so much new stuff happening

Well, things are look­ing up, in short. I have a new friend, Avery has a new friend, we have a new clean­ing lady and Tues­day we will meet the
new babysitter!

Yes­ter­day my new friend Becky called to see if I want­ed to go with her to a store called ASDA, the Eng­lish Wal-mart, to get clean­ing sup­plies for today’s clean­ing lady vis­it. I was feel­ing at loose ends so we
went, and apart from get­ting lost lis­ten­ing to the GPS tell us the wrong way to go on the motor­way, we arrived safe­ly some­where on the out­skirts of Lon­don and I bought every­thing in sight. I sim­ply love the notion of Fairy Liq­uid, and I have always dot­ed on the term “wash­ing-up liq­uid.” It’s so to the point. Then Fairy make
dish­wash­er pel­lets too, in some weird self-degrad­ing pack­ag­ing per pel­let, so I suc­cumbed. There were many many prod­ucts that Becky was sure I need­ed, so I came away with a mop, some bath­room clean­er, some limescale remover for the scary hard water here, some steel clean­er, oven clean­er, you name it. There was a food sec­tion, but it was fright­en­ing to see what they were sell­ing, in enor­mous quan­ti­ties: many kinds of indi­gestible-look­ing gravies, tinned tuna mixed with every­thing under the sun includ­ing sweet­corn (the British are obsessed with mix­ing tuna with sweet­corn in every dish imag­in­able), the ubiq­ui­tous black­cur­rant juice called Ribena, thou­sands of vari­eties of plain white bread. They spec­i­fy thin‑,
medi­um- or thick-sliced, inter­est­ing­ly. Some­thing for everyone.

Home again, then to school pick­up where the report on the fright­en­ing Eng­lish Speak­ing Board exam was mixed. I was bring­ing Beck­y’s daugh­ter Anna home with us for the land­mark First Play­date in Lon­don, so I packed both girls in a taxi and got the low­down on how the speech­es went (“I for­got ful­ly half my speech,” Avery claimed with some pride, while Anna felt she had acquit­ted her­self quite well), the poem, and the read­ing-aloud. They assessed each girl’s per­for­mance in detail. “I cah­n’t believe Sarah chose her Nin­ten­do as her object, for her speech. It’s just a game and she did­n’t even tell how she got it, just how to play it. The exam­in­er was quite bored, I think,” Avery said. Com­pared to the elo­quent obse­quies Avery was able to offer about HER object, her rid­ing hel­met, one can only imag­ine poor Sarah’s plight. Home for microwave pop­corn (once I had deci­phered the
incred­i­bly com­plex instruc­tions for the oven, which includ­ed the advice to “try it out straight­away, why not? make your­self a cup of tea, and then drink it while read­ing this instruc­tion man­u­al quite thor­ough­ly”; can you imag­ine Amer­i­can instruc­tions hav­ing that sort of charm?). The girls screeched and laughed and threw toys all around, and it was a total plea­sure to hear Avery being goofy and sil­ly for
the first time since we’ve been here. Dor­rie, the new clean­ing lady from the Philip­pines, came to look over the place and see what was required, and left. A love­ly, soft-spo­ken lady of 51 who looks 30, and has many tales to tell of her pre­vi­ous employ­ers, a Sau­di fam­i­ly who took her to Ger­many, Poland, Lebanon, Joran and New York. I felt sad­ly uncool beside that sce­nario, but one can but try.

Becky came to pick up Anna, bring­ing along lit­tle Eleanor the
kinder­gart­ner and Ash­ley the touch­ing­ly super-cool 11-year-old who is des­per­ate to babysit, and to adopt all our cats. “Do you ever go away and need a sit­ter for them?” We went down to the bed­room where the girls were play­ing and it was com­plete­ly adorable to see all three lit­tle girls in their uni­forms. Ash­ley affect­ed a live­ly dis­dain how­ev­er, and said she would­n’t be caught dead in
some­thing some­one else told her to wear. I gave them a hefty por­tion of the bolog­nese sauce I had spent the after­noon mak­ing, and if I do say so myself it’s the best bolog­nese ever: full of car­rots, white wine, nut­meg, gar­lic and toma­toes. We assessed the recep­tion (Eng­lish for liv­ing) room fur­ni­ture and deter­mined that every­thing was in the wrong place. I have an esti­mate for some shelv­ing to install, but the whole prospect is daunt­ing. I need my sis­ter or my moth­er to some and
tell me what to do, and then some­one else actu­al­ly to do it.

This morn­ing Avery and were a bit wiped out from so much… stuff
hap­pen­ing. But to school nonethe­less, and I sat with the kinder­gart­ners to be read to. What hap­pens is that in between my Thurs­days, there is anoth­er day when anoth­er moth­er comes to read. So I often come in the mid­dle of a book. Last week lit­tle Kathryn was read­ing to me, inex­plic­a­bly, about a lit­tle boy who had some­how caused
a num­ber of flans to go miss­ing. A flan is a par­tic­u­lar­ly nox­ious, at least to me, French-inspired pud­ding of a cus­tardy vari­ety, and how a num­ber of them went miss­ing I nev­er found out. Today Emi­lie’s book was an Edward Gorey-illus­trat­ed book about a boy called Tree­horn who began to shrink. Their pip­ing lit­tle voic­es are just too much. “ ‘Mum­my,’ ” Emi­lie read earnest­ly, “ ‘my sleeves all seem to be too long and I keep trip­ping on my trouser legs.’ ” She stopped in con­ster­na­tion. “If he isn’t care­ful,” she said seri­ous­ly, “some­one
will trod upon him.” !!!

Then, as if it weren’t all too much any­way, there’s a whole iden­ti­ty here called a “Yum­my Mum­my,” which seems to mean that not only are we all required to take care of our hus­bands and chil­dren, vol­un­teer nice­ly, cook meals and dec­o­rate our recep­tion rooms, but we’re meant to be real­ly sexy as well. Too much pressure!

Home now, try­ing not to act like I’m watch­ing Dor­rie clean. It’s odd for me to have a total stranger here, after the years and years of Car­men’s friend­ship and devo­tion and famil­iar litany of mis­for­tunes. I won­der how she’s doing. A call to her daugh­ter is prob­a­bly in order.

Well, you’re up to date. We’re all feel­ing the end-of-the-week fraz­zle­ment and I think it’s a roast chick­en, ear­ly bed night. Per­haps a wild-mush­room risot­to for comfort.