of divine eccen­tric­i­ties, social work, and a whole lot of cooking

What a month it’s been!

As you can see, spring has firm­ly sprung here in Lon­don.  This is my beloved St Paul’s Cathe­dral in full bloom, its wis­te­ria attract­ing self­ies like bees to — well, flow­ers.  It’s a com­plete plea­sure to saunter past these fra­grant blooms, flanked by equal­ly aro­mat­ic bright pink ros­es, when­ev­er I’m on my way to ring­ing prac­tice, or for services.

Sun­day morn­ing was par­tic­u­lar­ly beau­ti­ful in EC2, as I arrived at Fos­ter Lane to ring.  The tow­er reached into the blue sky, serene in its austerity.

The ring­ing cham­ber has been the scene of even more than usu­al plea­sures and excite­ments.  Two weeks ago saw us enter­tain­ing a jour­nal­ist, a reporter from the Wall Street Jour­nal who sat patient­ly through an entire evening’s prac­tice and drinks at the pub after, to go home and pen this gem.  As much fun as it was to have friends on both sides of the pond excit­ed at see­ing my name on the front page of a nation­al news­pa­per, I real­ly wish he’d con­cen­trat­ed his sto­ry on the tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ing aspects of ring­ing — the com­plex math­e­mat­ics and pat­terns, the glo­ri­ous his­to­ry, and most of all, the cama­raderie in the chamber.

Cama­raderie can, as it turns out, encom­pass a tru­ly eccen­tric event — the Shear­ing of the Tow­er Cap­tain.  He is the ful­crum around which we all turn, of course, our fear­less leader.

Yes, Mon­day night’s prac­tice began with a rit­u­al (“Is this a rit­u­al?” I asked anx­ious­ly.  “It is now,” answered one of my col­leagues) and rather cer­e­mo­ni­al sit­ting-down of dear Tom on a straight chair in the mid­dle of the cham­ber, where­upon our friend Jean, Mal­tese nat­u­ral­ly, because it just makes it more inter­est­ing for him to be from Mal­ta, approached with his all-too effec­tive shears.

In the blink of a hilar­i­ous eye, the unthink­able had hap­pened and Tom’s glo­ri­ous head of hair had gone.

After much rib­bing, and singing of Tom Jones’s “Delilah” to gen­er­al mer­ri­ment, we got down to our prac­tice.  And some­where between prac­tice and the pub after, Tom dis­ap­peared and shaved his John Donne beard as well.  The trans­for­ma­tion was com­plete, as every­one saw at Sun­day ser­vices yesterday.

When we appeared Sun­day morn­ing at church to be let in by the verg­ers, a love­ly elder­ly cou­ple always dressed impec­ca­bly, there was a moment of silence as Tom walked up the steps.

“I see we’ve appeared in the inter­na­tion­al press, the New York Jour­nal or some such,” the female half of the cou­ple men­tioned calm­ly.  Dis­cus­sion ensued, and then as we ringers walked up the steps of the bell tow­er, Tom chuck­led.  “She is far too much of a lady to men­tion my appear­ance.  I prob­a­bly should have warned her.”

As always, the atmos­phere of fun and team effort sits hap­pi­ly along­side crit­i­cism and chal­lenge.  “You’ve real­ly improved,” one col­league said to me over cof­fee yes­ter­day, after ser­vices.  “A real trans­for­ma­tion from a few months ago.”  I was inor­di­nate­ly pleased.  “It’s real­ly, real­ly incre­men­tal,” I said, and every­one agreed.

“It’s being able to hear your mis­takes, and to cor­rect your­self, that makes all the dif­fer­ence.”  So true.

Last night at prac­tice, we were greet­ed by this sight.

I adore this pho­to because it incor­po­rates so much of what I love about Fos­ter Lane: the beau­ti­ful col­ored sal­lies that form a com­plex pat­tern of red, blue, black, yel­low, across the cham­ber.  And there is the old, old graf­fi­ti, and the elec­tri­cal switch that rep­re­sents the per­fect Fos­ter Lane method of gain­ing entry to the Tow­er.  And… there is the wig, obvi­ous­ly.   Now Tom has flex­i­bil­i­ty.  Appar­ent­ly life with no hair is very chilly, but life with a wig is very hot.

Life at home has been enlivened and made slight­ly annoy­ing by the Adven­ture of the Fly­ing Cof­fee Cup.  Or rather, Cof­fee Cup Handle.

I’ll explain.

Two months or so ago, I was blithe­ly mak­ing a cup of cof­fee in the Nespres­so machine when some mishap occurred and the cup was shot off the machine, dropped to the floor where it sep­a­rat­ed from its han­dle, which then flew 7 metres across the flat to crack the enor­mous win­dow pane in the win­ter garden.

Seri­ous­ly.  We rang our land­lords imme­di­ate­ly to report what had hap­pened, who rushed over in con­cern, and even­tu­al­ly the win­dow com­pa­ny sent over two love­ly lads to cov­er the crack with a plas­tic film, to hold it in place whilst a replace­ment was ordered, with an eight-week lead time.  Prob­lem solved.

Until last week, ful­ly six weeks after the ini­tial inci­dent, we received a peremp­to­ry email from the build­ing announc­ing that a crew would be arriv­ing in the morn­ing to take away the bro­ken glass and replace it with a black, wood­en pan­el.  NOOOO!  But there was noth­ing to be done.  The crew came and did their worst.

It was like a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, requir­ing work­men both indoors and also sus­pend­ed in a pod high above the pave­ment.  And at the end of the day, this is what we’ll be liv­ing with for eight weeks.  Because of course no one ordered the replace­ment glass yet. Sigh.

Of course the instant the pan­el was in place, din­ner guests arrived.  But they were of such total charm and joy that it was­n’t two min­utes before the win­dow was for­got­ten and we set­tled in for a mag­i­cal evening.

Our guests were none oth­er than the divine sis­ters Gra­cie and Win­nie.  For those of you who don’t know the sto­ry, John and I got mar­ried a mil­lion years ago agree­ing we did­n’t want chil­dren.  Nope, it would be just the two of us in per­pe­tu­ity.  This atti­tude last­ed until we moved into a com­plete­ly splen­did Man­hat­tan loft, in a build­ing filled with remark­able peo­ple, among them the most beau­ti­ful preg­nant woman in the world, an actress called Mary.  She was quite sim­ply breath­tak­ing­ly glam­orous and about five min­utes away from giv­ing birth.  When she did, it was to bring forth the sweet­est baby girl imag­in­able.  Gra­cie.  Blonde, del­i­cate, fun­ny, sublime.

It took John and me just a cou­ple of years liv­ing next door to this delight before we said, pret­ty much at the same time, “You know what, if we could get one just like Gra­cie…”  And real­ly, we did.

Avery’s grown up hear­ing this sto­ry a thou­sand times, and it’s just as many times a pity that she was off in the mid­dle of her Oxford sum­mer term when up popped a mes­sage to me from Gra­cie’s mom.

“Gra­cie and Win­nie are com­ing to Lon­don!  Maybe you could get together.”

Maybe?  No maybe about it!  Win­nie is of course Gra­cie’s lit­tle sis­ter, whom we think we may have met as a tiny babe in arms, but in any case, noth­ing could be more stir­ring than to see both girls again, 20 years or so on.  I raced through my din­ner prepa­ra­tions — peanut­ty, spicy minced chick­en in let­tuce parcels — to wel­come them.  It was all quite unbe­liev­able, the past meet­ing the present.

Some­times I hate being a grownup: the deci­sions, the respon­si­bil­i­ty, the real­i­sa­tion that you have more behind you than ahead of you.  But then there are these moments, when your whole grownup life encom­pass­es the WHOLE life of the next gen­er­a­tion.  It was sim­ply heav­en­ly to have them here, to hear sto­ries of their upbring­ing (with an actress and an agent as par­ents, they are nat­ur­al racon­teurs and so very appre­cia­tive of their fam­i­ly).  They hap­pi­ly leafed through the pho­to­graph album John had uncov­ered, with pages of pic­tures of Gracie.

Because nat­u­ral­ly, play­ing at my house would involve a whole egg­plant.  Naturally.

It was ter­ri­bly sat­is­fy­ing to get to know them a lit­tle bit, to see the love they share.  I felt as I often do a sense of sad­ness at not hav­ing giv­en Avery a sis­ter.  Oh, the plea­sure of see­ing the plea­sure they take in each oth­er!  They are very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties, full of enthu­si­asms and inter­est in the wide world around them, and a per­fect com­ple­ment to each oth­er.  How proud their par­ents must be.  They brought lilies, my favorite.

All too soon the evening was over, but we feel absolute­ly sure it won’t be anoth­er 20 years before they — with their par­ents and broth­er Joe — are at our table once again.

That din­ner was a wel­come respite in a week dom­i­nat­ed by Home-Start train­ing.  That fab­u­lous organ­i­sa­tion has come up with yet anoth­er bril­liant scheme, this time called “Big Hopes, Big Future.”  The idea is to train vol­un­teers in the spe­cial needs of chil­dren who aren’t quite ready to go to nurs­ery or school yet (what’s called “recep­tion” here in Eng­land), but the date is loom­ing any­how.  They need a lit­tle extra help.  Morn­ing rou­tines, evening rou­tines, learn­ing to dress and feed them­selves, get­ting famil­iar with hold­ing a book in their hands.  What could be more won­der­ful?  Three rather gru­elling days lat­er, I was equipped.

So ulti­mate­ly I’ll be giv­en a fam­i­ly for a few months to go vis­it once a week and help impart a sense of readi­ness for school.  We learned some dis­heart­en­ing sta­tis­tics: for exam­ple that the chil­dren of “dis­tressed” fam­i­lies learn only half the words by age 3 as chil­dren in “sta­ble” fam­i­lies.  This is for the sim­ple (very com­plex) rea­son that for a par­ent to be able to spend prop­er time speak­ing to a child and lis­ten­ing to a child, nev­er mind read­ing to a child, the lux­u­ry of sta­bil­i­ty must first be in place.  So our job will be in part to intro­duce a bit of sta­bil­i­ty and under­score the impor­tance of pay­ing atten­tion to each child.

And “spe­cif­ic praise”!  We did exper­i­ments on each oth­er, draw­ing a house and then giv­ing an assort­ment of respons­es: noth­ing at all, a neg­a­tive crit­i­cism, gen­er­alised praise (“well done”) and spe­cif­ic praise (“what love­ly win­dows!”).  Unsur­pris­ing­ly every­one react­ed best to spe­cif­ic praise.  Don’t we all?  Such a small thing, but very influential.

I think my favorite les­son from the train­ing was this: don’t, how­ev­er tempt­ing it may be, always address your chil­dren with endear­ments, or nick­names.  There is appar­ent­ly a small but sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of chil­dren arriv­ing at nurs­ery ful­ly believ­ing their actu­al names to be “dar­ling,” “sweet­heart,” or even “chick­en legs”!  What a won­der­ful sto­ry that was to take away.

As always, I come away from any Home-Start expe­ri­ence feel­ing awed at the vari­ety of peo­ple there are out in the world — rep­re­sent­ing so many nation­al­i­ties, lan­guages, dress, cir­cum­stances — who want to devote their lives to doing good, to right the wrongs and injus­tices of the world, one lit­tle kid at a time.

To sus­tain us through all this activ­i­ty, of course I have been cook­ing.  Feel­ing I’d got us into pret­ty much of a rut as far as sup­per dish­es go, I picked up a Kore­an cook­book John had bought for me, “Kore­atown,” by chef Deu­ki Hong and writer Matt Rod­bard.  And oh my.  These two dish­es were so heav­en­ly that I have decid­ed sim­ply to give you Mat­t’s recipes just as they are.

Kim­chee Bokkeumbap

(serves 4)

Oh, it turned out beau­ti­ful­ly in my own kitchen!

And to go with this divine rice dish, go right along and make the rich­est pork dish in the world, with a wealth of com­plex flavors.

Jeyuk Bokkeum

(serves 4)

The two of these dish­es togeth­er, with a side of light­ly pick­led Chi­nese cab­bage, are quite sim­ply a gift, from you, to you.

Now, I want to give you a piece of advice.  Some­times it’s tempt­ing when you see a recipe with an ingre­di­ent you don’t rec­og­nize and you just kind of look away and say, “Oh, how much dif­fer­ence can that one thing make?  I’ll skip it.”  Or, even more dan­ger­ous, and ulti­mate­ly dis­ap­point­ing, “Oh, I’ll sub­sti­tute X.”  Oh, the tales of woe I’ve had from my cook­book read­ers who do just one or the oth­er of these things, and they are so disappointed.

When you see the word “gochugaru,” in the pork bel­ly recipe, you NEED TO BUY IT.  It is a fierce­ly fla­vor­ful pow­der of red pep­pers.  You can buy it here online in the UK and here in the US.  The same stric­tures absolute­ly apply to the ingre­di­ent “gochu­jang” which is a glo­ri­ous paste of red pep­pers with lots of oth­er ingre­di­ents like gluti­nous brown rice, gar­lic and soy­beans.  You can buy it here in the UK, and here in the US.

Of course if you’re in a big city, say, Lon­don, you can traipse over to your local Asian super­mar­ket.  John and I went blithe­ly off this week­end, in order to enact our Kore­an adven­ture.  “Can you help us find gochu­jang?” John asked a friend­ly helper at Long­dan, our local shop.  “Hmm, not sure.  Let’s ask this guy,” and hand­ed us over to a Kore­an chap.  Moments lat­er, we asked the same friend­ly helper about gochugaru.  Sigh­ing slight­ly, he said, “Let’s find the Kore­an again.”

Don’t be put off by the rather pricey nature of these two ingre­di­ents; you don’t use a lot, they last for­ev­er, and pork bel­ly itself, and rice, are cheap.

Oh, I wish I had some of these dish­es right now.  As you see, each recipe makes enough for at least four serv­ings, and I can tell you that John and I fought over the leftovers!

To salve my con­science at hav­ing slav­ish­ly fol­lowed some­one else’s recipe, I decid­ed to invent some­thing myself, an Ital­ian delight that was inspired by a sug­ges­tion from “The Splen­did Kitchen” that arti­chokes, lemon and pas­ta might go well together.

Papardelle with Arti­choke Hearts, Ital­ian Sausage Meat­balls and Lemon

(serves 4)

1 lb/450g pork chop or pork shoulder

1 cup/120g shred­ded mozzarella

1 12 ounce/340 gram jar arti­choke hearts, mar­i­nat­ed in olive oil (drained, oil retained)

1 bulb fen­nel, fine­ly chopped