Nation­al The­atre archives, Avery’s progress, and oth­er adventures

What a week! A lot of it was spent look­ing after, and feel­ing sor­ry for, Sick Hus­band. This was a first in our 23-year rela­tion­ship. I have known him to stay in bed, on a week­end, if sick, or to take off part of a day, or come home real­ly ear­ly, with flu or some­thing. But the boy was flat on his back from Fri­day after­noon until Mon­day after­noon, and even when he was able to get up with­out a ter­ri­ble cough, he actu­al­ly stayed home from work all day Mon­day, Tues­day and
Wednes­day. Much bet­ter by Thurs­day, and today, Sat­ur­day, he’s doing quite well. A real­ly bad bug.

So Avery and I amused our­selves as best we could. On Tues­day she had her first babysit­ter out­ing with the love­ly Katie, who took Avery and Anna (since it would have been so messy to sep­a­rate them now that they’re joined at the hip) to Regen­t’s Park Zoo, where they had an amaz­ing time and got very, very cold walk­ing home. I did­n’t men­tion to Avery the awful sto­ry I heard once about the zookeep­ers putting down all the dan­ger­ous ani­mals dur­ing World War II, so as to avoid mass pan­ic if a bomb hit the cages and the ani­mals got out.

Wednes­day morn­ing was the infor­mal “every­one gath­ers at Star­bucks” meet­ing of the moth­ers, where two or three of us sit down to start with, then as appoint­ments and errands and such claim one per­son, anoth­er per­son appears and takes her chair! I met three or four new love­ly ladies, and then there were a cou­ple I knew already, through Becky, since it’s large­ly a Form One crowd, Anna’s younger sis­ter Eleanor being in that form. They’re my lit­tle kinder­garten­er gull
group, so I am able to put a gul­l’s face and name with those of her moth­er and tell good sto­ries about their exploits. It’s a good way to get involved in the
con­ver­sa­tion quick­ly. To my left at one point was a lady called Gigi, who came up to about my armpit, and I realised she was the moth­er of one of my favorites, tiny lit­tle Chan­tal, and even tinier Low­er Kinder­gart­ner Tatiana, so I offered lots of admi­ra­tion for the fam­i­ly in gen­er­al. Would you believe Gigi is from Gibral­tar? I guess I nev­er knew that any­one came from Gibral­tar! Mar­ried to a man who’s Greek-Egypt­ian-Lebanese, and the whole sit­u­a­tion is just impos­si­bly exot­ic and ele­gant. Then there was a nice mom who was a dead ringer for my old gallery direc­tor Erin Myers, tall and gor­geous and very breezy Amer­i­can-ish. I felt so much
like I was in my old haunts in Tribeca, hang­ing out with my friends. Such an improve­ment over my ear­ly, lone­ly days. We’ve been here two months.

After school we had a lengthy snack at Vil­landry, spin­ning out the gap between school and my par­ent-teacher con­fer­ence at 5. Avery had a lot to say about RE, their Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion class, that day. “Did you know it’s Ash Wednes­day, Mum­my? And the begin­ning of Lent. You know, Jesus was a real­ly nice per­son. What a shame he had to die.” “Yes,” I said, “it’s always a shame when bad things have to hap­pen.” “Well,” she con­sid­ered, “not real­ly. It’s impor­tant for bad things to hap­pen, because then peo­ple real­ize that you can recov­er from bad things, and get over them. If noth­ing bad ever hap­pened, peo­ple would think you’d be destroyed if some­thing bad did hap­pen. We would­n’t know that you can get bet­ter again.” I asked if any­thing bad had ever hap­pened to her. “Leav­ing Lady­bug behind.” “And has it come true, you can get bet­ter?” “Not yet, but that’s part of the les­son. It takes time.”

Some­times I real­ly feel she has been around before.

So we went to school and gos­siped with Mrs D, wait­ing for my appoint­ment. She is awful­ly hap­py that Avery’s hap­py, and I was struck again, as I am always when I talk with her, that here is a woman who has found her mis­sion, her bliss. What a super­pow­er. She and Miss C were very pleased to see Avery in the library, ankles neat­ly fold­ed, work­ing hard on her cro­chet­ing. Mrs D said, “That is Aran wool, is it not, Avery? Love­ly jumpers can be made with that, you know.” I went up to meet Mrs Bick­ley, and, dear read­ers, I know you will for­give me if I kvell a lit­tle. Avery is just doing amaz­ing­ly well. Aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, social­ly, just blos­som­ing. She’s appar­ent­ly a phe­nom at spelling, is doing just
fine (despite her drama­tisch com­plaints) in French, is thriv­ing at Latin, and has eas­i­ly made tons of friends. “She’s a com­plete joy and a real asset to our class­room, Mrs Cur­ran,” Mrs Bick­ley raved. Well done, Avery. I report­ed these find­ings to her and we walked home in a mood of mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion. Plus it snowed! Heav­en­ly cozy to walk through the flakes amid the street­lights’ glow.

But Thurs­day was my real adven­ture. In my pur­suit of all things
relat­ed to Matthew Mac­fadyen, my crush actor, I have deter­mined to see him in every sin­gle incar­na­tion avail­able. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to my hav­ing an actu­al real life in New York at the time, I missed him onstage in “Hen­ry IV,” Parts One and Two, late last sum­mer at the Nation­al The­atre, where we saw David Suchet last month. How­ev­er, my obses­sion stops for noth­ing, so I found out through var­i­ous inter­net sources that the Nation­al The­atre holds, in its film archives, a video­tape of one per­for­mance of every play they put on. Amaz­ing! So it was but the work of a moment to call up the archives, make an
appoint­ment, and head over to Ham­mer­smith for a pri­vate view­ing! I took a taxi since my pow­ers of get­ting lost defy descrip­tion, and was glad I did because the archives were in the back of beyond, past Hol­land Park, quite far away. I would nev­er have found it on my own; I’d still be wan­der­ing around W14, pick­ing up odd meals and wish­ing my mobile phone bat­tery had­n’t died. As it was, I arrived in plen­ty of
time, went through the inner sanc­tum gates, and found myself with a secu­ri­ty pass with a mag­net­ic strip, and a lit­tle gnome of an escort to lead me through the labyrinthine pas­sages deep into the build­ing, end­ing up at a very ordi­nary look­ing research room. I was duly processed and giv­en the tape, and OH MY.

Grant­ed, it was on a lit­tle tele­vi­sion screen, so it did not do him jus­tice, but that boy can act. The divine Sir Michael Gam­bon played Fal­staff, and an actor who I saw in “The Way We Live Now,” the BBC adap­ta­tion of the Antho­ny Trol­lope nov­el, played Hen­ry IV. Our Matthew was real­ly mes­meris­ing and it was well worth the four and a half hours I spent there! I plan to go back after research­ing oth­er plays I have missed, includ­ing his maid­en the­atre voy­age, “The Duchess of Mal­fi.” Can you imag­ine, for FREE! Before you all come to Lon­don you would do well to research some­thing you’d like to see. I’ve nev­er met any­one who knows this place exists. What a find.

I emerged in a daze of Oedi­pal intrigue and polit­i­cal innunen­do inspired by the play, into the foxy sun­shine of a Lon­don after­noon , and decid­ed that since a ruinous­ly expen­sive taxi had got me there, even I could retrace its path and get myself back. And sure enough, I walked all across Hol­land Park, all through Hyde Park, past our flat in Mar­ble Arch, and into the Maryle­bone High Street, where in total exhaus­tion I gro­cery shopped and then picked up Avery and Anna from school. Whew! I Mapquest­ed my jour­ney and found I had walked near­ly five and a half miles!

Yes­ter­day I had my first doc­tor’s appoint­ment in Lon­don (how did I get by for three years here before with­out a doc­tor, or am I just hav­ing a mid­dle-age blank mem­o­ry moment?). Just to get some pre­scrip­tions filled (among them a refill of a face cream for John, I felt com­plete­ly guilty and duplic­i­tous answer­ing ques­tions about my “sen­si­tive skin,” ha). What is it about men and doc­tors, that they won’t go? A real­ly love­ly Amer­i­can woman, Dr Kate Haw­ley, mar­ried for 25 years to an Eng­lish­man. We com­mis­er­at­ed on the uni­ver­sal male­ness of men. She said, “I mean, real­ly, he’s a genius, a com­put­er genius, but if I ask him to fetch the milk from the fridge, he stands there and sim­ply PEERS and PEERS as if milk were quite a for­eign con­cept! And the symp­toms he gets up when he’s ill. Honestly!”

She sent me off to a lit­tle tiny, tiny chemist’s shop in Sloane Street where her office is (utter­ly galling to walk down this street, lined with Chris­t­ian Dior, Pra­da, Rober­to Cavel­li, Armani, Ver­sace and catch a glimpse of one’s blue-jeaned, dull, dull form). This chemist, she said, was called Nor­man and he would take care of me. “The shop is so small that the door has been set in diag­o­nal­ly from the pave­ment!” she described, and sure enough, it was like enter­ing a place where every­thing had been scaled down to fit a box tur­tle, as my favorite nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win would say.

Nor­man was con­cealed by box­es and box­es of the most exot­ic medica­ment you can imag­ine, and my request was there­fore field­ed by a love­ly, com­fort­ably plump lady called Nico­la. She passed the pre­scrip­tion sheet to Nor­man, and to while away the time I perused the shelves, absolute­ly sure there was some­thing besides bogus face cream that I need­ed. Before long, I could not con­tain my laugh­ter. “Stan­dard­ised Dev­il’s Claw Extract,” guar­an­teeed to dis­in­fect, or soothe, or heal, some­thing, I can’t remem­ber what. Nor­man and Nico­la began to notice my smoth­ered laugh­ter, and feel­ing bad for mak­ing fun of them, I said lame­ly, “It’s just that there’s some­thing fun­ny about its being ‘Stan­dard­ised.’ You cer­tain­ly would­n’t want ‘Unstan­dard­ised Dev­il’s Claw Extract, would you?” And Nico­la proved a ready ally. “Oh, then you’ve got to take a look at this,” she said imme­di­ate­ly. “Bach Res­cue Rem­e­dy Spray to Com­fort and Reas­sure. And then there’s this Injec­tion-Free Facial Relax­er, and oh, you need a jar of “Per­fect Pout.” It’s a hot red pep­per and cin­na­mon prepa­ra­tion that will guar­an­tee a Brigitte Bar­dot smile in just two applications!”

I dug deep­er and found a bot­tle of Spray-On Nylons, which must have been a car­ry­over from rationing dur­ing the war, and Nico­la emerged with a French con­coc­tion called “Email Dia­mant Den­ti­frice Rouge,” which trans­lates to some­thing like “Rare Dia­mond Red Tooth­paste.” It assured us that a rig­or­ous regime of its use would result in a “guar­an­teed embro­ca­tion.” Is that good or bad?

“Oh, no, here it is, here’s the one we’ve all been look­ing for,”
Nico­la said, “wait for it: it’s a tin of ‘Cox’s Rose Petal Salve, guar­an­teed to soft­en lips, tame bushy lash­es and brows, cure nap­py rash, and impart that lit­tle shine you’ve been look­ing for.’ ” “Gol­ly,” I said, “I don’t think I want a prod­uct that’s intend­ed for use both on your lips and your baby’s rashy bottom.”

Nor­man emerged from his office with a bot­tle. “Here’s my per­son­al favorite. ‘Bug Off: Jun­gle For­mu­la Fam­i­ly Lotion.’ Lis­ten to the warn­ing labels: ‘keep out of reach of chil­dren, harm­ful if swal­lowed, con­sult physi­cian if rash devel­ops, not for pro­longed use.’ Not quite the hap­py fam­i­ly prod­uct we were look­ing for, now is it? But my favorite label is the sleep­ing med­ica­tion that warns, ‘may cause drowsiness.’ ”

Final­ly after decid­ing not to buy a Gen­uine South Sea Sponge for 155 pounds, I told them they had made my entire week, and went home.

Anna spent the night last night and now I’ve got to go col­lect Avery from HER house where they repaired after break­fast. John and I spent the after­noon walk­ing to Por­to­bel­lo Mar­ket, for­get­ting that since we lived here last, sev­er­al hun­dred movies have been filmed there, in Not­ting Hill Gate, and every tourist in Lon­don was there. How­ev­er it was still fun to poke our heads in
the shops, and I went to my favorite old butch­er, “Kings­land: The Guardian Butch­er”, and bought mince (ground beef to you Yanks) and fresh Toulouse sausage to make
shep­herd’s pie for din­ner. I got up my courage to ask the burn­ing ques­tion: what is ham, and what is gam­mon? Well, it turns out that gam­mon is the name for the cut of meat that is cured, and if you cook it, it’s ham. So if it’s a raw ingre­di­ent you’re buy­ing to cook with, it’s gam­mon, but if it’s been cooked and you’re using it in a
sand­wich, it’s ham. Did I tell you that a request for ham sal­ad will get you ham and… a sal­ad? Ask for ham may­on­naise if you want to get what you want.

A trip down the long rows of fruit and veg stalls, com­ing away with the most gor­geous French leeks I have ever seen (des­tined for vichys­soise), and a flat of red cur­rants just because they are so pret­ty. We had a nice eggy brunch in a gor­geous place called The Gro­cer on Elgin, in Elgin Cres­cent. We debat­ed what exact­ly is meant by the odd Eng­lish term “speck,” in a dish. It’s Ger­man for sim­ply “meat,” and there is a clas­sic Ital­ian dish called, in Lon­don, “Spaghet­ti with speck and rock­et,” mean­ing beef bits and arugu­la. But with the eggs today I’m cer­tain it was a kind of pork thing, a supe­ri­or, very thin bacon. I’ll check it out more and report.