Step Away From the Stove

At least, that’s what my friend Amy is try­ing to tell me. Enough recipe test­ing, din­ner par­ties, lun­cheon par­ties. Get your mind around some­thing… intel­lec­tu­al, they say. (Isn’t this a gor­geous pho­to­graph? It’s by an artist called Frank Tschak­ert, real­ly tal­ent­ed.) Any­way, I made a good stab at using my brain at the school Book Fair on Tues­day, I must say. It was a fun­ny coin­ci­dence: Avery and I had run over to the won­der­ful Daunt Book­shop on Sat­ur­day, just for a good browse, always a good thing. Some­how we end­ed up at the till with a stack of books, sev­er­al for her, two for me (new fac­sim­i­le reprints of Agatha Christie clas­sics, in repli­cas of the orig­i­nal dust jack­ets, to cel­e­brate the 80th anniver­sary of Her­cule Poirot’s emer­gence on the mys­tery scene, what fun), and sev­er­al for sweet Baby Jane at home in Con­necti­cut (sad­ly, not a baby any­more). The fel­low behind the till was not at all covert­ly mon­i­tor­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, which went some­thing like this. “How are we going to explain this to Dad­dy? We always end up with such a… stack.” “Well, some are for you, some are for me, and some are gifts, and any­way, it’s always good to spend mon­ey on books.” “That’s right, it’s not as if it were fash­ion things that will be SO 2007 in about a week, or some fan­cy roast that will just dis­ap­pear. It’s BOOKS.” The fel­low laughed, and said, “That’s the spir­it. And I’ll throw in a nice can­vas Daunt bag, too, to make your pur­chas­es even more justifiable.”

It was such a nice moth­er-daugh­ter moment, a real shop­ping spree and a real con­ver­sa­tion, with an actu­al per­son, not a lit­tle child to be tak­en care of (as love­ly as they are). We walked out, feel­ing pleased with our­selves and a lit­tle naughty. Avery remarked, “It’s nice to be helped by some­one who real­ly likes his job.” So when I turned up at school to help with the Book Fair, the two staff mem­bers from Daunt explained the dif­fer­ent tables of books for dif­fer­ent ages, and lis­tened to Mrs D and me chat­ting about the PGL trip, and the com­plaints about school lunch. They were two love­ly peo­ple, the girl, Tri­na, heav­i­ly preg­nant and the fel­low, Adam, kind and obser­vant. It was­n’t until mid-after­noon that I realised the fel­low was our friend from the week­end shop­ping trip! I told him what fun we had had, and he said, “Now I remem­ber you! I thought at the time how nice it was to see a par­ent incul­cat­ing prop­er val­ues in her child.” “Spend­ing mon­ey, you mean?” “Pre­cise­ly! On books, that is.”

So the after­noon pro­gressed as all Book Fairs do, with mys­ti­fied Form Three gulls try­ing to get their minds around the prices of books and the rela­tion­ship between that infor­ma­tion and the mon­ey they held in their hot lit­tle hands. “Mrs Cur­ran, I have 4 pounds and 3 pence. Can I buy this book?” “Yes, it’s only 3.99, Lib­by, you have enough mon­ey.” “But I have 4 pounds 3 pence,” she said, clear­ly not hap­py with the unmatch­ing nature of the two amounts. “You’ll get a pen­ny back, and then you will have four pence.” “But I want to spend it ALL.” And then so hap­py to give her change to a class­mate, nev­er mind that it did­n’t make any dif­fer­ence. It remind­ed me so clear­ly of the last Book Fair at PS 234 in New York, when lit­tle Isabel­la was quite des­per­ate to spend her last dime. “But, sweet­heart, there isn’t any­thing you can buy for a dime. Look at your love­ly pile of books, though. You can take your dime home.” “No, I want to spend EVERY­THING!” she wailed. She must have come back to the till four or five times, implor­ing us to find some­thing she could buy for her dime. Final­ly I had a brain­wave. “I thought of some­thing you can buy with your dime, Isabel­la,” I said, and gave her two nick­els. Her sigh of relief was so won­der­ful. “At last! I spent it all.”

Then the Form Fives came, a lit­tle more sophis­ti­cat­ed about their mon­ey but still need­ing sup­ple­men­tary pounds here and there. “You can find Avery tomor­row and give the mon­ey to her,” I assured them. And they need­ed help decid­ing between Joan Aiken and Philip­pa Pearce, between Antho­ny Horowitz and Eva Ibbot­son. I had no idea that Antho­ny Horowitz wrote, in addi­tion to all the chil­dren’s nov­els and the tele­vi­sion series “Foyles War,” the first episode of Mid­somer Mur­ders, and a dozen Poirot screen­plays, includ­ing “Evil Under the Sun,” filmed on Burgh Island where we just had our roman­tic hol­i­day! What would it be like to be that talented?

Then the super-sophis­ti­cat­ed Form Six­es saun­tered in, secure in the knowl­edge that they have passed their senior schools exams, their futures are set, and they can devote the remain­der of the school year to find­ing new and cool ways to tie their PE sweaters around their waists and shoul­ders. Max­i­mum bar­gain­ing, bor­row­ing, lend­ing, and a polite dis­re­gard for any­thing we adults, includ­ing the Eng­lish teacher might rec­om­mend. So fun­ny to be 11 and so, so clever.

Well, oth­er than that day of intel­lect, I haven’t made much head­way in being smart. Emi­ly and I think we will make a trip to a gallery in Great Titch­field Street to see some curat­ed stu­dent art, which from the descrip­tion online includes some sculp­ture made from Hoover fluff, a real must-see, I have to say. I can’t be too snooty, how­ev­er, once hav­ing shown a quilt made of human hair in my own gallery. I don’t feel much like being intel­lec­tu­al. Maybe it’s spring fever, or maybe it’s the end­less house-hunt­ing get­ting me down, or feel­ing like I’m just sort of good at lots of things, but not real­ly, real­ly good at any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. I’m feel­ing a bit lack­adaisi­cal. Yes­ter­day’s school Spring Fes­ti­val of Thanks­giv­ing at All Souls church was a love­ly event, very uplift­ing and sweet, and so hard to believe it’s been a year already since Avery’s first King’s Col­lege Fes­ti­val. Where does the time go, she asks orig­i­nal­ly. I real­ly am dull today!

Well, John has gone off to look at yet anoth­er house. Tomor­row, Isling­ton beck­ons, although I real­ly do think it’s too far away. When I say that, every­one sug­gests help­ful­ly that we look at an entire­ly new set of schools for Avery, all in the north­east cor­ner of Lon­don, instead of the south­west cor­ner I had got my mind sort of com­fort­ably around. Maybe that’s what’s get­ting me down. The con­stant aura of uncer­tain­ty! At least today I’m hav­ing lunch with Becky, always a calm­ing, cheer­ing influ­ence. Maybe she can get me out of my funk. And keep me away from the stove for one more after­noon! But in the mean­time, do try the side dish we had last night. Then, I promise to stop cook­ing, at least until our… lun­cheon par­ty on Sunday.

Scal­loped Pota­toes
(serves four generously)

6 medi­um pota­toes, a waxy vari­ety like Char­lotte, peeled and sliced thin
1 cup light cream, plus 1/2 cup skim milk, mixed
salt and pepper

Spray a square glass bak­ing dish gen­er­ous­ly with non­stick spray and cov­er the bot­tom with sliced pota­toes, fanned out so they over­lap slight­ly. Pour over the cream mix­ture just to cov­er, and add salt and pep­per. Lay­er more pota­toes and pour over cream until the pota­toes are fin­ished. Salt and pep­per the top and bake at 400 for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly so that the pota­toes on top do not dry out, but tak­ing care not to break the pota­toes up. In the last 15 min­utes, all the top to brown nice­ly. You may also add gar­lic in between two of the pota­to lay­ers or add bread­crumbs and but­ter, or cheese to the top at the last 15 min­utes (I may not because my daugh­ter is a scal­loped pota­to purist). Deli­cious with braised pork chops and sauteed red pep­per strips.