mem­o­ries of March

Every time we think spring has come — a tan­ta­lis­ing­ly warm and blowy day, with per­haps a blink or two of blue sky — the grey descends again, this month, and plops us right back into Lon­don win­ter, which is like a long, long Thanks­giv­ing Day.  No real weath­er, to speak of, but res­olute­ly chilly and dank, with no hint so far on the trees at St Paul’s Cathe­dral of the glo­ries of a new sea­son to come.

That’s why it’s impor­tant to cre­ate your own bit of mag­ic.  Our house­hold has been light­ened and made cheer­ful by the arrival of Avery, home for her long East­er break.  Of course, John and I have got used to our lives with­out see­ing her love­ly face or hear­ing her mid-Atlantic voice describ­ing some new adven­ture or idea.  We have a nice time when it’s just the two of us.  But there must be some sort of pro­tec­tive parental pres­sure valve that does­n’t let us remem­ber how much nicer life is with her around, until she arrives and we can appre­ci­ate her.  We’ve been cook­ing together!

She’s about to head off on hol­i­day to stay in an airbnb flat, with a kitchen and no uni­ver­si­ty din­ing hall!  So it occurred to her to get some expe­ri­ence in the kitchen with me to give a bit of guid­ance.  Actu­al­ly, she start­ed out last week with her father teach­ing her to make scram­bled eggs, a life skill up there with tying one’s shoes or sewing on a but­ton — you can live with­out these skills, but it’s a lot eas­i­er with them.  If you can scram­ble an egg, you will nev­er go hungry.

Then she and I tack­led spaghet­ti car­bonara (from “Tonight at 7.30″, nat­u­ral­ly!).  Then we moved onto one of her absolute favorite dish­es: mush­room risotto.

Mush­room Risotto 

(serves 4 as a main dish, 6 as a side dish)

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsps olive oil

12 closed cap mush­rooms or 3 por­to­bel­lo mush­rooms, sliced or chopped as you like

1 fur­ther tbsp butter

4 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly chopped

1 small white or red onion, fine­ly chopped

1 3/4 cups/350 grams Arbo­rio (risot­to) rice

about 4 cups/2 pints hot chick­en or veg­etable stock

3 tbsps cream

hand­ful chives, chopped

1/2 cup grat­ed Pecori­no or Parmesan

In a heavy, large saucepan, melt the but­ter with the olive oil and when hot, toss in the mush­rooms.  Stir­ring fre­quent­ly, cook until soft.  Lift out of the saucepan and set aside in a small bowl.

Add the fur­ther but­ter to the saucepan and cook the gar­lic and onion until soft­ened, then add the rice.  Stir thor­ough­ly until all the rice is coat­ed with but­tery oil.  Then over a medi­um heat, begin adding stock with a ladle, stir­ring near­ly con­stant­ly as the rice absorbs the addi­tions of liq­uid.  After about 20 min­utes, the rice will have absorbed all the stock it can and will be cooked, but still a bit firm to the teeth.  At this point, you can decide if you would like the risot­to soft­er, and if so, add anoth­er ladle of stock.  Add cream and mush­rooms and stir.

Gar­nish with chives and cheese.

It was the first time Avery had cooked her own dish in order to pho­to­graph the fin­ished prod­uct!  It was com­plete­ly deli­cious.  And to be hon­est, I had only half the required quan­ti­ty of risot­to rice, and sup­ple­ment­ed it with so-called “pael­la” rice.  It was perfect.

You may have noticed, in these pho­tographs, that Avery’s hair is absolute­ly amaz­ing!  She has had her sec­ond Vidal Sas­soon hair­cut as a mod­el.  What fun to have this film to watch.  I loved this hair­cut, around Christ­mas­time, but I like her new one even more.  When she came home in time for din­ner after the shoot this time, she said, “Excuse me a minute; my lip­stick may look nor­mal, but it’s actu­al­ly coat­ed in hair.”

Mean­while, amidst the cook­ing and con­ver­sa­tion, I made my way back to a Sat­ur­day morn­ing ring­ing prac­tice in Barnes, for the first time since Octo­ber.  It was absolute heav­en to be back, and let me tell you, spring has sprung in Barnes, as it does ear­ly every year.

I think my Barnes col­leagues were a bit dis­ap­point­ed that after all my expe­ri­ences ring­ing at the famous Fos­ter Lane, I have not been mirac­u­lous­ly turned into a good ringer!  I explained that my improve­ments are very inte­ri­or, and not par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able to the out­side world.  It isn’t that I’ve learned a new method, or even improved my under­stand­ing of an old method.  It’s my pre­ci­sion that’s improved, after weeks and months of dear Tom’s voice in my ear, like an instruc­tion­al, beloved mos­qui­to.  But sim­ply ring­ing togeth­er, in that beloved ground-floor cham­ber, was worth the walk to Water­loo, the train ride, the walk across Barnes Com­mon.  SO love­ly to be back togeth­er with my cher­ished colleagues.

We had a cham­pagne par­ty to say thank you and good­bye to our dear Col­in, one of my dear­est friends in Barnes who was a ringer before my time, and has always been treat­ed as our old­er States­man, our Emeritus.

Barnes will nev­er be the same, with Col­in in a love­ly retire­ment home close to his daugh­ters, on the bor­der of Som­er­set and Devon.  He was so pleased with Trisha’s toast, as you can see.  “Thank you for my hugs, Kris­ten,” he said, giv­ing me one, and a kiss on the cheek.  I told how, the after­noon of my first Quar­ter Peal, I arrived at the ring­ing cham­ber to find a card dec­o­rat­ed with the British flag lying in the mid­dle of the car­pet.  “Good luck, Kris­ten!  You will be great.  Love, Colin.”

Hap­py mem­o­ries, in Barnes.

And my twins came to hear the ring­ing!  They were thrilled, as it was such a good Sat­ur­day tra­di­tion for us.  Their won­der­ful mum taped this adorable tiny movie, with lit­tle Fred­die say­ing over and over, “Kris­ten’s bells, Kris­ten’s bells!”

boys bells

We had a love­ly lunch togeth­er at their home, scene of so many shared hours of talk, games, birth­day par­ties, cups of tea.

I miss so much liv­ing just around the cor­ner from them.  How many after­noons did Claire bring them to our house to run up and down the stairs and kick a ball in the gar­den, and how many times did I pop onto my bike to bring them a bag of fresh dough­nuts, or a bit of ham sal­ad as a teatime treat?  The hours we spent watch­ing the swans on the pond, kick­ing leaves on the Com­mon, throw­ing sticks into the stream, say­ing “woof, woof” to all the Barnes dogs that stroll past.  Not enough hours, now we have to make a real effort to see each other.

All too soon I came home, leav­ing behind the life in Barnes that I loved so much.  Such a dif­fer­ent riv­er view we had there out­side our door than the one that offers us St Paul’s Cathe­dral and the Globe now.

Of course it takes only my arrival back in SE1, to our love­ly flat so unex­pect­ed­ly cosy, con­sid­er­ing its loca­tion, to make me hap­py to be home, and hap­py that we made our epic move in Octo­ber.  How the project of the Tate Exten­sion next door is com­ing along swift­ly.  But to be ready for the Queen to open it in June?  I will believe it when I see it.

The next week brought Avery’s cit­i­zen­ship cer­e­mo­ny!  It felt very strange to see her, a Com­pleat Adult, rais­ing her right hand and promis­ing loy­al­ty “to the Sov­er­eign Lady, her heirs and suc­ces­sors.”  We real­ly belong here, now.

To cel­e­brate, our great friends John and Suzanne braved the jour­ney from their new home out­side Lon­don to have lunch with us!  Crab tart to be sure — it real­ly is the ulti­mate lun­cheon dish, or din­ner if you have some sub­stan­tial side dish­es.  A spicy rock­et sal­ad, a bit of mar­i­nat­ed red cab­bage, a warm banana cake.  And then we walked off the calo­ries by tak­ing the ele­va­tor up to the 22nd Floor, to show them the unsur­passed view.

Suzanne did­n’t tell us until she got into the ele­va­tor that she suf­fers from fear of heights!  She was very brave.

We got into the ele­va­tor — the very much glass ele­va­tor — to come back down­stairs and the doors shut.  John hit the but­ton to come down.  Noth­ing hap­pened.  “Oh, my God,” I said, feel­ing for poor Suzanne, “we’re stuck.”  John prised open the doors like Super­man and we emerged, pant­i­ng slight­ly.  What were the odds?

Tomor­row will bring a stormy East­er Sun­day and my first Quar­ter Peal with my Fos­ter Lane band.  Forty-five or so min­utes of Plain Bob Dou­bles, with me on the tre­ble.  Watch this space…