mak­ing hap­py times before the storm

I am a crea­ture of habit.  And I am intense­ly devot­ed to my home life.  Nor­mal­ly at this time of year I am ner­vous­ly con­tem­plat­ing a major jolt to my sys­tem: the trans­fer of life from Lon­don to Red Gate Farm.

This year I have anoth­er enor­mous jolt, a mas­sive hur­dle, to get over before that hap­pens: mov­ing house.

The cats are, of course the Wild Card of the Move.  Actu­al­ly, that’s not even slight­ly true, because the term “Wild Card” implies that you don’t know what’s going to hap­pen.  I know EXACT­LY what will happen.

Tomor­row, first thing in the morn­ing, Avery and I will stag­ger from our beds, she to get ready for her last exam — good news, it’s the last exam; bad news, it’s physics — and me to assist my stal­wart hus­band in the mon­u­men­tal task of Get­ting The Cats Into Their Boxes.

Of the four cats, two will go unhap­pi­ly but coop­er­a­tive­ly into their box­es.  I know, how­ev­er, from bit­ter expe­ri­ence that the oth­er two will first attempt to flee the scene, and then if they are caught, will kick, scream and bite, to retain their freedom.

To thwart the first strat­e­gy, we’ve placed the hideous pris­ons all around the house in the places where the two crazy ones tend to sleep, hop­ing that tomor­row morn­ing we’ll be able to sur­prise them, grab them and stick them inside, shut­ting the doors in their faces before they know what hit them.

Once this is accom­plished the four vic­tims of our cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment will wait for their Kit­ty Taxi to arrive to dri­ve them out into the coun­try­side where they will spend four days of peace and lux­u­ry in a Kit­ty Hotel, being deliv­ered to their nice new home, all set­tled, at the end of the week.  I wish I could join them.

Grad­u­al­ly this week the house has begun to unrav­el.  Take, for exam­ple, my pre­cious book­shelves, so much a part of the fab­ric of our kitchen and din­ing room and lives.

One very ear­ly morn­ing while I slept, John packed them away, in alpha­bet­i­cal order.  I can’t believe he did it all himself.

Poor nut­ty Keechie made an effort to get used to the idea of the pile of boxes.

But then it was time for the team of book­shelf elves to invade the house and leave not emp­ty shelves, but an emp­ty wall.

Amidst all this upheaval, the nor­mal lives that were in place before we found out we had to move have all come to fruition.  I wish I had got a chance to tell you about the best play EVER, in time for you to go.  But “To Kill a Mock­ing­bird” in the Open Air The­atre at Regen­t’s Park has closed.  It was sim­ply heavenly.

I remem­ber vague­ly read­ing the nov­el in high school as an assigned text — sure­ly the best way to guar­an­tee that a book will leave absolute­ly no impres­sion what­so­ev­er on a child­ish mind.  I cer­tain­ly did not remem­ber how beau­ti­ful it is, how mov­ing and heart­break­ing.  I did­n’t even remem­ber the gen­e­sis of the title.

“Atti­cus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back­yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remem­ber it’s a sin to kill a mock­ing­bird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atti­cus say it was a sin to do some­thing, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mock­ing­birds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gar­dens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

The play was beau­ti­ful­ly staged, tak­ing place on a giant set made of chalk­board, with the homes, streets, jail and cour­t­house drawn in chalk.  The mem­bers of the cast read aloud from var­i­ous dog-eared copies of the nov­el, when they were not part of the action.  The per­for­mances were just stun­ning.  I was­n’t the only one in tears at the end.  Robert Sean Leonard as Atti­cus gave what I think is his best per­for­mance since “Dead Poets’ Soci­ety,” fatigued and ide­al­is­tic, self-dep­re­cat­ing and touching.

And we’ve had our own thes­pi­an news to hear: Avery’s won a role in the musi­cal “Les Mis­er­ables,” to be staged by a joint effort of the girls’ and boys’ school in Novem­ber.  One of the Bar­ri­cade Boys, hap­pi­ly part of all the most excit­ing num­bers, the most heart-break­ing scenes.  I sim­ply can’t wait to see her in it!

I’ve had such fun with my social-work vol­un­teer­ing, with a new role as play­group assis­tant at a love­ly Chil­dren’s Cen­tre, where tod­dlers and their par­ents drop in to play, do crafty projects, have snacks and sto­ries, sing and dance.  There are four of us who gath­er at the Cen­tre every Tues­day after­noon, and you would laugh to over­hear our conversations.

“Can I bor­row your glit­tery Play-Dough?”

“Do you think that blow­ing a kazoo would make a good frog’s tongue?”

I had for­got­ten how utter­ly absorp­tive two-year-olds are, how end­less their appetite for rep­e­ti­tion, for infi­nite­ly tiny vari­a­tions on themes, how soft and squishy and cud­dly they are.  The two chil­dren I take care of in par­tic­u­lar have begun to greet me with shouts of laugh­ter, tight hugs and a readi­ness to have fun, so dif­fer­ent from the mut­ed, hes­i­tant chil­dren I met last Novem­ber.  It is a total joy to hear them repeat things I say, learn to play pre­tend tea par­ty, get up the courage to go down the big blue slide.  I will miss them this summer.

To give me strength for these respon­si­bil­i­ties, we’ve had a cook­ing adven­ture!  Did you ever make sushi at home?  Don’t be scared.  Just find a fish­mon­ger you real­ly, real­ly trust, if you want to do raw fish.

We three stood around and ate the sushi and sashi­mi just as it came off the knife, with deep, dark soy sauce and fiery wasabi on the side.

Salmon and yel­low­tail tuna, avo­ca­do, spring onion, cucum­ber and spicy mayo.  Heav­en­ly.  There could be noth­ing fresher.

It’s so much more fun to “make your own” of just about any­thing, and once you’ve done it, the sort of trust you feel in your food gets addic­tive, and you can’t imag­ine let­ting some­one else do it for you any­more.  Ever since the horse­meat-sold-as-beef scan­dal over the win­ter, I feel most strong­ly about burgers.

When you see the deep, fresh col­or of your home-minced beef, you just know it will taste bet­ter than any­thing a machine has done for you in some far-off, shady pro­cess­ing plant.

We’ve need­ed all the sus­te­nance we could get in this sea­son of Avery’s exams.  She has been real­ly won­der­ful through­out the whole annoy­ing, tir­ing, pres­surised, mis­er­able marathon of weeks of 27 exams.  Since she does­n’t have to be in school unless she’s tak­ing one of them, I’ve had the plea­sure of her com­pa­ny around the house at times when I nor­mal­ly miss her, and the pre­dic­tions from moth­ers who’ve been through it already with their girls have all come true.

“You’ll have more con­ver­sa­tions with her than you’ve had since she was about 10 years old.  And she will want to do noth­ing but eat junk food and watch telly.”

Absolute­ly.  What fun.  We’ve watched all of “Twin Peaks,” sev­er­al sea­sons of “Parks and Recre­ation,” “Com­mu­ni­ty” and “The Mindy Project.”  Any­thing to get away from physics and Latin, maths and biol­o­gy.  Avery’s become a devot­ed dessert-mak­er, con­coct­ing every­thing from brown­ies to indi­vid­ual peanut but­ter cakes, to this shake which to my direct knowl­edge con­tains every type of sug­ar in the world.

It was very cosy, those long after­noons, to hear her in the kitchen, beat­er whirring, see her in an apron, smell the treats.

Lon­don has dis­played its usu­al June mul­ti­ple-per­son­al­i­ty weath­er, with days that dawn wet and windy, only to see the clouds scud away and bril­liant blue skies at lunchtime, then show­ers and rain­bows in the late after­noon, to end with a glow­ing, pink sun­set, very very late.  Last night’s sol­stice sun­set took place at near­ly 9:30.

We’ve been to school for the spe­cial lunchtime cock­tail par­ty to thank all of us who vol­un­teer (I saw many of my beloved Lost Prop­er­ty ladies of course).  John was sur­prised by being espe­cial­ly and warm­ly and pub­licly thanked by our head mis­tress, for his devo­tion to the bril­liant Christ­mas Fair.  What hap­py mem­o­ries those are.  He blushed, of course, and sev­er­al of my friends came over after­ward and said, “I saw tears in your eyes, you sap.”  True enough.  I’m very proud of him.

I’ve been ring­ing, of course, rush­ing off on Fri­day nights, Sat­ur­day morn­ings, Mon­day nights for prac­tice, turn­ing up at both St Mary’s and St Nicholas to ring for ser­vices on Sun­days.  What a plea­sure the new­ly refur­bished sun­di­al and clock are, on my beloved St Mary’s tower.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly per­haps, with all this devo­tion, I’ve improved!  Just this morn­ing I final­ly mas­tered some­thing fiendish­ly dif­fi­cult called “Grand­sire Dou­bles from the Three,” a method that’s been tor­ment­ing me for months.  Just last week­end I told Avery that I’d got about 75% of it cor­rect, and she smiled and said that would earn me an A* on most of her exams.  I’ll be hap­py for a lit­tle break from ring­ing, before I get involved on the oth­er side of the Pond.

Fri­day saw us at a sta­ple of our June lives: “Taste of Lon­don,” the best food fes­ti­val of the year.  This is some­thing you real­ly MUST do, as I’ve been telling my friend Bee for years, and final­ly this year she believed me, and came along.

As Bee said after­ward, “I can’t believe we ate the whole thing.”  And so many, many things!  The con­cept is that restau­rants turn up with their sig­na­ture dish­es, in tiny por­tions.  For about the cost of a fan­cy din­ner out some­where, you can “taste” what 8 or 10 restau­rants have to offer.  John, Bee and I shared every­thing: tiny seafood “slid­ers” made of spicy had­dock, lob­ster, shrimp and tartare sauce, flash-grilled chick­en wings, a foie gras and Romaine burg­er, scal­lops with lentils and pancetta, more scal­lops in a “lol­lipop” with slow-cooked pork bel­ly, fried squid with chill­ies and black pep­per, and most bizarrely of all, a crisp, cin­na­mon- and papri­ka-coat­ed dough­nut filled with… braised ox cheek.  How a chef man­aged to make that work, I do not know, but dipped in an apri­cot jam, work it did.  An amaz­ing afternoon.

We’ve had our very last din­ner par­ty in this house where we’ve all been so hap­py, last night with our sum­mer house-sit­ter, a new friend called Eliza, spend­ing a few months in Eng­land at work and at school.

It was an evening des­tined to point out to poor Eliza what she had tak­en on in agree­ing to sit both our house and all our crazy cats.  First­ly, upon her arrival, in the flur­ry of intro­duc­tions, Wim­sey slipped out the open door and exe­cut­ed his imi­ta­tion of Wilbur the Pig escap­ing his pen in “Char­lot­te’s Web.”

“Avery!” I screeched.  “Get on the oth­er side of the hedge, quick, before he runs into the road!”

“He’s head­ing your way,” she screeched back.  Eliza got into the action.

“He’s halfway between you, I can see his feet…”

Back and forth, back and forth he went, deter­mined to make the most of his bid for free­dom.  Final­ly John heard all the ruckus and came out, to seize him by the scruff of the neck and haul him in the house.

Togeth­er, and with our old and dear friends from up the road, we feast­ed on many-veg­etable stir-fry, laden with gin­ger and gar­lic, and fried rice burst­ing with spring onions, broc­coli and mush­rooms.  Roast­ed cashews sprin­kled over all, and some of the teenagers had third help­ings!  Then it was onto the dessert, a gor­geous lemon-polen­ta cake brought by my friend Elspeth.

Except that the naughty tab­by Hermione found it first.

I would­n’t have been at all sur­prised if Eliza sim­ply picked up her bag and her pass­port and ran scream­ing back to Cal­i­for­nia.  But she brave­ly stayed, and even seemed to have fun.  I ate the cat­ty piece of cake.  A love­ly last cel­e­bra­tion of what has been a very nice place to live.

And so ends anoth­er Lon­don school year, anoth­er stay in a hap­py home.  Next post: the new house.  Wish us luck, please!