a cou­ple of ways to beat the Jan­u­ary blues

Actu­al­ly, I don’t know why they call it the “blues” (isn’t that a line from an Elton John song? no, I think he does know, but I can’t remem­ber why). If I were in the busi­ness of coin­ing phras­es, I’d call it the “greys.”

Don’t get me wrong: I like grey. I wear a lot of grey, my sit­ting room fur­ni­ture is grey. John’s get­ting grey and he looks fab­u­lous. I don’t even mind the grey Lon­don sky. It’s more the pre­vail­ing sense that every­thing is at an ebb, noth­ing new is around the cor­ner, and it’s mak­ing me sleepy.

Added to this gen­er­al aura of gloom is the fact that Keechie has once again decid­ed that our down com­forter is far supe­ri­or to her lit­ter box, so back we’ve gone to the clean­er’s with a big plas­tic bag full of the unspeak­able, and John’s jaw is set in that way that makes me count the cats every now and then, just to make sure. I don’t under­stand what part of “a quar­ter of a Val­i­um twice a day” isn’t work­ing for her. Sigh. Let’s see, what else can I whinge about? I broke a blood ves­sel in my fin­ger, have you ever done that? Agony! All blue and pur­ple and puffed up under the skin of my knuck­le like it’s either going to explode, or send a heart-stop­ping blood clot surg­ing through my veins. Awful. Can you say “wimpy”?

And then there’s the ongo­ing anx­i­ety-mak­ing house search. Every­thing is sick­en­ing­ly unaf­ford­able, and the thought of pack­ing up again in just a year since our last move is obscure­ly unpalat­able. But then I look around this flat, albeit a nice flat, and there isn’t enough room for dish­es or pantry things in the kitchen, no room for Avery’s belong­ings in her room, or her clothes in her clos­et (and she hon­est­ly does­n’t have that many, it’s just bad stor­age). Cer­tain­ly no room for the books that seem to enter our lives with no voli­tion on our part. So we have to move, out of unaf­ford­able small square footage into, one imag­ines, even less afford­able but larg­er square footage. It makes my stom­ach squig­gle to think of it. And John’s unshake­able sang-froid is, frankly, mad­den­ing. Some­one needs to share my anx­i­ety, and I’m not get­ting any help from my chirpy hus­band or chirpy daugh­ter. Oh, wait, it’s Keechie who is my part­ner in strife. I wish it could have been some­one who is toi­let-trained. Dou­ble sigh.

So we’ve been cast­ing about for things to cheer us up. Let’s see, there was the James Bond movie yes­ter­day! I sur­vived! I would actu­al­ly per­haps con­sid­er see­ing it again, so I can enjoy things like the unde­ni­able eye can­dy that is Daniel Craig, with­out won­der­ing whether in the next scene he will lose both arms. He is sim­ply dreamy in the role, I think (yeah, like it want­ed only my opin­ion to estab­lish the fact), even though in gen­er­al I don’t groove to blonds, and he’s too beefed-up, I think. I pre­fer a man who looks as if he has bet­ter things to do than beef up, although arguably poor James gets that way just leap­ing away from cer­tain death sev­er­al times an hour, and lift­ing heavy things off damsels in dis­tress. Any­way, it was fun, and I’m proud I made it through with no avert­ed eyes, much less an untime­ly departure.

Then I felt unfaith­ful, so I found anoth­er Matthew Mac­fadyen site that’s lots of fun to dip in and out of. I’m des­per­ate enough for the sound of his vel­vety voice that I actu­al­ly lis­tened to sev­er­al of his com­mer­cial voiceovers. We can but wait for “Death at a Funer­al,” star­ring as well the deli­cious Rupert Graves, as you see. Some kind­ly soul has cre­at­ed a cal­en­dar on the Matthew site that counts down the days. There are 109 left, in case you were wondering.

Then there’s the con­tro­ver­sial (but we thought sub­lime­ly uplift­ing and inspir­ing) BBC pro­gramme called “The Choir.” The show fol­lows the progress of an Eng­lish school choir, direct­ed as a sort of social and cul­tur­al exper­i­ment by Gareth Mal­one, the impos­si­bly youth­ful choir­mas­ter of the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. I per­son­al­ly believe that any­one who is will­ing to try to teach young kids any­thing should be knight­ed. The devel­op­ment of these very unpromis­ing high school kids, unex­posed to clas­si­cal music until the exper­i­ment began, from typ­i­cal slouchy teenagers to peo­ple so proud of their achieve­ments that they were in tears, was ter­ri­bly mov­ing, we thought. Some peo­ple have offered up crit­i­cism that the direc­tor was so hard on the chil­dren, but John and I are both fresh from the expe­ri­ence of being Amer­i­can par­ents in an atmos­phere where sin­gling out, whether for fail­ure or suc­cess, is vir­tu­al­ly pro­hib­it­ed, and I think chil­dren suf­fer a lot less from harsh crit­i­cism than they do from a) neglect, or b) blind, unde­served praise. Avery has so thrived in the Eng­lish girls’ school atmos­phere where every day offers a chance to do well, to be round­ly scold­ed if she does­n’t, and great­ly reward­ed if she does, that we’re loath to find fault. Any­way, if you can find a way to watch the series, it’s def­i­nite­ly attention-grabbing.

Oh, and the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um of Child­hood is a good way out of the dol­drums. My friend Bex from my screen­writ­ing course invit­ed Avery and me to meet up with her fam­i­ly there, so we hopped on the Cen­tral Line (not with­out a bit of req­ui­site fum­bling in the tube sta­tion over the dif­fer­ence between the Cir­cle and Cen­tral lines, requir­ing the inter­ven­tion of a love­ly tick­et agent, thank you, how CAN I be so lame about direc­tions?) and end­ed up in Beth­nal Green. Ignor­ing all the promi­nent signs direct­ing us to the Muse­um, it was but the work of a moment for me to lead Avery in the oppo­site direc­tion and walk sev­er­al blocks out of the way, final­ly suc­cumb­ing to ask a nice lady with a pushchair where I should be going. She firm­ly turned me around 180 degrees, say­ing kind­ly, “Love, you just got your­self all turned about,” and with­in min­utes we had we achieved our destination.

Bex was there with her dar­ling baby Til­da, dressed in a com­plete­ly Eng­lish fash­ion with a flow­ered blouse topped by a hand­made leaf-green cardi­gan. She fol­lowed us solemn­ly with her eyes at first, but soon was wolf­ing sat­sumas as fast as Bex could peel them, and seemed ready to accept us as after­noon com­pan­ions. What is the dif­fer­ence between sat­sumas, man­darin oranges, and clemen­tines? I do not know, and every Eng­lish per­son I ask has a dif­fer­ent answer. Some­day I will find out, prob­a­bly the same day I get the defin­i­tive answer on what is a prawn and what is a shrimp. Are all these ques­tions basi­cal­ly down to size? Or is there a crea­ture dif­fer­ence? A project for a day when I’m not look­ing for a way out of the doldrums. 

Any­way, the muse­um was great fun, with the most amaz­ing col­lec­tion of dol­l’s hous­es (I love how they say that, not “doll­hous­es” as we do in Amer­i­ca) I have ever seen. How did the chil­dren not destroy all the lit­tle pieces, or lose them even­tu­al­ly as Avery did? And she was a care­ful child. There were rock­ing hors­es to ride, and thou­sands of stuffed ani­mals, board games, puz­zles, dres­sup clothes, you name it. Even­tu­al­ly Bex’s hus­band Joe turned up, fresh from his night work as a fish pur­vey­or! I would love to know more about that. Must ask Bex for details. His fam­i­ly firm work all night to pro­vide fish to Sel­f­ridges, among oth­er food halls and restau­rants, all over Lon­don. How fas­ci­nat­ing. He took off with Til­da to the Miffy exhib­it and Bex and I trailed around after Avery, gos­sip­ing. One of our fel­low screen­writ­ers turns out to be a … strip­per! I always did notice the lacy tops to her real-live stock­ings, when she sat down in class, and thought, “Gee, that’s a lot of effort to go to, to be sexy, for a screen­writ­ing class.” In his typ­i­cal lack­adaisi­cal fash­ion, our tutor nev­er seemed to notice. Wow, what a job. 

Final­ly Til­da had reached the end of her con­sid­er­able atten­tion span, and we part­ed, with plans to get togeth­er again. I always find it absurd­ly flat­ter­ing when an Eng­lish girl wants to be friends, so I am def­i­nite­ly not let­ting Bex go. It’s such fun to be with a smart, tal­ent­ed, new friend about whom all the details are yet to be learned! Like that she and her hus­band met “speed-dat­ing,” a con­cept new to me. Appar­ent­ly you and the friends you go with meet lots of peo­ple all in a row, and then sort of tick a box to say which of them you’d like to meet again. And it was instant­ly clear to Bex and Joe that they had hit pay dirt. This is so alien to my own his­to­ry (take one look at the impos­si­bly gor­geous and cool 18-year-old John, lo these 24 years ago and… that’s it! game over, in a good way) that I could hard­ly cred­it it as real. 

She and I both have sort of frus­trat­ing wish­es to be writ­ers, now know­ing exact­ly what we want to say, but know­ing we want to say some­thing. And there’s always the lure of some­one who appears to be as besot­ted with her daugh­ter as I am with mine. How well I remem­ber, how­ev­er, the pres­sures of a day with a per­son who can­not talk. I remem­ber sit­ting with Avery, as she had her blue­ber­ries and mel­on balls and cheese cubes in her high chair, look­ing at her long­ing­ly and mur­mur­ing, “Please say some­thing.” I was round­ly reward­ed, as it turns out. The oth­er night we were fin­ish­ing din­ner and I looked around all the emp­ty serv­ing dish­es and said, “We dec­i­mat­ed that meal.” Avery coughed self-dep­re­cat­ing­ly and said, “No, actu­al­ly that’s not the word you mean. ‘Demol­ish,’ per­haps, but not ‘dec­i­mate.’ That word refers to the ancient Roman tra­di­tion of choos­ing the tenth per­son in a group of pris­on­ers to exe­cute. That’s why troops are always referred to as ‘dec­i­mat­ed,’ although they don’t do the tenth-per­son thing anymore.”

Well put. Thank you.

The best way, how­ev­er, to beat the “greys” is… meat­loaf. And while my father is prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect in every way, I have moved away from his super-sim­ple (and deli­cious) recipe, lift­ed from my grand­moth­er’s recipe file, con­tain­ing lit­tle more as I recall than ground beef, bread, onions and eggs. No, this meat­loaf is of my own design, because I want­ed a lit­tle more vari­a­tion in the fla­vors. And last night’s ver­sion made one last change to my orig­i­nal recipe, because there was no plain ground pork at the gro­cery, and John made the excel­lent exec­u­tive deci­sion to sub­sti­tute pork sausage. With mashed pota­toes and a big plate of aspara­gus spears, sauteed slow­ly in olive oil and sea salt, you can­not get a more com­fort­ing din­ner. Enjoy.

Kris­ten’s Pre­ten­tious Meat­loaf
(serves six eas­i­ly, with leftovers)

1/3 pound each: minced beef and minced lamb
1/3 pound pork sausage
4 slices whole­meal bread, with­out crusts, torn into shreds
1 cup milk
1 egg, beat­en
1/2 cup grat­ed parme­san
3/4 cup ricot­ta cheese
1 medi­um onion, minced
3 stalks cel­ery, minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley leaves, chopped
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried basil
salt and pep­per to taste
six slices streaky bacon

It could­n’t be any sim­pler: mix every­thing togeth­er, except for the bacon, which you drape over the loaf once it’s shaped in a glass dish that you’ve sprayed with non­stick spray, or lined with alu­mini­um (note the dar­ling extra “i” there) foil. Bake at 400 degrees for one hour.

Now, curl up with a movie, and a nice wool­ly throw, and a hot water bot­tle, and if you can get one, a nice lit­tle girl. Put your feet up, and wait for Feb­ru­ary. It can’t take longer than a few weeks…