four simple pleasures

1. Last night, I made a meal I hadn’t made in over two years — something involving pork chops, cider vinegar, shallots, and slices of tart Granny Smith apple.  It was better than I remembered.

2. M and I had a lazy Saturday.  We stayed in bed until gone 9.30.  We had a lazy summer lunch on the porch at Parker and Otis.  And in the evening we watched two movies back to back.  He introduced me to one: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Verdict: better than I’d expected.  I introduced him to one: The Notebook.  Verdict: ridiculous, stupid, critically terrible movie that everyone must endure.

3. Tonight I made pasta with the basil I’ve been growing on my porch.

4. L is on her way over with a batch of blueberry muffins.  She said the blueberries are too tart this time.  Perfect.  It makes the roof of my mouth tingle to think of them.

(It seems most of my simple pleasures involve food.  Or M.)

end of summer

Fall 2009 has officially begun, and I need to come to terms with that.  As do my plants, incidentally.  Despite a morning drink, they are still shivering in the heat, surrounded by dry, dry soil when I get home.  This is definitely still summer, they say.  I wish it were true.

This weekend, I tried to do things that would lull me into a false sense of continued summer.  Went to the farmer’s market and bought happy bright red flowers.  Had Sunday brunch with L at Guglhupf.  Had tea with A & C at Parker and Otis (incidentally, P&O’s Bangkok green tea and sticky macaroons are a coconut-flavoured dream).  Engaged in random frenzied apartment-cleaning session.  Watched Julie & Julia with L (cooking + writing + Meryl = time very well spent).  Drank wine.  Read Dickens.

But today summer ended.

It began with a tutoring tutorial. (I’ll be working in the Writing Studio this semester.)  Eight-thirty-till-four training will continue until the very-much-anticipated weekend with M (beginning with a literary-themed food party on Friday night!)  My sofa is a little shell-shocked from a pressure-free day.

Fall 2009.  It was freshman move-in day on campus.  As I negotiated for an early parking place on a side street near East (resorting to a mental “please, Mr. Traffic Cop; don’t enforce the two-hour limit today”), shiny SUVs unloaded Moms, Dads, boxes, laundrey hampers, and the Duke Class of 2013, sporting flourescent yellow freshman move-in t-shirts.  They wore their dorm room keys in plastic name-tag pouches around their necks and milled around with frightened eyes and heads held high.

I never did “Dorm Move-In.”  The most I could unload had to fit into two suitcases, and I lived in a small apartment in Mississippi with LNB, just off campus.  The closest I got to dorm-life was the semester in Pontlevoy, France; but LNB and I shared there, too, so there was none of that strange-new-roommate business.  The same story in Exeter.   Still, watching the scene on campus today brought to mind the familiar rush of that fresh new move, the smell of unpacking and adrenaline.   For me, it’s just another school-year starting; and, I suppose, if I stay in academia,  I’ll witness many more like it.   But even if there’s no substantial change, buying new pens and paper from the stationary store always brings with it a sense of possibility — a new leaf to turn.  I like using this time of year to refresh and re-think my routine.

Perhaps I’ll go to Office Depot tomorrow.

summer sunset

The fourth of July was a perfect English summer’s day.  As the evening closes and the sun begins to set, the sky is every colour a summer evening sky can be: deep blue, baby blue, yellow, green, pink, red, purple.  Thin slivers of grey cloud are skirting the horizon as I watch from an upstairs window.  Alone in this big quiet house I can hear the laughter and conversations of villagers at the pub across the road.  They are drinking a pint to a long warm Saturday.  The pigeons are vying for attention with the barks of the blind village dog.  He haunts the pub scrounging for food every night.

When I was young, pints at the little village pub were only pulled for tired old men who used The Eagle as an escape-valve after work.  Now, under new ownership, it’s the heart of this little Hampshire village.  Children play in the grassy back garden.  Teenage boys play pool on the bar side.  The village eccentric, dressed in green overalls, brings his own engraved silver mug for a pint.  Every few minutes he steps outside to puff on his pipe (always complaining under his breath that the smoking ban has ruined his evenings).  Last year he got married, and the whole village took part.  He owns the village donkeys and collects Aston Martins.  He tips his cap to me whenever he sees me, accuses me of slipping into a terrible American accent, and stands when a woman enters the room.

Friday night is curry night at The Eagle, and last night my Dad and I shared poppadoms while we listened to locals debate the new drafts.  Not enough bite.  Too bitter.  Not deep enough.  It took forever to order a drink; they had to change the barrel.  Everyone knows each other here, but I feel like a stranger now, a foreigner in the village that has been home since I was two.  When my parents first moved here from the north, they were warned that you remained a newbie until you’d been around for at least 10 years.  After 24 years here, everyone knows my Dad, who used to be known as “slippers,” due to an unfortunate tendency to forget to change his footwear when heading out for a pint.  You can hardly blame him; the pub is just at the other end of our garden wall.  We commonly have a collection of Guinness glasses in our dishwasher — why buy cans of Guinness when you can nip across the road to get take-away on tap?

It’s a beautiful evening for a pint outside the village pub.  Wimbledon finals weekend.  It’s a pity there’s no British win to toast.  But on July 4th, I can’t say I’m too unhappy that there’s an American contender.  I have divided loyalties now.  I’m a bit of a foreigner here.