sun­shine and ath­let­ics in London

What a day we had Sat­ur­day! Bright, intense­ly blue skies, not a cloud in sight, and warm. A day that makes you real­ize that in gen­er­al, we live in a grey, grey world here in Lon­don. John and I picked Avery up at Anna’s, feel­ing slight­ly sor­ry for her par­ents as they head­ed off to a foot­ball match in Man­ches­ter. It’s one of those activ­i­ties that is prob­a­bly real­ly fun once you get there, and whether or not you like foot­ball it’s excit­ing, no doubt. But a long trip. It turns out, I heard from Becky today, that they arrived at half­time, which does­n’t sound so dis­ap­point­ing until you’re told that each half is only 45 min­utes long and no time outs! So you’ve missed a lot, at half time. And Liv­er­pool won, hap­pi­ly for them since they were seat­ed on the Liv­er­pool side. I had no idea it worked like that, being seat­ed accord­ing to your alle­giance. That’s actu­al­ly how it was at the show-jump­ing polo match, must be a ref­er­ence to the foot­ball tradition.

After we picked Avery up we head­ed to Church Street, off Lis­son Grove, to the long row of antiques shops. Becky and I had checked it out first of all last week, and had found a love­ly shop, Andrew Neb­bett, with sev­er­al things I liked a lot. One of them was a long wide bench cov­ered in heavy dark leather, from maybe 1930, a gym­na­si­um bench-press­ing affair. “On hold” for some evil per­son, not that we have any­where to put it. But also from the gym­na­si­um sale were sev­er­al leather mats that Andrew had had sewn into rugs. Gor­geous! So we came away with a big one for the liv­ing room and a small one for the entry.

Home to put John down for a nap and I took Avery roller-blad­ing in Hyde Park. The weath­er had held per­fect­ly, and every­one was out sun­ning them­selves in the lit­tle green-striped deck chairs (like the one Snoopy fights with in the Thanks­giv­ing Spe­cial, remem­ber that?), that you sit in and a Park Deckchair man comes round and charges you a pound fifty for each one. Seems rea­son­able! In New York of course some­one would come round in the night and put them all in vans and sell them on eBay. I should­n’t be so cyn­i­cal about my native city, but there you go. We sat and recov­ered from her exploits with an iced lol­ly (always read about them in books but nev­er quite real­ized that they are just pop­si­cles! much bet­ter to call them iced lol­lies), and a cup of milky tea for me. Every nation­al­i­ty and age and body type under the sun, all sacked out in the park on the green, green grass that does­n’t require spring­time to be green. Why is that? All year long, it’s green.

Avery was def­i­nite­ly wilt­ing at this point, so a long bath was in order, and then a high-pro­tein blast of a cut of beef called “feath­er cut.” Don’t know how to define it and will do some research. It’s shaped like sir­loin tips, with a strong cen­tral sinew that was quite edi­ble, and CHEAP. The whole three-per­son serv­ing was not even 3 pounds total. I sauteed it gen­tly in but­ter and sliced it thin, but it could have been cooked even less. We all went to bed com­plete­ly worn out!

This morn­ing up hor­ri­bly ear­ly (OK, it was 7) to get to the barn in Wim­ble­don in time for a 9 a.m. les­son. Nev­er again! I need my Sun­day rest! But wow, the les­son was amaz­ing. A pony called Bis­cuit, who is too tiny to be rid­den by any­one large enough to be any good! So she has been spend­ing years being trot­ted to and fro on a lead rope, with tiny chil­dren on her doing noth­ing. But when the train­ers saw how Avery was skilled and yet tiny, they decid­ed it was a match made in heav­en. So the moment Avery got on Bis­cuit’s back, and the rope came off, and the hack through Wim­ble­don Com­mon was over and the are­na in sight, that pony went BERSERK! Gal­lop­ing like the wind, round and round, the adult rid­ers on their calm hors­es look­ing on in a mix­ture of hor­ror and admi­ra­tion! I can’t even say that Avery “hung on,” far from it, she rode that pony beau­ti­ful­ly. Total­ly con­trolled, obvi­ous­ly impressed with the speed that was hap­pen­ing. I remained calm, believe it or not, and John was thrilled. Car­o­line, her new train­er, was unflap­pable, and unmoved. Final­ly Avery calmed Bis­cuit down and joined the rest of the group, but still through­out the hour every time she got to be by her­self, it was tear­ing off hell bent for leather. Hilar­i­ous! So they’ve decid­ed that if Bis­cuit gets exer­cised more this week she’ll be fine on Sun­day next. It feels ridicu­lous­ly good to have a barn, a pony, a train­er, FRIENDS.

Our friend Jill and her hus­band picked Avery up in the rain out­side Edg­ware Sta­tion, with Anna already in the car, to go with Ava to the Chess­ing­ton Adven­ture Park or some such thing. Jill wailed, “I have a cold, I’m preg­nant, and it’s rain­ing! I don’t believe it.” Lat­er she con­fessed that she made her hus­band drop her off at home and sent him off with the girls alone! John and I walked in the mist to a nice, anony­mous-ish Leb­nese restau­rant called Fatoush, in Edg­ware Road, and had love­ly fresh hum­mous, falafel, and lit­tle lamb meat­balls with tahi­ni sauce. Sweet lit­tle hon­ey and pis­ta­chio cook­ies after, and home for a nap. The per­fect day for it. We walked to col­lect Avery around 6, and the dad, Mylo, looked as wilt­ed as a man of 6 foot 4 can look. “Did it rain?” John asked sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly. Mylo gave us a look. “Did it rain?” he repeat­ed. “Did it RAIN.” So after chat­ting for a few min­utes about the mind-bend­ing­ly awful-sound­ing ride and prizes, John said, “Well, Mylo, at least it did­n’t rain.”

Well, I’m about to drop dead this evening, hav­ing walked home from school, back again with Avery’s for­got­ten PE kit, back again home, back to school again with Ava’s birth­day present for her par­ty after school, back home again, and back again to col­lect Avery at the par­ty! There was a very scary magi­cian in a tur­ban try­ing to invei­gle the moth­ers into com­ing home with him, and some­how Ava had per­suad­ed the local ice cream truck to come to her par­ty, so all the chil­dren were drip­ping with ice cream. It felt extreme­ly love­ly, and most wel­come, to have moth­ers I knew, to greet and be greet­ed by, and to have Avery includ­ed in a par­ty with her new friends. John’s out at a busi­ness din­ner, so I think I’ll skulk into the kitchen, pour a restora­tive cock­tail, and try to con­vince Avery to watch the Food Chan­nel. How sophis­ti­cat­ed are we?