bat­tling the elements

I know. In the grand scheme of things, a dri­ving rain­storm at 8 a.m. when you’re try­ing to get your child to school is NOT a tragedy. I agree. But when you’re real­ly not a morn­ing per­son to begin with, and then you’re wait­ing on the cor­ner for a taxi and cars fly by splash­ing you and there are no taxis and THEN your child remem­bers that her back­pack is in the car, two blocks away, and it’s still rain­ing… so you rush to the car, realise that by now you’ll be late if you don’t just DRI­VE instead of find­ing a taxi, but then it occurs to you that you can’t read to the lit­tle Form Three gulls that you enjoy so much, because you now have a car that you’ll nev­er find a park­ing spot for in the RAIN… then it offi­cial­ly becomes a day that has not start­ed off auspiciously.

So I drove Avery to school in total silence because she’s 100 pages away from the end of “Lit­tle Women”, and for some rea­son has focused on fin­ish­ing the book before her St. Paul’s inter­view this after­noon. Why? So she can say, in case any­one asks, that she’s read “Lit­tle Women.” I know, I don’t get it either.

Isn’t this a pret­ty pho­to­graph, any­way? I did­n’t take it, but some­one who does­n’t live in Lon­don where rain is not a thing you greet with open arms did, and you can see lots of oth­er love­ly pho­tographs on his web­site. The page where I found the pho­to­graph is called “An Appre­ci­a­tion of Rain.” Well, ask any­one in Eng­land right now about rain and you’ll be in for an onslaught of invec­tive. Flood­ing expect­ed today in all the poor spots that were flood­ed in the sum­mer. This is one of the few days when liv­ing in Lon­don just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

It’s going to be one of those days. Two hours and fif­teen min­utes from now will find me back at school try­ing to find her, to get her to Brook Green, find some­thing to feed her so she’s all spark­ly, then get to the school for her inter­view at 1:15. I won­der what I should do with myself for how­ev­er long it takes? Will it have stopped rain­ing by then? I am cha­grined that I have reached a stage in my life where my day con­sists mere­ly of get­ting some­one else to the thing that she needs to do. Do I ever actu­al­ly DO any­thing myself, or do I mere­ly wash clothes for, feed, and trans­port some­one to do things? This shall remain a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion for today, because right now just fer­ry­ing her where she needs to be and being ready to respond to what­ev­er hap­pens at 1:15 is task enough. What will it be like, an inter­view at the top Lon­don girls’ day school? Rumours, amount­ing by this point to urban leg­end, are fly­ing around the school. “Lucil­la had to iden­ti­fy a pic­ture of a gourd and say what it remind­ed her of, and she said it looked like her bot­tom,” is one sto­ry, and “Juli­ette says she was asked to describe the sig­nif­i­cance of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict,” and “Have you ever heard of a painter called Gau­guin? Because Mol­ly was shown a pic­ture of a naked lady by him and had to describe the emo­tion­al con­tent in it,” are some of the choice morsels. These chil­dren are 11 years old!

Ah well, by 3 o’clock, doubt­less, it will all be over. Until the next big exam on Fri­day. The sto­ries sur­round­ing last Fri­day’s exam are already the stuff of urban leg­end. “If you sneeze, or any­one else sneezes, and you make eye con­tact with anoth­er stu­dent, the proc­tor will come and RIP UP your exam, right in front of you,” and “One girl was sit­ting her exam, and the roof start­ed leak­ing, right onto her paper, and they would­n’t let her move.” Hon­est­ly, what we will all talk about when this process is over I can­not imag­ine. We may, hor­ror of hor­rors, have to get lives of our own. That prospect is actu­al­ly begin­ning to sound appealing.

Per­haps the best thing to do is to con­cen­trat­ed on the World’ Great­est Bed­time Snack. As you know, I am a night owl, and it’s very tempt­ing for me to stay up until all hours read­ing, watch­ing Miss Marple’s Neme­sis, talk­ing on the tele­phone to peo­ple liv­ing five or six hours ear­li­er than I am. But being in charge of the morn­ing rou­tine has meant a strict cur­tail­ing of all late-night pleas­antries. Well, not quite. Mid­night last night found me with:

Dou­ble Glouces­ter Omelet with Duchy Back Bacon
(serves one moth­er who should be asleep)

1 tsp butter
1 organ­ic Har­vest Moon egg (from the farmer’s mar­ket of course)
1 tbsp sin­gle cream
sprin­kle Mal­don sea salt
a dozen strokes across a grater of Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese
1 slice Duchy Orig­i­nal Back Bacon

Melt the but­ter in a non­stick skil­let (like the mas­sive­ly heavy Le Creuset one you got from your per­fect moth­er in law for Christ­mas). Whisk togeth­er the egg and cream with a fork and gen­tly pour it into one half or so of the skil­let, leav­ing the oth­er half for the bacon. Lay the bacon on that spot. Leave over a gen­tle heat until the egg is near­ly cooked (just bub­bling a bit) and grate the cheese over the egg. Turn over the bacon. Now, when the cheese is melt­ed, fold the egg over on itself two times. Turn onto a warm plate with the bacon.

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Obvi­ous­ly this is not a RECIPE per se. This is a cel­e­bra­tion of per­fect ingre­di­ents, a qui­et house­hold, the peace of mid­night, and a wish that you could be there in Iowa with the ones you love to hand them the warm plate, kiss their cheeks and make every­thing all right.

Well, my chores beck­on: turn­ing warm cats out of beds and mak­ing them, scrub­bing the omelet skil­let, the inevitable laun­dry. Stay dry, every­one, and wish Avery good luck this after­noon. She may well need it.