the calm before the storm

This is get­ting to be a habit!

Yet anoth­er blog post finds me wing­ing my way across the pond, this time from Lon­don to New York.  This time I leave behind beau­ti­ful spring­time Lon­don in order to curate and attend the open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion, “Text/ure,” that Avery and I have been plan­ning for near­ly a year, at the Fiter­man Art Cen­ter in Low­er Man­hat­tan.  I’m hop­ing that this peace­ful flight and a good night’s sleep in a fan­cy hotel will dis­pel the exhaus­tion that’s been dog­ging me for the past weeks, as I fit the work for the show into my nor­mal life of social work, bell-ring­ing, and gen­er­al living.

Of course, set along­side the tired­ness and stress has been the utter joy of work­ing with Avery, choos­ing the work in stu­dio vis­its in New York at Christ­mas, attend­ing exhi­bi­tions in Lon­don to hone our ideas of how to express our­selves in the wall text, such a respon­si­bil­i­ty to write, to get just right.

As we made our way down this path, mem­o­ries of gallery and art times togeth­er as moth­er and daugh­ter came to the fore.  One evening Avery showed me this series of car­toons, and you can imag­ine my reac­tion.  How won­der­ful to feel that her upbring­ing left her with hap­py mem­o­ries, at least some of the time.

She is back in Oxford with her real life, and in a few hours’ time I will be cosi­ly set up in my Man­hat­tan hotel room, com­fort can­dle (Indi­an grape­fruit), books on tape, and hap­py mes­sages from John and Avery.  These are all my amulets against the pan­ic I’m begin­ning to feel about the show itself, to open on Tues­day evening.

Let’s think about oth­er things.

We’ve been out and about in Lon­don, as spring weath­er set­tles in with all its joys (bril­liant leafy explo­sions) and sor­rows (mas­sive aller­gic sneeze fests).  In par­tic­u­lar, hop­ing to find some­thing new to look at on an unfa­mil­iar walk, we found our­selves in deep­est, far­thest Bermond­sey, in the depths of SE1, face to face with a Joseph Kosuth instal­la­tion, rep­re­sent­ing a quote from Charles Dick­en­s’s “Pick­wick Papers.”

“There are dark shad­ows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the con­trast. Some men, like bats or owls, have bet­ter eyes for the dark­ness than for the light. We, who have no such opti­cal pow­ers, are bet­ter pleased to take our last part­ing look at the vision­ary com­pan­ions of many soli­tary hours, when the brief sun­shine of the world is blaz­ing full upon them.”

It is hard for me to count the num­ber of things I believe about this instal­la­tion.  Yes, there are dark shad­ows on the earth — more than any of us wants to think about right now — and are lights stronger in the con­trast?  I like to think I would appre­ci­ate the light with­out ben­e­fit of con­trast, but per­haps not.  Maybe we all appre­ci­ate what we have only in the moments we spare to think about what we have being tak­en away.  And yes, some peo­ple are able to see best in that dark­ness (Win­ston Churchill, who shone so bright­ly in the dark and dis­ap­point­ed so abject­ly when the dark was con­quered).  I myself do pre­fer “the brief sun­shine of the world” in all its blaz­ing glory.

So much brief sun­shine is encap­su­lat­ed in my joy­ous encoun­ters with oth­er peo­ple’s small chil­dren!  Mine hav­ing grown up so abrupt­ly, I do seek out kids.  Nora’s, in par­tic­u­lar, are sat­is­fy­ing beyond mea­sure.  I went along with a warm, spicy, apple and banana cake to lure them into our friendship.

Apple Banana Spice Cake

(serves about 8 for tea, also very good for breakfast)

1 1/2 cups/200g 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/113g butter

1 cup/200g sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

about 1 cup/120g/2 medi­um mashed bananas

about 1 cup/120g/2 medi­um chopped apples

1 tbsp con­fec­tion­er’s sugar

Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents. Cream but­ter and sug­ar, eggs and vanil­la. Mix togeth­er dry and wet ingre­di­ents and add mashed banana and chopped apple. Bake at 350F/180C for 45 min­utes. Cool slight­ly and dust with sug­ar. Serve warm.

“I have won the crick­et tro­phy for this week,” crowed sev­en-year-old Otis, “and what luck it was the day you came for cake.”

I used them bla­tant­ly as exper­i­men­tal guinea pigs for my lat­est obses­sion, “book-shar­ing,” a ped­a­gog­i­cal approach for which I attend­ed a bril­liant two-day train­ing at Read­ing Uni­ver­si­ty.  The idea?  To not so much “read aloud” as “share” a book with chil­dren, ignore the text in favour of ask­ing them what they think is hap­pen­ing.  Nora took charge of Baby Angus.

I took the two old­er boys under my wing and they respond­ed as if they’d read the train­ing man­u­al.  We had such fun with “The Wrong Side of the Bed” and “Har­ry the Dirty Dog.”  Such hap­py mem­o­ries of Avery’s book-obsessed child­hood emerged, for me.

“Why do you sup­pose Har­ry looks so unhap­py?”  “What a fun­ny mis­un­der­stand­ing: Har­ry thought he heard ‘Har­ry, Har­ry, Har­ry,” but it was the hog dog man call­ing ‘Hur­ry, hur­ry hurry.’ ”

There came a day when a huge pile of books for this book-shar­ing project (oh, my Fri­day play­group has high hopes for it!) became avail­able in Oxford, and Avery kind­ly carved out time for a lunch togeth­er.  And Jo — a dou­ble act, dou­ble the fun.

Among oth­er tales, Avery described her upcom­ing role at a for­mal din­ner that evening, play­ing the role of “Schol­ar” in the Latin respons­es.  I remem­ber the back and forth, impos­si­bly seri­ous and ele­gant and time­less, from the for­mal she invit­ed us to.

There has been time for Cook­ing Club at my after-school group called “P3” (no one remem­ber what the three Ps stand for).  I have learned to my per­il that try­ing to organ­ise four lit­tle boys and two girls, under the age of 9, to coop­er­ate in the cre­ation of choco­late cup­cakes, is a feat beyond my con­trol.  It is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to get them to wait, to take turns, to share uten­sils.  “Miss!  Miss!  Should this teatow­el be on fire?”  Of course after the dra­ma is all over, it feels worth it.

Since it is Lon­don, we have vis­i­tors.  What fun to rev­el in mem­o­ries of sum­mers gone by, with the vis­it of Elise and her mom Jan­ice, on a fly­ing trip between Cam­bridge and who knows where else.  Over plates of John’s mar­i­nat­ed pork chops and Elise’s request­ed dish of “Becky Pota­toes,” we caught up on the excite­ment of life in San Fran­cis­co, Indi­anapo­lis, Lon­don, Oxford.

Life for me would not be worth liv­ing with­out my bells, and I’ve had a fair num­ber of mile­stones in the past sev­er­al months.  Tre­ble-bob­bing!  A brief for­ay to ring­ing “inside on Cam­bridge”!  But most mem­o­rably, and suc­cess­ful­ly, tre­bling for my first Quar­ter Peal on 8, at a fan­ci­ful church called “Bow in the Road.”  And it is.  Smack in the mid­dle of the road, near Mile End where I con­coct­ed my choco­late cup­cakes sev­er­al days before.

The Quar­ter was “well-struck” accord­ing to my teammates!

I came away sweaty, proud, and more than ready for the cock­tails and piz­za at the near­by pub, and a tri­umphant trip home, past St Paul’s in the dark.

And what fun, the fol­low­ing week, to find this notice in our won­der­ful mag­a­zine, “The Ring­ing World.”

I’ve found time to invent a per­fect­ly delight­ful, sim­ple fish recipe, a good sub­sti­tute for those hal­cy­on days when I rev­elled in a gar­den in Barnes, and a deep-fat fry­er.  Give this a try.

Crispy Herbed Hake

(serves 4)

4 hake fillets

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsps olive oil

4 tbsps Panko breadcrumbs

1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley

1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

1 tbsp fresh minced chives

1 clove gar­lic, grated

sea salt and fresh ground pepper

1 lemon, divid­ed into quarters

Lay the fish fil­lets in a foil-lined tray.

In a small saucepan, melt the but­ter and oil togeth­er, then add the bread­crumbs, herbs and gar­lic.  Sea­son well.  Remove from heat and allow to cool.

When crumb mix­ture is cooled, spoon over the hake fil­lets.  Bake at 425F/220C for about 15 min­utes or until fish just flakes.  Serve with lemon wedges to squeeze over.

*************

We found that this fish went absolute­ly per­fect­ly with rice and new sauce I love with every­thing, the saf­fron yoghurt sauce from Ottolenghi’s egg­plant.  Heav­en!

This sus­te­nance gave me strength to both notice and pho­to­graph sev­er­al instances of per­fect­ly enchant­i­ng side­walk art that popped up in our neigh­bor­hood one after­noon, to be dashed away by the fol­low­ing day’s fine rain.

I’ve looked and looked for any sto­ry about who might be behind this phe­nom­e­non, but there is no news.

I think this one is my favourite.

And thus approached my depar­ture.  The last social-work with my pre­cious four-year-old, play­ing “Doc­tor and Mum­my With Sick Baby,” my last Cook­ing Club (choco­late chip cook­ies, the least said about that dis­as­ter the bet­ter!), the last ring­ing for Sun­day ser­vice and Mon­day prac­tice.  Next post will find me far from home, in the thick of the New York City art world, reap­ing the ben­e­fits of months of hard work.  I hope it will be worth it, to leave Tacy behind.

Next post: New York City!  Here I come.