life almost too full of happenings

Let’s look at some pret­ty spring daf­fodils, shall we?

Life has been an utter mad­house late­ly.  Avery has been home for her East­er hol­i­days, then she has spent two weeks in Berlin in an Airbnb, learn­ing to shop, cook, break into aban­doned ware­hous­es with friends, eat an inor­di­nate amount of exot­ic street food, and come home again safe­ly.  What a wel­come late-night text to let me know she was on her way to Black­fri­ars, and a chilly mid­night walk along the riv­er to meet her in that rather odd train sta­tion that always feels like the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse has been and gone.

She was home for a week — a week of inter­views for work expe­ri­ence, lunch­es and cof­fees and din­ners with friends, a mem­o­rable din­ner in Bor­ough Mar­ket with us…

And a fab­u­lous evening of the inim­itable Peter Kay as Tom Lehrer.  I’d tell you to go, but it was one-night only.  “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park…”

and back to Oxford last week.  How we miss her.

Onward and upward.

We’ve had vis­i­tors!  Three lots of Amer­i­can vis­i­tors.  And you know what that means: trips to Pot­ters Fields, nat­u­ral­ly, to show off our plot of dirt/nettles/junk pile.  John remains stead­fast­ly proud and excit­ed, undaunt­ed by the end­less parade of nego­ti­a­tions with the Coun­cil.  He cycles in to give the tour.

First up was my child­hood friend Claire and her fam­i­ly — I haven’t seen Claire since high school!  She has­n’t changed a bit.

I treat­ed them all to the Full Bank­side Tour, begin­ning with Bor­ough Mar­ket, nat­u­ral­ly, then pro­ceed­ing to Pot­ters Fields for the req­ui­site “are you kid­ding me?” reaction.

My great friend Ang­ie joined us, as mes­merised as… well, as who can not be?  It is such a mad project.

From there we crossed Tow­er Bridge with all the oth­er tourists — “How often do you do this, Kris­ten?” and all the way along the riv­er, talk­ing non­stop about the 35 years we’ve been apart, until we came to St Paul’s (and love­ly Fos­ter Lane, of course), then across the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge and home, for a quick glass of bub­bly, and then din­ner down­stairs.  There was a lot to talk about, with Claire’s bright, clever eyes and bursts of laugh­ter just the same as in high school.  Every­one gath­ered around the archi­tec­tur­al plans late into the evening.

The next day brought us Julia, Ned and their close friends Ali­son and Antho­ny.  Now Julia began life as my friend stand­ing around a ring in the Bronx, filled with our small daugh­ters on ponies.  Since then we have hap­pi­ly pro­gressed to being just plain friends, and I am very lucky that when­ev­er she comes to Lon­don, she makes time to see me.  We met, nat­u­ral­ly, at Pot­ters Fields, but I have no pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry of this because it was sim­ply pour­ing with a cold April rain and we gazed, appre­ci­at­ed, and then jumped thank­ful­ly in an Uber to come to our nice, warm, wel­com­ing house, filled with the aro­ma of slow-brais­ing chick­en thighs with olives and gar­lic.  Thank you, John — and for light­ing all the candles.

Nat­u­ral­ly the plans came out then, too.  It felt so heart­warm­ing to see Julia with my cook­book, whilst Ali­son stud­ied Pot­ters Fields.  Sure­ly with all this good­will, John’s dream will come true, as mine has.

Ned and I lay on the rug try­ing to coax Keechie out from under a chair.  Antho­ny made him­self at home on the chaise.  No one real­ly want­ed to go home.

But we had to get a good night’s sleep because it was up ear­ly to ring for me, and Julia, Ned and their Jake came along!  Vis­i­tors in the Tow­er at Fos­ter Lane, what could be bet­ter.  Our won­der­ful land­lords and friends Gus­ta­vo and YSL came along too, mak­ing vis­i­tors almost out­num­ber ringers!

Gus­ta­vo took the most won­der­ful video…

I am so lucky to have friends who real­ly sup­port my bizarre pas­sions.  I have to laugh, though, because I met some­one this week who asked me if I had any hobbies.

“Yes, I’m a bellringer.”

Pause.

“A ball­roomer?”

“No, a BELLRINGER.”

“Oh, that’s even more peculiar.”

Final­ly my Dan­ish chum Julie turned up to watch the ring­ing, and to have a nice wan­der around SE1 with me.  Of course we end­ed up at, you guessed it, Pot­ters Fields.  Julie is des­per­ate­ly afraid of heights, but mind­ful of my advice to eat more pur­ple foods and do some­thing every­day that scares you, she scaled the wall brave­ly, to get a photograph.

But it isn’t all fun and games, sports fans.  I have some new vol­un­teer­ing gigs, as well (which are, strict­ly speak­ing, all fun and games).  I give you Roots and Shoots, for one.

Begun in 1982, this is a sim­ply splen­did acre of gar­den in South­east Lon­don that pro­vides voca­tion­al train­ing to teens keen to work in the hor­ti­cul­tur­al world.  More rel­e­vant to me, how­ev­er, there is an unbe­liev­ably patient and cre­ative man named David who, among many oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties at Roots, takes round groups of tiny school-chil­dren.  Nat­u­ral­ly I can­not show you any pho­tographs of these lit­tle angels, but suf­fice to say I spent two days fol­low­ing them and David around, wet wipes at the ready, hold­ing lit­tle hands, and final­ly sit­ting in the Drag­on’s Den to read aloud sto­ries about trees, spring­time and grow­ing things.  It is a heav­en­ly place to be.

David has fash­ioned this gate of an oak tree that fell down in a wind­storm at Roots — a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to explain to the chil­dren that when a tree dies, you can make some­thing beau­ti­ful of it.  Oh, the peace of the place, with bees buzzing around hives and the sound of bird­song in the air.

Nat­u­ral­ly, there is a res­i­dent kit­ty.  Meet Eric.

When not at Roots and Shoots, I’ve been deep under the eaves at the local Sal­va­tion Army at their Baby Bank, which, sad­ly, is not a place where one can get a baby, but rather a place where loads of sec­ond-hand baby clothes are stored in the cold attic, to be giv­en to par­ents who need them.

Once while there, I was sum­moned from the attic to help with snack and song time at the play­group, hap­pen­ing so bois­ter­ous­ly down­stairs.  Again, I wish I could show you their shin­ing faces, but it was an hour or so of absolute con­trolled chaot­ic bliss.  Chil­dren of every reli­gion and skin col­or you can imag­ine, hap­pi­ly shar­ing (or not shar­ing) slides and doll bug­gies, raisins and rice cakes.  Sim­ply lovely.

It was a mar­vel­lous reward, one evening after a par­tic­u­lar­ly wet jour­ney home from the Baby Bank, to con­coct this dish, real­ly one of the best ever.  I allow two duck legs per per­son, but this dish was so rich­ly savoury that I had to save my sec­ond leg for lunch the next day.  And the best thing is, it cooks itself while you do some­thing else.  The duck legs are per­fect, as you see, with caramelised car­rots on the side.

Slow-Braised Duck Legs with Fresh Bay, Thyme and Rosemary

(serves 4)

8 Gress­ing­ham duck legs

250g duck or goose fat

236g/1 cup white wine

8 fresh (if pos­si­ble) bay leaves

hand­ful thyme sprigs

hand­ful rose­mary sprigs

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

sea salt and fresh black pepper

Sim­ply wash and dry the duck legs and set aside.  In a very large roast­ing dish, large enough to fit all the legs in a sin­gle lay­er, place the duck fat and white wine and place in a warm oven until the duck fat melts.  Sprin­kle the fresh herbs in the liq­uid and place the duck legs skin side down in the dish.  Sprin­kle with plen­ty of salt and pepper.

Cov­er the cook­ing dish tight­ly with foil and braise at 150C300F for 2 1/2 hours.  Then uncov­er the dish, turn the duck legs over, increase the heat to 220F/450F, and roast for a fur­ther 30 min­utes, less if the skin begins to burn.

Serve with some­thing to absorb the mag­i­cal juices — steamed rice or mashed pota­toes are perfect.

***********

And lo and behold, one day we walked into our lob­by and our delight­ful concierge Tyrone said, “I believe a pass­port has come in the post for you, John!”

Full of envy, I went off to my pass­port inter­view at Her Majesty’s Pass­port Office (not a very salu­bri­ous place) to be quizzed by a love­ly Ghanan civ­il ser­vant.  It is an odd­ly chill­ing expe­ri­ence, to be asked things like your par­ents’ wed­ding date and where in Lon­don you lived in 2009, and do you have any sib­lings?  You feel like you’re lying no mat­ter what you say.

Final­ly we came to ques­tions about what I was doing here in the UK.

“I came with my hus­band’s job.”

“Ah, and does he still have that job?”

“Uh, no, now he is a prop­er­ty developer.”

“For whom does he work, madam?”

“Um, he’s… self-employed.” [Was that real­ly true?  I was­n’t too sure.]

“What sort of prop­er­ties does he develop?”

“Well, so far, just the one, our fam­i­ly home, near Tow­er Bridge.”

SILENCE.

“Will this home be built of cross-lam­i­nat­ed tim­ber, by any chance?”

He had been John’s inter­view­er too!  This final­ly broke the ice and I did­n’t car­ry on feel­ing like a crim­i­nal wait­ing to be found out.  And sev­er­al days lat­er, I was the proud hold­er of a pass­port too.  Now only Avery waits.

Of course, through all this, I’ve rung two Quar­ter Peals.  They are get­ting much less fright­en­ing.  Just 50 or so min­utes of intense con­cen­tra­tion, and then about ten min­utes after­ward feel­ing as if I could rule the world.

Trisha and Michael have come along, all the way from Barnes, to ring with me at Fos­ter Lane!  What a momen­tous occasion.

Michael was brave, but was ham­pered by ring­ing next to ANOTH­ER Michael and hav­ing the cor­rec­tions and instruc­tions sort of impar­tial­ly dis­trib­uted between them!

It was all great fun, though, see­ing my two ring­ing world col­lide.  At the pub after, I longed to know what Trisha and Tom were talk­ing about, as they gazed over at me and alter­nate­ly nod­ded and shook their heads!

And then there is… the tri­o­let.  A very spe­cif­ic poem, that is, spe­cif­ic to life in gen­er­al and very much so to Fos­ter Lane, whose walls are dec­o­rat­ed with them.  I invent­ed my own.

It’s been dis­played here very briefly, along with Michael’s alto­geth­er more bril­liant attempt, until such time as it can be pressed onto a small board and attached to the wall permanently.

“I’ve typed your tri­o­lets into my data­base,” Tow­er Cap­tain Tom assured me this morn­ing over coffee.

“I adore sen­tences that pos­si­bly have nev­er been uttered before,” I replied.

As a reward for all this flur­ry of activ­i­ty, I invent­ed a cook­ie.  As one does.

Amaret­to Choco­late Chip Oat­meal Cookies

(makes between 3–4 dozen)

250g/1 cup butter

200g/1 cup light brown sugar

75g/3/8 cup caster/granulated sugar

1 large or 2 small vanil­la pods, seeds scraped

1 tbsp Amaretto

2 eggs

150g/ 1 cup flour

1 tsp bicar­bon­ate of soda

2 large pinch­es ordi­nary (not flaked) salt

270g/3 cups porridge/rolled oats

200g/1 cup mini choco­late chips

100g/1/2 cup flaked almonds

With a stand mix­er or hand mix­er, cream the but­ter and sug­ars togeth­er, then add the vanil­la, Amaret­to and eggs.  Mix thor­ough­ly.  In anoth­er bowl, fork togeth­er the flour, soda and salt, and add to the but­ter mix­ture.  Mix well, then pour in the oats, chips and almonds and mix thor­ough­ly.  But­ter a cook­ie sheet and drop gen­er­ous table­spoons­ful of bat­ter, leav­ing plen­ty of space for the cook­ies to run.

Bake at 170C/325F for about 12 min­utes, then remove cook­ies to a rack to cool.

*********

These cook­ies are dense and rich, not too sweet, and sur­pris­ing­ly boozy and salty.  Heav­en­ly lit­tle treats, they are.  Tyrone and his col­leagues on the desk down in the lob­by were hap­py to receive them (Avery not being here to help with the consumption).

Andras waved me over.  He brought out his phone.

“Here, Kris­ten, is what I cooked for my moth­er last week.  It is from your cook­book.  It did not take too long to pre­pare, and then you just have to wait, while they cook.”

“I’m so pleased!  How did they turn out — that’s one of my favorite recipes [slow-braised chick­en thighs, very sim­i­lar to the duck leg recipe above]?

“Very nice, very tasty.  Thank you.”

No, thank YOU, Andras, for com­plete­ly mak­ing my day.  I real­ly can’t ask for any­thing more.