tis the season!

Final­ly! After weeks of watch­ing Lon­don get pre­pared for Christ­mas (since they have only the fake Hal­loween and no Thanks­giv­ing to dis­tract them), we can join in the fun. And also, final­ly, I locat­ed Avery’s beloved Advent cal­en­dar at the tip­py-top most hid­ing place of her clos­et, so we dust­ed it off and hung it on her door, and sure enough, dur­ing the night the elves found it and left a tiny, tiny red shoe, dec­o­rat­ed with a glit­tery gold drag­on­fly, to hang on the tree. We were slight­ly con­cerned that they would not find us here, but Avery point­ed out that even in all the con­fu­sion last year with pack­ing up Jay Street and say­ing good­bye to Red Gate Farm, all was serene with the elves.

Now, it must be all in the pre­sen­ta­tion, because yes­ter­day I had my penul­ti­mate screen­writ­ing course, and although I don’t think I am any near­er to hav­ing a great short film in me than a great nov­el, class was great. Maybe it’s just chem­istry. It was the day to bring in my short film script, a copy for every­body, and have them act it out! First of all I got points for actu­al­ly remem­ber­ing to bring copies, so poor Mike the tutor did­n’t have to spend pre­cious part-time-staff points bor­row­ing the machine in the office. OK, it’s not points for tal­ent, but just for sec­re­tar­i­al atten­tion to detail, but I was hap­py. Then I had to cast the parts, which was fun­ny because I had­n’t thought about their all being Eng­lish and my char­ac­ters being New York­ers, in New York. So lis­ten­ing to super-Eng­lish Alex talk about “Gold­man,” and “Lehman,” and “the 1/9 2/3 to the Bronx” was hys­ter­i­cal! Bex was, pre­dictably, more com­fort­able with her lines, since she’s a pro­duc­er for our night­ly favorite pro­gramme, News­night, that deals with loads of inter­na­tion­al issues. Avery would point out right there that “loads” is a very Eng­lish thing to say. And the whole class yes­ter­day was a study in the huge dif­fer­ence between Eng­lish and Amer­i­can Eng­lish, as well as the core cul­tur­al things, the lit­tle every­day details, that make fit­ting in one or the oth­er place a real­ly tricky thing to try.

Now, most of my Amer­i­can friends don’t try. They are hap­py being vis­i­tors in the place where they live, and prob­a­bly that says a lot about their strength of char­ac­ter in the face of unfa­mil­iar­i­ty. I, on the oth­er hand, at least want to know what I would be say­ing if I were Eng­lish, even if I feel too sil­ly say­ing it. So I end up ask­ing a lot of ques­tions. Hon­est­ly, if you don’t actu­al­ly live here you can’t imag­ine how many small things there are to fer­ret out and under­stand, and unless you just let the unfa­mil­iar things wash over you, get­ting used to all the dif­fer­ences can occu­py a lot of your mind’s ener­gy. Mike point­ed out that by the same token, he could­n’t write an Amer­i­can script. “I’ve nev­er heard of… what is it in your sto­ry? ‘Fan­ny pack’?” “Bum bag,” Bex con­tributed help­ful­ly. See? She’s bilingual.

Why, then, was I in just as for­eign and chal­leng­ing a social set­ting yes­ter­day as I was on Sat­ur­day at fic­tion, and yet yes­ter­day was suc­cess­ful? John sug­gests it’s some­thing to do with the rel­a­tive uber-con­fi­dence of the Eng­lish would-be nov­el­ist, as com­pared with the con­fi­dence of the Eng­lish would-be film­mak­er. It’s always more com­fort­ing to be uncer­tain togeth­er! Where­as there is lit­tle uncer­tain­ty in the fic­tion class, and con­se­quent­ly it’s more intim­i­dat­ing, and less open to an out­side view­point. And because the read­ing-out day was real­ly the first time we all got to hear each oth­er’s projects, yes­ter­day was real­ly per­son­al. Of course we all wrote auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal scripts, as well. Lynn wrote a hilar­i­ous script (remind­ed me a bit of David Sedaris, tru­ly my favorite com­ic writer) about Christ­mas, from the point of view of an 11-year-old boy, but ground­ed in her own expe­ri­ences. So Eng­lish! There was “San­ta’s grot­to,” which every­one explained was San­ta sit­ting and tak­ing chil­dren on his knee and grant­i­ng their wish­es, only with a typ­i­cal twist­ed Eng­lish sort of slant: “he always fan­cies the lit­tle girls a BIT too much,” was the pre­vail­ing theme! And every­one root­ing through a box of Qual­i­ty Street, which only because I live here do I rec­og­nize as sort of upscale super­mar­ket choco­lates. And “rub­bish in the dust­bins,” instead of “garbage in the trash cans,” and peo­ple being told to “sod off,” which (I can nev­er remem­ber) is either much bet­ter or much worse than our Amer­i­can equiv­a­lent, which this being a fam­i­ly show I can­not type out.

Any­way, one more class to go. I will miss Bex, and even Mike the tutor, who in his low-ener­gy way is actu­al­ly real­ly fun­ny, and occa­sion­al­ly informative.

Then I raced home and made lasagne for Avery, her new favorite, and lis­tened to her tell about the choral group, and we all exclaimed over the hilar­i­ous “tea-tow­el” that we bought loads of, for Christ­mas presents. A minia­ture self-por­trait of each lit­tle QCPS face! It was heart­warm­ing to see how many we knew, a lot from the morn­ing read­ing, and var­i­ous fundrais­ers. Good fun.

I want­ed to give you a good pota­to recipe, lift­ed shame­less­ly from the pages of Hel­lo! mag­a­zine. In the old days, when we lived here in the ear­ly 1990s, the recipe fea­ture was called “Food of the Week,” and here is a glimpse of the fool­ish nature of my new­ly­wed rela­tion­ship with my hus­band: on the day the new issues came out each week, John would call me up from the office and car­ol, “Guess what the Food of the Week is?” Now, dis­ap­point­ing­ly, it is called “Cook­ery.” What mind­less beau­ro­crat sat down at his desk and thought, “there must be a way to make this fea­ture less inter­est­ing. I know, we’ll change the name!” Any­way, I have had this par­tic­u­lar recipe sit­ting on my desk for an age, and final­ly made it to go along with stuffed pork roast and sauteed red pep­pers, this week.

Hello!‘s Cheese and Leek Croquettes
(serves four-ish)

1 lb floury potatoes
3 tbsps olive oil
1 leek, fine­ly trimmed and minced
4 oz grat­ed mature ched­dar cheese
1 egg yolk
salt and fresh­ly ground pepper

flour for dipping
1 egg, beaten
2 oz bread­crumbs mixed with 2 oz grat­ed cheddar

First of all, you can see that the mea­sure­ments of dry ingre­di­ents are all in weight, not vol­ume! This always flum­mox­es me a bit, hav­ing a mea­sur­ing cup but no scale. I tend to wing it in quan­ti­ties, any­way, but I trust that if you weighed your bread­crumbs and cheese instead of grab­bing a hand­ful, you’d be in good shape.

Boil the pota­toes till soft and drain and mash, then let cool. Mean­while, saute the leek in the olive oil and let cool as well. Mix the pota­toes and leek with the cheese, egg yolk and sea­son­ings, and form into either lit­tle sol­diers, or about five crab­cake-sized sort of hock­ey pucks (OK, I’m para­phras­ing here, sor­ry). Chill for an hour, or just as long as you can, then dip first in flour, then in egg, then in the bread and cheese mix­ture, and fry in olive oil, gen­tly, till crispy. Drain on paper tow­els (kitchen paper to the English).

These were delicious!

OK, I am off to have lunch with my friend Twig­gy on this cold, rainy day. Major scaf­fold­ing is going up out­side my study win­dow as the build­ing across the street pre­pares to get an exter­nal ele­va­tor, so all is not as serene here as usu­al. My dad always said he should have bought stock in a scaf­fold­ing com­pa­ny in Lon­don, because it seems that as soon as it comes down from one build­ing, it goes up on the adja­cent. Fair enough.