Mon­day Monday

I feel like I need a vaca­tion from my week­end! Yes­ter­day we walked over four miles after drop­ping Avery off just past Hol­land Park, at her new friend Sophi­a’s gor­geous house (more on that lat­er), and then when I went to fetch her I decid­ed to get on the phone to my mama and walk all the way there. Today if I were not sur­round­ed by clean­ing lady and elec­tri­cian check­ing all our bits and pieces, I would be flat out on the sofa with a hot water bot­tle and a kit­ty. It could still hap­pen, when every­one aban­dons me.

And Avery’s been invit­ed to play at Jade’s house on Fri­day! How nice. Her glam­ourous mum approached me at dropoff this morn­ing, nev­er my favorite time of day to chat but oh well, and said, “How would Fri­day be? Right, good. Sort­ed. Love­ly. Bye!” and I felt like I’d been hit by a steam­roller. Unlike at PS 234, no one here has yet learned that I should nev­er be asked to make plans at 8:15 in the morn­ing because there’s such a sig­nif­i­cant chance that I will not remem­ber a thing I said I would do. But here, now I’ve a record of our plans. Don’t let me forget.

class=“mobile-post”>Made a sal­ad last night that I want you all to try (except my moth­er who thinks avo­ca­dos taste like mod­el­ing clay). Very sim­ple and pret­ty, in fact pret­ty enough to post a pic­ture of it fin­ished on my kitchen counter last evening, before John demol­ished most of it even before din­ner began. I just man­aged to sal­vage a few mouth­fuls for myself. You run your knife all around an avo­ca­do, length­wise, and then twist it so as to sep­a­rate the two halves (one will con­tain the pit). Then run your knife down the inside of the non-pit half of the avo­ca­do, again
length­wise, in thin slices, and turn the avo­ca­do half inside out, like you would a man­go if you’ve ever watched Her­cule Poirot pre­pare a man­go. If you haven’t, just trust me, that’s how you do it. Pull off the slices, even if some of them break, and fan them out on a plate. Then slice a ball of moz­zarel­la nice and thick and inter­sperse with the avo­ca­do. Then halve tiny cher­ry toma­toes, and scat­ter them across the sal­ad. Sprin­kle with bal­sam­ic vine­gar and dot with spoons­ful of pesto, sprin­kle with salt, and you’re done. Hide from hus­band if you want any for yourself.

There was some sort of parade (or protest? they all look alike) that shut down Park Lane yes­ter­day morn­ing, thus effec­tive­ly trap­ping us in May­fair, but alas we had to get to Kens­ing­ton to take Avery to Sophi­a’s, so we hopped in a taxi and for the price of a nice lunch out got her to her playdate.

Sophi­a’s mum Susan greet­ed us on the steps of their big, ele­gant house (inside a wrought-iron gate and across a court­yard, so civ­i­lized). The inner foy­er is tiled in a sort of Ital­ianate, well-worn and col­or­ful pat­tern, and the walls lined with Susan’s col­lec­tion of mid-cen­tu­ry mod­ern art, the man­tel­piece of the hall­way fire­place lined with invi­ta­tions to art exhi­bi­tions and wed­dings. One card said, just like you read in a book, some­thing like “Mrs Annabelle Wes­t­a­cott, At Home.” I’ve always want­ed a card like that, just to announce that I’m At Home. High ceil­ings, lay­ered rugs, flower arrange­ments, the walls hung salon-style with art from floor to ceil­ing. An instal­la­tion of twelve Man Ray water­colours, “Evo­lu­tion of a Cac­tus,” which of course I have TAUGHT to peo­ple but nev­er seen in per­son. Susan is a docent at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Art and clear­ly pas­sion­ate about her sub­ject in a way that I admire but don’t exact­ly share any­more, hav­ing made the colos­sal sym­bol­ic ges­ture of leav­ing all my art his­to­ry books in stor­age in New Jersey.

Avery imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed Sophia up the mam­moth stair­case, fol­lowed by their black labrador, Diva, so Susan gave us a tour of the five-storey house com­plete with two kitchens, a gar­den, a ter­race and a roof deck, book­shelves through­out (mak­ing me ter­ri­bly envi­ous and impa­tient for my own). At some point her hus­band Claus joined us, a some­what old­er Ger­man man with the inde­fin­able aura of the sophis­ti­cat­ed Euro­pean financier: sort of pump­kin-col­ored cor­duroy trousers, a red sweater, blue shirt, and thin­ning hair float­ing across the top of his head, horn-rimmed spec­ta­cles and high­ly-pol­ished loafers. He approached us and held out his hand, which John met with his own, HOW­EV­ER Claus reached right past him to ME in a ges­ture of old-world ele­gance that I found quite charm­ing! Then he allowed John to shake his hand, say­ing some­thing along the lines of, “I’m so sor­ry to have been delayed, mat­ters of con­sul­ta­tions about con­tem­po­rary Ger­man art, you know.” Not some­thing that nor­mal­ly calls me to the phone on a giv­en Sun­day after­noon, but there you have it. He and John imme­di­ate­ly got down to the ever-pop­u­lar game of “invest­ment bankers I have known,” set­tling down to one Arthur Winther, about whom I heard a lot in maybe 1988 but haven’t thought of since; he was enough to bond the two men in sto­ries of “swaps” and dis­cus­sions of var­i­ous cur­ren­cies and the old days of rogue bank­ing. John said, “I remem­ber when Gold­man Sachs was suf­fer­ing some bad num­bers and Arthur just could­n’t stand it, called a meet­ing and stood there, slam­ming his fists down on the table and shout­ing, “We must focus on… EVERY­THING!” This so took me back to the old heady days when Gold­man Sachs ruled the world, com­plete with its own emer­gency blood sup­ply in Moscow (I remem­ber my lit­tle access card in my wal­let, lo these many years ago).

Susan and I dis­cussed art his­to­ry, and the incred­i­bly tiny world that makes her the god­moth­er of the chil­dren of the cou­ple who devel­oped our loft build­ing on Franklin Street. Got that? The girls made a whirl­wind appear­ance to ask if 1) they could jump on Sophi­a’s bed, and 2) they could try on Susan’s shoes. Per­mis­sion was grant­ed for both requests. We looked out at the beau­ti­ful, man­i­cured gar­den, graced with a tram­po­line, and I asked if they had nice neigh­bors, since they are, as they say in Lon­don real-estate-speak, “over­looked.” “Oh, they’re love­ly,” Susan said, “even if the frogs from their pond do tend to make their way rather too fre­quent­ly over our hedge. Yes­ter­day I had to fling two of them back over, and they were attached to each oth­er at the time, in that way that crea­tures do when spring­time arrives, you know. But I had to
get to them before Diva did, you see.”

Susan her­self is absolute­ly beau­ti­ful in the way of a Ralph Lau­ren mod­el, per­fect bone struc­ture, a loose­ly gath­ered pony­tail with ele­gant strands escap­ing, a sim­ple shawl-col­lared cash­mere cardi­gan, and dis­creet Rein­stein Ross jew­el­ry (anoth­er nice bond­ing point for us; shared jew­el­ry design­ers will do that for you). She ush­ered us out the door and we head­ed over to South Ken for lunch. Of course on the way we ran into one of John’s col­leagues, a gor­geous and ath­let­ic woman called Mary whom I was glad I had­n’t known exist­ed until then: how does he work sur­round­ed by these peo­ple? I refrained from ask­ing if she was going to be on his mam­moth Asian odyssey in a cou­ple of weeks. I don’t want to know.

We got a table at the Biben­dum Oys­ter Bar in our old haunt, the
Miche­lin Build­ing in the Ful­ham Road.

I don’t know why I love that place, I nev­er real­ly enjoy the food, but there you go. It’s the ambi­ence. We had cur­ried parsnip soup, good but too thick I thought, and then I suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion of a clas­sic Eng­lish dish I have always read about but nev­er eat­en: pot­ted shrimps. The idea is one of a very sort of Eng­lish con­fit, a way of pre­serv­ing food in the days before ade­quate refrig­er­a­tion. The shrimps (tiny tiny things, must ask at which point shrimps come to be called prawns; it seems to be a size thing, but I’ll have to find out) are placed in a lit­tle pot, hence the name, and then cov­ered with melt­ed but­ter, which then, I hate to use the word, con­geals and forms a sort of seal. It nev­er occurred to me, when read­ing about Lord Peter Wim­sey eat­ing pot­ted shrimps, that they actu­al­ly are served con­gealed. Now I know, and it’s one of those instances where the bad things peo­ple say about Eng­lish food are entire­ly deserved. What a weird thing to eat. Tra­di­tion­al gar­nish­es of mar­i­nat­ed cucum­bers, cor­ni­chons and toast points. Whew, it was hard going. John looked at me smug­ly over his per­fect bowl of Cae­sar sal­ad and inquired how my shrimps were, declined to share and clear­ly had his own opin­ions of peo­ple who order things because they appear on the menus in mur­der mys­ter­ies writ­ten 70 years ago. Fair enough. But we shared a nice South African sauvi­gnon blanc, had a wan­der through the rug sec­tion of Con­ran’s, real­ized for the fif­teenth time that we have nev­er mea­sured the liv­ing room and there­fore can­not buy a rug, and walked home. John took a nap and I had my mam­moth walk back to get Fifi.

Well, the elec­tri­cian has final­ly left. Can I jus­ti­fy a quick lit­tle lie-down on the sofa? So tempting.