the fran­tic run-up to adven­tures in Somerset

Well, the week before Avery’s birth­day adven­ture was com­plete­ly mad. We had no soon­er seen off John’s sis­ter Cathy than it was onto one of the busiest weeks I’ve ever had. Did I accom­plish any­thing? Not real­ly, but all my friend­ships are intact, not to men­tion my sam­pling near­ly every place to get cof­fee or lunch with­in a mile of my house. Cof­fee with Dalia before writ­ing class (she could­n’t even make class but drove across town for cof­fee togeth­er, a true friend), cof­fee and intense life con­ver­sa­tion at the Roy­al Insti­tute of British Archi­tects across from school (an unex­pect­ed­ly nice place to go on a frosty morn­ing, with a superb book­shop) with Becky, then lunch at The Nat­ur­al Kitchen with Susan (a few com­plaints: they sim­ply can­not get their wait staff in line, nei­ther of the two spe­cials was actu­al­ly avail­able, but the orange cake alone was worth a vis­it), then ear­ly-morn­ing tea with my dear friend Lara. It’s hard to believe that we have met only a cou­ple of times, hav­ing encoun­tered each oth­er’s blogs last year. Some­how our friend­ship has blos­somed in emails so that the few times we actu­al­ly see each oth­er, we feel as if a tremen­dous amount has been said. A love­ly time, at Pain Quo­ti­di­en in the high street, always a safe bet in the morning.

Final­ly, whew, lunch at Biben­dum Oys­ter Bar with a new friend called Gigi, a live­ly New York­er who left a com­ment on my blog say­ing that she too was a for­mer pro­fes­sor liv­ing in Lon­don with a lit­tle daugh­ter! It seemed fat­ed for us to meet. A hilar­i­ous lunch with a lot of shared rem­i­nis­cence of aca­d­e­m­ic life: I forced her to explain her spe­cial sub­ject of Pla­ton­ic phi­los­o­phy, just to dust off that dis­ser­ta­tion, but she also regaled me with sto­ries of her days writ­ing copy for the JCrew cat­a­logue (a nat­ur­al choice of career when one is in pos­ses­sion of a PhD from Stan­ford). “I don’t know if he was ever aware of the sub­text of what he was telling us to write,” she said, laugh­ing about the founder, “but seri­ous­ly: under­wear in ‘stretchy cot­ton for when the action gets fast and furi­ous?’ Did he real­ly think that would sound like he was writ­ing about… row­ing action?” Lunch was deli­cious. I always for­get between vis­its how much I love Biben­dum. Superb seared tuna with a hon­ey dress­ing and radish­es. Love­ly, and so nice to make a new friend.

Wednes­day night, then, saw Avery and me with all of her Form Six at the Roy­al Albert Hall for an incred­i­ble evening of “Music for Youth.” Five thou­sand peo­ple squished into the Hall, most of them fam­i­ly mem­bers of the school­child­ren who gave the con­cert. Per­haps 20 orches­tras, bands, cham­ber groups and oth­er assort­ed musi­cians, from all over Great Britain, per­form­ing their hearts out. So inspir­ing, and to think it’s the tip of the ice­berg as far as child­ish tal­ent goes. Every­thing from clas­si­cal strings to soul, to jazz and steel drums and aca­pal­la singing. What an event to chap­er­one! It was a total plea­sure to see the girls all in their “own clothes,” hair down, relaxed, as opposed to the lev­el of stress and anx­i­ety they’ve been liv­ing under with all this crazy exam prep. Def­i­nite­ly book your tick­ets for one of the three nights of MFY next year. At the end of the per­for­mance I had my first expe­ri­ence of “Pomp and Cir­cum­stance” and “The Land of Hope and Glo­ry” in the great British tra­di­tion: com­plete with the rather impe­ri­al­is­tic text and every­one wav­ing British flags. A bit of a cul­ture shock to see my child singing at the top of her lungs; she cer­tain­ly does not know the Amer­i­can nation­al anthem! But this tune, yes. “God Save the Queen,” no problem.

Thurs­day we all rose, I know not how, to attend the Michael­mas Fair at school. Absolute pan­de­mo­ni­um on all floors in both build­ings: scream­ing chil­dren of every size and shape, the Toy Tombo­la, the San­ta’s Grot­to (“San­ta is some­body’s grand­fa­ther,” Becky hissed to me, “and since we don’t real­ly know him, there are two moth­ers just hang­ing out with him”), the Cake Room (Avery was in charge of teach­ing the lit­tle tiny chil­dren to dec­o­rate some­thing or oth­er), the Lucky Dip, you name it. Final­ly we repaired to the Assem­bly Hall, flung open the win­dows to get some much-need­ed fresh air, and under­went the Raf­fle. Mrs D absolute­ly bel­lowed the tick­et num­bers and prizes: “A Day With Mrs M’s Chauf­feur For Christ­mas Shop­ping, Tick­et 527…” I won a hideous hand­bag and hap­pi­ly swapped it with Analee’s moth­er for a bot­tle of Veuve Cliquot. Whew. Home exhausted!

Final­ly we were at Fri­day, the long-await­ed birth­day trip day. I spent the morn­ing mak­ing mac­a­roni and cheese and a lemon birth­day cake (the cake was not mem­o­rable, but it served the pur­pose). I organ­ised lit­tle White Com­pa­ny par­ty bags with tiny sil­ver pic­ture frames, sparklers (these were, moth­ers note, a HUGE hit for very lit­tle expense), a bis­cuit and apple juice, and a lit­tle clutch of white tulips, and it was up to school to pick them up in the rental car John got, a Mini Coop­er not being quite up to the task of trans­port­ing three girls with all their STUFF.

There was a pos­i­tive fever pitch of excite­ment. Jamie, Anna and Avery set­tled down in the back­seat for the long dri­ve, and we soon realised it would have been very wise to bring a book on tape. As it was, con­ver­sa­tion soon dwin­dled to be replaced by an ener­getic ren­di­tion of EVERY SONG they know. And they know a lot of songs. At one point Jamie asked, “Does any­one else smell… cheese?” I toyed with the idea of just let­ting her think she was hav­ing some sort of olfac­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tion, but I gave in and said, “There’s an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese sit­ting here at my feet.” For some rea­son Jamie’s ques­tion struck the oth­er girls as com­plete­ly hilar­i­ous and they spent a lot of the rest of the jour­ney ask­ing at inter­vals, “Does any­one smell… cheese?”

Real­ly quite sweet, but we were all relieved when the three-hour-ish dri­ve was over and we arrived in the dark in Stogursey, a tiny vil­lage near Bridg­wa­ter in Som­er­set. Since it was pitch dark we had no idea how to approach the cas­tle where we were stay­ing, and even the direc­tions of the love­ly house­keep­er who gave us the keys weren’t much help. We inched along in the dark, and came to a body of water. “It’s the MOAT!” the girls shrieked, and John said, “I don’t know, is this it?” We stopped beside an ancient, square stone build­ing with, as far as I could see, no win­dows. A bit tak­en aback, I demurred, “Ooh, I don’t think so,” then John said, “I think I have to brave this water and just cross over to that road,” which elicit­ed anoth­er shriek, “We’re going to drown in the moat!” Anoth­er few feet, across the water (which turned out in day­light to be a very shal­low stream), and sud­den­ly ahead of us was a blaze of light: the guard­house of the cas­tle, our destination!

There was an actu­al work­ing moat! And two enor­mous white birds appeared from the dark­ness. “We have swans!” John yelled. “Uh, John, those are geese,” the knowl­edge­able Anna cor­rect­ed him. Sure enough, the cas­tle geese. The girls prompt­ly named them Fred and Gin­ger and were devot­ed to them for the dura­tion of our stay.

We dragged our bags in and the girls opened every door, exclaim­ing in total delight over their cosy medieval bed­room, the enor­mous fire­place, the cross-shaped bat­tle­ment win­dows. We tucked into the mac­a­roni and cheese and red pep­pers, and then the birth­day cake. This pho­to­graph isn’t even a good one, but I could­n’t resist because of the utter hap­pi­ness of their expres­sions. It’s a cliche, but I did think: life is hard at times for every­one, and filled with pres­sure and chal­lenges and dis­ap­point­ments and fear, and to be able to give three lit­tle girls such an expe­ri­ence of togeth­er­ness, adven­ture and fun was a very sat­is­fy­ing thing.

More on Som­er­set soon. I must buck­le down now, though, to an enor­mous gro­cery shop. This love­ly coun­try may not observe Thanks­giv­ing, but that does­n’t mean that twelve peo­ple aren’t com­ing to my house on Thurs­day for turkey. So I have my work cut out.