Hol­land, how friend­ly the gulls were, how good the food. “When I arrived I was real­ly quite a shy per­son, but now they’re all my friends,” she said, quite touch­ing. The very impres­sive head­mistress gave her talk about league tables and per­cent­ages of grade As, and extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties and so on. A very nice place. On from there to the first of doubt­less many inter­views with Avery’s head­mistress, in her for­mi­da­ble office whose intim­i­dat­ing pro­por­tions are only slight­ly leav­ened by all the hand­made cards lin­ing the walls, “With love from Ara­bel­la,” and “Hap­py Christ­mas from Kate,” etc. She assured us that Avery was doing very well in every­thing, and that we should “aim for the top” when look­ing for the prop­er senior school. All very nice to hear, but the con­tra­dic­to­ry nature of her con­ver­sa­tion is amus­ing. “Now, the pres­sure can get quite sil­ly, and I don’t want you get­ting neu­rot­ic about it. I always say, your job is to sup­port your daugh­ter and pay the fees, to be quite rude about it, and your daugh­ter’s job is to learn. The teach­ers’ job is to teach, and my job is to wor­ry. We all know it’s time to face Armagge­don.” Well, that’s jol­ly. “Should we apply to a rather eas­i­er school, do you think, as a back­up in case she does­n’t get into one of the schools you real­ly like?” I asked anx­ious­ly. “Mrs Cur­ran, if Avery does­n’t get into one of the three I men­tioned, some­thing dras­ti­cal­ly dread­ful will have to have hap­pened. I remem­ber one year, three days before the exam, one of our top girls was walk­ing her lit­tle dog, when it was attacked by a larg­er dog. In reach­ing out for the lead, her hand was sav­aged. And it was her RIGHT HAND. Obvi­ous­ly she could not sit the exam.” There was no mis­tak­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic nature of this sto­ry. We can only try not to get a dog before next Jan­u­ary, or if we do and hap­pen to be walk­ing it, just let it get sav­aged rather than sac­ri­fice Avery’s writ­ing hand. For heav­en’s sake. “The gulls all know that the real world is beck­on­ing, how­ev­er much I might pro­tect them like billy‑o.” I had nev­er heard that phrase actu­al­ly spo­ken before.

After school we were all hang­ing about on the pave­ment (of course in New York we’d be hang­ing around on the side­walk, but that’s nei­ther here nor there) when our friend Jill beck­oned to Avery and intro­duced her to an enor­mous­ly tall, impres­sive­ly built man with larg­er-than-life hand­some fea­tures and quite a lot of sub­tle jew­el­ry. Who on earth? She intro­duced him with the suc­cinct phrase, “This is Tom, and he rode in the Hamp­ton Clas­sic.” Well, imme­di­ate bond­ing. He’d com­pet­ed in Adult Jump­ing, and was­n’t the weath­er foul? Did we have a house in the Hamp­tons, did Avery have a pony? I sim­ply can’t fath­om who this man is, or how he was relat­ed to Jill, but it was a very cool moment, bond­ing with some tall dark stranger intro­duced by our famous artist friend. John and I just sit back and watch in won­der as our child becomes tru­ly cool before our eyes. Of course, to her it’s all nor­mal, but some­where inside both of us is a lit­tle Mid­west­ern kid who was raised on wieners and apple­sauce! How did we get here. We just have to hope that Avery con­tin­ues to let us go along for the ride.