bridg­ing the old and new

I can’t remem­ber a busier two weeks than the last two have been.  It’s a bit of a relief to have Sat­ur­day come, a Sat­ur­day with no plans, such a con­trast with my Barnes Sat­ur­days that always involved at least a long morn­ing bell-ring­ing prac­tice, and a vis­it to the farmer’s mar­ket.  This Sat­ur­day means stay­ing home and watch­ing the rain pour down our enor­mous win­dows, watch­ing the traf­fic and tourists go by, feel­ing lucky to be inside.  Yes­ter­day I fell vic­tim to a mas­sive hail­storm with a bad­ly func­tion­ing umbrel­la and bare ankles.  Not a hap­py memory.

Some­day, when Avery is home to trans­late the Latin inscrip­tion, we’ll have to find out who this fel­low is down below.

Hav­ing lived with him stand­ing stal­wart on his pedestal for near­ly three weeks now, it’s amaz­ing that it was­n’t until yes­ter­day’s windy hail­storm that I noticed his cloth­ing MOVES.  So does his head!  What on earth are they made of.?  I’ll let you know, when I find out.

We are begin­ning to emerge from the first days of insan­i­ty that is house-mov­ing — unpack­ing box­es, set­tling in, decid­ing where to hang pic­tures, where to store razor blades, cat lit­ter, suit­cas­es, shoe pol­ish, socks, spices and cut­lery.  In fact, one of the fun­ni­est parts of the whole process this time around involves those last two items.  On the first night of mov­ing in, I installed the cut­lery and knives in two draw­ers behind a kitchen cab­i­net door, and all my spices in the top two draw­ers that looked the most acces­si­ble.  Instant­ly this was expe­ri­enced as a mistake.

“I can’t stand hav­ing to open a door, in order to open a draw­er, in order to get a fork,” John com­plained, and I agreed.  So ear­ly one morn­ing not more than three days in the new place, he switched them around: spices to cut­lery.  And now nei­ther of us can man­age to get a fork with­out first open­ing the now-spices draw­er.  How did our brains man­age to absorb this one piece of infor­ma­tion so firm­ly in about 36 hours?  I fore­see that on the day we move out, we’ll still be look­ing for the cel­ery salt where the spoons have been for three years.

Of course some­thing had to give, so on the morn­ing I had planned to go to my beloved “Spir­it of Christ­mas” Fair with Sue, as we go every year to start our hol­i­day shop­ping, I got sick.  I strug­gled to get there to meet her, and because she is such a good friend, I con­fessed that I felt absolute­ly awful.

“Let’s have some­thing to eat, and just chat, and see how you feel,” so we shared a bit of break­fast and one of our excel­lent chats, but then after pur­chas­ing just a few things, I sim­ply had to go home and col­lapse, for a day of being cos­set­ed by John: chick­en soup, warm socks, naps on the sofa.  It had to hap­pen.  Just as every­one tells a new moth­er that “you’ll think you feel quite nor­mal, and then on Day Three, in the show­er, you’ll burst into tears.  It’s nor­mal.”  And so it hap­pens dur­ing a house move.  You pow­er through the actu­al phys­i­cal effort, and then con­grat­u­late your­self quite smug­ly that it’s all fine, it’s all behind you.  Then you col­lapse.  At least I do; John nev­er seems to.

It was lucky I had that day to sit qui­et­ly, because then our New Life sprang into action.  First up: ring­ing at South­wark Cathe­dral!  Twelve bells, oh my.

Trisha, full of enthu­si­asm, met us out­side in the frosty dark­ness and we gath­ered with the oth­er ringers — there were more than 80 of us, we heard lat­er! — to climb the many, many wind­ing steps to the bell-cham­ber.  Like St Paul’s, you climb and climb and then cross the nave to get to the cham­ber.  This is the view from that crossover.

Then you walk essen­tial­ly right under the roof:

The romance of it!  These mag­i­cal, secret places that most peo­ple, of course, will nev­er see.  And upwards to the ring­ing cham­ber, where we gath­ered with our hosts and wait­ed our turn to ring.  My heart was absolute­ly pounding.

“Take sev­er­al deep breaths,” my local helper told me.  “There’s no point in hav­ing the adren­a­line make you crazy.”  So I did, and ring­ing began.  I did­n’t need any help!  But my good­ness, you have to ring that bell with mas­sive con­trol, because wait­ing your turn in a cir­cle of twelve bells ring­ing one after the oth­er requires quite some strat­e­gy!  If you can bear it, lis­ten to the video below, but don’t hit “play” if you have a sleep­ing baby next to you.

(Before you shout at me, yes, I do chew gum whilst ringing.)

Since there were so many ringers wait­ing for their oppor­tu­ni­ty, we rang only briefly and then climbed up to the roof of the Cathe­dral for a heart-stop­ping expe­ri­ence.  Oh, the romance of the ancient door, opened to the sky.

We could see our build­ing in the dis­tance!  It’s one of the two in the very cen­tre, with ver­ti­cal lines of light­ed win­dows run­ning up and down.

What an experience.

And up in the morn­ing to make our birth­day vis­it to Avery in Oxford!  We stopped in Sloane Square for a spot of shop­ping first, buy­ing lit­tle treats for her, and some last-minute pur­chas­es for our flat, too.  “It’s not Christ­mas,” I mut­tered at all the win­dow dec­o­ra­tions.  Not until after Thanksgiving!

Once in Oxford, I texted Avery to say we were ear­ly, and then we did a bit more shop­ping before final­ly meet­ing her in her rooms.  Such fun to give her her presents, and hear her stories.

“My dear, where are your plates and dish­es?” I asked.

“Well, there might be a slight back­log in the wash­ing-up,” she admit­ted.  What a small task to be able to do for her, wash her few dish­es in her tiny sink, in her new life.

We went out for a sand­wich to her favorite shop, Olive’s, in the high street.  Gor­geous pork ril­lettes, jam­bon and moz­zarel­la.  And the views… does she get used to it?  This is Christ Church, sure­ly what the writ­ers mean when they refer to “The Dream­ing Spires.”

Although she was a bit under the weath­er, she was pret­ty game, and as love­ly to look at as ever.

Back home, over the week­end John won­dered, “Where is our local cin­e­ma, do you sup­pose?”  And it was the work of a moment to dis­cov­er the Cur­zon Mon­dri­an, in the hotel and bar of the same name, a gor­geous loca­tion we’d spied on the riv­er on one of our post-din­ner walks.

If you get a chance, you must see “Brook­lyn,” with the love­ly, tal­ent­ed Saoirse Ronan.  What a near­ly per­fect film, about the mid-cen­tu­ry Irish immi­grant expe­ri­ence.  Take your Kleenex, I warn you.  I cried through­out, feel­ing espe­cial­ly emo­tion­al at the scenes of Ellis Island, since my pater­nal grand­fa­ther worked as an immi­gra­tion attor­ney in just that decade.  Per­haps he sat at one of those wel­come desks, help­ing lit­tle Irish teenagers.

What fun to have such a beau­ti­ful local cin­e­ma, just a short and gor­geous walk away along the Thames.

Sun­day evening found me with my friend Eliz­a­beth at the equal­ly local Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall for the Lon­don Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra and Choir’s Remem­brance Sun­day con­cert.  Our host?  Jim Carter, oth­er­wise known as Mr Car­son from Down­ton Abbey!  Of course one could lis­ten to that voice read the phone book (if such a thing still exist­ed), but hear­ing him recite “For the Fall­en” was sim­ply spine-chill­ing, spell-bind­ing.  “They shall not grow old…”

“Please do make sure that your mobile phones are turned off,” he warned us, “but at the inter­val, you may use it to call your babysit­ters to make sure they are record­ing ‘Down­ton Abbey’ for you.”

On Mon­day, our lives were bright­ened by the arrival of a gor­geous, hand­made ash screen, to be giv­en the unglam­orous task of hid­ing the kit­ties’ lit­ter boxes.

How encour­ag­ing it is to meet some­one so young and cre­ative as Seb Cox, who has trained to make these beau­ti­ful hand­made wood­en objects.  And how excit­ed he in turn was to hear about our house project, so John brought out var­i­ous sam­ples of cross-lam­i­nat­ed tim­ber to show him, and also our plans.  Seb was very pleased to think of his screen in our even­tu­al home.

Con­ver­sa­tions like that one help John to main­tain the faith — our house will be built!

In the morn­ing my dear friend Janet came, all the way from New York, to see our flat, to see me, to share lunch at the Albion down­stairs (gor­geous crab and mack­er­el sal­ad).  As always when I see her, I remem­ber the fol­ly of hav­ing her liv­ing next door to us here in Lon­don, ten years ago, but not mak­ing real friends with her until she went back to New York!  Our main point of friend­ship was Tacy the tor­tie’s dai­ly vis­its to Janet, through her gar­den win­dow.  Now, she lis­tened with glee to our plans, and admired our new life.  “I love hav­ing a door­man, too,” she confessed.

That evening was a mile­stone: the first Neo din­ner par­ty!  I invent­ed a centrepiece.

Our absolute­ly fab­u­lous land­lords came: the ebul­lient, effer­ves­cent Gus­ta­vo and his part­ner, the ele­gant Yang-Soon.  They came bear­ing bot­tles of vin­tage Moet, and sim­ply the best smoked salmon bli­ni I have ever eat­en, the salmon ordered direct­ly from Scot­land, and then cut by YSL (as Yang-Soon likes to be known!) at home in thick lit­tle planks, rather than the ordi­nary thin slices.

“Now,” Yang-Soon point­ed out, “I’ve made some of the bli­ni with creme fraiche, and some with just the salmon, and some with black pep­per and some with­out, because I did­n’t know how you like them.”

“I like every­thing,” I assured him.  We are kin­dred spir­its in the kitchen and are deter­mined to cook togeth­er very soon.

We went onto my chick­en meat­balls Pojars­ki and a great dish of ten­der­stem broc­coli and cour­gette batons.  The table looked so love­ly, so urban, so dif­fer­ent from our enor­mous long table that was the home of Lost Prop­er­ty lunch­es and Thanks­giv­ings, and Avery’s school­work.  This table is inti­mate and rather ele­gant.  Here is the view into the apart­ment from our Win­ter Garden.

 And here is the way the table looked fac­ing out into the city streets.

They were quite the per­fect guests, full of enthu­si­asm and appetite, admi­ra­tion for the way we’ve done up the flat, great inter­est in Avery whom they’ve yet to meet.  And when I explain about my method of guests serv­ing them­selves, rather than my serv­ing them at the table (since I don’t want to seem to crit­i­cize hosts who do serve their guests), Gus­ta­vo said prompt­ly, “How per­fect, because then we can help our­selves to sec­onds.”  And they did.

We stayed on for­ev­er at the table, get­ting to know each oth­er in that effort­less way you do with peo­ple who come pre­pared to have a good time.  We smiled at all the eth­nic­i­ties around the table — Colom­bian, Sin­ga­pore­an, Amer­i­can — and exchanged the kind of sto­ries you do when you’re all expats of one kind or anoth­er, with friends and fam­i­ly scat­tered over the world.  At the end, we enjoyed a mas­sive bowl of fruit to close the meal, and felt grate­ful to have begun this new friendship.

The morn­ing brought my friend Francesca from the Barnes Food Shed to vis­it, to check out this new life that had tak­en me from beloved Barnes and all the fun we had had there.  We met at Pot­ters Fields, to show her John’s baby.

As every time we find our­selves at our lit­tle plot of net­tles, we mar­vel at the changes tak­ing place all around, the build­ings going up with such ambi­tion on our doorstep.  To think that some­day soon, our own walls will be going up, between the ivy-laden walls in the fore­ground and the shroud­ed school build­ing beyond.

Francesca was absolute­ly amazed, I think, at the absur­di­ty of our own­ing this plot of land.  She remem­bers work­ing in our neigh­bor­hood 20 years ago when there was very lit­tle around but indi­vid­ual peo­ple liv­ing their lives.  Now of course it is a tourist mec­ca of shop­ping and com­merce, for bet­ter or worse.  You can’t turn back from progress, I sup­pose, but it would have been fun to know SE1 back in the day of old-fash­ioned pubs and shops.

There’s noth­ing like show­ing your new life off to a friend from the old life, to throw into relief how lucky you are to have both the past to look back on and the future to look for­ward to.  As sad­dened as I was to leave behind so much and so many peo­ple that I loved in Barnes, it is a bit excit­ing to embrace the change and look around for what might pos­si­bly be next.

And read­ers, you will be aston­ished to know that I did a bit of house-fur­nish­ings shop­ping!  I know, I know, nor­mal­ly I can­not be both­ered to choose even a new lamp­shade — as much as I love hav­ing a beau­ti­ful home, I like every­thing sim­ply to fall into place with­out my hav­ing to make choic­es, and shops with large, over­whelm­ing inven­to­ries make me want to get rid of every­thing I own and live in a cave.  But it was time for new cush­ions for the sofa.  What do you think?  In this pho­to­graph they look a bit dark, but in dif­fer­ent lights they change, and I think they pick up the col­ors in the old rug (not so much the old cat).

There has already been a bit of new cook­ing, inspired by Bor­ough Mar­ket, to be sure.  Don’t be put off by the long list of ingre­di­ents in this dish; it’s real­ly very easy.

Gin­gered Asian Pork Fil­let with Carrots

(serves 4)

1/3 cup/85ml dark soy sauce

1 lime, juice and zest

1 tbsp mirin

2 tbsps plum sauce

1 tbsp chili paste

2 star anises

4 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly chopped

1 lb/450g pork fil­let, very thin­ly sliced across the grain in bite-sized pieces

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsps peanut oil

1 medi­um white onion, rough­ly sliced

2 large car­rots, cut into matchsticks

1 two-inch knob gin­ger, peeled and cut into fine matchsticks

2 tbsps sesame oil

8 large leaves Chinese/Savoy cab­bage, fine­ly sliced

8 large leaves Boston/Little Gem lettuce

2 hand­fuls raw peanuts, rough­ly chopped

Mix all the ingre­di­ents up to and includ­ing the gar­lic in a large bowl.  Stir in the pork and mix well.  In a large fry­ing pan, heat 1 tbsp sesame oil and fry the mar­i­nat­ed pork until just bare­ly cooked, then remove from pan to a large serv­ing bowl.

In the same fry­ing pan, heat the peanut oil and fry the onion, car­rots and gin­ger until the car­rots are slight­ly soft­ened.  Add the veg­eta­bles to the pork and toss well.

In the same fry­ing pan, heat the fur­ther 2 tbsps sesame oil and fry the cab­bage until softened.

To serve, pile the pork and veg­eta­bles onto let­tuce leaves and sprin­kle with peanuts.  Serve with cab­bage on the side, and lots of nap­kins!  (And don’t eat the lit­tle star anis­es: just warn your guests to dis­card them when found.)

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I can’t describe to you the savori­ness of this dish!  I had nev­er cooked before with star anise, and its fra­grant, spicy fla­vor is real­ly some­thing to cel­e­brate.  And there is so much gin­ger, it acts almost more as a veg­etable than a seasoning.

My new absolute favorite, how­ev­er, has to be the sort of ulti­mate fusion dish.  We were hap­pi­ly watch­ing the new Nigel­la Law­son series, “Sim­ply Nigel­la,” when my ears perked up at the men­tion of Lau­rie Col­win, to my mind the best food writer of all time.  Nigel­la described a dish that Col­win men­tioned in her sig­na­ture casu­al style, just list­ing ingre­di­ents, real­ly, and maybe men­tion­ing a tem­per­a­ture.  Chick­en with mus­tard and cin­na­mon of all things!

Nigel­la retained the com­bi­na­tion of fla­vors but bril­liant­ly turned the whole pieces of chick­en into breasts, pound­ed flat, coat­ed in corn­flakes, and briefly fried.  I imme­di­ate­ly dug out my pre­cious “tonkat­su” racks brought to me from Tokyo by our archi­tect, after he intro­duced me to the Japan­ese del­i­ca­cy in Paris this sum­mer.

Chick­en Tonkat­su with Mus­tard, Cin­na­mon and Cornflakes

(serves four)

4 chick­en breast fillets

1/2 cup 180g Dijon mustard

1 egg

2 cloves gar­lic, grated

1/2 tsp ground cin­na­mon (fresh ground if you have one of those cool grinders)

fresh black pepper

3 cups/180g cornflakes

1 tbsp sweet paprika

3 tbsps olive oil

Mus­tard and cin­na­mon!  It’s not unheard of in the world of cook­ing, but it’s not every day you see it, either.  Adding the slight sweet­ness of your aver­age corn­flakes real­ly sent my taste expec­ta­tions reel­ing, but trust me.  This is a won­der­ful set of fla­vor sensations.

Trim the chick­en breasts com­plete­ly of fat and sinew.  One at a time, place them on a cut­ting board, cov­er them with plas­tic wrap, and with a mal­let or rolling pin or any­thing heavy, flat­ten them to about 150% of their nor­mal size.  Set aside.

In a large dish big enough to accom­mo­date all four breasts, mix the mus­tard, egg, gar­lic, cin­na­mon and pep­per well.  Dip the chick­en breasts into the mix­ture and mas­sage it in well, turn­ing over to coat both sides completely.

Place corn­flakes in a large shal­low dish and scrunch them with your hands until they are the tex­ture you like — not a fine pow­der, but fair­ly fine crumbs.  Add the papri­ka and mix well.  One by one, mash the chick­en breasts into the corn­flake mix­ture, turn­ing over and over until com­plete­ly coat­ed, with a plat­ter wait­ing to receive them all as they emerge.

Heat the oil in a heavy-bot­tomed fry­ing pan (non­stick works very well, but isn’t nec­es­sary).  Fry the chick­en on one side until crisp and browned, about 2–3 min­utes depend­ing on thick­ness, then turn and cook on sec­ond side.  Drain on a wire rack just briefly before serv­ing, or if you are lucky enough to have “tonkat­su” racks, slice the chick­en into thick slices and place on racks, one on each plate.

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This dish!  Oh, I wish I had some right now.  The fla­vors are ter­ri­bly com­plex and yet famil­iar, the fla­vors of child­hood real­ly: mus­tard, cin­na­mon, corn­flakes.  But all togeth­er!  Just bril­liant.  I served this with a spicy parslied yogurt dip, but you don’t have to.

It has been such fun find­ing new places to shop, new things to cook, old and new friends to cel­e­brate with.  It feels right, in this new house, this November.