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So yes­ter­day (ear­li­er today, what to call the day, have mas­sive insom­nia right now), saw 22 apart­ments. Can’t say flats in the usual
way because let’s see, some were hous­es, some were flats, some were duplex­es, some were maisonettes (sup­posed to be French for “small house” but there are eso­teric require­ments for the use of the word here whose intri­ca­cies I can’t fath­om right now). No semi-detached hous­es, sad­ly, since that has long been my moth­er’s and my favorite real estate des­ig­na­tion. But two dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed places stand out at 4 a.m.: one a neglect­ed but com­plete­ly gor­geous and charm­ing flat a block from Avery’s school, hor­ri­ble kitchen and bath­rooms, grot­ty car­pet through­out, but POCK­ET doors between the two (!) par­lors and bow win­dows… all the orig­i­nal plas­ter mould­ings. John imme­di­ate­ly asked if it were for sale; we could both envi­sion bring­ing it back to life. Well, no, in fact the own­er owns the whole building
(a list­ed thing of decay­ing beau­ty in Maryle­bone). He needs to be shot or else take care of it.

The sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty is on an excru­ci­at­ing­ly tidy and per­fect block of May­fair (kept expect­ing to see Lord Peter Wim­sey and Bunter around the cor­ner), with rights to a com­mu­nal gar­den so tiny and exquis­ite it’s like it’s all under glass. A gray, dwin­dling glass since it’s Lon­don in Jan­u­ary, but still. A very sort of (as Lon­don­ers would say, one of my favorite expres­sions) mod­ern but cozy house, with a sur­feit of bath­rooms and too much over­head light­ing, but… dou­ble-glazed CURVED win­dows look­ing out onto the garden.

So then our mar­vel­lous estate agent Jane (army colonel’s daugh­ter, raised in India, great Oxbridge sort of voice and a won­der­ful mim­ic at
any­thing else) thread­ed her way through the crowd­ed Lon­don streets and we col­lect­ed a wet but tri­umphant Avery from school hav­ing just had swim­ming. Clio is show­ing feet of clay: ““Sarah says she is always super nice to new girls [must pro­nounce this as if it were birds perched on a roof in Maine, “gulls”], and then…” I advise caution
and judg­ing both girls on their mer­its. Anoth­er gull, Jana, plays the gui­tar which is an obvi­ous draw, as well as attempt­ing an Amer­i­can accent which Avery says sounds like Texas. How would she know?

A very fun­ny thing before I for­get. John went to the wine store with a request from me to find some exot­ic drink I could­n’t get in Amer­i­ca, per­haps some fan­cy vod­ka steeped in some­thing. All this a throw­back to old Moscow days where we mar­i­nat­ed any­thing and every­thing (gin­ger, gar­lic, water­mel­on) in the stuff and made peo­ple drink it. He came back with a bot­tle of plain vod­ka and said, “Sor­ry, noth­ing exot­ic. But I could fix you a cock­tail with just vod­ka and say, a slice of apple in it?” Avery pipes up and says, “That sounds so deli­cious. Just hold the cock­tail, please.”

Oh dear!

More soon…