last adven­tures

Well, the inevitable has hap­pened: Annabelle, Alyssa, Elliot and Steve have gone back to New York. Waaah! What will we do with­out hear­ing the end­less per­for­mances of “Bop to the Top,” Elliot’s earnest expla­na­tions of the plots of plays he has seen, Steve’s parade of crisp choic­es (I think in the end “Chi­nese five-spice baby­back ribs” may have won, if not the good taste award, then the dis­gust­ing ingre­di­ents award), and basi­cal­ly every­thing about Alyssa? If she has a flaw, we did­n’t see it over our week togeth­er. How sweet of her to bring match­ing paja­mas and socks for the girls for their week-long sleep­over, and their trea­sured latch-hook rug kits? What fun was had by all.

And the last two big adven­tures were the pan­to and the fair in Hyde Park. Both of which sound­ed, in advance, like can­di­dates for hot nee­dles in eye­balls, but au con­traire: while John and I were get­ting soaked and hav­ing bad Pol­ish food on our anniver­sary, every­one else was hav­ing the time of the cen­tu­ry at “Dick Whit­ting­ton and His Cat.” And true to my pre­dic­tions… Dick was played by a girl. Avery actu­al­ly got to go up on stage and take part, as you can see. Here are her per­son­al­i­ty and Annabelle’s in a nut­shell: the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go up was actu­al­ly pre­sent­ed to Annabelle and because she is a good and gen­er­ous friend, she let Avery go instead. Also, as she explained to me, “I don’t like to go up on stage when I don’t know what they’re going to ask me to do.” Fair enough. And Avery? Any stage is a good thing.

Sand­wiched vir­tu­ous­ly between the play and the fair was a trip to the British Muse­um. The kids duti­ful­ly got edu­cat­ed all about the Elgin Mar­bles while we adults debat­ed the rel­a­tive mer­its of the Turk­ish gov­ern­men­t’s and the Muse­um’s claims to the sculp­tures, the lat­ter’s seem­ing to win out with its stance that Lord Elgin deter­mined the build­ings were falling apart and the sculp­tures at risk in situ, and that they’d be bet­ter off in Lon­don where they could be prop­er­ly looked after. In oth­er words, in my analy­sis, the “Madon­na goes to Malawi and comes home with a baby” argu­ment. Doubt­less lit­tle David is bet­ter off in Lon­don, but… I still think it’s questionable.

Also ques­tion­able to my “please don’t let any­thing about Lon­don change” mind is the move of the British Library away from the Muse­um to its new, hideous, and doubt­less extreme­ly effi­cient head­quar­ters near King’s Cross Sta­tion. I know, I know, progress. But I spent so many hap­py, hap­py old-fash­ioned hours at the blue leather desks marked “GG5” and such, hand­ing in my hard-won slips of book requests, after learn­ing the byzan­tine sys­tem of clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Oh, the sat­is­fac­tion when I had con­quered the infor­ma­tion hid­den with­in the green leather books that hung from lit­tle chains from the cen­tral request desk (all the lit­tle book elves behind the desk had holes in their jumper sleeves, always… per­haps it was a uni­form). I’d turn in my slip and then fold my hands on my lit­tle desk and wait, and an elf would come with a stack and say, “GG5?” or what­ev­er desk I had that day, and I’d run my eye down the stack and say, “Yes, that’s me, thanks very much,” and be so proud I had asked for the things I meant to ask for! Sim­ple plea­sures. I kept my read­er’s tick­et for years after we had moved back to New York. I won­der if they have read­er’s tick­ets now? Prob­a­bly bar codes. Harumph.

Any­way, I bit the bul­let and vis­it­ed the Read­ing Room that was, now the loca­tion for all the muse­um his­to­ry bits. And it was still beau­ti­ful, the soar­ing blue and gold ceil­ing inter­spersed with cloudy win­dows. So cute: there’s a gor­geous carved pan­el with names of “Notable Hold­ers of Read­ers’ Tick­ets” print­ed on it, and Avery and Annabelle stopped quite seri­ous­ly to look for my name. I think once they saw “Rud­yard Kipling” and “Vla­dymir Lenin” they kind­ly refrained from point­ing out the obvious.

Then we were off to The Fair. I have to be hon­est and say that for sev­er­al rea­sons, the fair had not been get­ting very good pub­lic­i­ty in our house. For one thing, liv­ing at Mar­ble Arch, right by the entrance to the Fair, we got kind of sick of the glar­ing lights and spin­ning fer­ris wheels. Also, the pres­ence of all the rides and peo­ple and trucks and what­not had sad­ly cur­tailed rid­ing lessons, since the ring was inac­ces­si­ble. And, frankly, while I don’t love zoos, I real­ly don’t love fairs per­haps even more. I don’t like scary rides, or games of chance, or cot­ton can­dy (can­dy floss, as it’s called here, which is com­plete­ly con­sis­tent because sewing thread here is called both “floss” and “cot­ton”). Gee, I am a real­ly unap­peal­ing blend of cur­mud­geon and pur­vey­or of use­less vocab­u­lary today. Any­way, we went. At least, Alyssa went to Marks and Spencer and the rest of us went. And they had a blast. I shiv­ered and took pic­tures, while the boys and Avery and Annabelle slammed into each oth­er at the “dodge ’ems,” the Eng­lish equiv­a­lent of “bumper cars.” They had so much fun. Then Avery and John went on a very scary ride and I con­soled myself with half a hot dog with fried onions and cheese. Just half! That’s the best diet advice, I think. Have half. But I did­n’t get half a case of indi­ges­tion, I got the whole thing. Then it began to pour down rain, so we ran for home, and Avery, Annabelle and I all took hot baths! So cozy.

To our com­fort restau­rant, the Man­darin Kitchen, for a blowout New Year’s Eve din­ner! I always feel good when we’re the only non-Asian peo­ple there, although I am sure we order very con­ser­v­a­tive­ly. But so deli­cious! What did­n’t we eat. Let’s see, since there were so many of us we got a round table with what my fam­i­ly call a “Lazy Suzanne” on it (my poor moth­er being named “Suzanne” of course), so there was no annoy­ing pass­ing this or that. We just spun that baby around and sim­ply chowed down. Crispy sea­weed (does any­one know what the ground spice is that they sprin­kle on top? it looks like nut­meg but I don’t think it has such a strong fla­vor), fried soft-shell crabs with red and green chilis, lemon chick­en and sweet and sour chick­en for the kids, ver­mi­cel­li noo­dles with scal­lions and bean sprouts, whole fried prawns in their shells with dried gar­lic, spicy beef with car­rots, won­ton soup with dumplings, holy cow it was all good. Fried rice flowed. Tsing-tao beers flowed. So, so good and so much fun. Final­ly when we had eat­en every scrap, the boys went home with Annabelle and Avery, and Alyssa and I walked home togeth­er under our umbrel­las, try­ing to fit in the last min­utes of gos­sip, mutu­al admi­ra­tion for our chil­dren, dis­cus­sions of our hus­bands’ jobs (or lack there­of!), recipes, cloth­ing and hair advice, sto­ries about sis­ters and par­ents, how her new busi­ness, “Mom­cierge,” is doing, run­ning the lives of New York­ers and their par­ty needs. All the usu­al things that I took for grant­ed were always avail­able on a giv­en rainy evening, and now I tru­ly val­ue. What fun to have a visit.

And the girls stayed up until mid­night! Alyssa and Steve took Elliot home to their flat, and John and I sort of flopped down watch­ing dumb year-end chat shows, and then the fire­works! So mag­nif­i­cent, from the Lon­don Eye and boats on the Thames. Much love­li­er than any­thing I’ve ever seen in New York, real­ly. Maybe next year we’ll brave the crowds and hang out on the Embank­ment. When we hit the mute but­ton on the tel­ly remote and opened the win­dow, we could hear the explo­sions. Hap­py 2007!