Water
It has not been one of my better days.
It began, as my days so often do, yesterday. Or very early this morning: 1:30, approximately, when I went to run a bath and discovered I had no water.
And that began about a fortnight ago now, when they started digging up the road east of here. But a fortnight ago they were still safely out of town, on the road to the next little village. But they immediately started jackhammering their way back toward us again, and they arrived last Friday, so all this week it has been a total fricking nightmare this end of town. I think I’ve done some ranting about the way people blithely park on the double yellow line* on our piece of the road, which is mostly residential. Our road is also narrower than it is once you reach the centre of town, which is to say our road is two lanes wide, full stop. The shoulders are the vertical banks previously referred to, which Wolfgang and I had to climb a few days ago to get out of the way of a rampaging SUV which thought I was trying to get away with something. I was, I was trying to turn up my little cul de sac from a single traffic lane, which is all we’ve got at the moment. Since extra-large vehicles–troop carriers, perhaps, or tanks, or ground helicopter transport, disguised as passenger cars and painted in this year’s fashion colours–commonly park, as I say, on our double yellow lines, I should be accustomed to negotiating the merciless turn in and out of my cul de sac** while unable to see a blind bit of what’s coming in either direction. But it’s a funny thing, I am not accustomed, and I object, and furthermore there’s been increasing amounts of Large Paraphernalia hither and thither in both directions occupying even more space than the (lengthening) stretch they’re digging up, which means the extent of the single lane is stretching and stretching too, and the whole situation is too migraineworthy for words. Especially the prospect of their coming back again next week, which, since they’ve left all their toys behind, obviously they are going to.
Yesterday I was blazing back to the cottage to drop hellhounds off on my way to my piano lesson . . . and discovered I had no water. I ambled gently and nonchalantly down to the foot of my street and observed that some of the bozos in current occupation were wearing Southern Water logos so I attack–I mean I addressed one politely and he said oh, yeah, they’d turned it off, they’d turn it back on again in a little while.*** I didn’t have time to stay and chat† so I accepted this and shot off for my piano lesson.†† Friday afternoons are always a blur, and Peter was not playing bridge, so I went down to the mews after bell ringing practise. So I didn’t get home till . . . when I usually get home. And shortly thereafter discovered I had no water.
There were words. Hellhounds opened their eyes to check it had nothing to do with them.††† I found an old water bill and phoned the effing 24-hour emergency service and spoke to a surprisingly alert-sounding woman who did not deny that Southern Water had been mucking about on my street but said mildly that there were no reported problems. There are now, I replied. She promised to send someone round at 9 o’clock which I accepted gracefully, but it didn’t do a lot for my bath.
I didn’t sleep very well last night, for some reason. Something about the adrenaline spike getting stuck, perhaps.
But the water engineer was here at 9:05 and promptly went down in a sea of hellhounds. Fighting his way to the surface again he asked where the stopcock was, a question that had already exercised me somewhat, especially after the surprisingly alert woman had suggested I turn it off and on again to dislodge anything that was blocking my pipe, and I couldn’t find it. He eventually did, but had to take everything out of my under-sink cupboard first‡, where it was discovered in the farthest diagonal rear corner, and furthermore down a hole, where he couldn’t get his spanner‡‡ in the beggar.
Time passed. Only the hellhounds were happy.
I’m not sure how he finally mastered the thing. A small, trained, obedient goblin, perhaps. But at least I have water. Although given the amount of crud still coming through, I’m going to emerge from my bath tonight cinnamon-coloured‡‡‡ and I have no idea when I’ll be able to wash the white sheets from Wednesday Friend’s bed. Obviously if I weren’t a lazy slut I’d've done it already.
And that was only the beginning. But I want to go to bed now and read more of The Graveyard Book. And try not to get blood on anything.
* * *
* Ie, no parking
** Which is itself barely one lane wide, with brick-and-flint walls bordering both sides, in the uncompromising and inelastic way of brick and flint. Delivery trucks get stuck up here occasionally, which is always exciting.
*** Just as a matter of carefree curiosity what happens to, say, your washing machine, if it’s running and the water is suddenly turned off? Does it burn any of its bits out or anything?
† Nor did I have time to do running mad with an axe properly. Starting with the fact that I only have a hatchet for breaking up kindling.^
^ Hmm. Maybe I’ll get an axe for Third House, where there’s space for a woodpile, and room to swing an axe. And then it would be available for situations like these.
†† Where my cunning plan to play Name That Tune, my arrangement being rather successful, was slightly foiled by Oisin’s never having heard of Gypsy Rover. Gods, the man has such effing refined taste. He probably doesn’t even know who Led Zeppelin is. Or Peter, Paul and Mary. The only folk songs he knows are ones that Benjamin Effing Britten set. And he got them from Beethoven. Or possibly Haydn. Feh.
††† Or wasn’t the start of a promising new game. The auditory cues were inhibiting but the leaping around was hopeful.
‡ You don’t want to know. But he seems to think I hoard plastic bags. But he liked the hellhounds, so I forgive him calumnies on my personal habits.
‡‡ wrench
‡‡‡ Hey! Great! I can never get a tan!
Lemon Bars
I realise that after yesterday the last thing I should be thinking about is more sugar-shock specials, but the fact is that I keep thinking about my lemon bars. Other times I’ve been to the Ritz for tea* there has usually been a little lemon tartlet with a raspberry or a mint leaf on top among the dazzling pastry selection. Yesterday there wasn’t. And I missed it. But the awful, awful, the ludicrous and dishonourable truth is that I prefer my shortbread crust.**
2 c basic all purpose white flour
½ c confectioner’s/icing sugar
½ lb butter [sic]
Grated rind one lemon (do you have to be warned about ONLY grating the yellow part and NOT the white part? You also want unwaxed lemons if you’re going to eat the peel, and if I were you I’d want organic unwaxed lemons)
Mix flour and sugar; cut in butter and rind. Press in 13 x 9 inch pan (or reasonable equivalent. This is not a rocket-science, every 1/8th tsp counts, don’t slam the door while it’s baking, recipe). Bake 350° F 20 minutes, till light brown.
3 eggs, beaten till thoroughly mixed, but they should still be fluffy and foamy
2 c granulated sugar [sic]
½ c lemon juice (FRESH lemon juice. Anyone who uses Realemon or whatever ersatz rubbish they’re producing at the moment, is FOREVER BANNED from this blog)
1/3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
Beat sugar, flour and baking powder into eggs, then lemon juice. (The original recipe told you to beat in the lemon juice first, which is perverse, because the result is so thin the flour and baking powder will lump. Maybe I’m missing some rockety-sciency chemical reaction doing it my way, but almost everybody I’ve fed these to has wanted the recipe so I guess I can live with my shortcomings as a chemist.) Pour over baked crust. Bake 350° 25 minutes. It should be obviously set but only very faintly brown in the corners. Sprinkle with icing sugar, let cool. Let cool THOROUGHLY before you try to cut it into bars or you will be very sorry–in fact I recommend you let your refrigerator help you. It cuts better if it’s been refrigerated but it tastes better if you let it warm back up to room temperature.
And by all means put a raspberry or a mint leaf on top. Or both. I know there are a lot of lemon-meringue-pie-without-the-meringue cookies/bars/tarts out there (and indeed there are lemon-meringue-with-the-meringue cookies, bars and tarts out there too) but this is the one I use. A lot of them don’t have enough lemon juice in them. This one didn’t either in its original incarnation. Have I mentioned lately I’m an extremist?
* * *
* If you concentrate on having a Favourite Thing sometimes you can kind of create plausibility. Visiting Americans will also usually go for the tea at the Ritz plan–although Merrilee is jaded^, she knows me.
^ She was telling me about this amazing publishing party she’d been to while she was here, where they take over one of the big museums and you stroll around the priceless artefacts or go admire the view of London with your glass of wine and your canapés and your party frock+ and your exclusive company including no loud tourists or whining children. Yeep. I hope tea at the Ritz wasn’t too downmarket for her.
+ Although we were very well dressed yesterday. Merrilee was wearing a fabulous black lace dress and I was wearing a somewhat less fabulous twirly black skirt with lace insets but I was also wearing a very fabulous belt that Peter gave me for Christmas quite a few years ago now, with a big round black-and-clear-crystal rhinestone buckle as big as the palm of your hand. Well, as big as the palm of my hand, and I have big hands.
** Don’t tell them, or I’ll never get a booking again. The story I didn’t tell you about yesterday is that I’d done it by email and had a Confirmation Email with a Booking Reference Number which is eight letters, six numbers and a slash mark long^. It doesn’t say anywhere ‘print this out and take it with you’ but I was going to. And then it was on the wrong computer and I didn’t have time to go fetch it off the right computer so I went without it. And I therefore spent a not inconsiderable part of the journey up worrying that they’d have lost the booking and refuse to seat us and we’d be out on the street in our black lace and rhinestones and have to have tea out a Styrofoam cup at McDonald’s.^^
^ How do they come up with a system that creates Booking Reference Numbers that are eight letters, six numbers and a slash mark long?
^^ I wouldn’t cross the threshold of McDonald’s if I were dying of thirst/hunger/melting in the rain.+ Okay, tea out of a kiosk in Green Park. Actually that sounds kind of nice. Although the lace and rhinestones might have been a trifle superfluous.
+ I lie. Once a decade or so I use their restrooms. Although I think I missed this decade.
Tea at the Ritz
Yaaaay.*
http://www.theritzlondon.com/tea/index.asp
http://www.theritzlondon.com/pdfmenus/PALM%20COURT%20menu.pdf
And yes, okay, we had the tea and the glass of champagne. Sue us. And the scones–and the clotted cream and the strawberry jam–and the pastries and, oh yes, the little silly sandwiches with the crusts cut off and the delicate perfectly arranged thin layer of filling which is supposed to convince your bemused stomach that it’s being given food.** And we had the Ritz Royal English tea because the London Ritz is The Only Place in the World You Can Get It, so hey. (Also, I love Assam maybe best of all tea and Ceylon second, so double hey.) We swore to each other that we were not going to eat like menopausal women for the evening and we didn’t.*** Merrilee is going to get up early tomorrow morning and run laps around Hyde Park before she catches her plane home and I am going to give hellhounds an extra long walk.† Every day for the next month.
But the whole experience is such a rush. There are like six strapping young men in fancy-hotel uniform opening doors for you–all those superfluous doors exist specifically to lay on extra strapping young men in uniform††–just to get in to have your tea. And it’s all murals and gilt and floral arrangements the size of the Eiffel Tower everywhere you look. And the guys in the tailcoats††† that bring you your silver teapots and your silver tiered tea trays call you modom and do everything with a flourish and at one-and-a-half speed. If they were horses they’d all be prancing Hackneys.‡
And furthermore, because Merrilee is the best agent anyone ever had‡‡, she had scarfed me an advance galley of Neil Gaiman’s new book. I had brought the proofs for the paperback DRAGONHAVEN to read on the train . . . but on the way home I read The Graveyard Book instead. It is soooo wonderful. I have to go to bed now so I can read some more. . . .
* * *
* Well. Till I got home again. So, hellhounds have been pretty stable for a fortnight or so. I do not say that we do not have to go through The Ritual every meal^, but, as hellhounds go, they’ve been relatively stable.
So, this morning, Chaos has diarrhea. For the first time in two or three weeks. And getting lunch into him was one of our Epics.
And, you know what? I’m going to London anyway. I’m going to see Merrilee. And I do. And it was lovely. Till I got home and Chaos hadn’t touched his supper. Which means that tomorrow he’ll be fully into Living in Outer Space mode and I’ll need fancy NASA space-station billions-of-the-taxpayers’-money equipment to fetch him back again and my budget is more of the tinfoil hats to keep the alien rays out of your brain type. You know, I can’t stay home for the next fifteen years. I really can’t. Can I?
^ That’s every meal. That’s every, every meal. Every meal.
** Vegetables? You mean those green specks on the egg salad and the even thinner layer than other layers of cucumber, indeed the paper thin layer of cucumber, which is obviously to show off the chef’s hand on a kitchen mandolin, in a few of the sandwiches? And the cucumber sandwiches also have cream cheese in them. More cream cheese than cucumber in fact, which is not necessarily saying a lot. But they are very pretty.
*** Chocolate mousse! Itty bitty napoleon! Little bombe-shaped thingummy stuffed with caramel! Several varieties of fruit tart with custard and/or sugar glazes a quarter inch thick! More scones! More clotted cream! I’ve had my serious dairy ingestion bacchanal for the year! And will probably be paying for it for weeks! I don’t care! I had Tea at the Ritz!^
^ Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.
Sydney Smith
† In the vain hope of giving Chaos an appetite for lunch. Sigh.
†† Merrilee and I both thought there were unusual numbers of the door opening brigade even for the Ritz and that a lot of them seemed to be wearing wires, so maybe there was Someone Really Famous staying. If there was, we didn’t see them. Or maybe we just didn’t recognise them. ^
^ Colin Firth went to school in Winchester and there’s a rumour he’s bought a house around there somewhere. I never saw Pride and Prejudice. I never saw Bridget Jones. I’ve read both of them.
††† White. I think they’re black in winter, but I don’t actually go there often enough to have a mind for detail.^ I am too busy being dazzled.
^ Which is a good thing. Neither my wallet+ nor my waistline could stand it.
+ Although Merrilee won the arm wrestle and paid this one. Well, I was weakened by an encounter in Green Park, around which I was strolling because I arrived early. And a group of Young British People came up to me and asked politely if I knew where you got the boats. You mean like the Serpentine? That’s in Hyde Park. You go that way. –I told you I have that kind of face. And I laughed all the way back to the Ritz.
‡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_(horse) : ‘. . . In motion, they are recognizable by their showiness and style, with distinctive high knee and hock action due to very good flexion of their joints. They have a distinct moment of suspension, and reach out their front legs from their shoulders with each stride. Their hind legs’ flexibility allow those legs to rise up, bending the hock, and reach forward to carry the weight of the body during each stride. This distinctively spectacular movement makes the horse seem to float effortlessly over the ground. . . . ‘
‡‡ We were actually talking about The Tour Thing. Merrilee figured she could get away with this during tea at the Ritz when I probably won’t hide under the table because I might miss something. That was, however, before I got home and discovered Chaos hadn’t eaten supper. He has my best interests at heart, really he does. I don’t like touring.
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Hello folks
Hello folks, Robin’s second American guest here.
Robin was kind enough to pick me up at the station despite my having called her Tuesday night to say I’d be in at 3:30….. then again today to tell her I’d missed my train from Bangor and the subsequent re-routing of my ticket would result in my arriving at 5:30, not 3:30….then AGAIN from the platform in London to say I’d managed to catch a slightly earlier train on the last leg and I’d be arriving at 5. I wouldn’t have blamed her a bit if she’d just left me on the platform awaiting a return train. But she did pick me up, and didn’t throw me out of the car in retribution for all the time changes, and I’ve arrived more or less intact.*
As it happened, the late arrival meant that I’m in turn staying longer than originally planned. This led to two consequences; one you’re reading right now–I get to guest blog. Huzzah! And two, I got to go to Wednesday bell practice.
Do you play bridge? Because I don’t, and yet I sometimes read the bridge column in the paper for my own amusement just because it’s such complete gibberish–dummies and ruffles and clubbing your spades and all that kind of thing. Trying to follow what was going on in change ringing, beyond “Hmm, these people appear to be ringing some bells,” is similarly utterly indecipherable to the unindoctrinated. The ringing master keeps shouting out what seem like completely random words and phrases, and despite my best efforts to pay attention I only had a slightly better grasp of what he was talking about after than I did before. I did know, from reading Robin’s blog, that the ringers follow one another, and that who they follow relates to what pattern they’re ringing. So I decided to watch the fellow across from where I was sitting and see where he was looking. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated, as that particular fellow had a slight cast in one eye and I couldn’t for the life of me tell who he was actually looking at. So that was a wash. But the extreme high point was getting to climb up into the tower and see the bells themselves (you can’t from where they’re ringing, the ropes go right up into the ceiling) and then having a go at pulling a rope myself. Wild Robert was kind enough to run me through the basic parts of ringing a huge-ass bell, and it was pretty fabulous if I do say so. Next time I’ll have to show up for sacred home tower practice on a Friday. Though next time I might just have to abandon the train and hire a car….**
* * *
* This is the POLITE version. I got this email from her like ten days ago saying, hi, I’m coming to England this week, want to meet up? And I’m: yo, woman, you couldn’t have given me WARNING? Naah. Warning wasn’t in the plan.^ Blah. Phooey. So, she says she wants to experience some bell ringing. We can do this. She’s going to be in this area on Wednesday, and I ring bells every Wednesday at the same tower, so they have to be glad to see me and be nice to anyone I bring even if my visitor lives four thousand miles away and is never going to be anyone they can ask to ring that wedding when all the local band are in Bermuda. So I say, great, stay over Wednesday night, I’ll take you to practise. But noooooo. She doesn’t have time to stay overnight . . . grrrrrr . . . let it be known that I do not take it well when I am teased about bell ringing. So, okay, she’s going to be here about four hours, we’ll have tea, hang out, whatever. And then I’ll put her back on the train and make rude gestures as it pulls out of the station. And then I’ll go bell ringing.
I got back from walking the hellhounds this morning to a message on my phone machine that she’d missed her train and er um not only is she getting in late but she’s going to have been on a train for a very long time–apparently the rerouting was via Edinburgh–and er um was that offer of a bed overnight still good? Er um.
At this point I looked vacantly into the middle distance for a moment with a grisly little smile and contemplated my options. After running through a few of the more extreme ones I decided the one that appealed to me the most was to say suuuuuure, I’ll give you a bed for the night (I might even throw in supper if you behave) but (a) you have to come to bell practise with me and (b) you have to GUEST BLOG. After all, the new rule is that anyone who stays overnight has to guest blog. Mwa ha ha ha ha.
^ Plan? There was a plan?
** Next time you’d better give me BETTER WARNING or there will be SERIOUS TROUBLE.