the good, the bad, and the still-under-warranty

Where to begin?  John is at an “off-site” in Sus­sex for a cou­ple of days, even though I keep remind­ing him that “off-site” is not a des­ti­na­tion.  Avery is at school, some­what reluc­tant­ly still not feel­ing quite her best after her week­end’s bout with fever, and I?  I am sit­ting at my desk sur­round­ed by box­es of books, unpaid bills from increas­ing­ly impa­tient Amer­i­can cred­i­tors who don’t seem to real­ize I don’t care about them any­more (but of course I’ll be good and set­tle up Lady­bug’s vet tab and the Con­necti­cut phone bill, etc.).  Most­ly, how­ev­er, my func­tion today is what it has been since Fri­day, that is to answer the door­bell con­stant­ly and let in one after anoth­er alleged repair­man to “take a look” at the stove.  Call it a cook­er, call it a hob, it just does­n’t work.  And last night after Avery woke up from a very odd nap after school, all hot and sweaty, I went down to her bath­room to draw her a nice, refresh­ing bath, only… there was no hot water.  I real­ized as well that it was quite cold through­out the flat.  With a sense of sink­ing inevitabil­i­ty, I went to look at the boil­er, and yep, gone.  Dead as a door­nail.  I called up the land­lord’s office, the mys­te­ri­ous Grosvenor Estates who hold us in such expen­sive thrall, and the young man on the oth­er end even­tu­al­ly came back to me and said a repair guy would be there around 11.  ” P.M.??” I gasped.  “Well, you see, it is quite late now [six o’clock] and it will take awhile for him to get there.”  Where was this guy, Paris?  I said absolute­ly not and was there a super­vi­sor I could talk to.  “Not at the moment, you see, every­one’s left.”  But me, his sad lit­tle voice implied.  “Well, keep the work order in for FIRST THING in the morn­ing, then,” I huffed.  “It’s just as well, then, that I can’t cook din­ner, because I also could­n’t clean it up,” I said sulk­i­ly and on that bit­ing exit line I hung up, won­der­ing what else could go wrong.

An hour or so lat­er, just after John turned up, the repair guy showed up at the door.  Much beringed and spiky-haired, Gavin did not impart con­fi­dence.  Sure enough, after an hour or so bang­ing around in the boil­er room, he gave up.  “The dis­play pan­el is on, and then blow­er is work­ing like crack­ers, but there does­n’t seem to be a flame.”  The flame being the essen­tial part to any heat­ing source, we were a bit frus­trat­ed.  But the crown­ing blow: he said, “You know, I should real­ly not have been muck­ing about under the lid of that thing, not being licensed prop­er­ly, really.” !!!!

We got Avery set­tled in her bed any­way, and since her room was freez­ing, I went to get her an HWB (hot water bot­tle, of course), but then remem­bered there was no HW to go in it.  Boiled water in the elec­tric tea ket­tle, grate­ful for the first time for what I have always thought was a pecu­liar obses­sion with the Eng­lish, their elec­tric ket­tles.  Ah well, we set­tled down to watch a hilar­i­ous show on BBC1, “Balder­dash and Pif­fle,” where a pre­sen­ter hunts down the mean­ing of an obscure word, usu­al­ly some­thing new and cul­tur­al­ly-inspired, and then tries to con­vince an unbe­liev­ably solemn team from the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary to put the word in the next edi­tion.  Last night’s words were “balti,” a Pak­istani-inspired way to sautee­ing meats in a deep-bot­tomed pan, and “bin­go.”  Only in Eng­land could such a pro­gramme fly in prime time.

AH!!!  Tony is the man!  This love­ly bloke just fixed my boil­er!  It was the rare but vicious “inter­nal fuse.”  I have now had a com­plete course in how boil­ers work, as well as ther­mostats and timers.  He seemed amazed that I could take it all in, being a dumb Amer­i­can, so I bran­dished my PhD.  I coaxed him to take a look at the cook­er, but as the Eng­lish say, we had no joy.  Iain, the sweet but lame replace­ment for my beloved Bob, has gone away dis­con­so­late­ly to order a new cook­er from Siemens who are drag­ging their feet about the war­ran­ty. Grrr.

But I was sup­posed to start with the “good”, was­n’t I?  Pes­simistic Scan­dy that I am, I for­got.  I was just feel­ing sor­ry for myself yes­ter­day, sad­dled with laun­dry, sort­ing sweaters and field­ing repair­men, when it was time to pick Avery up, and although she said she did­n’t feel very good, this news was over­shad­owed by the offi­cial report from the Eng­lish Speak­ing Board, they of the dread­ed exam last week, and she earned a “Mer­it”!  The grades begin with, obvi­ous­ly, “Fail,” then go up to “Pass,” “Good Pass,” “Mer­it,” “High Mer­it,” and the cov­et­ed “Dis­tinc­tion.”  Of the four cat­e­gories on the exam, she scored two “Good Pass­es,” a “Mer­it” and a “Dis­tinc­tion,” the last being in the spon­ta­neous ques­tion and answer peri­od in which the exam­in­er found her to be “live­ly, well-informed and artic­u­late.”  She is very, very proud.  Added to that, she was men­tioned (in her absence) at assem­bly on Fri­day for hav­ing passed her skat­ing test, for which she will get a cool lit­tle badge to put on her cardie.  Very impres­sive.  What a trouper.  We had ice cream and cau­li­fow­er soup at Vil­landry, her favorite snack spot, and the love­ly French serv­er asked, “How did your exam go, pet?”  I felt we had passed a mile mark­er!  We have been remem­bered and treat­ed like real peo­ple.  So Avery showed her the report, and the nice lady brought her two choco­late lady­bugs. Sweet.

Her home­work last night was such a rev­e­la­tion, of what she’s con­tend­ing with in the way of cul­tur­al adjust­ment.  “Mum­my, this does not make sense at all.  I’m meant to look at these dif­fer­ent words and say how they each have dif­fer­ent mean­ings though they sound the same.  But they don’t.”  There were sev­er­al groups of words:

raw/roar
flaw/floor
paw/pour/poor

Of course in Eng­lish Eng­lish they DO sound the same!  She laughed and laughed.  “Coco has the most, most, most POSH accent and I can just hear how these words would sound the same if she said them, in that haughty way she has.  The homo­phones that aren’t homo­phones to me!”

On the cul­tur­al side for me, I’ve dis­cov­ered an excel­lent minis­eries on DVD, because of course it stars my crush actor Matthew Mac­fadyen, but it’s well worth see­ing for the rest of the stel­lar cast as well.  It’s called “Per­fect Strangers,” but not to be con­fused with that awful 1980s sit­com with Bron­son Pin­chot.  It’s the tale of a fam­i­ly reunion where most of the fam­i­ly mem­bers have not ever met, and one par­tic­u­lar fam­i­ly who’s been ostra­cized, we know not why for a long time.  We see the secrets unfold through the expe­ri­ences of the main char­ac­ter, Daniel, and it’s very com­plex, reward­ing and unex­pect­ed.  I haven’t seen the end yet because of my host­ess duties regard­ing repair­men and porters, but I shall at lunchtime I think.  Then, I’ve dis­cov­ered a very impor­tant writer whose name I’ve always heard but nev­er got around to read­ing: Nan­cy Mit­ford.  I sup­pose she prob­a­bly got a redis­cov­ery boost from the film ver­sion of “Love in a Cold Cli­mate,” which now I want to see.  But I start­ed out with “The Pur­suit of Love,” and it’s laugh-out-loud fun­ny.  Go get it from the library, do.

Then yes­ter­day as I was run­ning to Boots, the chemist, to get a spray bot­tle for Dor­rie to sprin­kle John’s shirts (I came away with a tee­ny tiny trav­el-sized per­fume sprayer!  I don’t think she thought it as fun­ny as I did, so I’ll have to track down a real one this week), I real­ized all the crowds were look­ing in the same direc­tion and peo­ple were whip­ping out cell-phone cam­eras.  I turned in that direc­tion and there, com­ing down Oxford Street and turn­ing into Port­man Street, were per­haps 60 or 80 hors­es with sol­diers in full uni­form!  Glo­ri­ous!  At the risk of look­ing like a tourist I turned to an obvi­ous­ly native Lon­don­er next to me and said, “OK, I’ll bite.  What’s going on?”  “Oh, every once in awhile the Queen just sends out her hors­es, to show that she has them.  It’s a sort of defence thing, in the old days, for for­eign vis­i­tors.”  I love this place.