All’s Well That … (well, you know the rest)

Well, we’ve been in a bit of a tizzy this week, although things have calmed down now. On Mon­day night, in the wee hours, Avery became very ill and by the morn­ing had devel­oped a real­ly fright­en­ing­ly high tem­per­a­ture, near­ly 40 degrees (that’s near­ly 105, to you at home). Being a “heli­copter moth­er” under the best of cir­cum­stances (my friend Car­ol’s adorable term for moth­ers who “hov­er”), I was imme­di­ate­ly thrown into a pan­ic. Then mat­ters turned from bad to worse when my friend Becky called with a let­ter from school in her hand: a warn­ing that a kinder­gart­ner had been hos­pi­talised with menin­gi­tis and a list of symp­toms to look for. The first two on the list: vom­it­ing and a high tem­per­a­ture. TOTAL pan­ic by then. It was very dif­fi­cult to be ratio­nal and calm and ask Avery if she had any oth­er symp­toms (just so you know, they’re stiff neck, sen­si­tiv­i­ty to light and headache). She did­n’t, but then she went into her usu­al tail­spin of fear at the thought of going to the doc­tor. I called and got an emer­gency appoint­ment, and sit­ting in the taxi with her, all I could think was that we have had too much good luck, too many good things have hap­pened to her, and the price was going to be… you can imag­ine my thoughts.

Avery sat on my lap wait­ing for the doc­tor and repeat­ing over and over, “I can’t do th is, I can’t do this,” just shak­ing with pure fear. This is the child who walked fear­less­ly into six inter­views and three exams a few short weeks ago! The doc­tor asked her how she was feel­ing and she piped up, “Well, not very good, but what real­ly wor­ries me is that the Form Six Enter­tain­ment is tomor­row evening, and we’re doing Shake­speare, and I’ve worked so hard! And there’s no under­study…” On and on, war­bling away in per­fect com­fort. The doc­tor took a long look at her and said, “24-hour virus,” and admon­ished her about drink­ing plen­ty of flu­ids. She took her tem­per­a­ture and it was falling already. Waves of relief replaced the panic.

In the taxi going home, I said, “Now, you have to admit that that was noth­ing to get pan­icked about. She is so nice, and you cer­tain­ly seemed to enjoy talk­ing to her.” Avery just looked at me over her glass­es and said acid­ly, “Mom­my, that’s called ACT­ING.” Sigh.

Any­way, the chick­en soup I had put on the stove as soon as she got ill was the per­fect panacea, and the Calpol did­n’t hurt either. All she want­ed was for me to read aloud to her, and from a com­fort­ing baby book, so Bet­sy-Tacy it was. By bed­time she felt miles bet­ter and in the morn­ing was good as new. Dou­ble sigh. The doc­tor had said that if she had no fever in the morn­ing and rest­ed all day, she could go to the Enter­tain­ment, so she rest­ed deter­mined­ly, sit­ting and read­ing in her box of soft toys, which always cracks me up. There she is, sur­round­ed by a bed and a chair and a floor, and she sits in her toy box.

The long and short of it is that she’s fine. No sword of Divine Ret­ri­bu­tion has as yet fall­en on the heads of my fam­i­ly, but no doubt, giv­en my capac­i­ty for rea­son­less anx­i­ety, I will con­tin­ue to expect one to do so. Hon­est­ly, if I could find the part of my brain that pro­duces anx­i­ety and dig it out with a grape­fruit spoon, I would. But John objects, say­ing that it’s prob­a­bly con­nect­ed to some oth­er trait of mine that he likes. Like being super-super appre­cia­tive of all the good things I have. Fair enough, but it makes life very, very stress­ful when any­thing remote­ly bad happens.

So it was in this mood of intense appreciation/fear that I approached the Enter­tain­ment on Wednes­day evening. And it was absolute­ly the sort of event that makes me want to take Avery, and all the oth­er lit­tle girls, and put them under a nice glass jar to keep them safe. They had put them­selves into groups of four or five, and each group had cho­sen a Shake­speare play, one girl had writ­ten a short syn­op­sis of it, which they took in turns to read out to the audi­ence, then they per­formed a scene from it with the real words, THEN they per­formed a mod­ern ver­sion of the scene which they had writ­ten them­selves! It was just stun­ning. Avery’s group chose “As You Like It,” which she already loved (we gave her a lit­tle stack of the old red leather “Pock­et Fal­staff” edi­tions of the plays for her birth­day), and she was giv­en the job of writ­ing the syn­op­sis. We heard a great deal about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of this task in the weeks lead­ing up to the Enter­tain­ment, but she did an amaz­ing job! They all did. Mrs D said at the end, “I have been a teacher for a very long time, but I’ve nev­er under­stood these plays as well as I do now!”

In between the plays were dar­ling musi­cal num­bers, one hilar­i­ous song we’ve been hear­ing a LOT of at home that includes lines like, “Romeo, Romeo, I think you’re ter­ri­fi­co!” and a love­ly bal­lad with lots of “hey non­ny non­ny” bits. I tend to want to cry when­ev­er I hear Avery and her friends sing, so it was a bit of a strug­gle not to embar­rass her completely.

I have had to cut the apron strings today: Avery has gone off to see “Much Ado About Noth­ing” at the Nation­al The­atre with her friends Juli­a’s fam­i­ly, and to spend the night. She’s been on quite the Shake­speare kick, has­n’t she? In Eng­lish class at school they’ve been watch­ing the old Fran­co Zef­firelli “Romeo and Juli­et,” and when I looked it up on imdb to find the name of the actress who played Juli­et (it was Olivia Hussey), I saw the fun­ni­est thing. imdb lists “Plot Key­words” and one of the cat­e­gories is “dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly”! Well, that’s one way to put it!

I told John I would cook what­ev­er he liked for din­ner, and he rash­ly said, “Scal­lops: three ways.” Hmm. Now, I love scal­lops, so this is a wel­come chal­lenge, if a bit daunt­ing. I think I’ll do my dar­ling friend Vin­cen­t’s scal­lops with creme fraiche and sin­gle-malt Scotch, then I’ll also try to repli­cate the divine dish at Angelus in Bayswa­ter: grilled scal­lops with steamed char­lotte pota­toes, truf­fle oil and snipped chives. But the third way? I can­not decide. Seared, with a but­tery Alep­po pep­per sauce? Swim­ming in a pars­ley-laden creamy broth? Or how about the old favourite:

Coquilles St. Jacques au gratin
(serves four as a starter)

1 dozen fresh scallops
1 cup white wine (or dry Vermouth)
1 tbsp Madeira wine
dash cayenne pepper
3 tbsps butter
2 tbsps flour
2 shal­lots, fine­ly minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley, fine­ly minced
1 egg yolk, beat­en slightly
salt and pepper
fresh soft breadcrumbs
grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese

If you’ve got your scal­lops on the shell, as I did (first time! scary), care­ful­ly remove the red roe and the mem­brane that con­nects it to the scal­lop. Remove the tough mus­cle that clings to the out­side of the scal­lop, too. Is it all nice and smooth and white and clean? Wash and rinse and lay the scal­lops on paper tow­els, then scrub out four of the shells and rub with butter.

Pour the wine and Madeira in a small saucepan, dust with cayenne and bring to a sim­mer. Place scal­lops in the saucepan and sim­mer (don’t boil!) for five min­utes, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a cut­ting board and cut each scal­lop in half, and place six halves in each scal­lop shell. Add the flour, but­ter, shal­lot and pars­ley to the saucepan and whisk until mixed, then add the egg yolk. Pour this mix­ture over the scal­lops and top with bread­crumbs and cheese. You can do all this ahead of your din­ner. Five min­utes before you want to eat, place the scal­lop shells in a glass dish big enough to hold them all and put in a very hot oven (425 degrees) for five min­utes. Serve hot, with a fork AND a spoon. You will want every bite.

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Ah well, some­thing will come to me. It always does. And you know, all’s well that… well, you know.