back in the saddle!

Do you ever wake up and feel that at some point in the next few days you’re going to find your­self NOT doing some­thing you know you need to do? It could be that you’ll get your child to school late, or fail to remem­ber a play­date, or not return a phone call to some­one who real­ly wants to speak to you, or even have, dare I say it, McDon­ald’s for din­ner instead of cook­ing? Right now I have a pot of chick­en stock halfway through its cook­ing process, sit­ting out­side my bed­room door with its lid cov­ered in yes­ter­day’s icy rain. I should, by all rights, be bring­ing it in, boil­ing and strain­ing it and mak­ing it into vichys­soise with the leeks I bought over the week­end. I also should be putting a load of laun­dry into the wash­ing machine the size of a tea ket­tle. But I don’t feel like doing any of those things, I feel like being derelict and lazy.

I put this down to the marathon effort that went into Avery’s first horse­back rid­ing les­son yes­ter­day. Added to that is the fact that since Mon­day we have had no heat or hot water. It’s amaz­ing how you get used to no heat, but no hot water means no show­er, so I have real­ly bad hair right now. Yes­ter­day is sim­ply poured with rain from dawn to dark, and I got wet then dry, wet then dry, a dozen times, so my head is por­cu­piney and crazy today. I picked Avery up from school and she was clutch­ing her laun­dry bag with her skates, and her back­pack full of lord knows what, and we hailed a taxi to King’s Cross sta­tion to catch the Pic­cadil­ly line. I felt right then that we should turn around, go home, and watch a movie! But no, we per­se­vered through the cold rain, and down into the depths of the deep­est tube sta­tion in the city, crowd­ed with pre-rush hour com­muters. But as we got fur­ther out of Cen­tral Lon­don the crowds died down, Avery fell asleep on my shoul­der and we whizzed out into the coun­try­side. I had to remind myself to look around and enjoy see­ing the lit­tle hous­es rep­re­sent­ing sub­ur­ban Lon­don, like an episode of “Coro­na­tion Street.” Some 45 min­utes we lat­er we alight­ed at the penul­ti­mate stop on the line and looked around for some indi­ca­tion of where the eques­tri­an cen­tre was, final­ly get­ting direc­tions from a real­ly appeal­ing- smelling fish and chips cafe where no-lunch Avery would hap­pi­ly have set­tled in, but I felt we need­ed to find the barn.

Down the road, soaked to the skin, to the Trent Park Eques­tri­an cen­tre, an 800-acre mon­stros­i­ty set in the mid­dle of the coun­try­side, with the famil­iar and touch­ing sight of rail fences, jumps, and final­ly the stalls filled with ponies. Heav­en! We reg­is­tered her, went to the cafe for a nice toast­ed ham and cheese sand­wich and hot choco­late, she changed into her lit­tle jodh­purs and half-chaps and sweet cor­duroy barn jack­et, all sal­vaged from her New York tack trunk, now repos­ing odd­ly in my study.

She did her home­work while wait­ing for her les­son, and I eaves­dropped on the man­ic mobile phone con­ver­sa­tions of a harassed moth­er whose teenage daugh­ter was being ground­ed for hav­ing run away from home (!) and was protest­ing her incar­cer­a­tion. Teen sulks know no geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries, appar­ent­ly. Final­ly it was time to get on her pony, and we were met by Esme, a train­er with some unde­fin­able (to me) mid­dle Euro­pean accent, and marched down over tracks to what Amer­i­cans would call a ring, or are­na, but the Eng­lish call a “school.” There was a roof, but my good­ness it was cold and wet. So for an hour she trot­ted and can­tered, with her gold­en pony­tails flop­ping over her back and her
cheeks all pink, and what John and I call her “pony expres­sion” on her face, total con­cen­tra­tion. Dull as dish­wa­ter to me, but she was hap­pi­ness incar­nate. The hour slipped by, wet minute by wet minute, dark­ness fell and I could hear the rain gath­er fury out­side as I imag­ined the walk to the train sta­tion! How­ev­er, she had a won­der­ful time, bond­ing with her pony and get­ting some­thing out of the les­son even though as she told me lat­er, she could hard­ly under­stand a word the train­er was say­ing! The ter­mi­nol­o­gy is sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent, a post­ing trot being called a “ris­ing trot,” and the out­side rail being called the “track.” She shared the ring with a hap­less lit­tle chick called Rae, on a pony who would­n’t break out of a walk to save its life.

Sev­en p.m. saw me trudg­ing down the lane with all Avery’s belong­ings, red city bus­es whizzing per­ilous­ly past, Avery can­ter­ing ahead full of excite­ment. By 8 we were back in May­fair, and I assessed the chances
that I’d be able to find our way from Green Park sta­tion and home, decid­ed it was very unlike­ly, and hailed a cab. So now I’m mea­sur­ing how much Avery enjoyed her les­son against the fact that it took us four and a half hours to do it all, and I can’t decide what I think. I booked her for Sat­ur­day, and fig­ure John can take her and see if that’s some­thing they’d like to do each week­end. I’m not sure it’s the best thing for a school night. Of course com­ing home to no heat or hot water (again! The Curse of the Dun­raven Street boil­er) did not help! Iain, the high­ly unsat­is­fac­to­ry replace­ment for my beloved Bob the Porter, brought some Cock­ney lads to look at the hor­rid device, and now he’s depart­ed, rolling his eyes as if it were he who was with­out the basic util­i­ties of West­ern life. I can hear various
lugubri­ous pro­nounce­ments com­ing out of the boil­er room now, and I don’t want to get any closer.

What a depress­ing entry for today! It has begun to rain again. Per­haps tea at the Ritz, which I glimpsed upon our emer­gence from the Green Park tube stop, would cheer us both up.

Oh, and one more amaz­ing coin­ci­dence sto­ry to report: our friend Jim had a busi­ness meet­ing last week with an old col­league from the Cana­di­an gold-min­ing indus­try and of course guess who it is? The chap who bought our Jay Street loft, for his expec­tant daugh­ter, as a baby present. I think my par­ents gave me a nice set of Peter Rab­bit chi­na when Avery was expect­ed, but hey, a 3800-square-foot loft in Tribeca is nice, too. We got all the low­down on how much the new own­ers like the apart­ment. It sounds as if the dad actu­al­ly bought it out of sheer love for it him­self, and appar­ent­ly pro­posed to his real estate agents a deal where­by he would acquire all our fur­ni­ture and art as well, which they quashed by say­ing we felt real­ly strong­ly about our belong­ings. Ha! John says he would have leapt at the chance to start all over, but since we have spent two months and near­ly come to blows over try­ing to choose a bed­side table for Avery’s room, I think things turned out for the best.

Oooh, I’m hear­ing the lads say things about “fan speed fail­ure,” and “Cel­sius 25,” in accents that sound like the guys you see reel­ing down the road on their way to see Chelsea play Man­ches­ter on a Sat­ur­day after­noon. “Thanks, mate, for your exper­tise,” one of them says, “we’ll give you a tin­kle lat­er.” Grrr.