Sep­tem­ber in London

Nat­u­ral­ly on a sun­ny autumn Sun­day in Lon­don, young ladies’ thoughts turn to… a lit­tle scoop­ing detail after The Bless­ing of the Hors­es. Not that you’d know it to look at them, but the girls had a thor­ough­ly good time on Sun­day (I turned these pho­tos black and white because they looked SO Dick­en­sian with their brooms and bas­kets). After last year’s expe­ri­ence with this arcane and bizarre (but some­how very sweet) rit­u­al, we def­i­nite­ly were not going to miss the cer­e­mo­ny. Sim­ply dozens and dozens of hors­es clam­or­ing for atten­tion, whin­ny­ing and rear­ing, lin­ing up in the square to be blessed.

Avery was put in charge of the barn dog, Zola, and strug­gled along with Ava who had hold of the fam­i­ly dog Hol­ly. The rid­ers were cho­sen by lot­tery, and sad­ly none of our girls won out, but the dog duty was pret­ty nice as well. Then home for a quick lunch while Avery ate hers at the sta­ble, and we all met up again at the ring on the Knights­bridge side of the park for the gymkhana. Avery has pro­gressed (or sim­ply aged, I guess) to being in charge of the lit­tle ones and spent most of the show trot­ting with a lead rope in her hand, kick­ing up immense amounts of dust while she led a lit­tle girl across the jumps. But she was reward­ed by being classed with the big girls for the real jump­ing lat­er! A glo­ri­ous after­noon hang­ing out with Becky and Mark, and Avery was more than hap­py to repose for a long time in a warm bath afterward.

We spent Sat­ur­day evening with Avery’s friend Juli­a’s fam­i­ly see­ing “As You Like It” again, at the quaint lit­tle Cur­zon May­fair cin­e­ma (a hid­den lit­tle May­fair jewel)and I would high­ly rec­om­mend it if you have a chance. Great cast­ing wtih lots of faces you’ll rec­og­nize (Kevin Kline and Adri­an Lester among them), and all the girls enjoyed it. Piz­za after­ward at a lit­tle joint in Shep­herd Mar­ket and lots of con­ver­sa­tion about the upcom­ing school poet­ry recit­ing com­pe­ti­tion (they can find ANY­THING to com­pete about at that school!), plans for Octo­ber break, the hid­den Jun­gian mean­ing of the play (well, that was Juli­a’s intel­lec­tu­al moth­er, not me). A real­ly nice night.

Sat­ur­day itself was one of those after­noons that makes me tru­ly love liv­ing in Lon­don, on a gor­geous spark­ly autumn after­noon. We dropped Avery off at her act­ing class (she says a cast­ing agent came to watch!) and then John left me up at the top of the Maryle­bone High Street to run a cou­ple of errands, and it was such a plea­sure! Start­ing off at the lit­tle food and cloth­ing mar­ket that runs on the week­ends, I was able to pick up a bot­tle of my favorite Dani­lo Man­co super-spicy chilli-infused olive oil, which makes any sal­ad bet­ter. And a great olive-oily rose­mary foc­ca­cia from The Flour Sta­tion, and even a stem gin­ger cake from Rum­man­co. Such nice peo­ple, and so pleas­ant to buy real food from actu­al peo­ple who made it.

From the mar­ket I saun­tered on to Daunt Books, always a dan­ger­ous thing to do, espe­cial­ly if I have my wal­let with me. I end­ed up with a copy of Ams­ter­dam, the Book­er Prize-win­ning nov­el by Ian McE­wan, whose Atone­ment is such a stun­ning film this fall. I can’t stop think­ing about that film, although it could be that I just can’t stop think­ing about James McAvoy. An under­stand­able obses­sion these days! Plus, some trav­el books about Ire­land, to get ready for our Octo­ber break: two days in Dublin and four days at a haunt­ed cas­tle in Coun­ty Kilken­ny! Can’t wait for that. There’s some­thing about the expe­ri­ence at Daunt that makes me feel there’s hope for us all: staff who gen­uine­ly want to help you find some­thing good (and they’re nice to Avery, which always makes a big dif­fer­ence), piles of books you would nev­er find in Amer­i­ca like biogra­phies of obscure gar­den­ers and diarists), a soar­ing sun­lit trav­el sec­tion (I love it that Shake­speare appears in the Eng­lish trav­el sec­tion), and lots of con­tent­ed cus­tomers perus­ing the dark wood bookshelves.

It was but a step from there to Fish­Works, which while I rec­og­nize is a chain of sorts, and not the fam­i­ly-owned fish­mon­ger that used to inhab­it the shop, is nonethe­less a sol­id pur­vey­or of great fish, and the guys in the front who fil­let­ed my lemon sole for me are so kind. We dis­coursed about my dis­cov­ery of The Fish Soci­ety as a place to buy soft­shell crabs, and recipes for lemon sole, and I felt hap­py. To be here! I sup­pose some­day all these lit­tle errands will become com­mon­place, but not yet.

Right now I must eat some lunch (yel­lowfin tuna with red pep­pers, red onions, lemon zest and horse­rad­ish, any­one?), but then I’ll tell you about…“Saint Joan.” What a play! I’ll leave you with a per­fect sim­ple autumn recipe. It just about invent­ed coziness.

Apple­sauce