sun­day lun­cheon with Vincent

Not that I was whip­ping out my cam­era and pho­tograph­ing our meal with our friend Vin­cent, but it just so hap­pened that right before hav­ing lunch with him, Avery and I brought home the most amaz­ing haul from the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket. OK, OK, I brought home the most amaz­ing haul while poor Avery stag­gered behind under the weight of her overnight bag from her sleep­over with Jade, just up the road. They had a per­fect time, Amy’s moth­er report­ed, and Avery is wel­come any time. Isn’t that nice to hear? There was Nin­ten­dog, there was dis­co danc­ing, French toast (“home­made, mind you, dipped in egg and fried in but­ter, yum” was Avery’s exact food review), and a bless­ed­ly ear­ly bedtime.

Any­way, just take a gan­der at this pur­ple broc­coli, and the goat cheese! At first I was hap­py to sam­ple just the plain chevre, lib­er­al­ly crum­bled up in a bowl for us all to taste (so pleased not to see a lot of sil­ly “health and safe­ty” non­sense, the irri­tat­ing reg­u­la­tions that seem to make every­thing fun for­bid­den; every­one sim­ply picked up lit­tle bits and seemed hap­py to live with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that anoth­er actu­al human might have come into con­tact with the bit adja­cent. How­ev­er, once Avery and I had both had the plain, the lady behind the counter said, “Now lovey, if that is to your lik­ing, just get on the out­side of this bit, with the chilies,” and it was divine, and maybe even bet­ter was the log rolled in chives. Mmmm! So I bought both. I also bought a kilo of tiny, tiny toma­toes, and a big bunch of basil. I think that with a lit­tle angel hair’s pas­ta the cheese, toma­toes and fresh pesto will be just the tick­et tonight.

This all put John and me in the per­fect mood to drop Avery at the sta­ble and run out to Hol­land Park for lunch with Vin­cent. It was worth titling a post after him. We were great friends 15 years ago in New York, then he end­ed up here mar­ried to an Eng­lish girl with whom he had two divine lit­tle girls, Estee and Ines. They are now divorced and Vin­cent is hap­pi­ly with Pete, who co-host­ed our lunch. The house is absolute­ly stun­ning: gut­ted and done up from scratch with dou­ble-lev­el new win­dows on the ground and first floor, poured con­crete floors with ther­mal heat­ing under­neath, the per­fect kitchen with every pos­si­ble impor­tant appli­ance includ­ing a waist-high dish­wash­er. So smart. We had brought cham­pagne, so we start­ed on that and caught up on gos­sip, work news, the all-impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion­al cat­e­go­ry “Real Estate Ven­tures I May Get Involved With,” child talk, etc. Then we were onto a home­made tarte with feta cheese, red onions, tiny toma­toes, fava beans and chives. And a quiche with lar­dons of bacon and ched­dar cheese. Plus a peer­less sal­ad of baby rock­et, baby spinach and water­cress, with a dress­ing of mus­tard, lemon oil, olive oil, bal­sam­ic vine­gar and oregano. A cheese board with Saint Andre, Brie, Stil­ton and Ched­dar, and an enor­mous bowl of black­ber­ries, rasp­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries and straw­ber­ries tossed with vodka.

Vin­cent of course is, in addi­tion to advis­ing the sheik of Qatar on his invest­ments, pur­su­ing a side­line in dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, very arty and hard for me to under­stand, but obvi­ous­ly real­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed. He has been assid­u­ous­ly if gen­tly court­ed by art deal­ers to make a pur­chase, and was sore­ly tempt­ed by an Antony Gorm­ley, but then so would­n’t we all be. Imag­ine, hav­ing to shore up the foun­da­tions of your floor­ing to acco­mo­date the weight of a sculp­ture. “You know, Kris­ten, there is vir­tu­al­ly no rep­re­sen­ta­tion at ALL for young Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­phers, or even mid-career pho­tog­ra­phers. They sort of stop here at Irv­ing Penn, so there is a real niche.” He’s earnest­ly try­ing to per­suade me that it would be great fun to build a gallery in the East End in some aban­doned ware­house, keep my over­head down (while pre­sum­ably try­ing not to lose my actu­al head to armed ban­dits in this waste­land of real estate). Vin­cent is one of those peo­ple who makes you feel that your din­ner choic­es are always above aver­age, your per­son­al style not to be despised, and any­thing you might ever want to do entire­ly with­in your reach, and prob­a­bly, at that, your own aspi­ra­tions aren’t near­ly cool enough for your capac­i­ties. A love­ly, tall, hand­some, urbane, superbly enter­tain­ing man. We’ve missed you, Vin­cent, and now that we’ve got you back we aren’t about to let you go. Peter is hav­ing his own adven­tures try­ing to make friends with Estee and Ines, and it all seems to be work­ing quite beau­ti­ful­ly, as any­thing Vin­cent turns his hand to would. It would­n’t dare otherwise.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly just as the last bite was swal­lowed and the last sip of Beau­jo­lais Nou­veau drunk, we had to dash away to get Avery from the barn. There she was, crouched on the floor of the sta­ble with all her lit­tle friends, eat­ing a black­cur­rant iced lol­ly. She had a bit of an adven­ture in the Park with a run­away Rowan in a lead­er­ship con­test with naughty Horace, and filled me with con­fi­dence in the super­vi­sion at Ross Nye when she gig­gled, “Of course the only instruc­tor, Sofia, was busy with a lit­tle girl on lead­line, so we all just went crazy.” Harumph. What can I do.

Last night while Avery was at Jade’s house John and I went out for a good if rather too salty Chi­nese meal, and came back home to watch “The DaVin­ci Code.” Yawn! Dou­ble yawn. I thought Tom Han­ks was woe­ful­ly mis­cast, the plot total­ly impos­si­ble to fol­low, Ian McKel­lan briefly res­cued it and then turned ridicu­lous. Audrey Tautou was of course adorable, but she could do only so much. A rather wast­ed movie oppor­tu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly since I’m meant to be study­ing films now! I had a great screen­writ­ing class, watch­ing the first five min­utes of three films and analysing the devel­op­ment of the main char­ac­ter in those five min­utes: “Mid­night Cow­boy,” “Wall Street” and “Far­go.” Of the three, the only film I’d cross the road to see is “Far­go,” and I gath­er I am the last per­son in the world to see it. Maybe on DVD. The Sat­ur­day course, “Cre­at­ing Fic­tion,” is also heat­ing up. This time we lis­tened to three peo­ple read their pieces and total­ly slagged them off (love that new slang word), then spent a half hour writ­ing a piece on “The worst evening you can imag­ine and an unex­pect­ed pleas­ant sur­prise at the end of it.” These set pieces are sur­pris­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to do! Far more dif­fi­cult, how­ev­er, is my task for Octo­ber 21: I have to come in pre­pared to read 2500 words, or 15 min­utes, of my own orig­i­nal fic­tion, and pre­pare to be slagged off. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that I am not cur­rent­ly in pos­ses­sion of even one minute of orig­i­nal fic­tion, my work is clear­ly cut out for me. The instruc­tor’s most inter­est­ing advice yes­ter­day was “go in late, come out ear­ly,” which means that nine times out of ten, the first 40 pages or so of the nov­el you are writ­ing will turn out to be garbage, and not nec­es­sary to set up the sto­ry, except that it’s nec­es­sary to cre­ate them in order to have them to throw away. Like­wise with the end; the last 40 pages will turn out to be rub­bish, only you don’t know that till you’ve writ­ten them. Intrigu­ing. I’d like to have even 80 pages of rub­bish, instead of the big fat zero I have right now. My dear dar­ling broth­er-in-law Joel is patient­ly think­ing up plots for me, and he’s real­ly good at it, so I had bet­ter get busy writ­ing them down, even if I end up throw­ing them away. The tutor also men­tioned some of the pit­falls of writ­ing in the first per­son (clear­ly my pre­ferred method): “end­less whinge­ing can become indi­gestible.” Does­n’t sound real appeal­ing, for sure, and I have a sneak­ing feel­ing that many of the read­ers of this blog know just how like­ly a pit­fall it can be, sor­ry. But as soon as I try to write in the third-per­son I feel arti­fi­cial, like I’m just nam­ing myself “Kate” and try­ing to dress dif­fer­ent­ly on paper. There must be more to it than that.

Right now Avery is slav­ing away on her home­work, John is tak­ing a nap, and I’m con­tem­plat­ing mak­ing my pesto for din­ner. In the way that you do when you’re writ­ing a cook­book (which sad­ly involves fig­ur­ing out how to write things down for OTH­ER PEO­PLE and not just mak­ing it up dif­fer­ent­ly every time for your­self), I have bought two more duck breasts so I can per­fect the roast duck sal­ad. If you haven’t tried it yet, you must. I have to find some­one else to talk food with while my moth­er-in-law is spend­ing three weeks in East­ern Europe. Some­thing tells me my own moth­er would fall asleep on the phone if I tried to work through a recipe for onion tarte with her on the tele­phone, poor dear. Now, get her start­ed on some For­mu­la One race dri­vers and she’d be all set. Wait: maybe one of them has a recipe for onion tarte?