activ­i­ties

Our week­end was bliss­ful­ly unevent­ful. We had booked a new babysit­ter for Fri­day evening and my Lifestyle Con­sul­tant had got reser­va­tions for us at the Savoy Grill. How­ev­er. Dur­ing the course of Fri­day I did get my boil­er fixed (the lame porter Iain even brought me flow­ers to apol­o­gize for my trau­ma) but not before I had a com­plete ner­vous break­down. Get this: John called me when he got to the office to see if the repair guys had come yet, and of course they had not, and I just absolute­ly lost it. Hon­est­ly I was near to tears, what with being cold and dirty, and for some rea­son my mobile phone would­n’t charge and a DVD was stuck in the play­er so I could­n’t even lose myself in some fic­tion­al world. Well, I hung up tear­ful­ly and went off to make beds, feel­ing sor­ry for myself. Some­time lat­er I heard the front door slam. Scary! Who knows who has a key to my flat. I came upstairs stealth­ily, lurk­ing around cor­ners on tip­toe, when I saw John! “You did not sound like you want­ed to spend the day alone,” the dear man said. “That’s what part­ners are for.” Well!

I real­ized I did not have the heart to go out for a killer din­ner; what a waste to pay a babysit­ter and swal­low a sol­id-gold din­ner when I was just too tired. So we can­celed every­thing, and I went to fetch Avery at her play­date with Jade. They looked angel­ic in their match­ing uni­forms and Nina, the Russ­ian nan­ny, report­ed that they had done their home­work and had din­ner. This is a very typ­i­cal set­up, I have found, in the bet­ter fam­i­lies of Lon­don. The chil­dren are fed by the nan­ny at 5 o’clock or some such hour, and the par­ents come home and have their own din­ner sep­a­rate­ly, the chil­dren being tucked up in bed with a nice seda­tive or what­ev­er so as not to cause any stress in the house­hold. As we walked home from Maryle­bone in the frosty twi­light, I said con­tent­ed­ly, “Well, it looks like you had a nice time.” Silence. “Did­n’t you?” “Well, Mum­my, I just don’t think I’m sophis­ti­cat­ed enough to play with Jade. She seems like a, sort of a teenag­er and I’m just a lit­tle nine year old.”

I said, “I think you’re sophis­ti­cat­ed in your own way, but what about Jade seemed so old?” Avery hes­i­tat­ed. “She… she… talked about… IT.” “It?” “You know, THAT sub­ject. She had Bar­bie and Ken doing some things that I know are def­i­nite­ly not appro­pri­ate for my age.” Oh dear! I diag­nosed some old­er step­sis­ters some­where in the back­ground. “Well, let’s have Jade to play at our house some­time, just as a return favor, and we’ll see what she gets up to when there aren’t any Bar­bi­es.” Although the prospect of their play­ing with Avery’s many horse mod­els does not inspire con­fi­dence, as far as hus­bandry (ani­mal or oth­er­wise) goes.

We got home to the most lus­cious pork spareribs in the world. I had gone all out and shopped at Sel­f­ridge’s Food Hall, a tru­ly divine expe­ri­ence, and had bought a huge rack of Glouces­ter Old Pot (some­times called Old Spot, I don’t know which is tru­ly cor­rect) ribs, a supe­ri­or, beyond organ­ic type of pork that the butch­er assured me was of even high­er qual­i­ty than free range.

I mar­i­nat­ed them in a mix­ture of ran­dom things pulled from the pantry shelf: molasses, hon­ey, Lyle’s gold­en syrup, soy sauce, Japan­ese mirin (a sort of rice wine), and the left­overs of last night’s mus­tardy sal­ad dress­ing. I mixed this all up in a bowl and poured it over the ribs, and then they slow-roast­ed in a low oven, per­haps 300 degrees, for near­ly three hours, being turned twice and swirled around on the mari­nade in the dish. Don’t for­get to line your bak­ing dish with foil, and then you just ball it up and throw it away when you’re fin­ished, and the dish is clean under­neath (a must with these sticky mari­nades and long cook­ing times). With these ribs we had sin­ful­ly rich mashed pota­toes (noth­ing beats a com­bi­na­tion of creme fraiche and sin­gle Eng­lish cream) and steamed arti­chokes. Have I ever in my life steamed arti­chokes with­out let­ting them boil dry and burn­ing the hell out of the bot­tom of the pan? I don’t think so. It nev­er seems to hurt them but it makes cleanup real­ly annoy­ing. But a deli­cious com­fort din­ner on a cold night, and it basi­cal­ly cooked itself.

Sat­ur­day I was giv­en a Day of Lux­u­ry! I slept late and was greet­ed with a plate of very per­fect scram­bled eggs with sour cream, the eggs hav­ing been a total indul­gence from my food fren­zy at Sel­f­ridge’s. “Mabel Pear­man’s Bur­ford Browns” they were, the brownest shells, embossed with some very Eng­lishy rear­ing grif­fin, the yolks as yel­low as the sun, all served up with toast sol­diers and a cup of tea. Plus some­thing to drink called Oranap­plgi­na which was Avery’s own inven­tion. It all came with a very impres­sive menu in a fan­cy font, which I have saved in my under­wear draw­er, under my “smalls,” as the Eng­lish say. After break­fast we did noth­ing. Or rather I did laun­dry. Just before din­ner-prepa­ra­tion time the phone rang and it was Anna, ask­ing Avery to come spend the night! So I got her through a light­ning-fast show­er and we sped to Harley House where I dumped her, protest­ing to Becky that she had enough on her plate with­out a sleep­over date, but she was on her way out to see “The Pro­duc­ers” with her house­guests. A whirl­wind of gaiety.

Yes­ter­day we saw “The Pink Pan­ther” and it was tru­ly ridicu­lous, but we found our­selves laugh­ing any­way. Steve Mar­tin is just fun­ny no mat­ter what he does, and Emi­ly Mor­timer was adorable as his lit­tle French sec­re­tary. A long walk home via John Lewis depart­ment store where we bought very dull things like a food proces­sor and a coat rack and a spray bot­tle for long-suf­fer­ing Dor­rie’s iron­ing duties.

I’m going to spend the day hon­ing my new skill: adding hot links to this blog! As you may have noticed in this post, you can now click on var­i­ous words (just the col­ored ones, sor­ry) and be sent to excit­ing web­sites where you can vir­tu­al­ly vis­it our after-school snack haunts, read the menu of favorite restau­rants, see the hotel where Avery and I will spend our Scot­tish High­land spring break (that will have to wait till I know where we’re stay­ing!), even order book­shelves just like mine! Be sure to com­ment on the blog post, or email me, if you want me to add a link. This is get­ting seri­ous, this blog stuff.