Three Days of Rain (and Cats in Chim­neys Part Two)

I think the crush is revived. Rejun­ve­nat­ed, brought back to life like when you soak dried le Puy lentils overnight and sud­den­ly they’re all plump and invit­ing! Actu­al­ly, it’s prob­a­bly exact­ly that sort of metaphor that kills a crush. No sexy actor in his twen­ties wants to be com­pared to a lentil, not even the expen­sive ones from le Puy, France that keep their shape in a stew. But more on James McAvoy lat­er. Oh, to see him in per­son! It was thrilling.

Life has been slight­ly fre­net­ic late­ly, owing on the one hand to a heavy but excit­ing load of writ­ing, worked into my nor­mal life sched­ule. Bet­ty Crock­er, any­one? Bundt cakes? My grand­moth­er’s life as a hab­er­dash­er in post­war Wis­con­sin? These things occu­py my mind, or what’s left of it after Avery and Emi­ly fin­ish their hys­ter­i­cal ren­di­tion of “Had a Bad Day” in the style of Alvin and the Chip­munks (Emi­ly’s new cell­phone ring­tone, if you have to ask), and the builders fright­en Keechie into the chim­ney with their lad­ders and drills. She emerged hours lat­er, as you see, none the worse for wear.

All these things make for a love­ly dai­ly life, punc­tu­at­ed by the most divine six-hour-braised shoul­der of lamb with (see, you knew I’d come to it) le Puy lentils and gar­lic. I’m not jok­ing here. Gar­lic. It’s amaz­ing how much one 12-year-old child can put away. The lamb was a mere accompaniment.

Six-Hour-Braised Shoul­der of Lamb with le Puy Lentils, Rose­mary Pesto and Garlic
(serves four with leftovers)

1 2‑kg shoul­der of Welsh lamb
4 heads gar­lic, one minced, the oth­ers whole with tops cut off
3 tbsps pesto
leaves of 2 stalks rosemary
1 cup le Puy lentils, dried

Line a roast­ing dish with alu­minum foil (trust me, you will thank me lat­er) and place the shoul­der of lamb in it. Run the pesto through the food proces­sor with the rose­mary leaves and the minced gar­lic. Smear the lamb with the pesto and place the three whole gar­lic cloves upright in the cook­ing dish. Scat­ter the lentils all around. Don’t wor­ry that they are dried; the lamb juices will cook them.

Cook at 140C, 280F for about six hours, cov­ered with foil. After about three hours, begin bast­ing every half hour or so (only if you’re home to do so; obvi­ous­ly you can leave it to cook on its own if need be).

About half an hour before you want to eat, drain all the cook­ing liq­uid (leav­ing the lentils and gar­lic behind in the dish) from the dish into a fat sep­a­ra­tor (a very clever imple­ment that looks like a mea­sur­ing cup, talks like a mea­sur­ing cup, but actu­al­ly sep­a­rates the fat from the good stuff in poten­tial gravy). Pour the good stuff into a lit­tle saucepan and dis­card the fat.

Scoop up all the nice­ly cooked lentils and hide them under the lamb. Turn up the heat to 220C, 450F and place the lamb, uncov­ered, back in the oven. Mean­while, heat the gravy in the saucepan and add just a lit­tle flour (depend­ing on the amount of liq­uid you have, prob­a­bly you will not want more than a table­spoon) and whisk care­ful­ly till flour is dis­solved. Remove lamb from oven 15 min­utes from serv­ing time, cov­er with foil and let rest. Let the gravy cook for the time the lamb rests. Serve the lamb sliced thick, with lentils on the side. Scoop the cooked gar­lic from the cloves and spread on toast­ed bread.

*****************

Now it’s hard to know whether to call this “roast­ing” or “brais­ing.” Truth be told, it begins by roast­ing and then lets out so much juice and fat that some­where the alchem­i­cal mag­ic turns the process into brais­ing. You choose the terminology.

Well, that was Sun­day and then all hell broke loose. Meet­ings all day Mon­day, par­ty here Mon­day night. Tues­day more meet­ings, phone calls, writ­ing, then Avery’s “Singing Tea” at school, so beau­ti­ful and touch­ing. I want to sit and lis­ten to her sing a capel­la all night some day. Maybe for Moth­er’s Day. Then a rush to get her to her overnight date and us to… “Madame de Sade” at the Don­mar, the third in their series of four (we’ve now seen the three, don’t think I can stom­ach Jude Law as Ham­let in May).

In point of fact, the only rea­son we end­ed up at Sade was because our dear friend Annie turned up the night before with tick­ets they could not use. And through a com­plex web of com­put­er-equip­ment swap­ping, it was an even deal. But it was an odd, odd per­for­mance. Rosa­mond Pike, as gor­geous as they come, shout­ed a great deal, in a very wide dress, about Sadism (not sur­pris­ing). What was sur­pris­ing was how un-Sadis­tic it felt, not naughty or wicked at all, not even painful. Judi Dench her­self seemed very off. Frances Bar­ber was won­der­ful, but all too infre­quent­ly onstage. In gen­er­al, sor­ry to say, while it was beau­ti­ful­ly staged, I found it tor­ment­ing to lis­ten to. Add to that, about fif­teen min­utes before the end of the play, the woman in front of me… vom­it­ed. Into her pash­mi­na scarf. More than ONCE. I could not believe any of my sens­es. And believe me when I say ALL my sens­es were involved in the repul­sive expe­ri­ence: I could hear it, see it hap­pen­ing, then sad to say… smell and near­ly, well, you know, enough said.

The next few min­utes were the longest since, pos­si­bly, I was in labor for 18 hours. Why did­n’t the sick woman bloody leave? But she did­n’t. She care­ful­ly made up her pash­mi­na into a scary lit­tle par­cel which she insert­ed into a plas­tic bag in her hand­bag, and… sim­ply stayed in her seat. Stink­ing to high heaven.

Lis­ten to this hilar­i­ous sto­ry my friend Patri­cia told me: she was sit­ting in the inter­val at “Les Mis­er­ables” here in Lon­don some years ago and over­heard an Amer­i­can lady next to her say to her Amer­i­can com­pan­ion, “Well, I’m glad we did­n’t MAKE plans to go to Paris, if the con­di­tions are going to be like THAT!”

Well, after the vom­it­ing inci­dent, I prac­ti­cal­ly had to be dragged out of the house the fol­low­ing evening to see “Three Days of Rain.” As so often hap­pens, I was grate­ful to have the tick­et in hand, so I could not change my mind and stay home. I left John and Avery in the kitchen with two pots of boil­ing fab­ric dye and sev­er­al hun­dred fin­ger-knit­ted string bracelets (can you say ‘school fair’?), and escaped to my first con­vey­or-belt sushi expe­ri­ence, at Kulu-Kulu in Brew­er Street. It is sad that I have got to my advanced age, and dare I say it with a more than pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with the menu at Nobu (both New York and Lon­don), but have nev­er sat myself down at a sin­gle seat in a sushi bar and watched the dish­es go by. You just help your­self and then when you’re fin­ished, you pile up your dish­es and the cashier adds up your total from the dif­fer­ent pat­terns of the dish­es! Free tea! At first I grabbed a seat between two Japan­ese peo­ple and then thought, “No, I’ll nev­er sur­vive,” so I moved my stuff to a seat next to two nice Eng­lish girls and they ran me through the ropes.

My god, I ate. Two plates of yel­low­tail, two hand rolls of soft-shell crabs (per­fect­ly fresh fish, prob­a­bly not sus­tain­able, but fan­tas­tic, and crunchy tem­pu­ra to die for). A com­mu­nal pot of wasabi, a jug of soy sauce, and a host of dish­es fly­ing by that I could not iden­ti­fy. I near­ly grabbed a plate of what I hoped was tuna in a spicy sauce, but found out just in time it was roe of some kind. No thank you. If it’s not caviar I don’t want roe, and I don’t even like caviar. Shrimp sushi, tuna sashi­mi, final­ly a cut roll of some­thing vague­ly cucum­ber and avo­ca­do with prob­a­bly crab stick, and I could­n’t eat anoth­er bite. There were weird plates of mashed pota­toes with spring onions, gor­geous look­ing shrimp tem­pu­ra which I will try next time, and salmon sashi­mi that I just did­n’t have the appetite for. I said good­bye to my love­ly com­pan­ions, picked up my dish­es and paid… 14 quid. A mir­a­cle. I can­not wait to go back. Per­fect pre-theatre.

And then it was… James. I have nev­er seen him, until last night, live. He was a rev­e­la­tion. Every time his head turned even slight­ly toward the audi­ence, the blue, blue bea­con of his vul­ner­a­ble, trag­ic gaze was beamed out­ward… he did not have to speak. But he did. And those icon­ic move­ments, very spare, very bal­let­ic, that I’ve seen on screen, were all there in per­son. No wast­ed move­ments, no acci­den­tal ges­tures. A gor­geous play of fam­i­ly tragedy in what seemed to me a clear copy of the Don­ald Judd studio/home at Spring and Greene Street, our old stomp­ing grounds in SoHo. The entire cast was cred­itable with believ­able-ish Amer­i­can accents, but James… his char­ac­ter haunt­ed by the silence, neglect, genius, tor­ment of his father, the acci­den­tal love of the woman he’s tak­en from his part­ner, the sense of betray­al. If you go, sus­pend judg­ment for the first half which, it is true, runs slow. The sec­ond half more than makes up for it, and you’ll find your­self dur­ing the tube ride home ask­ing, “So why…?”

Just love­ly. I looked up dur­ing MY tube ride home and there was my friend Char­lotte, com­ing home from a din­ner in the city. We kicked some­one out of the seat next to me and chat­ted all the way home, feel­ing grate­ful, ridicu­lous­ly, for a fel­low walk­er home through Ham­mer­smith in the dark.

Tonight out AGAIN to Maryle­bone for a love­ly sort of pan-Lon­don drinks par­ty for a mixed group of Oba­ma peo­ple, banker peo­ple, fem­i­nist peo­ple, arts peo­ple. All in all a group I could prob­a­bly have hap­pi­ly spent sev­er­al hours with but, alas, I had cho­sen this evening to teach my child, via mobile phone on the way home in the car, to turn on the oven AND the stove, hence mak­ing pos­si­ble a baked salmon and mashed pota­to din­ner. She was not marked­ly any more self-con­fi­dent when we got home than when we left, but I have high hopes. Need­ed an evening home eat­ing my own food any­way… and we’re out AGAIN tomor­row night for a din­ner par­ty. This is def­i­nite­ly not a nor­mal week.

The weath­er has been unbe­liev­ably gor­geous for the past week or so: blue skies every day, love­ly breezes at night. But being Eng­land we know it can­not last and of course the weath­er­man aids and abets us in this fear. Just lis­ten to this fore­cast… “It’s love­ly and blue up there now, but soon, we might have a few spit-spots of rain, look at this rain band, but then it will tend to fiz­zle out, real­ly almost com­plete­ly, as we approach lunchtime… to give way to just a sort of patchy cloud.” That’s the Eng­lish spir­it for you, lov­able as always.

I’ll end with a sad good­bye to the love­ly Natasha Richard­son, just my age, leav­ing behind two lit­tle boys and a fam­i­ly who loved her. An extra kiss and hug for every­one you love tonight.