from one world to another

Is it just me, or is it real­ly odd to move from one life to anoth­er in the span of about 12 hours? One after­noon we were hav­ing one last tram­po­line ses­sion with Jill, Joel and Jane, and by the mid­dle of the night we were back in our flat in Lon­don, greet­ing the kit­ties, kiss­ing Becky and Anna hel­lo, and in gen­er­al turn­ing into COM­PLETE­LY DIF­FER­ENT PEO­PLE! Trad­ing one set of friends for anoth­er, one kitchen arrange­ment for anoth­er, walk­ing every­where instead of dri­ving, stand­ing in the “queue” instead of the “line” and swap­ping one wal­let’s con­tents for anoth­er. Becky came instant­ly and reunit­ed the girls, who are as you can see thrilled to be back togeth­er, com­plete with Nin­ten­do, col­lec­tions of Syl­va­ni­ans, and spec­u­la­tion about the new school year. Tonight’s task will def­i­nite­ly be to emp­ty the ruck­sack of all scary Form Four detri­tus (gee, could I have done that in July? I have to hope noth­ing was alive when I last saw the con­tents), and refill­ing it with a work­ing foun­tain pen, the prop­er num­ber of pen­cils. Thanks to the inde­fati­ga­ble Dor­rie, all Avery’s uni­form bits and pieces are in a state of supreme readi­ness, so as of tomor­row morn­ing, the ran­dom amal­gam that is Avery’s rai­ment today will be replaced with that angel­ic and pris­tine ver­sion I got used to last year. I have to say I approve!

I’m sit­ting here on speak­er­phone, sub­ject­ed to a total­ly annoy­ing sort of sal­sa music, on ter­mi­nal “hold” wait­ing for some­one at CityLit to answer my call and get me reg­is­tered for “Screen­writ­ing” and “Writ­ing for Chil­dren,” which will keep me out of trou­ble for at least part of the day, once a week. A nice lit­tle min­ion employed by the land­lords is out­side water­ing the flower box­es, the Indi­an fel­low across the way is busi­ly engaged in his end­less task of wash­ing the black BMW that sits at the entrance to what­ev­er unla­belled embassy or con­sulate it is over there, count­less black cabs are trundling by my study win­dow, doubt­less tak­ing peo­ple to their roman­tic posts at the Amer­i­can Embassy around the cor­ner, my desk is piled with two months’ worth of life details that will even­tu­al­ly claim my atten­tion, but right now I’m catch­ing up on my dar­ling crush actor’s fan­site (some­how he and his career sur­vived over the sum­mer with no input from me, how sad) and pet­ting the incred­i­bly needy Tacy, who has for­got­ten that her cat­sit­ter Kate kept her hap­py all sum­mer. Wim­sey, thanks to Kate’s min­is­tra­tions, seems at least mar­gin­al­ly func­tion­al, and in gen­er­al life seems quite liv­able. Once I get Avery and all her clob­ber off to school tomor­row morn­ing I can turn my atten­tion to our din­ner guest for the evening (I think I’m mak­ing chick­en cur­ry with orange and car­rot sauce, which for some rea­son is exempt from John’s usu­al stric­tures against fruit and meat togeth­er). It’s good to be back.