anoth­er exam, anoth­er rainstorm

Here’s a good Lon­don rid­dle: how soon would I have to stop post­ing on my blog if I could­n’t post on days when it… RAINED? Hon­est­ly. It’s enough to make me bel­liger­ent­ly stop turn­ing the water off while I brush my teeth. How can we pos­si­bly run out? It’s just awful, I have to say.

One of my writ­ing class col­leagues told me yes­ter­day that she has “Sea­son­al Affec­tive Dis­or­der,” for real, not just feel­ing annoyed that it’s rain­ing AGAIN, but true blues from not see­ing the sun. How could you live here with such a con­di­tion? I even enjoy gray days, I nev­er say, “I’ve got to get away,” or plan hol­i­days on beach­es in Feb­ru­ary. I don’t mind the win­ter. But con­stant­ly being wet is get­ting me down. You can choose from the fol­low­ing wardrobe options: wet tights, or wet trousers. And hair? There’s no point in ever blow­ing it dry. Mine is stick­ing up per­ma­nent­ly now like I had an arti­choke on my head. It’s real­ly demoralizing.

So last night in the, you guessed it, RAIN, I picked up Avery at Anna’s house, turn­ing down Beck­y’s din­ner invi­ta­tion reluc­tant­ly because it would have been nice to stay, but I just did not have the where­with­al to be friend­ly. Like an ill­ness with no real symp­toms. On the way home I thought, you know what, for once I’m going to buy some ready-made food that Wait­rose is always tout­ing as “just as good as home­made,” since there was enough left­over creamed chick­en for Avery but not for me. Well, nev­er again. Hon­est­ly, once you’ve unwrapped the food from all the plas­tic and card­board that can’t go in the oven, and placed it all in dish­es or on cook­ie sheets or what­ev­er, to my mind I’d rather sim­ply have chopped some gar­lic and cooked my own din­ner. I won’t tell you what I bought because you might love it, but suf­fice to say next time I’m in that lazy mood, I’d rather stick a chick­en in the oven and leave it for awhile and have some­thing real­ly good. I’ll go this far: I bought prawns. And for the mon­ey and the trou­ble, I’d just as soon:

Quick Prawns with Gar­lic and Chilli
(serves one lazy person)

6 giant tiger prawns, raw but shells removed
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
lit­tle shake of pow­dered ginger
1 tbsp peanut oil
splash sesame oil
sprin­kle hot chilli flakes
3 spring onions, sliced
soy sauce to taste

Heat the oils in a wok or skil­let and add every­thing else. Stir till prawns are pink. ENJOY.

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Some­day when I have a prop­er freez­er I am even going to have lit­tle ice cube trays filled with mixed chopped gar­lic and gin­ger. Then I will offi­cial­ly have NO excuse for pre­pared food.

Any­way, Avery took her cozy bath, we ate our din­ner and watched Beck­y’s gift of “Miss Pot­ter,” which I adore, and that was that. As luck would have it, the tem­ple of Avery’s eye­glass­es snapped, total­ly unac­count­ably, so the poor thing has to do her Har­ry Pot­ter imi­ta­tion with scotch tape today.

This morn­ing dawned (if you can use such a word for the alarm going off, since there was no actu­al dawn involved) sog­gy, but we per­se­vered with a nice crepe filled with Nutel­la, a cou­ple of slices of fab­u­lous bacon, a juicy Comice pear, and then we were off. And we arrived at South Hamp­stead VERY ear­ly. Embar­rass­ing­ly so, as my almost pre-teenager’s “Oh, Mom­my!” point­ed out to me. Nev­er­the­less, I left her at the door with some Godol­phin look-alike grownup girls, and slogged home. It’s sort of a relief: by this after­noon she’ll have done all she can to get into five of her six schools. Two more inter­views next week and one more exam and she’s THROUGH. “Then it will be out of your hands,” I said reas­sur­ing­ly. Or so I thought. “But I’m the sort of per­son who LIKES hav­ing things in my hands, Mom­my,” she point­ed out. Ah well.

John will be home on Sun­day, which will be glo­ri­ous. No doubt with his arrival the rain will dry up and the sun will shine. Or maybe it will just seem that way. TGIF, everyone.