The Roof is On

How I wish inter­est­ing things would space them­selves out: in JAN­U­ARY for instance, or the more bor­ing moments of Octo­ber. But NO, it all hap­pens at once: Lost Prop­er­ty Sale, vis­i­tors, bill-pay­ing, per­mis­sion-slip-fill­ing-out, pack­ing to go away for the sum­mer, end of school, Wimbledon!

All made slight­ly more chal­leng­ing by the fact that I’ve been sick as the prover­bial dog for a week, with what my doc­tor imme­di­ate­ly feared (hoped?) was a return of scary diges­tive things from sev­er­al years ago. Days of mis­ery, med­ica­tion, wor­ry. Then up comes a test result: a rather rare “food-borne bac­te­ria.” What, where did I eat? John and I near­ly always eat the same things. A mys­tery. But so much bet­ter than a life­long diag­no­sis of some­thing life-chang­ing. Still, the bug floored me for quite a while, and I still find myself long­ing for a chance to lie down in the mid­dle of the day. One day final­ly John pushed me down on the sofa, gave me a glass of water, and left the room say­ing, “You just sleep,” and that 45 min­utes or so saved me for the rest of the day, which includ­ed hav­ing friends to din­ner! Let noth­ing slow me down, is the mot­to of yours truly.

In the mean­time, while I was cod­dling myself, it’s hap­pened, his­to­ry has been made: the roof over Wim­ble­don Cen­tre Court has been moved into place, Mon­day evening, for the his­toric Andy Mur­ray win over Mr Swiss Per­son (I can­not remem­ber his name). How I wish we had been there to see it, and I’m not even (yet) a huge Mur­ray fan. But he is the Great British Hope, and for that, I’ll fight for him.

The British com­men­ta­tors breathed deeply, “Nev­er thought we’d see the day,” the cam­eras return­ing again and again through­out the evening to the glow­ing, sur­re­al lights of Cen­tre Court sur­round­ed by the dark­ness and the nurs­ery cov­er­ings of the oth­er courts, as well as the rest of the City of Lon­don which goes to bed with much more final­i­ty than Man­hat­tan ever does. And I sim­ply dote on the phrase­ol­o­gy of the com­men­ta­tors. Andy Mur­ray, was, they claimed, “ask­ing awk­ward ques­tions” of his oppo­nent, and as the ten­sion became quite unbear­able and the cam­eras veered to Mrs Mur­ray, one expert asked rhetor­i­cal­ly, “Who would be a moth­er at the moment?” And there’s always the lacon­ic cut-glass des­ig­na­tion of “Juice!” which of course we Amer­i­cans pro­nounce “Dooce.” Two peo­ple sep­a­rat­ed, as always, by a com­mon language.

Speak­ing of lan­guage (or “talk­ing of lan­guage,” as the British would say!) Avery and I have decid­ed that we a new Pet Peeve as far as expres­sions go, and that is “which is FINE.” As in, at my recent writ­ing sem­i­nar, “This cov­er let­ter you’ve writ­ten, So-and-So, is one of the worst you can write, WHICH IS FINE.” Which it patent­ly is NOT! So con­de­scend­ing, so annoy­ing. “Which is fine, since every­one does it, or which is fine, because for £300 I can tell you how not to do it again, or which is fine, because I would nev­er be stu­pid enough to do it in the first place, but since you DID…” Awful! I hope I’ve nev­er said it.

So the Lost Prop­er­ty almighty Pre­view and Sale have come and gone under my fear­less (ish) lead­er­ship, and the tru­ly fear­less help of Annie. As usu­al, all the expect­ed per­son­al­i­ties emerged: the shout­ing, quirky, slight­ly scary head of Expen­sive Cloth­ing, grab­bing lit­tle first-years and hold­ing jumpers up against them say­ing, “Hel­lo, lit­tle alien, this jumper looks just right for you, and YOU [to her friend stand­ing near­by star­ing as if at a train wreck], lit­tle Friend of Alien, this t‑shirt is per­fect for YOU.”

I myself came away with a cun­ning felt­ed croc­o­dile brooch! Which had sat dis­con­so­late­ly in the jew­el­ry draw­er, feel­ing infe­ri­or to the fake gold bracelets and lone ear­rings, for months. Now it’s mine. A bright orange cash­mere scarf emerged from the months-old pile of scarves, to be snatched up for a pret­ty pen­ny. Cups of tea were brought to us in the swel­ter­ing heat by din­ing room staff, our hands grew filth­i­er and filth­i­er, count­less girls iden­ti­fied items at the sale as “def­i­nite­ly mine” when of course they had­n’t missed them for aeons. Noth­ing new under the sun.

Now my thoughts are turn­ing ever more to our Con­necti­cut par­adise (or so it always seems from the van­tage point of Lon­don respon­si­bil­i­ties, sched­ules, oblig­a­tions). I pic­ture my old green and white quilt on my bed under a slop­ing ceil­ing, wavy glass to look through to the mead­ow, Avery’s room strung with rib­bons and all the old paper dress­es she makes every sum­mer. Laun­dry room hum­ming with bathing suits (swim­ming cos­tumes!), tow­els, kha­ki shorts, dish­tow­els that form the basis of our laun­dry loads at sum­mer time. After a few days, John’s beloved birds and our ground­hog and wild turkeys and red fox­es and blue herons will return for food, poor things, for six weeks! They do it every sum­mer. Avery will trap cray­fish, we’ll haul her tram­po­line and see­saw from the barn, dis­turb­ing the bats who will fly at sun­set for sev­er­al nights, in alarm.

But until we get there, we’ve still got Avery’s ortho­don­tist appoint­ment tomor­row, my recep­tion and life­guard-pay­ing duty at her school pool to put in dur­ing the evening, and one more day of school, one more ice skat­ing les­son, one more play to go to. What to take for the pic­nic, in Regen­t’s Park, under the glo­ri­ous sum­mer sun­set? I’m think­ing chick­en wings with blue cheese dress­ing, or slow-roast­ed pulled pork in wraps with sour cream and black beans. Or I could go all Indi­ana child­hood and make a meat­loaf in the morn­ing and turn it into sand­wich­es? Avery votes for sim­plic­i­ty: egg may­on­naise sand­wich­es on good Eng­lish white bread, crusts removed, of course. In the mean­time, there’s the post-pool din­ner. And it’s a win­ner. Although I must ask: can any­one tell the dif­fer­ence between rain­bow trout and salmon? I sure­ly could not, either in appear­ance or taste, and I admit guilti­ly that I did­n’t note the price dif­fer­ence. It went down just as hap­pi­ly no mat­ter what the fish it ulti­mate­ly might turn out to be. And if you lack Fox Point Sea­son­ing, sub­sti­tute anoth­er savoury salt mixture.

Grilled Rain­bow Trout with Red and Savoy Cab­bages and Cele­ri­ac Slaw
(serves 4)

1 side rain­bow trout
1 tbsp olive oil
Fox Point seasoning

2 cups each: shred­ded red cab­bage, Savoy cabbage
1 cup cele­ri­ac, cut into matchsticks
1/2 red onion, sliced very thin

dress­ing:

2 tbsps chilli-infused olive oil
3 tbsps mayonnaise
juice of 1 lemon
big dash cel­ery salt
loads of fresh ground black pepper

Place the trout on a large plat­ter, driz­zle with olive oil and sprin­kle with sea­son­ing. Let arrive to room tem­per­a­ture before grilling.

Place all dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a jar with a tight lid, and shake till mixed thor­ough­ly. Toss with the cab­bages, cele­ri­ac and onion and refrig­er­ate till needed.

Grill the trout skin side down for 4 min­utes at high heat (210C, 425F), then on the oth­er side for 4 min­utes. Remove skin.

To serve, mound the slaw on a plate and place the serv­ing of fish on top. A nice side of mashed pota­to is very good with this dish.

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You’ll LOVE this slaw. If you make it right before eat­ing, it will be quite crisp. If you refrig­er­ate it for awhile, dressed, before eat­ing, the fibers wilt a bit and pro­duce more the tex­ture of an Amer­i­can cole slaw. Pure nutri­tion, real­ly crunchy, and beau­ti­ful to look at with the red, green and white.

Right, I’m off to begin pack­ing. Who cares what I take? Red Gate Farm is a place where NO ONE will care what I look like (as if any­one does here, either, to be hon­est!) for at least six weeks. The pile of books to take is much more compelling…