men­tal note

Note to self: in future, prob­a­bly best not to wash a bright-red, brand-new pash­mi­na scarf in the same load as hus­band’s busi­ness shirts.

I’m in the dog­house. A bit.

You see, Avery went off to her school friend Alice’s birth­day par­ty on Sat­ur­day, which was billed as a “dis­co and fash­ion show.” Intox­i­cat­ed at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wear not only NOT a school uni­form, but not even jeans or kha­ki pants, Avery went nuts. She rum­maged through her clos­et until she found a dress that my sis­ter Jill and broth­er-in-law Joel will rec­og­nize from the Christ­mas they gave her, as a joke, a whole pile of out­ra­geous­ly crazy, glit­tery, slinky clothes and watched my reac­tion to see if they were for real. I think my sis­ter had a client with a kids’ cloth­ing store, and they were sam­ples? The details elude me. In any case, this dress is the last rem­nant of that haul, which served Avery and her lit­tle Tribeca friends very well as dress-up clothes for years. This par­tic­u­lar item is laven­der, at the bot­tom, and then sort of morphs into a mau­vey-ish pinky grey at the top, with spaghet­ti straps and sequins and beads and I don’t know what all. Lined in silk, and at this point quite, quite short. It might have fit her prop­er­ly four years ago. So she put this on, and did her hair up in a series of scary lit­tle puffs, held in place with glit­tery clips for whose prove­nance I can­not pos­si­bly vouch. They have all the ear­marks of par­ty favors. Any­way, to top this ensem­ble she threw her beloved red pash­mi­na around her shoul­ders, added a pair of shiny maroon Mary Janes that I remem­ber clear­ly pay­ing $4.99 for at the Dan­bury, Con­necti­cut Wal­mart, in a pour­ing rain­storm. Gee, this is like word association.

Any­way, there she was. I did not get to see the fin­ished prod­uct as I was attend­ing my “Auto­bi­og­ra­phy Into Fic­tion” work­shop at CityLit, but I heard reports that Avery looked quite stun­ning. The upshot, how­ev­er, was that the pash­mi­na got choco­late all over it, and with­out think­ing I just stuck it in the wash­ing machine blithe­ly with every­thing else that was in it, includ­ing John’s two favorite shirts (of course, they WOULD be) from Thomas Pink. Dou­bly unfor­tu­nate, he hap­pened to go in the laun­dry room to get paper tow­els or some­thing and saw the pathet­ic lit­tle streaky corpses where I had bun­dled them up on top of the machine. He bleat­ed, “What on earth hap­pened to my SHIRTS??” I had had every inten­tion of high-tail­ing it over to Pink and replac­ing them before he saw the dread­ful evi­dence, since Dor­rie, the clean­ing lady extra­or­di­naire, says there is no way on earth they can be res­ur­rect­ed. She came in this morn­ing, took one look and asked suc­cinct­ly, “He knows?” All women are famil­iar with this sit­u­a­tion. The pash­mi­na itself, smug in its new clean­li­ness, is hang­ing over the kitchen door to dry, a reminder of my iniquity.

Ah well, John’s off to New York and I shall swan off myself to Pink. I don’t sup­pose it will do any good to take the poor things with me to match, since they bear no resem­blance to their for­mer selves. Sigh.

But all has not been domes­tic embar­rass­ment. For exam­ple, last week I was in an episode of “Who Wants to Use her PhD?”, the lit­tle-known spin­off from that show you all watch and just won’t admit it. There was a meet­ing Fri­day up in Not­ting Hill, for the “UK Friends of the NMWA,” which means the Lon­don con­tin­gent that is gath­er­ing sup­port for a vis­it from the founder of the Nation­al Muse­um of Women in the Arts in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. This lady, a Mrs. Wil­helmi­na Hol­la­day (yep, she calls her­self Bil­lie) is 85 years old, start­ed her muse­um of works by women artists in 1987, and for some bizarre rea­son (at least I’ve always thought it bizarre) decid­ed to call it the “Nation­al” Muse­um of Women in the Arts. How “Nation­al”? It’s a pri­vate col­lec­tion. Just because it’s in Wash­ing­ton does not mean it reflects any­thing “nation­al,” to my mind, and it gets no pub­lic fund­ing. Don’t get me start­ed on this, as I’ve spent more hours than it would take to paint the Tow­er Bridge, debat­ing the odd­ness of this whole insti­tu­tion. But here in Lon­don, all such com­pli­ca­tions have been laid aside to cel­e­brate the fact that some 50 years ago, the Hol­la­days decid­ed to buy art only by women, and when they dis­cov­ered that they could not do any research into what they’d bought because no one had writ­ten any­thing about these artists, they decid­ed to open their col­lec­tion to the pub­lic and hope it spawned (always a good word to use if you get the chance) some schol­ar­ly inter­est. Which it did, but by then fem­i­nist art his­to­ry had got well and tru­ly underway.

Any­way, a cer­tain seg­ment of the Lon­don expat com­mu­ni­ty, name­ly a large num­ber of Har­vard Busi­ness School female grad­u­ates who are chomp­ing at the bit to use their brains for some­thing grander than home­work super­vi­sion, has mobilised itself to bring Mrs. Hol­la­day here in the autumn and fete her. I won­der if she has the strength to with­stand the amount of fete-ing that is being planned. I tell you, these women have ENER­GY. So I’ve been draft­ed in, first just as a per­son with a some­what murky rep­u­ta­tion for being “inter­est­ed in the arts” (I’ve told almost no one about the gallery or any­thing else for fear of being in just the posi­tion I’m now in with this group), but the truth leaked out. So I’m going to try to have a con­ver­sa­tion with my old friend — neme­sis — col­league Susan Fish­er Ster­ling, who’s the Chief Cura­tor at the NMWA, about ways we might get the Lon­don group and the Wash­ing­ton group togeth­er. Recep­tions at the Amer­i­can Ambas­sador’s house, lec­tures at the Roy­al Acad­e­my, an offi­cial web­site mar­ry­ing our two cul­tures which have such a “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” to one anoth­er. That phrase is almost a code here in Lon­don: the “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” between Amer­i­ca and Great Britain that has land­ed them, as they see it, in quite a diplo­mat­ic pick­le these days.

The meet­ing was actu­al­ly quite inter­est­ing, and I admire so much the kind of women who can go from an MBA to run­ning a house­hold, to no doubt being the pil­lars of their chil­dren’s school com­mu­ni­ties, to dress­ing up in their Jean Muir dress­es and Manolo Blah­nik mules and sashay­ing forth in the name of right­ing the sex­ist wrongs of the art world. More pow­er to them. One thing I did find instruc­tive and pro­found­ly depress­ing: no one is using the word “fem­i­nist” ever EVER in these dis­cus­sions. In fact one woman said, “When I told some friends about this meet­ing, one of them said, ‘Isn’t it ghet­toiz­ing women artists to have projects where the only thing they have in com­mon is that they’re women?’ What do you all think of that?” I could hard­ly speak for hav­ing so much to say. It’s such a nasty, spe­cious lit­tle argu­ment but its appeal is unde­ni­able: that way every­one’s off the hook for acknowl­edg­ing inequity, because it would be sex­ist to try to right it! I mere­ly said, with admirable restraint I think, “No more ghet­toiz­ing than an exhi­bi­tion of ‘just’ pho­tog­ra­phers. Does every show have to include paint­ing too?” I know women wor­ry about paint­ing them­selves as vic­tims, if they acknowl­edge, or even posit, that their sex might make a dif­fer­ence in how they’re per­ceived or treat­ed. But I think it can be dis­cussed with­out its being about vic­tim­iza­tion. I do think I got three book sales out of the dis­cus­sion, so now we can retire with my next roy­al­ty check.

I hate to say it, but I enjoyed my post-meet­ing jaunt around Por­to­bel­lo Road even more than the meet­ing itself! I’ve found out that the # 23 bus goes right from my cor­ner of Oxford Street to the exact road I like best in Not­ting Hill, Elgin Cres­cent. And just around the cor­ner in Blenheim Cres­cent is pos­si­bly the most won­der­ful book­store in the world, “Books For Cooks.” I want­ed one of every­thing! And there’s a cafe, but I did­n’t sam­ple any­thing this vis­it. Next time. I came away ter­ri­bly intim­i­dat­ed by the accom­plish­ments of peo­ple who can write real­ly won­der­ful cook­books. I did indulge myself and pick up a copy of “I Am Almost Always Hun­gry,” by Lora Zaru­bin. The intro­duc­tion by Jay McIn­er­ney (of “Bright Lights, Big City” fame and almost no oth­er kind of fame, poor boy) is pret­ty lame, in my opin­ion, being more about his impres­sions of Lora than the impor­tance of the book itself, but the recipes look divine. Every dish you can think of under the sun is rep­re­sent­ed, from the sim­plest pos­si­ble sand­wich of toast­ed moz­zarel­la and toma­to con­fit, to “fil­let of salmon cooked on a bed of sea salt in parch­ment with aro­mat­ic spices.” And how about a lit­tle “roast­ed peach­es with car­damom sug­ar and mas­car­pone sauce” to fin­ish it off? Beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed with pho­tographs by Tes­sa Traeger, just com­plete­ly intim­i­dat­ing. I con­soled myself by look­ing at the pho­to of the author on the dust jack­et, hold­ing… her Jack Rus­sell ter­ri­er, who we are solemn­ly informed is called Bessie. OK, maybe I could churn out an incred­i­bly impres­sive cook­book of 198 pages if I weren’t also fol­low­ing around a small per­son of slight­ly more demand­ing needs than your aver­age ter­ri­er. Or maybe not. Too bad!

I also bought MFK Fish­er’s clas­sic “How To Cook a Wolf,” which is pos­si­bly the best bed­time read­ing there is. You can’t go wrong with chap­ters like “How to Catch the Wolf,” “How To Have a Sleek Pelt,” and “How Not To Be An Earth­worm.” I love her obser­va­tion, “Prob­a­bly one of the most pri­vate things in the world is an egg before it is bro­ken.” I also bought Julian Bar­nes’s “The Pedant in the Kitchen,” which looks enter­tain­ing but I’ve nev­er read it before. It’s prac­ti­cal­ly against my reli­gion to buy a book I haven’t read yet. It’s almost as scary as adopt­ing a new kit­ten. Sure, I guess you could find a way to dis­pose of it if you got it home and you, gulp, did­n’t like it. But it would make me real­ly uncom­fort­able. So I choose my kit­tens and new books with care. The bit that sold me was, “The sole lib­er­ty I take with a recipe is to increase the quan­ti­ty of an ingre­di­ent of which I par­tic­u­lar­ly approve. That this is not an infal­li­ble pre­cept was con­firmed by an epi­cal­ly filthy dish I once made involv­ing mack­er­el, Mar­ti­ni and bread­crumbs: the guests were more drunk than sated.”

I wan­dered around through the excel­lent farm­ers’ mar­ket in the Por­to­bel­lo Road and bought so many veg­eta­bles that I spent the entire week­end devis­ing ways to stuff them down my fam­i­ly’s throats. Huge, bloomy arti­chokes, pos­si­bly 300 tiny, tiny toma­toes, a half dozen red pep­pers, avo­ca­does (I am addict­ed late­ly, and have con­vinced myself I have a potas­si­um defi­cien­cy that can be addressed only with copi­ous amounts of sliced avo­ca­do, driz­zled with lemon juice and sprin­kled with real­ly expen­sive salt), and most inter­est­ing­ly, two dif­fer­ent vari­eties of aspara­gus. Did you know that the aspara­gus sea­son in Great Britain is only five weeks long? Here, in the days of Lord Peter Wim­sey, they called it “Eng­lish grass,” and it could be served only in the fol­low­ing man­ner: light­ly steamed just until it begins to smell like aspara­gus (since raw aspara­gus smells like noth­ing at all), and slathered with melt­ed but­ter. The thing that intrigued me with the aspara­gus at the mar­ket was that some was fat and some was thin. Bunch­es of each, not mixed togeth­er. So being a dumb Amer­i­can I could ask the farmer why. After his ini­tial shock at being asked to pro­duce more ver­biage than the usu­al “that’ll be two pounds, my love” he came forth with the infor­ma­tion that the skin­ny ones are the ear­li­est stalks, and they’ve been har­vest­ed in order to thin the rows. The fat ones are the ones that were left behind. So I bought some of each, got my allot­ted “my love,” and came home to see how they tast­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. And they did. Avery and John and I agreed that while the “bite”, the feel, of the big stalks is nicer, the lit­tle ones had more fla­vor. So take your pick!

Today after I’ve found replace­ment shirts and paid my penance, I have absolute­ly noth­ing press­ing to do. I want to save a cou­ple of errands for John’s mom’s arrival, like going to the Roy­al Acad­e­my Framers’ to get some glass replaced on a piece that broke some­where over the Atlantic Ocean. I think that will be a cool place. But wait a minute: I could take it now, and col­lect it with her. I think it’s just around the cor­ner from Pink, so I can kill two birds with one pashmina.