Slow down, life

You know how when it rains it pours?  When you have one or two excit­ing things hap­pen­ing, you find that they seem to repro­duce expo­nen­tial­ly and leave you with a series of days so packed with STUFF that you don’t even have time to write it down.

So now I’m going to.

It’s been an absolute­ly stun­ning week or so.  The first excit­ing thing that hap­pened was when I walked into our lob­by last week to find a thrilling bas­ket of exot­ic spices from Bangkok wait­ing for me.

Paul the concierge smiled broad­ly.  “This is for you from Gus­ta­vo and YSL; it is to go direct­ly into your hands!”  And so it did, with a hand­writ­ten note reveal­ing that these great friends of ours were to be in town for a few days.  It was but the work of a moment to get them to our house for din­ner.  With Eliz­a­beth of course, who always adds her spe­cial brand of ele­gance to any get-together.

YSL brought the mak­ings for a love­ly starter which was new to me: white aspara­gus with fine­ly chopped hard-boiled egg and pep­per.  It was a divine­ly sim­ple and per­fect dish, then fol­lowed by my favorite crab and goats cheese tart, always a winner.

Page 114 of Tonight at 7.30, if you please!  For some rea­son it has been ages since I made this won­der­ful, light, crust­less tart, and I’d for­got­ten how much I enjoyed the del­i­cate fla­vors and tex­ture.  Now I’ve made it for three par­ties run­ning and it will prob­a­bly creep back to the shad­ows until I remem­ber it again next spring, when for some rea­son crab comes to my mind.

What fun to have three such dynam­ic and dif­fer­ent peo­ple around our table, each com­ing from such dif­fer­ent places — Gus­ta­vo and YSL fresh from months in the Far East, Eliz­a­beth hap­pi­ly lured from Barnes to SE1 for the evening.  We moved on to a delec­table apple and banana spice cake and some bananas that unsur­pris­ing­ly did­n’t flambe.  That banana cake nev­er disappoints.

 Apple Banana Spiced Cake

(serves 8)

1 1/2 cups/180 g plain flour

1 tsp bak­ing soda

1 tsp bak­ing powder

1/2 tsp each ground cin­na­mon, cloves and nutmeg

pinch sea salt

1/2 cup/113 g butter

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanil­la or 1 scraped vanil­la pod

about 1 cup/2 aver­age apples, chopped

about 1 cup/2 bananas, mashed

Com­bine all ingre­di­ents up to and includ­ing salt in a bowl.  Cream but­ter, eggs and vanil­la togeth­er and add to the flour mix­ture.  Add fruit and stir thor­ough­ly.  Scrape into a but­tered and floured round cake tin or loaf pan and bake at 350F/180C for about 45 min­utes, or until cen­ter no longer jig­gles.  Serve warm.

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This is a sim­ply awe­some recipe, there are no two ways about it.  I have acci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­ered a won­der­ful lit­tle tweak, recent­ly, through a typ­i­cal Kris­ten bak­ing error.  A month or so ago, as I slipped the tin into the oven, I realised I had added absolute­ly no leav­en­ing.  No bak­ing soda or pow­der.  What to do?  I decid­ed to let it go and see what hap­pened.  What hap­pened was an absolute­ly bril­liant­ly squidgy, dense fruit cake, very dif­fer­ent from the fluffy, tall cake I had intend­ed.  My friends adored it.  Child­hood on a plate!  Then I made it with just bak­ing pow­der, and again with just bak­ing soda, and the result was some­where in between.  Dense but not squidgy.  So you may take your choice.  They are all wonderful.

Mon­day evening brought ring­ing prac­tice with all its now expect­ed joys and sor­rows — the joys of a band of new friends, for one thing.  John and I had popped into a local and lux­u­ri­ous wine shop, Laith­wait­e’s of Bor­ough Mar­ket, on Sat­ur­day after­noon for our din­ner par­ty wine, and I exclaimed, “Eva!  What are you doing here?”  For there was one of my Fos­ter Lane ringers, a Hun­gar­i­an wine expert of all things. We talked long and hard about Plain Bob and Fos­ter Lane call changes, to John’s pre­tend­ed bore­dom.  He loves for me to be hap­py about ringing.

The sor­rows are hard­er to explain.

Why on earth do I per­sist at a hob­by that makes me so ner­vous?  Part of my nerves is down to the Tow­er Cap­tain’s con­stant pres­ence behind my shoul­der, cor­rect­ing near­ly every stroke.  This method of teach­ing is def­i­nite­ly help­ful, and I find that I can pre­dict what cor­rec­tions he is ready to make, which is all the more mad­den­ing because I should­n’t DO things I know will be cor­rect­ed!  But ring­ing is one of those expe­ri­ences in which every sec­ond or two you have the chance to improve.  And when I do, it feels very satisfying.

And Mon­day was, as my Tow­er Cap­tain put it after­ward, an his­toric occa­sion because I accom­pa­nied every­one to the pub after!  A nice glass of sin­gle malt, a bit of chat about Tom’s mas­sive accom­plish­ment of the after­noon — a full peal of four meth­ods spliced togeth­er.  His paper­work for the after­noon looked like a rain­bow EKG.  This image isn’t exact­ly what he rang, but it gives you a pic­ture of how com­plex the instruc­tions can be.

Then you have to keep in mind — there are no instruc­tions at the actu­al moment of ring­ing, unlike lucky orches­tras who get such help­ful music set in front of them!

There was no time to breathe, how­ev­er, because Tues­day morn­ing brought us to an all-impor­tant day for John’s beloved build­ing project.  Our thrilling archi­tect from Paris and the project archi­tect who works with him (I still have to keep the secret of his iden­ti­ty here, for the time being) came to Lon­don for a deli­cious and inven­tive lunch, and a chal­leng­ing after­noon meet­ing at our Eng­lish archi­tec­t’s office.  That evening, then, our Paris archi­tect gave a sim­ply stun­ning pub­lic lec­ture, and it was quite over­whelm­ing to have “Reserved” seats in the front row, lis­ten­ing to his descrip­tions of his pro bono work, his beau­ti­ful pri­vate homes, his inven­tive and clever pub­lic build­ings.  I can’t wait till I can share all the details with you — but it’s all still rather secret right now.

At an ele­gant bar after the talk, we sat late over lagers and brandy and felt excite­ment brew­ing.  Our build­ing WILL be built.

Again with no time to breathe, the next morn­ing took us to Oxford to have lunch with Avery!  The city sparkled in the ear­ly spring air.

We enjoyed our steak frites and whole sea bass at Quod, a very reli­ably deli­cious restau­rant just up the High from Avery’s Col­lege.  How I drank in all the lit­tle sights along the pave­ments as we walk along.

How won­der­ful to see Avery set­tled in with loads of hilar­i­ous sto­ries to tell about her adven­tures.  John fixed her com­put­er, I filled her fridge and pantry and treat tin, and she gave us our birth­day presents.  My offi­cial favorite tea tow­el ever, and you know how many I have.

We shopped at the cool Cov­ered Mar­ket, and the offi­cial Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty “stuff shop,” which some­how man­ages to be both mer­can­tile and ele­gant — a very Oxford accomplishment.

We drove home feel­ing sat­is­fied and relaxed, even though we miss her.  She’s in the right place.

The next morn­ing brought my intro­duc­to­ry vis­it to my new Home-Start fam­i­ly.  It has seemed like a very long gap between my last vis­it to my Rich­mond fam­i­ly in the chilly, short days of Novem­ber, and now.  But of course the office had to ver­i­fy my records, my back­ground check, my ref­er­ences, and find a fam­i­ly that would respond to my skills (what­ev­er those might be).

As always, it is a pot­pour­ri of emo­tions to vis­it a fam­i­ly in need of sup­port — I swal­low hard at the fragili­ty of their secu­ri­ty, but rejoice in the way fam­i­lies find a way to love each oth­er deeply in the face of trau­ma and hard­ship.  Feel­ing a lit­tle hand in mine, total­ly trust­ing after an instan­t’s intro­duc­tion, is always a les­son in human­i­ty’s default set­ting of love.  It will be a chal­lenge to find what they most need, and how I can give it.

I knew it was going to be a painful jux­ta­po­si­tion to attend our Res­i­dents’ Meet­ing of our fel­low Bank­side neigh­bors that evening.  This bizarre event took place in the adja­cent office build­ing, the Blue Fin Build­ing of BBC dra­ma film­ing fame (hon­est­ly, it seems to be the loca­tion for every political/crime/journalism pro­gramme we have seen since we moved here).  For starters, they bot­tle their own water.

Seri­ous­ly.

The meet­ing began with a heat­ed debate over what has become of the bas­kets of crois­sants and bananas and tan­ger­ines that used to live on the concierge desk in the lob­by.  It tran­spired, through much dis­cus­sion with the har­rassed build­ing man­ag­ing agents, that these free treats had been sup­plied by a third-par­ty exer­cise in luna­cy to the tune of £18,000 a year.

“I’ll sup­ply them for half that,” John offered instant­ly.  This jest was received in grim silence.  After all, we’re only low­ly renters, at the meet­ing through the invi­ta­tion of our land­lords who KNEW how much we would rev­el in the per­son­al­i­ties on dis­play, and the idio­cy of the “issues” that would demand seri­ous attention.

Like the shock­ing delay in win­dow wash­ing, and the impor­tance of mak­ing sure the perime­ter gates are locked prompt­ly at 8 p.m. to pre­vent the hoi pol­loi from soil­ing our inter­nal pavements.

It was an awe­some parade of objec­tion­able priv­i­lege and lack of per­spec­tive.  I would­n’t have missed it for the world.  And the build­ing was well worth a visit.

The next day was a red-let­ter one because my great friend Cat­ri­na and her hus­band Joseph came to vis­it!  All the way from Philadel­phia.  We met at John’s beloved plot of dirt, and as always, the loca­tion and the insan­i­ty of our hopes were reflect­ed in their eyes — vis­i­tors always have this reaction.

With all the pres­sure and com­plex­i­ty of the plan­ning process, it’s always good just to stand there, and appre­ci­ate what we have, and feel once more the cer­tain­ty that some­day, some­how, there will be a home there.

We came home for yet anoth­er crab tart (I was on a roll with that recipe).  There is just about noth­ing I love more than stand­ing in my kitchen with John and beloved guests on the oth­er side of the counter, eat­ing the olives Avery brought us from her sum­mer hol­i­day in Greece, sip­ping cock­tails, chat­ting non­stop about all the peo­ple and ideas that we share.  Except when I get so involved in con­ver­sa­tion that I find myself pour­ing the cream over the crab tart WITH­OUT hav­ing mixed in the eggs that would make it a custard!

“Oh no!” I gasp.  “AND I don’t have enough eggs.”

It was but the work of a moment for John to pop over to the “every­thing store” down­stairs for eggs, and for Joseph to calm me, bring­ing over a plate to hold on top of the tart, to hold the crab back while the cream poured harm­less­ly back out.  That is a damn for­giv­ing recipe, because the tart was quite perfect.

As was the whole evening.

In the morn­ing they met me at Fos­ter Lane for their first vis­it to a bell cham­ber, and their first expo­sure to the insan­i­ty that is my hobby.

“Stop clip­ping the fifth!  That’s a cap­i­tal offense!” Tom the Tow­er Cap­tain hissed from his usu­al posi­tion behind me.  “You’re prac­ti­cal­ly in 4 and a half posi­tion.  Stay off the second!”

Final­ly the ses­sion was over.  “This was like Boot Camp,” I moaned.  Tom smiled indulgently.

Over a rather lack­lus­ter omelette at the Albion min­utes lat­er, Cat­ri­na and Joseph asked won­der­ful ques­tions about the ring­ing, which involved plac­ing all our water glass­es plus juice glass­es in a cir­cle and my explain­ing the Eng­lish pecu­liar­i­ty of change-ring­ing.  They are fans now, Joseph from an engi­neer­ing per­spec­tive and Cat­ri­na from a pat­tern per­spec­tive, nei­ther of which I possess.

“The oth­er qual­i­ties to make a great ringer are appar­ent­ly intense intro­vert­ed­ness, and a tal­ent with math­e­mat­ics,” I explained.  “So I’m basi­cal­ly screwed.”

We went off to sat­is­fy one of Catri­na’s life­long ambi­tions — to vis­it the Thames Bar­ri­er.  This bizarrely apoc­a­lyp­tic struc­ture is intend­ed to save Lon­don from the flood­ing that is no doubt in our future (whether the Repub­li­cans believe in cli­mate change or not).  We stood in the freez­ing wind and gazed.

From the hill­side where you first encounter this view, there’s a hilar­i­ous slide-option to get down to the water’s edge!

 Down a long tun­nel was a com­plex and beau­ti­ful schema of the Riv­er Thames in all its width and depth and height of tide.  I can’t claim to have under­stood it as well as my com­pan­ions did, but I did zoom in on our home location…

And Avery’s home location…

See­ing them both, con­nect­ed by our beau­ti­ful riv­er, made Avery seem clos­er, which is always to be wished.

A long walk lat­er and we were at the Green­wich Obser­va­to­ry for anoth­er freez­ing walk to the famous line, and into the Cam­era Obscu­ra, sit­ting down to a wel­come cof­fee and more non­stop talk.  We nev­er seem to run out of things to talk about, a fea­ture of Catri­na’s end­less atten­tion span for new things, and her writer­ly appre­ci­a­tion of dia­logue and wit.  She’s such fun.

All too soon their vis­it was over.  But there was­n’t time to be bored, because it was Elec­tion Day!

Democ­rats Abroad organ­ised a polling sta­tion in West­min­ster to open at 6:30, so I prepped a nice stir­fry din­ner and left it all in readi­ness, and we strolled up the riv­er and across West­min­ster Bridge, feel­ing our usu­al sense of awe and love at being in London.

The queue stretched all down and around the block — seem­ing to indi­cate that vot­er apa­thy isn’t a prob­lem among the Democ­rats Abroad.  We engaged in live­ly con­ver­sa­tion with a Bernie Sanders sup­port­er behind us — a trans­plant­ed New York­er just like us — and then entered the polling room itself, com­plete with a three-piece band.  I’m not mak­ing this up.

It was a relief, a wel­come focus, to escape from the hideous cir­cus of this elec­tion sea­son to actu­al­ly VOTE.  It was a reminder of the pur­pose of the whole cha­rade — we must actu­al­ly choose a Pres­i­dent.  There was some­thing mild­ly thrilling and awe-inspir­ing about it, akin to our feel­ings when we became UK cit­i­zens.  Pub­lic life real­ly is significant.

And because I real­ly can’t leave you with­out a nice savory recipe, let me tell you about an inno­va­tion that real­ly ele­vates one of my tried-and-true classics.

Slow-Braised Chick­en Thighs with Can­nelli­ni Beans

(serves 4)

8 chick­en thighs, skin on, bone in (do NOT sub­sti­tute either skin­less or boneless)

4 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly chopped

1 cup black oil-cured olives (not in brine)

1 medi­um white onion, sliced roughly

1 soup-size tin can­nelli­ni beans, drained

4 bay leaves (fresh if you can get them)

hand­ful capers, drained

1/2 cup/120 ml each: white wine, olive oil, chick­en stock, mixed

juice of 1 lemon

Arrange the thighs in a sin­gle lay­er with space between, in a large bak­ing dish.  Sprin­kle over all the ingre­di­ents up to the liq­uids and tuck them in between the thighs.  Pour over the mixed liq­uids and the lemon juice.  Cov­er tight­ly with foil.

Braise at 350F/180C for two hours, then uncov­er and turn heat up to 425F/200 C for a fur­ther half hour.  Serve with rice, noo­dles or steamed potatoes.

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The inno­va­tion here is the sub­sti­tu­tion of the can­nelli­ni beans for the mush­rooms I usu­al­ly use, but did­n’t have last night.  And guess what?  The added tex­ture and pro­tein of the beans was gor­geous.  Some float­ing on top got crisp, which was a delight.

I must love you and leave you, as I am head­ed off Choral Even­song at St Paul’s Cathe­dral, just a hop over the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge.  I’ve always want­ed to go, and tonight is the night.  I will report.