four very busy weeks

Well, it’s me, the orig­i­nal bro­ken record. Anoth­er month has gone by, and yet again I’m enveloped in a 747 cross­ing the Atlantic! This time I have Avery beside me (well, actu­al­ly to be per­fect­ly hon­est we have an emp­ty seat between us, very pos­si­bly the only emp­ty seat in the entire plane, what luck), and we’re on our way to New York and Con­necti­cut to spend six weeks.

 John, sad­ly, has been left behind in order to pre­pare for and attend a long-await­ed, seem­ing­ly for­ev­er-await­ed meet­ing relat­ed to his plot of dirt. He’ll join us in about 10 days’ time, with, one hopes, good or at least encour­ag­ing news about his project.

Mean­while, Avery and I are fac­ing the rather daunt­ing tasks of open­ing up Red Gate Farm, acquir­ing a rental car, unpack­ing all Avery’s stuff and repack­ing it for her sum­mer in NYC, nod­ding our heads at the Fourth of July, and get­ting her set­tled in the city at her rent­ed room. Then we’ll motor on down­town to see “Text/ure” togeth­er! This promis­es to be an event of momen­tous impor­tance, a cel­e­bra­tion of all the ardu­ous work we put in over the last year, and a chance to share the joy, since of course I attend­ed the open­ing all by myself in May. I promise a whole blog post devot­ed just to that mar­velous evening, all the prepa­ra­tions in the week before, and then Avery’s and my tour of the exhi­bi­tion together.

 

The last month in Lon­don has been char­ac­ter­ized by even-more-than-usu­al con­trasts of highs and lows. The lows are, of course, of a pub­lic and trag­ic nature: the truck attack at Lon­don Bridge, the shat­ter­ing Gren­fell Tow­er fire. The for­mer dis­as­ter had imme­di­ate effects on our actu­al dai­ly lives: the clos­ing of streets, of our beloved Bor­ough Mar­ket, of our adored Padel­la restau­rant. Because noth­ing, absolute­ly NOTH­ING can keep Lon­don­ers down, how­ev­er, the neigh­bor­hood grad­u­al­ly bounced back, while remem­ber­ing the vic­tims of the tragedy.

 

As we strolled around the mar­ket, spend­ing as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble to show our sup­port of the farm­ers and mer­chants, we spot­ted an unbe­liev­able sight. A t‑shirt from the obscure and very far-away Isles­ford Dock Restau­rant in Maine! We stalked its wear­er and accost­ed him. He turned out to be Justin of Bread Ahead, the bak­ery where I had my short-lived sour­dough tri­umphs. “I was the head chef at Isles­ford for years!” Justin crowed. Incred­i­ble. One of those moments when life tru­ly sur­pris­es you.

 

I’m get­ting ahead of myself. The month of June began aus­pi­cious­ly with my return from New York, very, very tired and oh-so-hap­py to be home. That very after­noon saw the inau­gu­ra­tion of what I like to think of as the Great Parade To and From the Vet, as I took a taxi over to Clerken­well to pick up Keechie from her stay in the Cat­tery. John had spent part of my absence in bliss­ful talks with his Japan­ese archi­tect in Basel and oth­er parts of Switzer­land, so poor Keechie, in need of dai­ly med­ica­tion for her brand-new thy­roid con­di­tion, had to be impris­oned unwill­ing­ly with Drs Mark, Mary and Pais­ley in their eccen­tric and lov­ing estab­lish­ment. Boy, was she hap­py to get home.

 

Since then she’s been back for anoth­er set of blood tests, and poor Tacy has made sev­er­al trips to have a lit­tle bump removed from inside her ear (sev­er­al instances of scratch­ing at said bump and then shak­ing her head mad­ly hav­ing result­ed in the flat’s look­ing like a crime scene). There­upon, Tacy’s kid­neys were dis­cov­ered to have ele­vat­ed, or depressed, some­thing or oth­er, neces­si­tat­ing more trips back and forth, whilst her ear required a very fetch­ing lit­tle capelet, strange­ly appeal­ing as an accessory.

 

In between fer­ry­ing all these cats to and from the doctor’s, I’ve had oth­er adven­tures. A day in Barnes – a deli­cious and talk­a­tive lunch with my beloved ring­ing friend Trisha (I miss her so much), and then a whole after­noon with my favorite twins, “Fran­gus,” and their beau­ti­ful moth­er. What a per­fect adven­ture, begin­ning with a pre­cious music les­son in a jew­el of a lit­tle brick house, then cof­fee and cakes at Gail’s, scenes of so many messy, joy­ous after­noons with the boys.

We hap­pened to run into Trisha after­ward, and she chat­ted with them about their fre­quent vis­its to St Mary’s to hear the bells. What hap­py mem­o­ries of those Sat­ur­day mornings.

 

 Then we drove through the incom­pa­ra­ble Rich­mond Park for their week­ly swim­ming les­son! They could not be cuter.

 

And the beau­ti­ful dri­ve back through the park. “Look, Kris­ten,” Fred­die told me earnest­ly. “The deer on this side of the car are spot­ted, and the deer on the OTH­ER side are plain.” He was right.

 

Tea with much-missed Eliz­a­beth and a vis­it to our old home fin­ished my vis­it to Barnes, always such an event of nos­tal­gia for me.  I texted John and Avery. “Am I the only one feel­ing ter­ri­bly sen­ti­men­tal now?” “Yes,” they replied. They are com­pleat Banksiders.

One after­noon, out of my long-ago and mis­spent youth one sum­mer in France, my love­ly friend Karen popped over from Min­neapo­lis. We sat fever­ish­ly talk­ing for two straight hours, just enjoy­ing the bril­liance of a forever-friendship.

John and I made a day trip to see Avery, since I just couldn’t fath­om either send­ing my NYC pho­tos to her, or of wait­ing till the end of term to share them. I want­ed to sit with her in per­son and pore over them all, so we did. In the Morse Bar at the Ran­dolph! What a joy-filled after­noon that was.

 

Avery in turn shared with us two arti­cles she’s writ­ten about “Text/ure” for the Oxford news­pa­per, the Cher­well. So impres­sive. She has so many words at her disposal!

We’ve had artis­tic inter­ven­tions of an extra­or­di­nary nature. First is the new neigh­bor at Tate Mod­ern next door, an instal­la­tion of the word “For­ward” three times in Russ­ian. It is a thing of whim­sy and fun, a climb­ing frame for chil­dren, a pho­to­graph­ic frame for tourists.

 

The Roy­al Acad­e­my Sum­mer Exhi­bi­tion has opened, and as mem­bers, John and I were able to go ear­ly. As always at that show, ful­ly 95% of the objects on dis­play sim­ply elude my field of vision. The bright­ly coloured, the fig­u­ra­tive, the brash, these are invis­i­ble to me, in favor of intri­cate, mono­chro­mat­ic, repet­i­tive ges­tur­al pieces alive with process. And inter­est­ing­ly, I was able to pre­dict with 100% accu­ra­cy which rooms’ cura­tors were women, and which artists were women. John and I laughed at the utter pre­dictabil­i­ty of my taste, and in fact the shared taste of our fam­i­ly. We were pret­ty cer­tain the three of us could go through the show and pick out the five or six pieces we would all want to own.  Here are a cou­ple.  I restrained myself from remem­ber­ing who the artists were, out of sheer temp­ta­tion.  This piece is a burned drawing.

And this one a very, very intri­cate watercolour.

And we made a pur­chase! Sara Dodd. We will get it in Sep­tem­ber, when the show is finished.

 

Avery and I have made an amaz­ing stu­dio vis­it to a fiber/embroidery artist in West Hamp­stead, Richard McVetie. Avery encoun­tered his work on Insta­gram, and it was but the work of a moment to track him down and ask if we could come in admir­ing per­son. We both have an elu­sive set of ideas for a show we’d like to do in Lon­don: process, intri­ca­cy, pre­cise mate­ri­als, inti­mate ges­tures. Richard will most cer­tain­ly come top of the list, when this project takes shape next fall some­where, sometime.

Very pos­si­bly sec­ond on our list is an incred­i­ble tex­tile artist called Kather­ine Tay­lor, a young woman who has just earned her degree from a Lon­don uni­ver­si­ty (she has a show up in Lon­don now!).

She hap­pens to be a fel­low ringer with me at Fos­ter Lane! Not only is she an artist, she is also a “Vis­i­ble Mender,” which it turns out is a thing.  The idea real­ly appeals to me — instead of fol­low­ing our increas­ing­ly throw­away approach to cul­ture, when things become torn, or bro­ken, or moth­e­at­en, we should mend them, and not in a way that hides the orig­i­nal flaw or the mend, but in a way that cel­e­brates the mend. Kather­ine is teach­ing me, and our mutu­al ring­ing friend Eliz­a­beth, to mend things in the most lov­ing, artis­tic way possible.

One of my favorite-ever woolen throws, an arti­fact of the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest spread on our New York apart­ment, has been the vic­tim of a ter­ri­ble moth inva­sion. Its repair is at its infant stages.

The mate­ri­als have often been res­cued from dump­sters, or “tips” as they’re called here.  So, recy­cling plus mending.

 

On the oppo­site end of the spec­trum of life from the relax­ing activ­i­ties above, I’ve had a few very chal­leng­ing bell­ring­ing expe­ri­ences late­ly, one a gor­geous wed­ding (we climbed pre­car­i­ous­ly to the church roof to enjoy the spectacle):

And then “Tre­ble-Bob­bing to Cam­bridge.” This Quar­ter Peal was so very dif­fi­cult that for the first time ever, I didn’t even mark the event with a pho­to­graph. I’m not sure I would have shown up on film. It’s the most mad­den­ing skill of one blow in first, one in sec­ond, anoth­er in first, then up to third, fourth, back down to third, up to fifth, then six, back down to fifth… I kid you not. All mem­o­rized, for 52 min­utes in a row. Absolute mad­ness. I do not know how I sur­vived, but of course the church and its tow­er are beloved to me, anyway.

I’ve been cook­ing, of course. I came home from NYC with a sheaf of recipes under my arm, reminders of a sim­ply incred­i­ble evening spent with my dear friend David Rosen­garten, learn­ing all his Chi­nese secrets. More on this tuto­r­i­al when I write up my New York adven­tures, but suf­fice it to say for the moment that the dish­es are unbe­liev­able. “Don’t you feel you’re in a Chi­nese restau­rant, Kris­ten?” David asked as we tucked in. And I did. You will love them too.

 

You would be so proud of me!  I fol­lowed his recipes to the let­ter.  A rar­i­ty for me.  And it was worth it.  “Vel­veted” Chick­en, and Spicy Shrimp.

Then, into our peace­ful lives arrived my dar­ling sis­ter Jill and her love­ly fam­i­ly, for a week’s inten­sive, ridicu­lous­ly filled-up tourism and fam­i­ly time together.

 It was Joel’s birthday!

They came to ring­ing prac­tice with me!  My God, it was unbe­liev­ably hot.

Both girls had a go at the rope!

 trimme molly.m4v

 We had such fun.  The cast courts at the V&A!

 

My dar­ling friend Sue, who heart­less­ly aban­doned me to move to San Fran­cis­co, just hap­pened to be in town with her hus­band Paul and so nat­u­ral­ly, they came to dinner!

In addi­tion to the adven­tures we all shared togeth­er, they some­how also man­aged to see the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, the Tow­er of Lon­don, West­min­ster Abbey, the Cab­i­net War Rooms, Wind­sor Cas­tle, Stone­henge and Bath! I’m sure I’m miss­ing some­thing, but I bet they were pooped when they final­ly set­tled on their plane to go home. The trip of a life­time, and such fun for us all to be togeth­er, on our home turf in Lon­don for the first time.

 I’ve had my last Home-Start vis­it for the sea­son (only one more to come before “clos­ing” with this fam­i­ly). I’ve made my last recipe for Cook­ing Club, a deli­cious tray of Rice Krispie treats.

 

And then I sliced off the end of my thumb, whilst chop­ping mint for Cook­ing Club (I didn’t get to go). Dra­ma! Talk about a crime scene. I have since learned that thumbs are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly “vas­cu­lar,” which means they con­tain unheard of num­bers of veins, and as such pro­duce an unholy amount of blood when cut open. John car­ried me along to the hos­pi­tal for an after­noon at A&E. First go!

What an idiot I felt!

Sec­ond go, lat­er in the after­noon (with a love­ly sling to go with it).

 

Final­ly day two, after anoth­er after­noon at anoth­er hos­pi­tal, the thumb was bear­ably wrapped.

I felt rather sor­ry for myself, and all the more so for miss­ing my two last play­groups.  My friends at Mum­space sent me a love­ly con­so­la­tion video!

I missed one last Sun­day ring­ing. I went along for cof­fee with my ring­ing friends any­way, know­ing how much I shall miss them in the com­ing weeks.

We man­aged to pop along to the Globe for a rau­cous and uproar­i­ous “Twelfth Night.”  Go!  It’s such fun.

And then, not so much fun as incred­i­bly intense and thought-pro­vok­ing, a stand­ing-room-only, sev­en-hour marathon “Angels in Amer­i­ca” at the Nation­al.  I went to the first half and John and Avery to that twice PLUS the sec­ond half.  Mind-blow­ing explo­ration of the first months of the AIDS cri­sis.  Heart-stop­ping stuff — Andrew Garfield is incan­des­cent — if you can pos­si­bly get even one tick­et, stand­ing up.

 After a fren­zied last after­noon of laun­dry, decid­ing what to take, pack­ing and unpack­ing and repack­ing, we were ready to go.

 This evening will see us, post-flight, rush­ing in a car ser­vice from JFK to RGF, and a sigh of relief at being “home.”  More from Amer­i­ca soon — a full-scale report of the open­ing in May and Avery’s vis­it with me tomorrow!