kinder­garten­ers, a hair­cut and a fishmonger

It’s an odd com­bi­na­tion, but it made up my Thurs­day today! Yes, I’m up to my old tricks with the lit­tle kids. Just like in Abby’s class at PS234 lo these many years ago (start­ing, I remem­ber, in the sad days of Octo­ber 2001, try­ing to be nor­mal again), I got to spir­it lit­tle kinder­garten­ers out of the class­room one by one and have them read to me from their lit­tle book bags in the library at King’s Col­lege Prepara­to­ry School! It was a remark­ably sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence, con­sid­er­ing we’re sup­posed to be strangers in a strange land. Yes, instead of being called “four going on five” they’re called “ris­ing fours” by the staff, and yes, they’re all wear­ing uni­forms with their hair in plaits, but… they still gig­gle if you make up non­sense words out of “bath­tub” and their noses ALL run just the same as in Amer­i­ca. Only instead of say­ing “Can you get me a Kleenex?” they say “Might I have a tis­sue please?” So I read with lit­tle Mal­ri­ka, Emil­ia B. (there’s an Emil­ia K. as well, I hear, but she’s only a rumor until next week for me), Lily, and I for­get who else. Part­way through there was much dis­trac­tion as the sounds of the Church of Eng­land dai­ly assem­bly hymn float­ed down from the room above. Who­ev­er I had at the time said plain­tive­ly, “I cah­n’t con­cen­trate with all the noise those gulls are mak­ing!” I hoped that among the gulls pass­ing through I would see Avery but Form Four was oth­er­wise occu­pied. Oh, and did you know that the Latin word for horse is mas­cu­line? She’s furi­ous, being a true fem­i­nist from birth. I fanned the flames by telling her that in French, “war” is fem­i­nine. Ooooh, so unfair.

Then in the uni­ver­sal sit­u­a­tion where you can’t go home because the clean­ing lady’s there, I decid­ed to get a hair­cut. The love­ly Piero from Vin­cen­za gave me a very nice pix­ie-ish (well, age­ing pix­ie) cut for not too hor­ri­ble a price, and then I had to kill some more time so I went gro­cery shop­ping of course, and decid­ed what I real­l­ly want­ed for din­ner was oys­ter stew. I don’t know why. Because I knew the oys­ters would be hard to find and it would give me a mis­sion. So after two abortive attempts at super­mar­kets, I end­ed up at a fish­mon­ger in the Maryle­bone High Street, Lon­don’s answer to… what… I don’t think there is any­thing like it in Man­hat­tan. A true high street, wind­ing along with lots of taxis and zebra cross­ings (don’t for­get to pro­nounce zebra prop­er­ly), with the req­ui­site neigh­bor­hood-friend­ly shops (as opposed to tourist places), like a chemist’s, lots of pubs and tea­rooms, shoe repair, and a fish­mon­ger! An impos­si­bly quaint blue-front­ed small shop with a front win­dow that is removed upon the shop’s open­ing, and the fish­es and shell­fish­es and sea­weed sit on their beds of ice right in your face. Gor­geous! It’s called Fish­Works and it’s of course very famous but I have nev­er heard of it because my hus­band hates fish. Why? Many you have heard the inflam­ma­to­ry and entire­ly unde­served sto­ry of one slight­ly under­cooked red snap­per I pro­duced rough­ly eleven years ago and he claims I was try­ing to kill him. There would be so many eas­i­er ways.

But back to the fish­mon­ger. He said imme­di­ate­ly but in a slight­ly frosty Eng­lishy man­ner that for between 60p and 1 pound 60 per oys­ter, it would be his plea­sure, no, his priv­i­lege, to shuck them for my stew. In the mean­time, why did­n’t I have lunch in the restau­rant? Turned out that behind the tiny shop the size of our bath­room at 16 Jay Street is a full-on gourmet restau­rant! I love to eat lunch by myself, so in I went, and was prac­ti­cal­ly the first per­son there, oth­er peo­ple hav­ing real lives that don’t involve avoid­ing clean­ing ladies, I guess. It’s owned by a famous youngish fish­mon­ger called Mitchell Tonks, who hap­pened to be there being fet­ed by some lan­gous­tine pur­vey­ors (as my dad would say, one of the long list of things that’s nev­er hap­pened to me), so he signed a cook­book for my moth­er ‑in-law Rose­mary! I then had an appe­tiz­er of organ­ic sea bream roe tara­masala­ta, a fishy sort of gar­licky mayo con­coc­tion topped with olive oil and pars­ley and accom­pa­nied by yum­my baguette slices and a lit­tle dish of a sort of sal­sa verte. While I was munch­ing away lots more peo­ple came in and EVERY­ONE looked like he (there were vir­tu­al­ly no women) was about to close a real­ly, real­ly big deal with the per­son across the table. The lan­gous­tine pur­vey­ors ordered a whole fish of some kind that fed all six of them, steamed in white wine and thyme. Not them, I mean, the fish.

Then I had a dou­ble mound of fresh-picked Dun­ge­ness crab: I’ve nev­er seen it that way before with both the white claw meat and the dark inner meat dis­played sep­a­rate­ly. This was with tiny seed­less slices of cucum­ber, home­made mayo and the sal­ad I for­got I loved so much because you can’t get it in Amer­i­ca so I blocked it out: a won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of rock­et (arugu­la to the Ital­ians), lam­b’s let­tuce (also called mache) and baby spinach. Mmmm. I’m addict­ed again.

So I sat there with my glass of Pinot What­ev­er, not being a wine con­nois­seur, and ate hap­pi­ly and looked at all the peo­ple who were prob­a­bly famous if I read the FT instead of Hel­lo! mag­a­zine (I had the lat­est issue with me, by the way, and did you know how MUCH Gwyneth Pal­trow prefers Lon­don to Hol­ly­wood? I did­n’t. She can just live like a nor­mal per­son here. Yeah). On the way out I picked up my oys­ters and the guy asked me what I was going to do with them, and when I described my oys­ter stew, he total­ly unbent and said, “My Chi­nese moth­er makes that! It is the best!” Food brings out the friend­ly in everyone.

I’m back here now, hav­ing con­soled Maria the clean­ing lady on her near-fatal fright at see­ing Wim­sey fly out from under the bed when she vac­u­umed. I’ve unpacked my gro­ceries, brushed thou­sands of lit­tle tiny hairs off my black turtle­neck sweater (which one, you ask? My sec­ond favorite one, the favorite one’s at the clean­er’s. I’m a lit­tle ner­vous with only one sweater, I can tell you that). We’re wait­ing to hear if the gar­den flat we liked so much will let Avery play in the gar­den, and if so, we may have a home soon! Our con­tain­er ship­ment arrived and passed cus­toms, which would be great news if we had any­where to put it.

But we LOVE it. When are you com­ing to visit?