an orgy of enter­tain­ment, British style

Now you all know of my quest to enjoy (or at least expe­ri­ence) all things British while liv­ing here. To ful­fil this quest we have, for exam­ple, not sub­scribed to any cable tel­ly chan­nels, which lim­its us to only British things like the BBC (noth­ing to com­plain about there). And I’ve set up a whole host of Google alerts to let me know when things and peo­ple I care about are hap­pen­ing and doing things, and it was by this method that we found our­selves, last evening, spend­ing a glo­ri­ous time doing some­thing tru­ly… British. As in, see­ing a play by Alan Ben­nett. Last year we so enjoyed the film of “The His­to­ry Boys” that I knew we’d like the play “Office Suite,” even the more so because it starred… My Crush Edward Pether­bridge. All right, all right, also the two ladies pic­tured above, Patri­cia Rout­ledge (who we used to love even back in New York in “Keep­ing Up Appear­ances, don’t you love that pro­gramme?), and Janet Dale, cer­tain­ly not to be sneered at. But so not Crush Material.

It was love­ly. First­ly we dashed around get­ting Avery to skat­ing in the morn­ing and rid­ing in the after­noon, dashed home to do all our house­hold chores and pine over Keechie, who seems to be back­slid­ing into anx­i­ety again (grr), and then dash to get her at the sta­ble and dri­ve to Rich­mond-Upon-Thames. What a per­fect name. It is, you know, upon the Thames, and I know this because I ate upon it. The Thames, I mean. We walked down to the riv­er and looked in vain for a fab­u­lous restau­rant (would it have killed me to look up restau­rants instead of blog­ging about meat­balls? appar­ent­ly so). Avery kept walk­ing us past the H2O Restau­rant, wor­ry­ing­ly perched atop a… boat, but final­ly we suc­cumbed. The wait­ress said, “Con­vinced you, has she?” and we pro­ceed­ed to have a most pleas­ant, if not mind-bend­ing­ly inter­est­ing, din­ner, with the most splen­did views you can imag­ine. Stuffed mush­rooms, Cae­sar sal­ad, margheri­ta piz­za, and my grilled salmon which was quite deli­cious. And just a great touristy experience.

Off from there to the Rich­mond The­atre, where to judge by the wine-sip­ping crowds out­side, we would be the youngest (and for Avery by six decades) youngest peo­ple there. The play was love­ly. There were sev­er­al Eng­lish ref­er­ences that we did­n’t under­stand, and which I’ll have to ask some­one about, but all the per­for­mances were spot on, touch­ing and fun­ny and very, very dat­ed to the 1970s, pre-Thatch­er-era Britain. I’d advise you to go see it, but it left Rich­mond today and went I know not where. I can­not hon­est­ly imag­ine why Avery enjoyed it, see­ing as how it was about retire­ment aged British office work­ers in an era she can’t even have read about, but there you have it. She said, “I enjoyed the triv­i­al­i­ty of it,” so fair enough. It was all about triv­ia, and yet with an under­cur­rent of emo­tion about loss of youth, loss of secu­ri­ty, that was very sweet. And there were some very fun­ny Mala­propisms, like “I would­n’t want to be cast­ing nas­tur­tiums,” which Avery loved. Alto­geth­er an expe­ri­ence that I can­not imag­ine hav­ing under­stood two years ago. I am fair­ly cer­tain we were the only Amer­i­cans there, which is always a good sign as far as doing British things goes.

Home super late in top-down Mini Coop­er, and today we… pic­nicked in Hyde Park. A cou­ple of evenings ago we walked all the way down to the rose gar­dens near the Mile where Avery rides (as she always reminds us when we see it), and there found an enor­mous tree under which you can walk! And stand, and feed squir­rels, and carve your ini­tials into the trunk (although we refrained). If any­one read­ing this can tell me about the his­to­ry of this tree, please do! I haven’t found any­thing online about it. So we took Avery’s friend Jamie and a whole enor­mous pic­nic bas­ket and had lunch. Oh, the sand­wich­es: duck pate, smoked salmon, sala­mi, and my per­son­al favorite, home­made chick­en sal­ad. I don’t know what you’d call it here, as nor­mal­ly the des­ig­na­tion “chick­en sal­ad” would get you… chick­en and sal­ad, as in let­tuce. No, what I mean is what you make when you’ve had the ulti­mate­ly bud­get-friend­ly two days of eat­ing. Let me explain.

Chick­en on a Bud­get, Three Ways, Three Days
(serves about the same num­ber as the loaves and fishes)

DAY ONE: you buy a large roast­ing chick­en and cut it up. Leave the entire breast intact, on the bone. But take away the legs, thighs and all, and the back­bone, and the wings. Place all these bits in a stock­pot, add a cou­ple of car­rots, a parsnip, an onion and some cel­ery, with LOTS of salt and bay leaves, and cov­er with water. Sim­mer this all after­noon, but remove the thigh and drum­stick meat after about an hour, and set aside in the fridge. Leave the rest of the stock to cool overnight, skim off the fat, strain it into anoth­er saucepan and make dar­ling mat­zoh balls to plop on top. A lit­tle dill, and the sliced thigh and drum­stick bits you saved… din­ner num­ber 1. Prac­ti­cal­ly free.

DAY TWO: Remem­ber that breast you saved? Right. Place it on top of a giant stem of rose­mary in a nice glass cook­ing dish. Smear but­ter over all of it and sprin­kle with oregano, salt, pep­per and roast at 350 degrees for 45 min­utes. Some steamed rice and a bunch of sauteed aspara­gus… din­ner #2. Still prac­ti­cal­ly free. Save the leftovers.

DAY THREE: Left­over chick­en breast in the Cuisi­nart with a good tea­spoon dried oregano, the juice of a lemon, salt and pep­per. Whiz till nice­ly chopped, then mix in a table­spoon or two of mayo, and bob’s your uncle. Lunch, sort­ed. On nice whole­meal bread with but­ter. And still, prac­ti­cal­ly free.

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Then, we are addict­ed to a pro­gramme, sad­ly now in archives and avail­able only on DVD, “The Vic­ar of Dib­ley.” We have long been huge fans of Dawn French (I espe­cial­ly loved her in last year’s Marple, “Sleep­ing Mur­der”), but she is at her absolute best in this series, set in an Oxford­shire vil­lage, where she comes to take the towns­peo­ple by storm as their first female vic­ar. The guest stars are love­ly, and you can watch it with a ten-year-old, thank goodness.

Lis­ten, Jamie and Avery are calm­ing down for their sleep­over, and I must get Avery’s things ready for her last rid­ing day with her beloved train­ers Alexa and Karin, who are leav­ing to pur­sue “oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties,” sad­ly. What will we do with­out those shout­ing ses­sions from Alexa? Why, oh why do things have to change… Alexa told a hilar­i­ous sto­ry last week at the barn. “I lost Zola in the park today,” she said air­i­ly, ges­tur­ing toward the enor­mous­ly stout yel­low lab trot­ting at her side. “She got off her lead and was away. I went back to the barn and the phone rang and it was the bl**dy police, telling me to come and col­lect her. When I got there, she was lying flat on the floor, eat­ing a bis­cuit. ‘Come away,’ I said, ‘that’s how she got lost in the first place, fol­low­ing some bl**dy fool with a bis­cuit!’ ” Alex­a’s promised me her nan’s recipe for Pol­ish Chick­en Soup (which sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like my own chick­en soup with mat­zoh balls from Alyssa), so I’ll make it the Memo­r­i­al Alexa Post when I get it.