what was Shake­speare’s last name?

Just one of the won­der­ful ques­tions our guide yes­ter­day at the Globe The­atre tells us gets asked dur­ing his tours! Let’s see, what else? “Who paint­ed the sky?” Reminds me of the Amer­i­can tourist at Wind­sor Cas­tle who, watch­ing yet anoth­er air­plane cross the sky, asked a guide “why the Queen built the cas­tle so close to Heathrow?” Dear me. One wor­ries a bit.

It’s shame­ful that we’ve lived her for close to two years and it took an out-of-town vis­i­tor to get us to the Globe. But that’s often the way, isn’t it? I nev­er vis­it­ed Ellis Island until my par­ents came to vis­it, nor the Empire State Build­ing or oth­er New York attrac­tions. Thank good­ness for John’s sis­ter Cathy who arrived yes­ter­day for a quixot­ic, whirl­wind 24-hour stay to gain, what else, fre­quent fly­er miles! And to see her fam­i­ly, of course.

The evening before, I con­fess, I felt a bit down, not to say bored with what I had been up to all week, name­ly laun­dry, cook­ing, organ­is­ing the house includ­ing dis­man­tling piles of books from all the place and shov­ing them into book­shelves, get­ting a roy­al soak­ing on Thurs­day on the way to Avery’s rid­ing les­son, watch­ing her skate, the usu­al. Dull! Repet­i­tive! Real­ly bor­ing. Final­ly, Fri­day saw a cel­e­bra­to­ry birth­day lunch with my dear friend Becky and a cou­ple of her friends (among them Kristin from the fab­u­lous Maze birth­day lunch!), which helped my mood tremen­dous­ly. What would one do with­out girl­friends? Just to have peo­ple to talk to about chil­dren, hus­bands, trav­el, future plans, to bounce ideas off and learn from. We had a won­der­ful time, at L’En­tre­cote in Maryle­bone Lane. It’s such a fun­ny restau­rant (Beck­y’s all-time favorite): there is no choice on the menu, unless you include how well-cooked your steak is. It’s green sal­ad with wal­nuts, rump steak, with a “secret sauce” (a bit of a cur­ried mus­tardy vinai­grett?), and French fries. That’s it! Plus adorable lit­tle French wait­ress­es in sort of French-farce black dress­es with white ruffly aprons. Like lunch with girl­friends, the place is com­fort itself. And they let us sit over the bill and chat, even though the place was quite full. Hap­py Birth­day, Becky.

Some­how, then, I got down again between lunch and school pick­up, a mood not notice­ably enhanced by the whingey, moan­ing, over­whelmed lump of human­i­ty that is my child by Fri­day after­noon. Noth­ing suits her! Hun­gry, cold, tired, and tired of being asked, “Where is your…” The evening before she had man­aged to mis­place no few­er than the fol­low­ing items: eye­glass­es, vio­lin, win­ter coat. Grrr! In the mood she was in, noth­ing is good news. Even a skat­ing les­son with her beloved friend Jamie is but a brief chink of blue in the cloudy sky of her exis­tence. Rats.

But by Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and John’s sis­ter’s arrival, I was ready for a change of pace, big time. And far from being jet­lagged and unen­er­getic, Cathy was rar­ing to go. We bun­dled up and jumped in the Mini and top-down (Novem­ber wind notwith­stand­ing) we were off to the Globe.

First we need­ed lunch, and I was glad I had done a bit of research on where to go. There’s only one real choice: The Swan at the Globe, and it was love­ly, love­ly, love­ly! Before it makes you as crazy as it made me, the music play­ing on their web­site is “Comp­tine d’un autre ete,” from the sound­track of Amelie. How’s this for cus­tomer ser­vice: I was dri­ven so crazy by this music that I emailed the restau­rant, and some­one amaz­ing called Joanne in man­age­ment actu­al­ly replied and sent a file of the song. How crazy help­ful is that? But I digress.

The food was so sim­ple, and so good, that I want to go back and have more things imme­di­ate­ly. Cathy is a strict veg­e­tar­i­an and we were very pleased to see that among the starters there was a veg­e­tar­i­an but­ter­nut squash soup, and a beet­root, cured salmon and fen­nel sal­ad. But in the end she suc­cumbed to goat’s cheese Welling­ton with fig puree, and loved it. I had duck ter­rine (with a glo­ri­ous vein of pure foie gras run­ning through it), and John, being a big­ger boy, had a main course of hal­ibut steak with a caper mous­se­line and one of those clever lat­ticed stacks of chips so pop­u­lar these days. Avery ordered a “young din­ers” por­tion (so respect­ful, that phrase!) of mac­a­roni cheese and not only was it del­i­cate, per­fect­ly fla­vored and nice­ly browned, but HUGE! We all tucked in. All in all, a good enough rea­son to cross the riv­er even if you’re not inter­est­ed in Shake­speare. But we were.

The muse­um exhi­bi­tion is very absorb­ing and could eas­i­ly have pro­vid­ed food for though for over the amount of time we had before the tour, so allow at least 45 min­utes. And our tour guide! Total­ly crush-wor­thy, was David. So many fun­ny sto­ries, ges­tures of his ele­gant actor’s hands (must be, we decid­ed), evoca­tive Eng­lish school­boy flop­py hair and an immac­u­late trench­coat, he owned the Globe with his sto­ries and ener­gy. We were all imme­di­ate­ly inspired to see a play there, although the sea­son is regret­tably short (due to its open roof, hence the joke about “who paint­ed the sky”), run­ning only from May-Octo­ber, and since our sum­mers aren’t spent in Lon­don, we’re a bit lim­it­ed. But it would be sub­lime. I think it’s a mir­a­cle that an Amer­i­can actor was moti­vat­ed to recon­struct it, that the archi­tects were wise enough to leave it sim­ple, and beau­ti­ful­ly pared-down.

From the Globe, John peeled off to take Avery to act­ing (new­ly moti­vat­ed, of course!) and Cathy and I hit the under­ground for a vis­it to Char­ing Cross Road, since she’s a bib­lio­phile after my own heart. Sad­ly, how­ev­er, the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly crum­my exchange rate was a deter­rent although she did suc­cumb to a nice vol­ume of Joseph Conrad.

After a brief rest, we were off to din­ner at one of our old, old favorite stomp­ing grounds from our new­ly­wed days in the ear­ly 90s, Star of India in South Kens­ing­ton. Fam­i­ly-owned since 1954, it was won­der­ful 40 years lat­er, but is even more won­der­ful now hav­ing been recent­ly refur­bished in a min­i­mal­ist style (but retain­ing the beloved fres­coed ceil­ing, thank you!) and the food has gone from fam­i­ly-homey to light and sophis­ti­cat­ed. The saag paneer I always dot­ed on is still pleas­ing, although Avery missed the old chunks of cheese (now float­ing ten­drils), and I did miss com­fort­able chana masala, my favorite chick­pea dish, but per­haps it’s not cool any­more. But the green-cur­ry chick­en dish (I can­not remem­ber its name! but yogur­ty and with a slight kick) was divine, and Cathy had an aubergine dish that I did not sam­ple, but which John said was good. I just dived in with my usu­al bossy nature in a restau­rant where we’re shar­ing, and ordered lots of dif­fer­ent things, and we were com­plete­ly hap­py. Excel­lent cucum­ber raitha, real­ly first-rate, and the best pop­pad­ums in Lon­don, I’m sure.

We had such a hap­py, com­fort­able time. Cathy is one of those peo­ple whose qual­i­ty of lis­ten­ing makes you feel much more inter­est­ing than you know you are: she is com­plete­ly focused on what you’re say­ing, com­plete­ly sin­cere, and asks thought-pro­vok­ing, con­cen­trat­ed ques­tions, all over­laid with a bub­bling laugh and warmth that makes her the per­fect sis­ter-in-law, and aunt. She treats Avery in that way that you’d think comes nat­u­ral­ly to peo­ple but does­n’t that often: like a real per­son whose opin­ions are to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Not in an affect­ed or pre­cious way, but with gen­uine inter­est and respect. And she stayed awake through din­ner! No jet lag gets in the way of her whole­heart­ed appre­ci­a­tion of life.

This morn­ing, sad­ly, she was off ear­ly to the air­port. And our ordi­nary lives, infused briefly with ener­gy and new things, set­tled back down to… nor­mal. Safe trav­els, Cathy.