Hap­py Birth­day, Queen Elizabeth

Do you sup­pose the Queen had such pret­ty East­er eggs last week­end? (I’d ask also if she had such a pret­ty lit­tle girl to spend East­er with, but that would be unkind). No, I know for cer­tain she did not have such pret­ty eggs, because one thing we dis­cov­ered this year is that the British do not col­or eggs. Well, actu­al­ly Avery reports that some very reli­gious peo­ple dye some eggs red to sym­bol­ize puri­ty and blood (how cheer­ful). How did we find out that our cher­ished tra­di­tion was not observed here in our new home? Well, for one thing there was no dye in any of the shops. Any­where. I dis­cov­ered this too late to bleat help­less­ly to Alyssa, my friend and source for all things Amer­i­can that we miss, like microwave pop­corn and Peo­ple mag­a­zine. Then, on our way to our Nation­al Trust hol­i­day, we stopped at an enor­mous gro­cery store to stock up, and… there are no white eggs in Great Britain. Can you dye brown eggs? With no dye? It turns out you can. Weird­ly, the night before our trip I had a very vivid dream in which I dis­cov­ered a cache of food col­or­ing bot­tles on my top kitchen pantry shelf. And… sure enough, in the morn­ing there was a whole sec­tion of bot­tles from some bygone Tribeca crafty thing, moved here to my Lon­don kitchen. So the whole East­er egg dye rack­et is a scam, the idea that you need some­thing spe­cial to col­or eggs. So much for all the research I did online, find­ing creepy ovo-lac­to veg­e­tar­i­an tofu-obsessed web­sites that assured me a quick dip in boil­ing water and onion skins would make fine yel­low (nev­er mind the smell, I guess) and that beet­root shreds would pro­duce red with­out all that pesky can­cer risk, and blue? I don’t remem­ber what they claimed would pro­duce blue. Because have you ever looked inside a blue­ber­ry? It’s sort of a phlegmy white, cer­tain­ly not a hue we were aim­ing for in East­er eggs. And strong cof­fee for to get brown? For heav­en’s sake, this is where we came in! The darn things ARE brown already. Any­way, my point is that plain old Dur­kee food col­or­ing in warm water makes per­fect­ly good dye, and the brown eggs took to their adven­ture like ducks to water, thrilled at their oppor­tu­ni­ty to rise above their less­er brethren, des­tined only for egg cups across the British Isles, know­ing that theirs was a high­er fate.

So all Eng­land is agog today for the roy­al 80th birth­day. Please promise me you’ll click on this link. She looks like an Amer­i­can Girl doll gone large I swear. I heard on the BBC this morn­ing that so far she has received over 20,000 cards. Today a huge self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry flag is being hoist­ed over Wind­sor Cas­tle (the BBC announc­er said solemn­ly that it was “a much larg­er flag, indeed, than we’re used to see­ing fly­ing over the Cas­tle, isn’t it?”). She’s going to do a “walk­a­bout” in town to press the flesh, and receive posies, and 25 mem­bers of the inti­mate Roy­al Fam­i­ly will be at a din­ner host­ed by Prince Charles this evening. What do you sup­pose she asked for to eat? When asked what she want­ed for her birth­day, she said “a nice sun­shiny day.” Trust her to choose the one thing that doubt­less she can­not have, here in Eng­land, land of the per­pet­u­al grey sky. And yes­ter­day she invit­ed for tea at Buck­ing­ham Palace all the peo­ple who could prove that they turn 80 today as well. Kind of cute if you like that sort of thing. I’m not a huge fan of the Queen, I hes­i­tate to con­fess, but there is some­thing catch­ing about all the birth­day fever and we suc­cumbed last night and taped a show all about the ten most sig­nif­i­cant days in Queen Eliz­a­beth’s life. Would you believe the show last­ed an hour and a half? Must have been some ten days. Oh! Yes­ter­day out­side Marks and Spencer I saw Lady Helen Tay­lor, with her lit­tle girl Eloise. She was very pret­ty in per­son, but not in the Body of Armani way you’d expect, from all her pic­tures in Hel­lo! mag­a­zine. Just trot­ting along in jeans and sneak­ers, hold­ing her lit­tle girl’s hand, not act­ing at all as if she’s 11th in line to the throne. Actu­al­ly I’m mak­ing that up; I can’t remem­ber how far away she is, but still! She’s a princess.

Speak­ing of the Queen, who is Avery’s school’s Patron, excit­ing news: Avery was cho­sen by the art teacher of King’s Col­lege to cre­ate a por­trait of the Queen for the school’s birth­day card to her! To be deliv­ered, Anna and Avery told me in breath­less excite­ment yes­ter­day, in “a spe­cial Queen’s birth­day taxi” to Wind­sor Cas­tle this after­noon. Well done.

And more news about Avery’s achieve­ments, if you can bear it. She won the Form Four Sto­ry­writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion! This was her great­est goal, and she poured her heart and soul into her sto­ry, writ­ten before break. Mrs Davies assured us in her pre-East­er head­mistress let­ter that all efforts would be made over vaca­tion to judge the entries and come up with a win­ner for each form. Our New Girl, can you imag­ine it, heard her name called out at assem­bly yes­ter­day and was the proud recip­i­ent of two real­ly scary choco­late bun­nies, as a prize. As you can imag­ine we are all quite proud. Her sto­ry and her roy­al por­trait, all in one day. And the new sum­mer uni­forms have arrived at John Lewis Depart­ment Store, so I stopped off yes­ter­day for a ruinous shop­ping trip and came away with dress­es and new white ankle socks, as well as a cute short coat. I shall have to get a good pic­ture of her in her new ging­ham dress. And boater hat, if she’ll put up with it. Lots of fun.