Laun­der­ers of Distinction

Hap­py Birth­day, Janie…

Now, if you’re liv­ing in May­fair, lah-di-dah, and your child is a Form Four stu­dent at King’s Col­lege Prepara­to­ry School, you owe it to your hus­band to have his shirts done at the Buck­ing­ham Dry Clean­ers and Laun­der­ers of Dis­tinc­tion. It was tru­ly hilar­i­ous; I asked our beloved porter Bob Jack­son where the near­est clean­er’s was, and he point­ed me in the right direc­tion, but since my sense of direc­tion belies the inte­gral word “sense,” I was soon quite lost. Have no fear: a quick call to John and he was on the inter­net for “dry clean­ers May­fair” and talked me through it like long-dis­tance emer­gency surgery. My own per­son­al GPS sys­tem! Any­way, I found the clean­er’s final­ly, and I have to say, I love the place. Would you have a sin­glet you need cleaned? Don’t know what a sin­glet is, but it’ll cost you 2 pounds. There’s also a Day Dress list­ed. Hmmm, was I sup­posed to change at 4 p.m. upon arriv­ing home from school pick­up, for my Late After­noon Dress? Any­way, it would cost 12 pounds 50 pence, so I don’t think I can afford the elegance.

So I am in enor­mous crush con­flict. There’s my orig­i­nal crush, to whom I feel a lot of loy­al­ty, Matthew Mac­fadyen. He is love­ly of course, I’ve resist­ed find­ing where he actu­al­ly lives so as not to stalk him as I did John Malkovich in our first Lon­don sojourn, where by God if he was buy­ing sausages in the Ful­ham Road so was I, day after day. No, this crush was going to stay much more head-in-the-clouds. Until I saw “In My Father’s Den,” Matthew’s lat­est cin­e­mat­ic effort, which I would huge­ly rec­om­mend. Tiny no-bud­get New Zealand film, gor­geous emo­tion­al range, real­ly well-cast, sad fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships. So I was in major crush renew­al mode until… our porter came on the scene. Porter mean­ing super in New York, the guy who will be here to meet your British Tele­com guy, the guy who tells you there’s no prob­lem with sev­en­teen bags of garbage. He’s my dream, is Bob Jack­son. Love him. Took chick­en soup to his office today but there was no one there, so I left it on the doorstep. Do you sup­pose he ate it? Or the wan­der­ing bob­by giv­ing out park­ing tickets?

Avery today said just about the cutest thing. She was con­cerned about not doing well in French, although frankly (hee hee) she got 10 out of
12 cor­rect on her exam, so who’s com­plain­ing. She said, “I sup­pose I can’t be good at every­thing. I was learn­ing today in sci­ence about elec­tri­cal cir­cuits. It turns out if one bulb can’t work, but the cir­cuit is still func­tion­al, the remain­ing bulbs get stronger. So I won­der if maybe I’m bet­ter at Latin because I just am not good at French. The bulbs get brighter.”

She’s thriv­ing. John’s thriv­ing. I’m get­ting bored being at home with box­es, where my biggest chal­lenge is to get the vac­u­um clean­er to hook up prop­er­ly, or to con­vince the kit­ties that the new lit­ter­box and its new loca­tion is just as appeal­ing as the old box and the old loca­tion. Tired of it! I’m also real­ly know­ing I’ll huge­ly miss being able to chat on the phone with John’s mom and dad who are in St Barths after tomor­row (one place where you real­ly do not have to have your mobile phone with you at all times), and I’ve got to send my dar­ling niece Jane her first birth­day present, can it be a year since Feb­ru­ary 3…

OK, to sleep on a wel­come Thurs­day night, because tomor­row morn­ing I can…nap.