from the sub­lime to the mun­dane (and even a bit nasty)

Well, after my glo­ri­ous celebri­ty evening, head in the clouds, I was bumped firm­ly down to earth yes­ter­day. It was just one of those… you know.

It start­ed off per­fect­ly all right, even very nice indeed, with some run­ny-nosed lit­tle Form 3 gulls read­ing to me on the top floor of the school, and a gor­geous bou­quet of flow­ers from Avery’s head­mistress, I can’t real­ly think why! When I ran into her at school I protest­ed, “Mrs D, what on earth are you doing send­ing me flow­ers? But they’re love­ly, thank you,” and she put her hand on my arm and said, “Many rea­sons, my dear.” Now that’s a gra­cious lady.

And then, too, a real­ly sweet lunch out with my hus­band (who dressed up in one of his new bespoke jack­ets for the occa­sion, which he insist­ed on call­ing a “date”). We jaunt­ed off to Wright Broth­ers Oys­ter House, where I’d sam­pled oys­ters on Sat­ur­day, and had such fun. We ordered adven­tur­ous­ly, which meant that some dish­es were hits and some miss­es. I suc­cumbed to curios­i­ty and had rock oys­ters “Japan­ese style,” which were topped with wasabi, soy and a tiny bit of pick­led gin­ger. Good, but the fla­vors masked the oys­ter. John stuck with a six­er of the spe­cial “Claires” I had the oth­er day, and they were sub­lime (I nicked one from him with his per­mis­sion). Then I had anoth­er exper­i­ment, the “Rock­e­fel­la,” a nice warm but unex­pect­ed­ly raw take on the tra­di­tion­al cheesy spinach ver­sion, and they were deli­cious. Sub­tle, a nice warm shell but chilly oys­ter and a del­i­cate spinach puree. John had the petit plat de fruits de mer, which would not have done for me because I am a bit squea­mish about some of the things that might have been includ­ed (squid, which was­n’t, clams, which were). But he was in heav­en, and the chilled poached lan­goustines were com­plete­ly fresh and deli­cious. I also tried a cold mus­sel and while I did­n’t dis­like it, in fact I liked it bet­ter than hot, I would­n’t cross the road for it.

Then we com­plete­ly caved to voyeuris­tic nosi­ness and ordered what the two guys sit­ting next to us each had, which our won­der­ful New Zealan­der wait­ress assured us were good, deep-fried white­bait. Now, per­haps the very word “bait” should have been a clue. Not awful, but baity. Sor­ry, I don’t want to think about eat­ing some­thing’s eye­balls, as it stares up at me through admit­ted­ly good, crunchy bat­ter. No thanks, but we’re glad we tried them because it was going to hap­pen some­time with that menu, and you might as well get it out of the way the first vis­it. We’ll def­i­nite­ly be back. Oh, and an excel­lent green sal­ad with squashed toma­to halves soak­ing up a live­ly dress­ing and lit­tle ten­der beet greens.

Fair enough, until school pick­up, then, it was a stel­lar day. See, I’m such a Scan­di­na­vian, that the first sev­en hours of the day were vir­tu­al­ly for­got­ten in favor of the fol­low­ing, say, four. I went off for my sec­ond vis­it to the acupunc­tur­ist at Sen, the extreme­ly chic and posh Chi­nese health cen­tre in South Moul­ton Street, cho­sen for its prox­im­i­ty to the unaf­ford­able watch shop where I’m attempt­ing to get my ancient watch fixed. And it hurt like bloody HE-dou­ble hock­ey sticks! I thought it was­n’t sup­posed to hurt. It’s this crazy fin­ger I have where every so often, the first knuck­le fills up on the inside with a painful bruise, and then the next day it’s so cold I think it’s going to fall off. Grant­ed, I have oth­ers, but it’s annoy­ing, and some­one sug­gest­ed acupunc­ture. I fell for the “book four appoint­ments and get one free” offer, so now I have to use them up. Ouch! And it’s hard to see improve­ment when suc­cess is only… neg­a­tive. In that it has­n’t hap­pened again, YET.

I slunk away feel­ing hard done-by (to pay for pain is annoy­ing), and came in to face Avery’s Extreme Home­work Com­plaints about how, even con­sid­er­ing Leap Year, could a boy reach the age of 8 with only one birth­day? I was stumped, and even more so when the phone rang with my friend Sarah on the oth­er end, and get this: our book has been pla­gia­rized! Yes, it’s not enough that the wretched thing took sev­en years to write and get pub­lished, and that my roy­al­ty checks have to roll over onto one anoth­er until they reach $50 per quar­ter, because it’s not worth it for Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia to print the small­er checks. No, my “get rich quick scheme,” as John kind­ly refers to it, is now being not only not bought, but stolen!

Here’s how it hap­pened. Sarah was approached by some jour­nal or oth­er to review an art his­to­ry book, recent­ly pub­lished by a uni­ver­si­ty press who, for rea­sons of a poten­tial­ly liti­gious nature, shall remain name­less for the time being. Well, she’s read­ing and read­ing and… hey, she wrote that! Or I did, or both of us, or sev­er­al of the con­trib­u­tors to our book. She was in such a state of help­less rage that she could hard­ly be coher­ent, not to men­tion I con­stant­ly inter­rupt­ed her to try to stave off Avery’s home­work pan­ic. Final­ly we agreed she would email our edi­tor and give her a heads up. Whole sec­tions that she says just leap out to her as hav­ing been writ­ten by me, shin­ing from the page, unac­knowl­edged. We’re not even cit­ed in the bib­li­og­ra­phy as a source, even though, mod­esty aside, we’re the author­i­ties on the sub­ject he’s dis­cussing. We are seething.

To add insult to injury, ful­ly a third of the mus­sels I bought to steam for our din­ner were already opened, which makes them ined­i­ble. Good point, that. I always knew that if they did­n’t open dur­ing cook­ing, you should throw them out, but I did­n’t know until last night (and a hasty google search by John, the intend­ed vic­tim) that if they do open before cook­ing, the same applies. Oooh, not only those mus­sels were steam­ing. I had it com­ing out my ears.

Ah well, by mid­night all had been fed, one had been read to, sung to, and tucked in, every­thing was tidy, John asleep. I came upstairs just to sit in the kitchen, still redo­lent of the thymey, gar­licky, but­tery mus­sel sauce, with a lit­tle hint of toast­ed cia­bat­ta in the back­ground, and soaked up a lit­tle qui­et domes­tic har­mo­ny. I guess life is like that: you’re up in the clouds from your crush, then still pret­ty high up there with your love­ly hus­band slurp­ing down oys­ters, then you’re flat on your back stuck through with nee­dles, then con­tem­plat­ing a law­suit, then all is peace­ful again. Maybe it would be bor­ing with­out the roller-coast­er? I’ll think about it and get back to you.