tri­umph at the Pony Club Quiz!

Yes, Avery’s team in the under-12s won their “Area 12” group of the Pony Club Quiz! Area 12 is, I found out through assid­u­ous googling, the “North­ern Home Coun­ties” of Eng­land, which includes all of Lon­don. As Vene­tia, head girl at Ross Nye Sta­bles put it, “Avery won it for us!” She was pos­i­tive­ly jump­ing up and down like a jack-in-the-box last evening when we went to col­lect her at the sta­ble, a lit­tle bounc­ing fig­ure in the dark, clutch­ing her blue rosette. “We won, we won!” So she and her lit­tle com­pan­ions are all set to move on to the next round, which I think is all of Area 12, and then Region­als, near to East­er. Well done! That barn has been incred­i­ble for her self-esteem, not to men­tion leg mus­cles. As she fell asleep she mur­mured, “I nev­er had any­body do a three cheers for me before. Hip, hip, HOORAY… for Avery!”

So she tripped off to school this morn­ing with her rosette, and I’m sure she will have plen­ty of sto­ries to tell.

I myself have not been idle. Did I tell you I final­ly got all the hor­ri­ble ugly hair col­or from last spring cut off? Yes, on Coco’s moth­er’s rec­om­men­da­tion I head­ed off to Shep­herd’s Bush and under the min­is­tra­tions of Rad­i­na, got all the bad col­or gone, a new nice, sub­tle blonde-ish col­or put on in high­lights, and a nice, if too-short cut. Took years off my appear­ance, I have to say. Plus they were ter­ri­bly nice, and all just like char­ac­ters out of a British tele­vi­sion show. Very homey, lots of in-house gos­sip, advice giv­en on all sub­jects from school choice to the best way to cook sea bream, and a lit­tle glimpse into the teenage years to come. Rad­i­na told me wise­ly, “Kris­ten, if your daugh­ter comes to you at any time, come the teen years, and wants to do some­thing with her hair, just you let her do it. Because it’s either that or pierc­ings, and hair GROWS BACK.” As I sat there, out­last­ing all the oth­er ladies who had less demand­ing hair prob­lems, a nice Eng­lish lady sat down to have a sham­poo. Her hair­dress­er asked if she’d man­aged to get that birth­day present off to her son in time. “No, I found out it would cost the price of the book to get it to Wash­ing­ton in time, so there’s just a card in the post, now. I would have liked him to have a lit­tle some­thing to open, on the day, but he’s 42 this year and per­haps it won’t mat­ter so much.” Oh, it made me home­sick for my own mum! I’m turn­ing 42 as well, this year, but I still want a present from my mum on the day. Just so she knows. Now it’s public.

Then today I ven­tured off to a shop a friend has been urg­ing me to vis­it ever since we arrived last year, but for some rea­son, some things just go undone until one day it’s absolute­ly imper­a­tive to find roast­ed almonds in bulk, and poof! Off goes the lit­tle light­bulb about where my friend said to get nuts in bulk. And every­thing else exot­ic and Lebanese, as it tran­spires. Green Val­ley is the place to go if you want the most deli­cious lamb sand­wich you will ever have, called a shawar­ma: in-house just-baked pita bread, stuffed with home­made pick­les, pep­pers, onions, car­rots and shav­ings of roast lamb, which I then topped with their yoghurt sauce with cucum­bers and dill. Warm, deli­cious, and very fill­ing. John of course inhaled his in the time it took me to lift the sand­wich to my mouth, so I think he was pret­ty hap­py as well. I had such fun trawl­ing the aisles. Every kind of olive you can imag­ine, and dozens of dif­fer­ent sorts of chick peas, and many brands of tahi­ni (I can’t imag­ine why you’d need more than one, but then I’m not Lebanese). Real­ly high qual­i­ty pro­duce (I bought a cou­ple of gua­va, think­ing sure­ly they give juice?), seem­ing­ly hun­dreds of vari­eties of bakla­va, nougat and oth­er sweet things that did not tempt me, but might you. Spices I had nev­er heard of, like “lime pow­der,” can’t imag­ine what that’s for, but some cook might not be able to exist with­out it and is search­ing Blog­ger for some­one who can tell you where to buy it. There you go. And a love­ly new bev­er­age (because I’ll try any­thing that smacks of a way to drink water that does­n’t taste like water), made from hibis­cus flow­ers. Becky would laugh so much, as she does every day at school pick­up when I show up with a new bot­tle and either a thumbs up or resound­ing thumbs down. But do go to Green Val­ley if like me you adore food shopping.

Oh, and a place to vis­it if you need gifts. We went before Christ­mas and I meant to describe this shop right away, but the brochure found its way to the bot­tom of the pile of things on my desk that need attend­ing. It’s called The Big Toma­to Com­pa­ny, in St. Helen’s Gar­dens in West Kens­ing­ton, and what they do is put fun­ny expres­sions, epi­thets, nick­names, you name it, on cof­fee mugs, uten­sil con­tain­ers, serv­ing plat­ters, every­thing. One of my favorites was the toast rack that read “nice rack.” I bought “los­er” for John, because of his obses­sive rant­i­ngs at bad dri­vers: “You’re a big fat los­er!” And I want­ed “dark horse” for Avery, but they were sold out. I bought “foot­baller’s wife” for Alyssa, and “dra­ma queen” for Annabelle. You could get a teapot with “not for all the tea in chi­na,” or a cof­fee cup with “yum­my mum­my.” The pro­pri­etors were there and very keen to chat. They’ve cracked the Amer­i­can mar­ket already, but John and I feel con­fi­dent they could have a fab­u­lous suc­cess in, say, Noli­ta in New York. Go, do, and indulge your­self in some­thing funny.

Well, we’re off to see anoth­er house, in Not­ting Hill. The one in Bed­ford Square fell through because a ginor­mous devel­op­er turned up with cash and the abil­i­ty to close in ten days, so John is very sad. Some­thing will turn up. Maybe it will turn out there’s a high­ly lucra­tive quiz show called “Who Wants To Be A Sta­ble­hand?” and Avery will be the sav­ior of us all…