heav­en­ly voic­es and… foie gras

Oh my. Can I just say that last night’s con­cert was quite the most beau­ti­ful, touch­ing and fes­tive events of our hol­i­day sea­son? And as you know quite well, it’s been packed with good things. But if you ever get a chance to hear The Choir of St George’s Chapel, Wind­sor, run, don’t walk. They were sim­ply breath­tak­ing­ly marvelous.

Call me igno­rant, but it nev­er occurred to me that, when you lis­ten to a CD of Christ­mas music, the high pip­ing voic­es belong to… lit­tle boys! Not to sopra­nos at all, dumb me. I actu­al­ly felt a pang of wor­ry that Avery would be bored, since all the singers looked to be boys. What was I think­ing? Now, I imag­ine adult choirs have to run to actu­al females, but if you don’t have to, don’t. And THIS from a card-car­ry­ing fem­i­nist! No, tru­ly there is noth­ing sweet­er than lit­tle boys singing, and I don’t think I ever have done, before, actu­al­ly live. They sang all the won­der­ful bits I love, like “Joy to the World,” and my all-time favorite, “In the Bleak Mid­win­ter,” although to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent tune than I am used to. Of course in blog­world I can­not sing this tune to you. But has any­one else heard two dif­fer­ent ver­sions? Any­way, it was love­ly. And “The Hol­ly and the Ivy,” and to Avery’s delight, “Ding Dong Mer­ri­ly on High,” since she played the vio­lin for it at the school fes­ti­val. Just won­der­ful. When the inter­val came, we had the awful thought that it was over! But no, there was more. John turned to me and said, “I don’t think I have ever shed a tear lis­ten­ing to music, since we lis­tened to ‘Con­cert for New York,’ after the World Trade Cen­ter.” It was ter­ri­bly mov­ing. And then after the inter­val came what the con­duc­tor called wry­ly, “The loneli­est solo in the busi­ness,” the begin­ning verse of “Once in roy­al David’s city,” which our lit­tle friend Lind­say sang at the school fes­ti­val. All alone, out there on the stage in front of every­one, a lit­tle chap called Oliv­er sang his heart out last night, their “senior cho­ris­ter,” look­ing as if he should be in the dusty stacks of the British Library, look­ing up some arcane bit of pre-Raphaelite intel­li­gence. A dear lit­tle fel­low, and a sim­ply mag­i­cal voice. Then, also mys­te­ri­ous­ly, there was a car­ol called “Angels from the realms of glo­ry,” but I’m sor­ry, it was “Angels we have heard on high.” Who knows from what arcane dis­tinc­tions these vari­a­tions arise.

Then they trot­ted out a female opera singer as, one sup­pos­es, a sop to those who want to hear a lady sing, and she was a yawn. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I hap­pened to men­tion to Avery that she looked like “The Opera Camel,” a ref­er­ence to a joke I had with a friend in col­lege, when we could make all sorts of camel faces. There was the “Schol­ar­ly Camel,” the “Super­cil­ious Camel,” the “Aston­ished Camel,” and the “Patho­log­i­cal­ly Shy Camel.” But the “Opera Camel” comes with a dark, dark his­to­ry. Years ago, dur­ing our first sojourn in Lon­don in the ear­ly 1990s, my dear fam­i­ly came to vis­it us at Christ­mas­time, to mark the end of my sis­ter’s dread­ed semes­ter at Essex Uni­ver­si­ty, or “Gotham City,” as she referred to it (suf­fice to say she spent a lot of time at our flat in Lon­don). As a spe­cial hol­i­day treat, we all went to hear Han­del’s “Mes­si­ah.” Which would have been love­ly except that as an igno­rant idiot, I thought there was the “Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus,” and that was it, and we’d all go have a love­ly din­ner. Oh ho. It last­ed for HOURS. And my sis­ter and I began to get squir­rel­ly. I made one, just ONE “Opera Camel” face at her, and after that, all bets were off. No amount of stern looks from our moth­er (who sad­ly began to do camel faces too after a bit), or angry glances from oth­er occu­pants of our pew (shak­ing with laugh­ter) could dis­pel. Then John got it. One by one, we had to leave the chapel, to try to stop laugh­ing, but it was no good. We snick­ered and shook the pew and gig­gled until final­ly it was the bleep­ing “Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus” and we could just shout and get it out of our systems.

Well, I’m ashamed to say that Avery took the “Opera Camel” face in much the same spir­it. She is, how­ev­er, con­sid­er­ably more mature than I was at, say, 26 years of age, and came to her sens­es. Whew.

We emerged from the con­cert into the glow of St. Paul’s cathe­dral, and came home in a fog of appre­ci­a­tion. Plus Avery was wear­ing my favorite grey coat that makes her look so cozy, and a very fan­cy dress from Mor­gane le Fay that her Iowa grand­par­ents bought for her at least three years ago and which has seen her through every fes­tiv­i­ty in her life since. Dark blue woollen knit, swirly about the hems, with a dark-blue silk lin­ing. And a cream-col­ored silk blouse with a ruf­fled col­lar. With this fetch­ing ensem­ble she wore a grey felt beret with a felt rab­bit on it. Both John and I were quite sil­ly with admi­ra­tion for her, in the tube.

This morn­ing she tripped off to her eye doc­tor appoint­ment with John while I slept in like a lazy slob. What on EARTH am I going to do when he even­tu­al­ly gets a job? I have got sin­ful­ly accus­tomed to hav­ing a sec­ond par­ent in the house. And I must say that late last night, after Avery had gone to sleep and we were hav­ing a restora­tive shared scram­bled egg in the kitchen, we dis­cussed the incred­i­ble lux­u­ry of a two-par­ent house­hold at all. We’re look­ing to buy a house in North Kens­ing­ton, cur­rent­ly lived in by a love­ly Irish lady called Sal­ly and her lit­tle boy William. And that’s all. How incred­i­bly brave of her to man­age on her own, with­out the adult to talk to at the end of the day, to share errands, han­dle half (or more, in the case of my hus­band) the moral dilem­mas and behav­ioral con­cerns. I want­ed to take the two of them in to live with us! Hey, if we are able to buy her house, you nev­er know! Seri­ous­ly, though. A thing to be grate­ful for at any sea­son, but espe­cial­ly now: a sec­ond par­ent. And we real­ized: this is the first Christ­mas ever that John has been able to do any­thing about the hol­i­day. Which was always fine, because I love any­thing to do with Christ­mas prepa­ra­tions, and his­tor­i­cal­ly he has been very Scroogey. But now I won­der how much was Scrooge and how much was just sheer exhaus­tion. I remem­ber the child­hood feel­ing of my dad being able to relax. It was always like an extra Christ­mas present, hav­ing him be the self he prob­a­bly always would have been with­out the pres­sure of being head of house­hold. At Christ­mas­time he got to have fun, and be fun­ny, and play jokes and have me sit on his lap in the fire­light (which, dear read­ers, I did through­out col­lege). What old fash­ioned lives we still lead, some of us, at-home moth­ers with work­ing hus­bands. And what a treat to get out from under the man­tle, this one Christ­mas, and play a dif­fer­ent role.

Any­way, Avery needs glass­es, it turns out! Nev­er one to be con­ven­tion­al, her left eye is near-sight­ed, her right eye far-sight­ed. Not to wor­ry, mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy will fig­ure this out. From her eye exam she went to her class­mate Kimi­a’s for a play­date, and I? I swanned off to a Thai gro­cery store with my friend Vin­cent, since I nev­er real­ly been to such a thing. Vin­cent spe­cial­izes in three things: one, know­ing all the cool things to do, two, intro­duc­ing them to his friends, and three, sit­ting back and lov­ing watch­ing his friends like what he likes. It goes for Thai gro­ceries, favorite restau­rants, oth­er friends. It’s one of the nicest things about him, his gen­eros­i­ty about what he loves. We had FUN. And I bought lots of exot­ic things like kaf­fir lime leaves, Thai basil, three dif­fer­ent kinds of pick­led cab­bage for John to try (hav­ing a child­hood friend from Viet­nam who instilled in him a life­long love of kim­chi). Noo­dles, green cur­ry paste, lemon grass, you name it. Tomor­row night is, I’m think­ing, Thai night.

From there, we end­ed up hav­ing a total­ly unex­pect­ed lunch out (at least, unex­pect­ed for me, but Vin­cent had of course booked) at The Provi­dores in the Maryle­bone High Street. Sec­ond direc­tion for you to run, not walk, should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty: a lunch to die for. First, “can I take all those pack­ages for you?” mean­ing, “can I stop you from enter­ing my uber-cool restau­rant with all those tacky Thai gro­cery bags?” Although to be fair, she also took our bags from Skandi­um, the sub­lime Swedish design store, and Bro­ra, the Scot­tish cash­mere shop (I can­not divulge, for obvi­ous rea­sons, any­thing that was acquired anywhere).

The food sounds inde­scrib­ably pre­ten­tious when I think how to describe it, when what it real­ly is is imag­i­na­tive New Zealand fare. Which includes… kan­ga­roo. Don’t fret! I did not indulge. Too… pouchy for me. Or some­thing. But I did have a won­der­ful bowl of some­thing called lak­sa, which is an Indi­an-ish soup with a coconut milk base. This par­tic­u­lar bowl hap­pened to be filled with crab, black car­damom, and galan­gal root, with a fried crab dumpling (to die for), lime-leaf-mar­i­nat­ed squid (nev­er did like eat­ing rub­ber bands, so Vin­cent got mine) and green tea noo­dles. Sounds ridicu­lous? Per­fect, Some noo­dles and the crab to eat with chop­sticks, and a nice ster­ling spoon to get the coconut milk, unbe­liev­ably rich and creamy. To fol­low I had… foie gras, pan-fried with roast­ed pineap­ple and, I have to say, an oily corian­der pikelet (a sort of pota­to ros­ti, a non-Jew­ish latke). Tell the truth, I always say! What was great was great, but the pikelet was oily. There you have it.

Vin­cen­t’s friend Pete joined us lat­er on, and we lin­gered, oh did we linger. How won­der­ful to aban­don any idea of what you thought you would do between sort of 1 and 3, and just sit, and eat and chat. Total lux­u­ry. Presents were exchanged, and I came home to see if John was still among the liv­ing, and I must say, even with the glo­ri­ous restau­rant lunch, the lin­ger­ing aro­ma of home­made chick­en soup was pret­ty amaz­ing. Last bits of present wrap­ping, now, and so the clock to Christ­mas winds down.