the worst job in Lon­don (but also a great vis­it from NY)

Would­n’t you hate to know that every sin­gle per­son who calls you, all day long (and so many peo­ple call you that your line is near­ly always busy) hates you? And has nev­er even met you?

This is what it must be like to answer phones at… The Roy­al Bor­ough of Kens­ing­ton and Chelsea Declamp­ing Unit. Yes, it final­ly hap­pened. I got clamped. That’s how it feels. I don’t even feel as if they clamped the wheel of the car. I feel as if the hor­rid yel­low tri­an­gle was attached to my very own foot and tight­ened until I bled pounds. As in 115 pounds.

Does any oth­er city have such a nasty lit­tle park­ing scheme? Or as many rabid traf­fic war­dens who walk along in their ugly reflec­tive waist­coats (prob­a­bly because they know most motorists would dear­ly love to acci­den­tal­ly run them down), wait­ing by park­ing meters until the last pence drops and then pounc­ing on the wind­screen with glee and the sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing bled yet anoth­er dri­ver of yet anoth­er enor­mous­ly inflat­ed fine? We have, sev­er­al times, come upon a traf­fic war­den writ­ing out a tick­et for us, even though there were, say, five min­utes left on the meter. Just hop­ing we won’t come back in time. They must be on a com­mis­sion system.

The prob­lem is for the motorist that these war­dens are only occa­sion­al­ly caught in the act. Most­ly you come back to your car to find the tick­et flap­ping in the breeze. And there’s no one to scream at. But the poor man answer­ing the phones when you call in to get your car declamped, now he’s a sit­ting duck. A teth­ered tar­get for my wrath. The nasty park­ing reg­u­la­tors had played a cun­ning trick on me: they put a park­ing sign indi­cat­ing a “pay and dis­play” spot on a spot that was actu­al­ly, if one looked down at the road and noticed an extra lit­tle white paint­ed line, a “res­i­den­t’s only” spot. I fell for it, bought my tick­et, dis­played it proud­ly in the win­dow and went off hap­pi­ly to have lunch with friend Julia, vis­it­ing from New York. Only to come back two hours lat­er to the ugly truth.

Well, enough about that. The rest of the day was love­ly. Yes­ter­day, dur­ing Avery’s brief but unpleas­ant lit­tle ill­ness, I had got a text mes­sage from her sci­ence teacher indi­cat­ing that “we will all meet at Padding­ton at 8:15 a.m. next to the tick­et counter.” Indeed? And why would that be? “Oh, Mum­my, I for­got, Dad­dy signed the per­mis­sion slip. It’s the ‘Inter-Schools’ Sci­ence Chal­lenge’, in West­on­birt. We will spend all day there, and it was a real hon­or to be asked; just four girls in the class can go.” Well, it’s nice to be told. So I packed a lunch and hoped for the best, and sure enough, this morn­ing she was well enough to go. So we got our­selves to Padding­ton, met up with the oth­er lit­tle girls and the teacher, and I had just said, “See you at pick­up,” when the teacher smiled and said, “No, indeed, Mrs C, we’ll see you HERE at 6.” “P.M.?” I asked in amaze­ment. “Oh, yes, I asked Avery if you need­ed anoth­er per­mis­sion slip to know the details, but she said you knew all about it.” Sigh.

So my sev­en-hour free day became a 10-hour free day, and sud­den­ly my planned lunch with Julia, such a treat to see her, became a poten­tial­ly even nicer whole after­noon with her. Suf­fer­ing from a dread­ful spring cold as she was, she brave­ly met me at home after I had done all my lit­tle house­hold chores of dish­wash­er, lit­ter­box, laun­dry, bed­mak­ing and the like, and then I con­fi­dent­ly led us to the car, since I’m not afraid of dri­ving any­more and not (very) afraid of get­ting lost. Up to Not­ting Hill to a gor­geous place called E&O, one of the brain­chil­dren of the hot Aus­tralian chef and restau­ra­teur Will Rick­er. He was not in evi­dence this after­noon, how­ev­er, which is too bad since by all accounts he’s an amaz­ing, ener­getic man. The name stands for “East­ern & Ori­en­tal,” and I’m not sure why we need both des­ig­na­tions, but the food was sim­ply sublime.

Julia and I kept inter­rupt­ing our by no means bor­ing con­ver­sa­tion to exclaim over anoth­er unex­pect­ed tex­ture, or light­ness of touch, or unusu­al sauce. We start­ed with two dish­es to share: prawn and chive steamed dumplings, and a sauteed beef dish called “san choi bau” (the bits of beef a per­fect com­pro­mise between strips and mince) with red chilis and bean sprouts, to be wrapped in a let­tuce leaf with basil leaf and what I think were ground pinenuts sprin­kled on top. Spicy, light, salty and crunchy, it was sim­ply per­fect. And Julia declared that one bite blew her cold right out of the top of her head (although this prog­no­sis proved actu­al­ly a bit too opti­mistic on her part).

Then we went our sep­a­rate culi­nary ways and I had a tem­pu­ra soft shell crab, nice­ly halved and there­fore man­age­able with chop­sticks. There was a sour green dip­ping sauce that could have been pars­ley and cit­rus? Don’t know for sure, and I should have asked. Julia went for a green cur­ry with lichee and and aubergine and the pre­sen­ta­tion alone — topped with curls of sliv­ered red bell pep­per, daikon and a crispy fried aro­mat­ic herb — was worth the mon­ey. And the heav­en­ly cur­ry aro­ma, rich and coconut-milky, just per­fect. We end­ed up shar­ing every­thing, and talk­ing about her daugh­ter Nina, one of Avery’s rid­ing pals in New York, her work at the Guggen­heim on James Rosen­quist and oth­er Pop artists (she’s knee-deep in her dis­ser­ta­tion on Pop and col­lage, poor girl), my cook­book project, our var­i­ous fam­i­ly entan­gle­ments, joys and sorrows.

Well, I’m flag­ging. Avery’s safe­ly home from her Sci­ence Chal­lenge, which was per­haps both more, and less, than what one expect­ed. More on that lat­er. We are full of chick­en in a cal­va­dos and mush­room cream sauce, and ready for slumber.