Avery’s dream come true

Oh, the divine Ellen Whitak­er! You may remem­ber her name from my post about our trav­els to the British Open Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onships in Sheffield last spring (or your eyes and mind may have com­plete­ly glazed over in a ponied-out stu­por, as mine threat­en to do at times). In any case, Ellen is the only girl in the “Whitak­er Dynasty” (be sure to pro­nounce this “di-nasty, not “die-nasty” of course) of show jump­ing, and one has to be impressed by the array of fam­i­ly mem­bers com­pet­ing at the Horse of the Year Show in Birm­ing­ham this week­end. The great patri­arch, John Whitak­er, his son Robert, and some­how also relat­ed are Michael and Steven, who is Ellen’s father. Ellen was the only woman, well real­ly a girl, who qual­i­fied for the 138 cen­time­ter (whch is a tech­ni­cal term for real­ly JOL­LY HIGH jumps) jump­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the show this week­end, and she end­ed up in the final three jump-off. So Avery and I tracked her down at the path­way lead­ing out of the are­na to the sta­bles, and got her auto­graph! She was most gra­cious, lit­er­al­ly the Gold­en Girl of the pony world, I think 21 years old, with shin­ing blond hair spring­ing grace­ful­ly out of a pony­tail (nat­u­ral­ly). “Oh, thank you!” Avery breathed. “Thank YOU,” Ellen said. So Avery’s been clutch­ing her grub­by lit­tle piece of paper ever since, also graced with Ben Maher’s sig­na­ture. These kids are just unbe­liev­able ath­letes, and you know what? Nobody got hurt. It was a long dri­ve each way but because we had Emmy, we did not mind. Except for poor Avery in the back on the way there, com­plete­ly frozen sol­id in the harsh wind that leapt nim­bly over John’s and my heads and blast­ed her with artic strength! I final­ly reached back and felt her lit­tle hand and it was sim­ply… frozen! Emmy will not let us put her top up or down whilst mov­ing, so we pulled over and got the top up and then all was cozy. Since then, at the Purdeys stall in the shop­ping are­na of the horse show, we acquired a gor­geous tar­tan fringey rug that will live in the back seat for just such occasions.

Let’s see, what else has been going on? We’ve had an extra­or­di­nary num­ber of parcels not get deliv­ered, or get deliv­ered to New York and then not get for­ward­ed, or get can­celed, so I seem to spend most of my day play­ing with track­ing num­bers and annoy­ing auto­mat­ed mes­sage sys­tems that thank me for choos­ing “D Haitch L” which makes me crazy. Avery’s out­grown school shoes, print­er ink, cat lit­ter and food. Please tell me I did not acci­den­tal­ly ask for the deliv­ery of 30 kilos of cat lit­ter to Reuters Amer­i­ca, Times Square, New York. If I did, it’s good news that it has­n’t arrived. Sigh. This was all punc­tu­at­ed yes­ter­day by a total­ly cap­ti­vat­ing trip to the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery with Avery’s school class! When the per­mis­sion slip for the coach ride appeared in Avery’s back­pack, I signed it with a lit­tle added note say­ing I would be avail­able to chap­er­one if they need­ed it, and sure enough, I was allowed. So I turned up at school yes­ter­day in time to meet the new librar­i­an, Mrs Palmer, who will let me help with the Book Fair in Novem­ber, and then meet up with all the fran­tic girls with sticky hands who were at a fever pitch of excite­ment at the thought of their coach jour­ney through Cen­tral Lon­don. I was Coco’s part­ner by sim­ple dint of the fact that she grabbed my hand and did­n’t let go. Miss Leslie and Mrs Laforet were on either side of me and we dis­cussed the film Avery and I saw over the week­end, “The Queen.” I found it to be real­ly impres­sive: a behind-the-scenes look at how the roy­al fam­i­ly dealt with the after­math of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Helen Mir­ren played the Queen, and then there was the peren­ni­al game of “where have I seen him before?” that occurs with all British actors. There seem to be only about 30 of them, and you know you’ve seen them on “Bleak House,” or “Spooks” or “Agatha Christie: Marple.” What­ev­er crit­i­cisms any­one has for that new series of Marple, star­ring Geral­dine McE­wan (and believe me there are some vit­ri­olic Brits who do not appre­ci­ate any­one try­ing to replace Joan Hick­son!), the cast­ing is always superb. So the Queen’s sec­re­tary is played by the man who was Home Sec­re­tary in last week’s “Spooks,” and the equer­ry was the doc­tor in Marple, but hey! Here’s a sur­prise. Prince Philip is played by the chap who was the farmer in “Babe”! How weird is that. This time around he spent most of the movie in either a dress­ing gown or a kilt. There is some­thing about a man in a kilt climb­ing out of a Land Rover Defend­er 110 that just made every­one in the audi­ence tit­ter slight­ly. Sur­pris­ing­ly, Avery loved the film. We had a very intrigu­ing dis­cus­sion on the way home (through the POSH­EST of May­fair neigh­bor­hoods, along Cur­zon and South Aud­ley Streets, pierced sad­ly by the Amer­i­can Embassy) about the way the char­ac­ters devel­op through the movie, and the queen’s metaphor­i­cal rela­tion­ship to the hunt­ed stag that appears through­out. There’s a nice dose of grand­fa­ther­ly sup­port after the trag­ic loss of your moth­er: go bag you a stag with a huge set of antlers! Per­fect therapy.

So any­way, we were head­ed to the NPG in order to see the two rooms of Tudor por­traits on hand, since Form V are study­ing the Tudors. Avery has an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of the suc­ces­sion of Tudor kings and queens, most espe­cial­ly the six wives of Hen­ry VIII. I remem­ber my moth­er dur­ing my child­hood say­ing, “Divorced, behead­ed, died, divorced, behead­ed, sur­vived.” Why did she say that, what an odd thing to remem­ber? Oh, I know, it was dur­ing the air­ing on PBS of the series doc­u­ment­ing his wives. Any­way, we all sat down on the floor of the cozy pan­eled rooms and had a docent point out the salient details of Eliz­a­beth I’s gown, her jew­els, her crown. Coco hissed to me, “My moth­er said espe­cial­ly to notice the jew­els and to give her any ideas, if I had any, for her next col­lec­tion.” Coco’s moth­er is as you will have gath­ered a jew­el­ry design­er. Although giv­en the wealth of the King’s Col­lege par­ent base, it’s per­fect­ly pos­si­ble that any giv­en moth­er might be inter­est­ed in acquir­ing a neck­lace that belonged to Eliz­a­beth I at the next Christie’s auc­tion. Nonethe­less. Avery waved her hand a grat­i­fy­ing num­ber of times to give answers to ques­tions, and then they made a love­ly draw­ing of their favorite por­trait and we were off again. Coco and I spent the return jour­ney try­ing to come up with a suit­able plot for the piece of fic­tion I am sup­posed to pro­duce on Octo­ber 21 for my writ­ing class. “You could have it with a house that’s filled with pre­cious objects, and a but­ler who when you shake his hand, you get trans­port­ed back in time to a place where you’re just the ser­vant…” she offered, “or like in Agatha Christie, you could have some­one mur­dered and there are lots of false clues and it’s up to you to fig­ure out that it’s actu­al­ly the per­son who looked like the obvi­ous sus­pect, and the false clues were to dis­tract you!” Why isn’t Coco tak­ing this class?

Because it’s a sad fact that I am stymied. I’m doing bet­ter with the one-page out­line of a screen­play for next Thurs­day’s class. But there seems to be an unbridge­able gap between my enthu­si­asm for writ­ing this blog, and my abil­i­ty to come up with even the slight­est glim­mer of a fic­tion­al world. Why is that? It’s not as if my real life were so bleep­ing inter­est­ing that fic­tion­al ideas were unnec­es­sary! I live a very dull life! So you’d think I’d be chomp­ing at the bit (ooh, don’t men­tion hors­es, please) to come up with an alter­na­tive exis­tence to describe and live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through. But no. Every­thing I think of seems either too bor­ing, too improb­a­ble, or has no end­ing. I do think I’m going to take in my screen­play out­line with no end­ing, and see if the class can help me. The real scary thing is the read­ing-alooud of the 2500 words of fic­tion, in front of all those expe­ri­enced writ­ers who are not loathe to express their dis­dain for one’s efforts. I have found that there’s noth­ing like a Brit to express dis­dain. It seems to be in the water.

A mys­tery of some kind seems like the solu­tion. At least there, in that genre, there’s no doubt about what’s meant to HAP­PEN. You got your char­ac­ters, you got your set­up, then some­body gets killed, or some­thing gets stolen, and voila. You have to get your char­ac­ters into the action, and then out of it. As opposed to the sort of self-explorato­ry, Life of the Inner Mind fic­tion where lord knows how you end it. It’s not that things don’t hap­pen in real life, but as far as I can tell, there’s no plot! Or I’ve “lost the plot,” one of my favorite Eng­lish expres­sions. Avery and I emerged from Daunt Books, her mec­ca, last evening, with a bag full of books for her. “You know, Mum­my, you did­n’t buy any­thing for your­self. I think that you can’t expect to write a nov­el, if you don’t read nov­els. You read the same sorts of things, over and over. Look at the vari­ety of gen­res here in my bag. I’ve got a fake diary from some­body in World War II, a non-fic­tion book about the Roman Empire, and the sequel to my favorite fairy sto­ry. You’ve got to expand your mind.”

There’s noth­ing like a well-meant put­down from your child who has yet to attain two num­bers in her age. But you know what: she’s right. I’d bet­ter go read something.