a week with Dad­dy and ponies

I feel like it’s back to the future these days: sta­ble, sta­ble, sta­ble! After the brief respite of the spring, where it was Sat­ur­days only, I’m back to spend­ing three days a week fer­ry­ing Avery to the barn. It’s so easy at Ross Nye Sta­bles, though: smack in the mid­dle of cen­tral Lon­don. Don’t you love this pic­ture of lit­tle Richard Nye, grand­son of the founder of the sta­ble, com­muning with his dog? Yes­ter­day he had on a t‑shirt that said, “Here Comes Trou­ble,” and sure enough he was tear­ing around the mews, beat­ing up on his old­er broth­er Hen­ry, wreak­ing hav­oc. I love the horsey and peo­p­ley feet in the back­ground of this pic­ture. And I real­ly love that Avery is not only wel­come to take care of the ponies, she’s MADE to. At the sta­ble in New York, the lit­tle hot­house flow­ers that were our daugh­ters were led straight to a pony that had been groomed, tacked up and pedi­cured by sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al grooms, put on the pony’s back, giv­en a les­son and tak­en direct­ly off the pony, where­upon it was led away to its stall to be cos­set­ed some more by the grooms. Here, Avery is def­i­nite­ly expect­ed to help with every aspect of the pony’s exis­tence, most of which make me high­ly aller­gic just to think about. She mucks out the stalls, fluffs up hay to sleep on and straw to eat (or is it the oth­er way round?), cleans tack, picks dirt out of hooves with lit­tle picks, sweeps the mews clean. And of course she loves every minute of it.

We have had such fun hav­ing John home with us this week; he’s been able to go every­where we go and real­ly be part of Avery’s life, as opposed to his usu­al mode where he is updat­ed by me on Avery’s life! We’ve found every con­ceiv­able rea­son to get in the car and go some­where, and looks of envy at lit­tle Orange Emmy fol­low us all around the city. At dropoff yes­ter­day morn­ing, we pulled up to the school just as Mrs Davies came out to mail a let­ter in the post­box out­side the Chi­nese embassy (did you know it’s one of the most fre­quent­ly-emp­tied post­box­es in Lon­don because they’re afraid of bombs?! so com­fort­ing, that). She looked at the car and said, “Well, now THAT’S a lit­tle bit of all right!” Emmy makes even traf­fic jams fun, espe­cial­ly if we can put the top down. But today it’s been tor­ren­tial rain all day, so it may be a bit of a killjoy at pick­up. So John’s been hang­ing out with us at rid­ing lessons, skat­ing lessons, the Form V Cof­fee Morn­ing yes­ter­day, held inex­plic­a­bly in the local cof­fee bar and so com­plete­ly point­less: no one could hear what any­one else was say­ing and in any case we were all slung around a t‑shaped hasty table arrang­ment so even if it had­n’t been loud it would have been impos­si­ble to have a con­ver­sa­tion, but oh well. John looked a bit like a big fluffy owl sat down on a tele­phone wire full of lit­tle wrens, tucked in between Eliz­a­beth’s and Sahra’s moth­ers! I don’t think there’s ever been a dad at a Cof­fee Morn­ing before.

The screen­writ­ing class is heat­ing up. We’re being told inter­est­ing things like this: most films have a 20-minute set­up, a 50-minute con­flict, and a 20-minute res­o­lu­tion. Did you know that? I did­n’t. And a page of script equals a minute of screen time, in gen­er­al. So to pro­duce a whole indus­try-stan­dard film you need 90 pages of script. Yes­ter­day we watched the open­ing 20 min­utes of “The Full Mon­ty,” an absolute­ly hilar­i­ous British film about a bunch of age­ing York­shire men who decide the only way to make mon­ey is to start a strip club where they’re the fea­tured del­i­ca­cy! It was fun to watch the film with an eye toward the set­up of the whole plot, the devel­op­ment of the main char­ac­ters, the hints at sub­plots. I have ever more respect for peo­ple who can num­ber one, think of a plot, and num­ber two, actu­al­ly craft the sto­ry suc­cess­ful­ly. It’s hard­er than it looks! I’m real­ly enjoy­ing my class­mates, a very var­ied group of every nation­al­i­ty you can think of, unlike my cre­ative writ­ing class that’s all Brits and me. It’s such a lux­u­ry to sit and be taught some­thing new, ask ques­tions, for­mu­late the­o­ries, lis­ten to every­one’s ideas.

But then my day went from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous! As I left the class, John called me on my mobile to say that Avery’s new babysit­ter had told him that she had to leave the sta­ble at 5 to get to a class. OK, it was going to be dif­fi­cult to get there in time, with the floods of rain mak­ing an emp­ty cab an impos­si­bil­i­ty. But add to that, Avery had per­suad­ed Anna to go along to her les­son, so Chrisa could­n’t just leave once Avery was on her pony. John raced to meet me in Hanover Square and drove me to the park, where we saw Avery com­ing along on her pony with her instruc­tor, but no sign of Anna and Chrisa. “Avery, where are Anna and Chrisa?” I asked, stand­ing in the mud under my umbrel­la in the pour­ing rain. “What do you mean?” she said with a puz­zled frown. “I mean, where are your best friend and your babysit­ter, who brought you here?” I clar­i­fied through clenched teeth. “I real­ly haven’t the faintest idea,” she said, and if she had­n’t been high in the air on an ani­mal that weighed ten times as much as I did, I would have shak­en her. She rode off uncon­cerned, and John and I drove to the sta­ble where we found Anna and Chrisa hud­dled under an enor­mous umbrel­la, soak­ing wet. “They were going to ride around the park, so we stayed here,” Chrisa explained. So she went off and Anna and I had the choice of stand­ing in the rain, or stand­ing in the sta­ble cor­ri­dor, which smelled like a com­bi­na­tion of wet dog and wet horse, filled with the boys’ school clob­ber and cov­ered with hair of var­i­ous kinds. I called Becky to come get Anna, and just stood in the door­way, unable to be inside because of my horse aller­gies, and not want­i­ng to be out­side in the pelt­ing rain. I felt sor­ry for myself, already with a cold and now with feet soaked through and bare legs! What had I been think­ing, to wear a short lit­tle skirt and no tights?

Becky came and then we heard the clip­clop of hooves on the cob­ble­stones, and Avery arrived, glow­ing and hap­py from her ride. “I see you found Anna!” she said. Becky and I just looked at each oth­er. She kind­ly gave us a ride to Marks and Spencers where I dashed about get­ting last-minute things for our din­ner with John’s work friend John (a bit con­fus­ing, that), fol­lowed by Avery who I have to say looked adorable in her jodh­purs, waxed cot­ton coat and hel­met. We strug­gled home, Avery insist­ing that I take the gro­cery bag she was car­ry­ing since it “so did­n’t go with my out­fit,” and the looks on the Johns’ faces told me I need­ed to fresh­en up, so I changed into dry clothes and joined them for a nice warm­ing Scotch and real­ly good con­ver­sa­tion. The oth­er John is one of those Yale-edu­cat­ed peo­ple who knows a lit­tle more than a lit­tle about just about every­thing, and so can talk about physics, pol­i­tics, restau­rants and chil­dren’s books with per­fect aplomb. Avery came rush­ing in ask­ing, “When was Cather­ine of Aragon dethroned?” and the oth­er John whipped out his Black­ber­ry and in no time had the Wikipedia page up and the ques­tion answered.

We sat down to com­fort­ing shep­herd’s pie and a real­ly good sal­ad, inspired by Vin­cent over the week­end: water­cress, lam­b’s let­tuce and baby rock­et. There’s noth­ing like shep­herd’s pie on a cold, rainy night, sur­round­ed by candlelight.
Lord Peter Wim­sey has gone vis­it­ing. He popped out into the cor­ri­dor the oth­er day when I opened the door to the Fedex guy, who had also buzzed our next-door neigh­bor whom I had nev­er met. This nice lady propped open her door with a slip­per and in went Wim­sey. “Whoa, mis­ter,” I said. “That’s all right,” she said in an Amer­i­can voice, “we’re old friends. We met this sum­mer, with your hous­esit­ter. Also,” she men­tioned, “I know of you from anoth­er source.” Anoth­er les­son: nev­er lie, even exag­ger­ate, or pre­tend to be any­thing you are not, because your next door neigh­bor’s hus­band works with your daugh­ter’s god­fa­ther. This city is CRAZY small.

I must close. Tomor­row to the Horse of the Year Show in Birm­ing­ham. We can either take Avery, or a pic­nic, but not both because Emmy is so small. Just kid­ding. Sort of.