I’m so unselfish

Hmmm. I knew that at some point dur­ing this process the phrase “what was I think­ing” would come in handy; it was too good to be true that we got through the nasty con­flu­ence of 1) an inter­na­tion­al move with three peo­ple and four cats, 2) Christ­mas, and 3) a tran­sit strike in BOTH the city we were leav­ing and the one we were going to, with­out some­thing going mild­ly wrong. We thought it remark­able that we haven’t as yet bit each oth­er’s heads off, deter­mined that a nice
board­ing school would have been a love­ly choice for Avery, or vis­it­ed the local branch of the RSP­CA with any or all of the cats.

How­ev­er.

Why did I pack only two sweaters, three pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes for myself. How unselfish is that? OK, I also for­got to pack more than one suit for John, and Avery I don’t have to wor­ry about too much because of that handy uni­form. So I admit I was look­ing for­ward to the “air ship­ment” which came today, con­tain­ing all the things we alleged­ly could not live with­out until the “sea ship­ment” comes, date unknown. Was there ANY­THING in it for me? There were eleven pairs of shoes for Avery, five suits and eight shirts for John, and unac­count­ably an elec­tric fan. But for me, was there so much as a pair of socks? Of course not. I am stuck with these five items of cloth­ing (luck­i­ly also suf­fi­cient foun­da­tion gar­ments, but still, where’s the glam­our in that?) for anoth­er ten days, two weeks? I seem to have put my cloth­ing needs on a par with, say, our pani­ni mak­er, in terms of urgency.

Ah well, as of tomor­row John will be hap­pi­ly clad in a glo­ri­ous fresh suit, Avery can rush home from school and put on any of three dozen out­fits, but I will be wear­ing either my favorite black turtle­neck or my sec­ond favorite black turtle­neck for the fore­see­able future. Some­what damp­en­ing. I have to hope I don’t run into my major crush, the love­ly Matthew Mac­fadyen of “Pride and Prej­u­dice” fame, until I
have on at least a grey turtle­neck, fresh from the pack­ing materials.

Dur­ing my bout with a 24-hour bug over the week­end, I con­soled myself with an Eng­lish copy of Hazel Holt’s “The Silent Killer,” a per­fect cozy mur­der mys­tery for a rainy day, as well as a nice Eng­lish copy of Dorothy L. Say­ers’ “Gaudy Night,” which made vis­it­ing Oxford a high pri­or­i­ty for Avery and me. After all, we have a cat named Lord Peter Wim­sey. Of course any book by these two authors is won­der­ful. John con­tent­ed him­self with perus­ing “Your Guide to Land Rovers, things that look like Land Rovers, and oth­er things that your wife will think look just like Land Rovers.” It was a real­ly recent issue, thank­ful­ly. Avery, what was she read­ing? The sequel to “Chil­dren of the Lamp,” what­ev­er it is called, but it was good enough that she read it while brush­ing her teeth, and tak­ing out her ear­rings before they could be con­fis­cat­ed by Head­mistress Davies this morn­ing. We feast­ed on home­made chick­en soup a la John, a nice gift for my illness.

Our hous­ing inde­ci­sion con­tin­ues. Tonight we will see for the sec­ond time the love­ly per­fect place with the gar­den but too expen­sive and far from school, and the sort of com­pro­mise place with love­ly appoint­ments but no per­son­al­i­ty, cheap­er and clos­er to school. The trou­bling third choice is the mad­ly charm­ing in its peri­od details but HOR­RI­BLE kitchen, known as Ham­p­den House, whose main attrac­tion is its extreme prox­im­i­ty to Avery’s school, name­ly a block. How to decide?? Then we’ll repair to one of three restau­rant choic­es I’ve gleaned from the incom­pa­ra­ble Egon Ron­ay Lon­don Restau­rant Guide, an upscale pub, a fan­cy Italian,
or a sort of pan-fusion-mixy-uppy place. Will keep you posted.

Two absolute­ly love­ly lan­guage sto­ries to tell, if you like that sort of thing. Our hilar­i­ous estate agent (real­tor, to you Yanks) Jane was regal­ing us with all sorts of accents, impen­e­tra­ble Eng­lishisms, and final­ly upon my request, sto­ries of mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tions. Ever since my dad told sto­ries about a client of his who fre­quent­ed the Indi­anapo­lis Sym­pa­thy Orches­tra I have loved such things. Appar­ent­ly Jane’s real estate office in Wim­ble­don is graced, dur­ing the hol­i­days, with Christ­mas trees sus­pend­ed above their awning. Love­ly, but after New Year’s she real­ly want­ed them tak­en down, and called the local coun­cil office to see how she could get that done. The girl who answered the phone seemed total­ly flum­moxed. “They’re where, did you say miss? I see, the… the… Above the, what did you say, miss?” Final­ly Jane real­ized the girl need­ed the word spelled but before she could the girl began, “Ok, that’s O‑R-N-I-N‑G, right?”

Then, a sto­ry about a lady who went to the tick­et booth at Padding­ton Sta­tion ask­ing for a round-trip tick­et to Torquay, the sea­side resort famous for, among oth­er things, being Agatha Christie’s home­town. Well, either she did­n’t pro­nounce “Tor­kee” prop­er­ly, or the tick­et agent thought she need­ed some­thing a lit­tle more exot­ic, because before she knew it, the lady was in a taxi bound for Heathrow and a plane to… Turkey. In the nick of time the mix­up was sort­ed out. I imag­ine she just went home at that point and had a cup of tea. Must make sure to speak clear­ly if I want to go to the World’s End tube sta­tion in the King’s Road, lest I go an awful lot fur­ther than just a tube stop.