the mad­ness of mid­dle school choice

Well, it’s offi­cial: my last hope of remain­ing above the fray in this “11+ exam” insan­i­ty has been lost like a sock in the dry­er. I had just been con­grat­u­lat­ing myself mild­ly on get­ting all the paper­work for all six schools on on time (just) and was plan­ning to stop think­ing about it all until the first exam in Jan­u­ary, and telling myself how lucky we are to be able to afford a fan­cy school, when in the post came… an invi­ta­tion to an inter­view at the top school. Now, we have no idea whether this is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing excit­ing (like a clan­des­tine tele­phone call between our head­mistress and the oth­er?), or if every sin­gle appli­cant gets invit­ed. In the absence of real data, we decid­ed to err on the side of get­ting excit­ed. Then in the post yes­ter­day came two more invi­ta­tions to inter­views. And we know for cer­tain that one fur­ther school does­n’t invite appli­cants for inter­views until after the exam, but that still leaves two more excit­ing and scary envelopes to anticipate.

And of course each invi­ta­tion requires a tele­phone call AND a fur­ther­ing of the invi­ta­tion back to the school to con­firm that yes, she’s com­ing on that day. So in fact the mad­ness con­tin­ues. Lis­ten to the child’s sched­ule so far in Jan­u­ary: school starts up again Jan­u­ary 8. Then:

Jan­u­ary 11: exam #1
Jan­u­ary 12: inter­view #1
Jan­u­ary 15: inter­view #2
Jan­u­ary 18: exam #2
Jan­u­ary 21: inter­view #3
Jan­u­ary 25: exam #3

Will she still be stand­ing by Ground­hog’s Day? Will any of us? We lay in the pre-school cud­dle this morn­ing and dis­cussed it all in the bleak Decem­ber light, with cats crawl­ing all over try­ing to get to the radi­a­tor and press their faces against it. Sur­round­ed by all her horsey rosettes that hang from the rib­bon around her bed­posts, it seemed like the world was a cosy enough place to pro­tect her from all the pres­sure and com­pe­ti­tion that will be her life in a mon­th’s time, but who knows. And me? I def­i­nite­ly hit a secret pan­ic but­ton and have been a lit­tle nervy ever since.

What real­ly scares me is not that she won’t get into a good school, or two good schools, but that she WILL. And then every­thing will change. I hate change! I had a real­ly vivid dream this morn­ing about being back at her old school in New York, where we were so extreme­ly hap­py, but where she was receiv­ing at best a lack­lus­tre edu­ca­tion. But I was head of the Book Fair! And on the Win­ter Fair com­mit­tee, and the Taste of Tribeca com­mit­tee, and the Auc­tion com­mit­tee. I prac­ti­cal­ly lived at school. Saw Avery near­ly every day dur­ing school hours! And that was, if not quite the norm, cer­tain­ly a com­mon life for a Tribeca moth­er to live. We all lived at the school.

So in my dream the New York school was relo­cat­ed to Sloane Square, but we were all still Amer­i­can. There were par­ents in my dream who I haven’t thought of more than twice since we moved, but who were life­like to the touch as I slept, and we were all gos­sip­ing and keep­ing tabs on our chil­dren’s activ­i­ties. And the amaz­ing thing when I awoke was this: I feel near­ly as at home now in our new school. Cer­tain­ly I don’t live there. But then, no one does. There just isn’t the same lev­el of parental involve­ment in an Eng­lish school as there is in Amer­i­can schools, although I am com­par­ing apples to oranges a bit: what if she had gone to a fee-pay­ing school in Amer­i­ca? Maybe they are as hands-off with par­ents as our school is, and yet our school con­sid­ers itself to be very wel­com­ing to par­ents, unusu­al­ly so. It’s just a dif­fer­ent lev­el of expec­ta­tion, and I can’t help but think that it has some­thing to do with mon­ey. Our New York school would­n’t have an art pro­gram with­out the Win­ter Fair to raise the mon­ey for it. The Silent Auc­tion paid for the librar­i­an. At Avery’s school now, all fund-rais­ing efforts go to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Well, in any case I’m sure my dream was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by my impromp­tu meet­ing yes­ter­day with Avery’s head­mistress, she hav­ing caught me as I went upstairs to be read to by my Form Three gulls. “Don’t leave, Kris­ten, with­out com­ing to see me about a date for your lec­ture!” This announce­ment gave me but­ter­flies. What on earth made me think last sum­mer that I was any kind of expert on lit­er­a­cy? When Mrs D invit­ed me to speak this upcom­ing spring on the sub­ject of read­ing aloud and chil­dren’s lit­er­a­cy, why did I accept? What on earth do I know, oth­er than some hor­ri­bly trite things like “it will bring you clos­er to your child,” or “it will help your dyslex­ic hus­band over­come his fear of the writ­ten word”? Because the lat­ter is absolute­ly true, and maybe that’s enough to begin the lecture.

In any case, after all my chil­dren had dili­gent­ly read aloud to me from their var­i­ous lit­tle books in their pip­ing voic­es, I head­ed down to Mrs D’s office to talk about my lec­ture. But although our com­ments on read­ing aloud flew fast and furi­ous, what warmed my heart most was her absolute love for the chil­dren of King’s Col­lege. She knows Avery like the back of her hand, bet­ter than we do as far as her life as a stu­dent goes, and every anec­dote and obser­va­tion came with a fond, wise smile. And her irre­place­able Eng­lish expres­sions! She is the only per­son I have ever heard actu­al­ly utter the words, “but what real­ly creased me up…” about some­thing that made her smile! And “going after these exams like billy‑o,” and say­ing that when some­thing wor­ries her, “and it occa­sion­al­ly does, Kris­ten!” she reach­es for… Mal­o­ry Tow­ers! Com­fort read­ing for the head­mistress set!

I just want­ed to leap across the desk and hug her. How lucky we have been to have her in our lives. I’m grate­ful, in a cow­ard­ly way, that we’re leav­ing when she retires. King’s Col­lege with­out her is unthink­able. At last I stood up to go, and saw the Christ­mas card from a for­mer school fam­i­ly whose elder daugh­ter is now grave­ly ill, and we talked for a moment about the fam­i­ly, our mem­o­ries of them, the fright­en­ing prog­no­sis. And then she did hug me. I’ve nev­er cried in a head­mistress’ office before, but as she did as well, it seemed all right. “Right, that’s enough of that, then, onward and upward!” she sniffed, and walked me to the door. What a lady.

Let’s see, what else are we up to? We’ve been dec­o­rat­ing Christ­mas cards, and it’s real­ly embar­rass­ing when your child pats you on the hand and says, “Your ivy is get­ting much bet­ter, Mum­my! Good on you! You’re mak­ing great progress.” Clear­ly she has been tak­ing note of the Eng­lish meth­ods of encour­ag­ing back­ward pupils. She is an amaz­ing­ly con­fi­dent artist, and angels, bells, trum­pets bear­ing tapes­tries, and snowflakes of every descrip­tion flowed from her metal­lic pens. “The good thing about snowflakes is that no two are exact­ly alike, so it’s all right if yours are a bit… unpredictable!”

Do you by any chance need a nice hol­i­day dip? I must pass along a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can-tast­ing con­coc­tion kind­ly pro­vid­ed by my dear friend Shan­non, one of the Form Six Mums’ Choir (that just makes me laugh), who made it for us to tuck into after our choir prac­tice on Mon­day. It’s sim­ple, sweet, and you dip apples into it, so it’s even good for you.

Shan­non’s Pump­kin Dip

3/4 cup light cream cheese
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
2 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Place first three ingre­di­ents in a medi­um size bowl, beat until well blend­ed. Add syrup and cin­na­mon, beat until smooth. Chill and serve with sliced apples.

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And Christ­mas shop­ping by mail! My new favorite store is Ped­lars, and I guar­an­tee you a quick look will solve your shop­ping tri­als for at least one per­son, adult or child. I have made some very sat­is­fy­ing pur­chas­es for cer­tain peo­ple, so give it a try yourself.

Remem­ber my scal­lops in scotch and creme fraiche, from Vin­cen­t’s recipe? Well, in my time-hon­oured tra­di­tion of nev­er being able to leave a recipe alone, I made it again last night with the addi­tion of saf­fron, which made a love­ly aro­ma and colour. It’s worth post­ing again here to save you the trou­ble of going back, but one of my goals for the New Year is to fash­ion some sort of index for all my recipes. I can call it “work­ing on my cook­book,” to jus­ti­fy the time spent.

Scal­lops with Sin­gle-Malt Scotch, Creme Fraiche and Saffron
(serves 2 real­ly hun­gry people)

16 King Scal­lops (the biggest you can get, roe on or off as you like)
4 tbsps unsalt­ed butter
1 cup creme fraiche (or a mix of sin­gle and soured creams)
two shots good sin­gle malt scotch
juice of a half lemon
salt, pepper
pinch of saf­fron threads soaked in hot water for 10 minutes

In a heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and sim­mer until it begins to brown, then lay the scal­lops in, clock­wise so you remem­ber which went in first. Cook until the edges begin to brown on the under­side, and then turn the scal­lops over in the order in which you laid them in the skil­let. Expect major splat­ter­ing of but­ter. When the sec­ond side browns nice­ly, remove the scal­lops (again, in the prop­er order) to a wait­ing plate. This whole process should take about 4 min­utes. Do not overcook.

To the skil­let add the creme fraiche or creams. Sim­mer until the mix­ture is thick and coats the back of a spoon. Add the scotch and cook down until no more smell of alco­hol ris­es from the skil­let. Taste and add lime juice, then salt and pep­per and saf­fron. Return the scal­lops to the skil­let and toss in the sauce for a minute. Plate up with sauce on the bot­tom, a nice help­ing of cele­ri­ac-pota­to mash, top with scal­lops and serve with sauteed asparagus.

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We had some bizarre gim­micky pur­ple aspara­gus from Marks and Sparks, but don’t both­er. It stays very lit­tle pur­ple after being cooked and tastes just like reg­u­lar asparagus.

Now I’m hav­ing trou­ble with the green notion of eat­ing only things that can be had sea­son­al­ly in Britain (or wher­ev­er you live). I do get ner­vous at the proud lit­tle air­plane on some Marks and Sparks veg­etable pack­ages, since we’re meant to be AVOID­ING food with air miles, not grav­i­tat­ing toward it. And I know some cook­ery writ­ers say valiant­ly that no one REAL­LY wants straw­ber­ries in Feb­ru­ary, or aspara­gus in Decem­ber, and that if we fol­lowed our taste instincts we would all want to eat noth­ing but root veg­eta­bles in all the months end­ing in R, and then live on toma­toes and corn on the cob dur­ing the sum­mer. But in my heart of hearts, I want what I want, when I want it, and so does my fam­i­ly. Avery absolute­ly thrives on a bowl of mixed fruit every after­noon when she does her home­work. And in Decem­ber, it can’t be only apples! And any­way, don’t we need to sup­port the peo­ple who grow bananas at Christ­mas­time, for exam­ple? And what would we in Britain do for an avo­ca­do or lemon, I won­der? I’m get­ting cur­mud­geon­ly and it’s just from guilt. I’d be inter­est­ed in hear­ing how oth­er real peo­ple get on in food shop­ping and cook­ing, and how we can get away with order­ing soft shell crabs from Thai­land. Help, someone!

Oh, we’ve been lov­ing the new BBC pro­gramme, “Monar­chy: The Roy­al Fam­i­ly at Work.” It’s a series of episodes watch­ing the Queen make a state vis­it to Wash­ing­ton (Pres­i­dent Bush actu­al­ly appears in a very charm­ing light, as a real per­son rather ner­vous to meet the Queen, as he is ner­vous about dis­pleas­ing his own mum!), and receiv­ing del­e­ga­tions from Com­mon­wealth nations, and hav­ing tea with Tony Blair at Bal­moral. It’s very relax­ing because it is so far removed from any nor­mal per­son­’s way of life that the view­er can just sit back and enjoy, with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of empathy!

Last­ly, I want­ed to tell you about a cook­ing dis­as­ter I had, turned suc­cess­ful. Bless my moth­er in law for ris­ing to the occa­sion and com­ing up with a solu­tion. The real mes­sage here is that I should nev­er try to bake. My friend Twig­gy has a the­o­ry that one can­not suc­cess­ful­ly cook any­thing that one does not look for­ward to eat­ing. The upshot of this for me is that any­thing that includes sug­ar will not be some­thing I want to eat, and yet every once in awhile some mater­nal instinct gone hor­ri­bly wrong forces me to reach for the bak­ing pow­der and hand blender and try to pro­duce some­thing sweet. I can rec­om­mend these cook­ies, part­ly because they’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly sweet, and part­ly for the burn of cin­na­mon that, frankly, makes them not much of a kid-pleas­er. So last week when the itch to bake hit me, I thought, “Those cook­ies are fool­proof, and if I make just half a batch, we should be able to appre­ci­ate them all. Plus cin­na­mon smells so Christ­massy.” With these mind­less jus­ti­fi­ca­tions to hand, I began.

And prompt­ly screwed up. Because if you change two cups of sug­ar to one cup, and a tea­spoon of some­thing or oth­er into a half tea­spoon, guess how two eggs should end up? Not as two eggs! But I did, put in both eggs, I mean, and imme­di­ate­ly could see that I had turned cook­ie dough into… some­thing not cook­ie dough. Dou­ble hog­wash! I was so annoyed with myself that I just left it all on the counter, and walked out in a huff to pick Avery up at school. On the way I called my moth­er in law in defeat. “Just pitch it and start over,” was her first very wel­come sug­ges­tion, but then we start­ed to feel guilty over the air miles of my organ­ic cast­er sug­ar, so she said brave­ly, with the air of a sur­geon propos­ing one last, des­per­ate mea­sure to save the patient, “How about spread it in a big bak­ing dish and make brownies?”

And it worked per­fect­ly. They are dark, chewy, spicy and they keep for­ev­er (so far, over a week in an air­tight bis­cuit tin). So try it your­self, do.

Trea­cle Brown­ies with Cinnamon
(makes about 32 brownies)

2 cups all-pur­pose flour
1 tsp each ground cloves, cin­na­mon and ginger
dash salt
3/4 tsp bak­ing soda

1/2 cup but­ter, softened
1 3/4 cups cast­er sugar
1/2 cup black treacle
2 large eggs

Mix all dry ingre­di­ents in a medi­um bowl, and the but­ter and sug­ar in a larg­er bowl. Beat the but­ter and sug­ar till fluffy, then add the trea­cle and mix well, then the eggs (both of them!). Final­ly with a beat­er on low speed, grad­u­al­ly add the dry ingre­di­ents to the wet, then spread in a 9x13 glass dish that’s been sprayed with non­stick spray. Bake at 325 degrees for about 35–40 min­utes, till cen­ter is cooked through.

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And you know what? The ARE Christmassy.