when chal­lenges arise

Per­spec­tive.

It’s hard to get sometimes.

Just ordi­nary dai­ly life some­times can seem to be quite enough to be going with: the quo­ti­di­en tasks of sort­ing out Lost Prop­er­ty at school, look­ing after my social work fam­i­ly, ring­ing my bells and try­ing to keep inter­est­ing food on the table feels like a full plate.  Feed­ing 30 Lost Prop­er­ty ladies on a beau­ti­ful, sun­ny, warm spring day is the icing on the cake.

And then just to mix things up, life throws you a curve ball.  This time around, it came to me in a text from John.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“The bad news, please.”

“Our land­lords are com­ing back from Swe­den and they want the house.”

Our house, that is.  Except that it isn’t.

It’s much nicer to own your home, as it turns out.  We’ve rent­ed many apart­ments and hous­es in our day, and we’ve owned a cou­ple too, and I can tell you that the phone call from real estate agents telling you you’ve got to uproot your lives is one you real­ly don’t want to get.  Espe­cial­ly with the gar­den in a state of love­li­ness and peace.

So ordi­nary life, which had until then seemed like plen­ty, gets shoved aside to be replaced by the famil­iar hunt (by John) for places to view, the trips around var­i­ous neigh­bor­hoods, ana­lyz­ing the prox­im­i­ty to pub­lic trans­port, food shops, walk­ing into strange hous­es and try­ing to pic­ture our fur­ni­ture, books, art and cats in the places of oth­er peo­ple’s lives.

It’s time sud­den­ly to pack up the cats into their kit­ty pris­ons and drag them, their voic­es raised in woe, to the vet for the vac­ci­na­tions that will allow them to stay in their kit­ty hotel for the dura­tion of the movers’ work.  They don’t like mov­ing any more than we do.

Time to drag through my mem­o­ry for the names of the art hang­er, the book­shelf instal­la­tion peo­ple, the car­pet clean­ers.  Time to weigh the rel­a­tive mer­its of being close to Avery’s school in a not-nice house, or being far­ther away in a nice house.

“If this house were clean, if the car­pets were clean, it would look so much nicer.”

“Yes, and if there weren’t mir­rors behind all the book­shelves and there was­n’t water dam­age to the floor and all that cal­ci­um dam­age to the bath­room faucets…”

The nice house won!

Then it’s time to start get­ting cau­tious­ly excit­ed about start­ing fresh.  Where will the sofa fit, and the long din­ing room table?  Which will be Avery’s room and which the guest room?  Will the kitchen be big enough for the Lost Prop­er­ty lunch?  Movers come to give esti­mates and John wran­gles over var­i­ous unac­cept­able aspects to the lease.

It’s a chance to make deci­sions about how much we actu­al­ly need and love all our belong­ings!  “Think of it this way: do you love that stock­pot enough to pay some­body to put it in a box and take it out again?” we ask each oth­er in a hun­dred dif­fer­ent ways.

Dur­ing all this upheaval, Avery is fac­ing the long exam sea­son: over 20 exams in 11 sub­jects over the course of five weeks.  Every day sees anoth­er exam or two under her belt: from Russ­ian, French and Latin to all the sci­ences, maths, his­to­ry…  whew!  The most impor­tant thing to do, now we’ve found a house, is to keep life sane and calm for her to accom­plish this enor­mous task and then be able to push aside the sub­jects she’s decid­ed to drop, and get ready for next year’s con­cen­tra­tion on the things she loves.

In a fit of bad tim­ing, we had just booked our tick­ets back “home” the day before we found we had to move.  So between Avery’s last exam and our trip back to Red Gate Farm, we have six days.  Two to pack up this house, two to fill up the new house, and a day of cush­ion on either side.

Although it’s frus­trat­ing to go through all this crazi­ness at the behest of oth­er peo­ple, it’s impor­tant to keep per­spec­tive once again.  We’re incred­i­bly lucky to be strong and healthy enough to go through the whole process once again, and to have each oth­er to keep sane and even hap­py as we uproot every­thing and try to put it back togeth­er on the oth­er side.  Some­times it’s hard to keep that all in mind!

Since I did­n’t have enough to think about, my bell­ring­ing men­tors decid­ed it was time for a new chal­lenge: ring­ing what’s called a “Quar­ter Peal” from the tre­ble bell at the beau­ti­ful Christchurch in Col­liers Wood, in south­west London.

Of course last year around this time I rang my first Quar­ter Peal, from the tenor bell.  It’s a 45-minute-ish mad whirl of con­tin­u­ous ring­ing, and the dif­fer­ence this year was that instead of my bell sim­ply ring­ing the last sound every six blows, my bell was chang­ing all the time, now ring­ing first, then sec­ond, then third, then fourth, then fifth.  It was MUCH more fun, but much more dif­fi­cult than any­thing I’ve ever done before.  Thank good­ness for all the dif­fer­ent col­ored sal­lies, unique in my expe­ri­ence, and so much more fes­tive than plain blue or red!

I made plen­ty of mis­takes, but all the expe­ri­enced ringers around me were patient and helped me out with raised eye­brows and lit­tle nods and oth­er indi­ca­tions of where my bell should be.  Thank good­ness it’s over!  I can stop prac­tic­ing on the com­put­er now, for awhile, and rest on my laurels.

Per­haps the best way to cel­e­brate my tri­umph would be a plate of per­fect pota­to cakes, adapt­ed from my dear friend Orlan­do’s cook­book.  Pos­si­bly Avery’s favorite food on earth.

Orlan­do Potatoes

(serves 4)

4 large potatoes

1 large shallot

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

3 tbsps goose or duck fat

Peel the pota­toes and slice them very thin length­wise, then slice them the oth­er way into very fine match­sticks.  Plunge into cold water until you’re ready to use them.  Mean­while, mince the shal­lot very fine.  Drain the pota­toes and mix them in a large bowl with the shal­lots and sea­son them to taste.  Lay a large teatow­el on the work sur­face and pile the mix­ture on top, then fold the tow­el around the mix­ture and roll it up tight­ly.  Leave to let the mois­ture be absorbed by the tow­el, until you are ready to cook.

Heat the fat in a large non­stick fry­ing pan until a piece of pota­to siz­zles when dropped in.  Form the pota­toes into four cakes, drop­ping them care­ful­ly into the hot fat to avoid splat­ters.  Fry on one side until it’s crisp and browned, then turn over care­ful­ly and press down slight­ly.  Fry on the sec­ond side until it’s browned as well.  This process will take three or four min­utes per side, depend­ing on how large your pota­toes were.  Remove from the pan and place on a pile of paper tow­el. Serve straightaway.

These pota­toes are the ulti­mate use of that par­tic­u­lar carb: they are creamy inside, crunchy on the out­side, and the duck or goose fat adds a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent fla­vor from any oth­er fat.  Of course you could cook these pota­toes in olive oil or but­ter, but go for the spe­cial fat.  After all, you don’t eat them every day (although Avery would if she could).

Orlan­do pota­toes may not be enough to pro­tect us from the spiky moments of life — mov­ing house, exams, Quar­ter Peals — but they will sure­ly make them more deli­cious.  And that puts it all into per­spec­tive.  Keep life deli­cious and the details will take care of themselves.