After decades of urban sophistication, career hopping, and ambitious cocktail swilling, I traded it all for 11th hour parenthood. Apparently you can’t just hand in your 2 weeks’ notice for this one and there is no vacation..

I have many of my most interesting conversations with Seven in the car.

The other day, after she had spent an afternoon with a rather precocious friend, she asked me if I would ever let her watch a film that was rated PG-13.

I said I absolutely would, once she was, say, thirteen.

But would I, she persisted, let her see one, maybe when she was really big, but not quite thirteen. Perhaps when she was nine or ten?

I thought about this for a bit.

“If it’s PG-13 for violence, then no. If it’s for scary bits, we’ll see how brave you are by then but judging by today I’d say probably not. If it’s for rude words, I’d probably say okay if you promised not to repeat them, and if it’s for, um, smoochy stuff, I’d have to think about it”

“Smoochy stuff!” said Seven. “That’s no big deal! It’s just kissing! I already know about that. I  kiss you, you kiss me, I kiss Four and Daddy, that’s smooching, isn’t it?”

“Um, no, not exactly, Darling” I say, wondering how to put this delicately. “It’s more like grownup married kissing, Mummies and Daddies and all that”

I hoped that would end the conversation.

It didn’t

“But that’s still just a stupid kiss so that will be okay, then?”

I think carefully.

“Well, maybe PG-13 is a bit more than just a kiss. It might involve bottom squeezing or something like that .”

Seven falls about laughing at this ridiculous notion

“So ya stand there kissing and squeezing your own butt? That’s really FUNNY!!!”

(that IS really funny, and might also have been sexier than some of the toads who’ve squeezed my bottom, but I digress)

“Um, no darling, generally they squeeze each other’s bottoms.”

More hilarity ensues.

“Squeeze somebody else’s butt! That’s just CRAAAZZZY!”

Long may this innocence last.

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Four started his new preschool this week and it has been extremely turbulent.

He himself has been perfectly fine and seems very stable, it’s me that is a neurotic, weeping wreck, racing like a silly clucker around the streets and internets with my head clearly left behind somewhere in the sawdust .Or perhaps I mean that my head was full of sawdust to begin with and this stressful event merely caused it to burst open and leak in an unattractive and very public way?

I had started out rather pleased with myself. Preschools in this city are notoriously expensive and difficult to get into with one having to put down the child’s name prior to considering conception and paying large application fees which you will never see again to fill out forms in triplicate that explain Junior’s little ways and how you see his strengths ( clearly!) and weaknesses (none, of course, except for some you make up for false modesty’s sake but they’re really little boasts disguised as foibles ” Four has a tendency to insist on working through differential equations before he will allow you to give him dessert but we are working on flexibility and allowing for the needs of others”).

I did my due diligence and phoned about 80 preschools back in October, most of which said they wouldn’t have space, then I visited 5 who said they might if I was very extremely lucky and they’d take my application fee anyway at $100 a pop, and out of those I applied to three, hoping very much that one in particular would come through. It was near our new office and was not quite as sickeningly expensive as the others (although still considerably more than we paid in Stepford) and had a charming arts-based curriculum and lots of nice grass and books and plenty of psychological theory that appeals directly to middle-class parents like me who are anxious and vaguely guilty about leaving their precious little flowers all day long at a nursery school. Come to think of it, I would quite like to have attended the school myself – they visited a carousel once a week, not just to have a ride, you see, but to study the animals and then draw them in great detail and create clay representations of what they had ridden. I saw Four becoming a contributor to SFMOMA.. It seemed perfect and they told me to call back in April to secure the spot. This was great.

However, I phoned again in April and to my dismay they suddenly sounded rather non-committal about the availability of a space for him. My heart sank – what on earth was I going to do with an active 4-year old when I needed to work, and by then there would be nowhere that would take him  and all my other applications had informed me that he was very low on the waiting list. I started scouring websites and school ratings sites and I randomly came across a YMCA preschool very close to the house we had by now rented that got fantastic reviews. I thought it extremely unlikely they’d have any space but I rang them anyway and to my surprise I got through immediately to the preschool director and she said that there might be a spot or two but I’d have to come to the open house the following weekend and sign up then, in the mean time all the other details were online. I read through their curriculum and it looked pretty good. Play centred yet still focused on getting them ready for Kindergarten which is exactly what Four would need. It sounded ideal.

As luck would have it Husband was teaching that weekend in San Francisco and I quickly arranged for the whole family to come up with him and I was pretty much camped outside the tiny YMCA, which serves only as a preschool and a senior citizen’s center as it opened on the Saturday morning for their open day.  As the first in line I managed to sign Four up for one of two spots for his age group starting in the summer, and I nearly fell off my chair when the administrator told me apologetically that I’d have to pay full price for August, which was already half the price of the other school, but come September a citywide grant would kick in and every child would get a further reduction of $250 per month. Oh, and they provided a free hot lunch for all the kids, too.

OMFG! WIN!

The tour was good. It wasn’t full of bells and whistles, but the classroom was set up in a similar way to a Kindergarten room and the play yard was well equipped. If the toys were a little older and more loved, they looked tidy and clean as were the loos and kitchen. I hoped it would work out.

So. Time passed. We went back to Stepford. We moved to San Francisco. We settled in. Monday morning rolled around and it was time for Four to start preschool.

We had had a little visit on Friday so it wouldn’t be a complete shock. He seemed to like it so we had high hopes for leaving him a couple of hours on his first day.

But he cried and cried. I couldn’t stand it.

And the staff didn’t seem prepared for it, or to pay any special attention to him. I was absolutely gutted and I had to leave Husband to do the final leave-taking and I sat in the car and sobbed. How could this be happening? The school suddenly seemed not ‘real and diverse’ but ‘low rent and substandard’. I thought of my precious boy there and the magical year of Four and I worried that he wouldn’t get any enrichment, that they’d just leave him there to wander around aimlessly.

I phoned my lovely carousel school and asked again if they had a space. By miracle they suddenly did! Husband and I zoomed over to get an enrolment packet.

We fetched Four from the YMCA where he claimed to have had a very nice day and a delicious lunch and took him with us for the tour.

We loved it

Four was unimpressed.

Husband and I oohed and ahhed over the artwork and the Reggio Emilio philosophy of creating the child’s sense of identity.

Four squarely told the director “I not coming here. I love my other preschool”

I laughed falsely, pushing Four towards some interesting looking trucks and said “Oh, I think he must mean his school in Stepford..”

Husband and I agreed that the program was superior and was probably altogether more educational. We tried to sell Four on the weekly carousel rides.

Four said “I love my new preschool. I don’t want to go here”

That night we worried and agitated. It was certainly more convenient for us to keep him 5 minutes from home a half the price with free lunch but what about his psychological development?

What about the self-portraits in charcoal and wire?

At the Y they might have been pratting about with some clay and glitter but there seemed to be quite a bit of general crowd control and a soupcon of benign neglect but maybe not enough attention.

Or did I mean not enough attention to parents?  I was unfortunately not completely clear on this.

Four reported increasing satisfaction with each passing day which added to my confusion. On top of this I began to consider how much poorer we’d be if I sent him to Elves and Fairies and how incredibly inconvenient it would be to have to take him on the bus or drive downtown every day and how I’d never be able to go to a daily dance class if I did that, and far from making this an easier choice, it made it harder as then I felt GUILTY at the thought that I might choose my happiness over Four’s wellbeing.

Bugger it! I’d be halfway down a bottle of scotch by now if I actually drank.

On Tuesday night I decided to send him to the expensive preschool so I sent an email to the director taking up her offer of a place.

But she didn’t write back to me.

So by this afternon (Thursday) I had reconsidered and I went down to the YMCA and spent a little time there  talking to the staff and asking questions and just watching how Four and the others were getting on. I couldn’t drag him away. He loved it.

And you know what? I’m coming around to seeing things his way.

Panic over.

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. And as Husband pointed out, we can easily spend some of the extra money we might have spent at the other place on supporting the preschool that would benefit not only Four, but all the kids there and also help support the teachers. That would be a win for everyone.

How very San Francisco. We’re going native already

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Thank FUCK we’re back in civilisation.

They deliver the New York Times here, one can get a decent espresso at the corner bakery, the corner shop sells fresh bread, organic produce, delicious olives and, most importantly, Chocolate Digestives.

I have been riding my bike around the neighborhood – I hadn’t been on the damn thing since I fell pregnant with Seven – and I was overcome by a fabulous sense of freedom and the re-emergence of my real self, one that had been lying dormant all those Stepford years. As I pootled the other day on my own through the Mission Disrict, buying a few bike accessories and poking into the interesting shops and restaurants, I wondered how I had survived for so long without this kind of mental stimulus and I reflected that I had done exactly and only that – survived – whereas what I really intend, nay deserve to do is THRIVE.

Since I became a mother I have always looked after other peoples’ needs rather than my own, reasoning that as my children are my most beloved and precious things, it made sense to put their happiness and security above mine. I still believe that to a large degree, but I don’t think I quite knew where to draw the line. I put their father’s needs before mine as in practical terms this made some sort of sense – I needed to accommodate his career in order to preserve financial security which in turn would protect the children, but in doing all this the real me got lost. So I spent seven years wandering in the small-town cultural desert with no real sense of direction while the sun beat wrinkles and resentment into my skin.

Fortunately I had just enough energy and gumption left to manouever us out of there and into a proper metropolis where the bubbling clamour and stink of a million lives lived on top of each other would let me breathe and dream again.

Four starts preschool next week and Seven is already in a camp where, last week, they dissected a cow’s eyeball and this week will spend a morning in a tactile dome. I shall be moving into my new office (the computer and teapot, essential tools of business already packed) and I have several social engagements on my calendar already.

Life is good.

I shall continue to report from the field.

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I have been quiet but not idle these last months.

Since I last posted Six became Seven and Three turned into Four, I threw two birthday parties with the obligatory whimsical cakes, Husband was awarded tenure and immediately became a nicer and more relaxed person, we started our new company and were slightly taken aback to have a client before we were exactly ready (no complaints, though) and I even managed to squeeze in a mad dash to London where I spent a terrifying amount of money on new clothes and lunch in a very short space of time (we won’t dwell on that, although Visa is very happy that I did).

And here I am, writing a quick post instead of packing up all our worldly goods which is what I should be doing because we are pulling out of Stepford in about 10 days.

We’ve been here seven and a half years. I can hardly believe it. Of course I know it in some deep way because here is my seven year old daughter and when I came here I was barely pregnant. I arrived a young woman, excited and looking forward to motherhood, and I’m leaving it a no-longer-young woman (fuck it, I seem to have crossed the great wrinkle divide without any fanfare or serious fun) looking forward to getting back into some proper work, money and city action as this small-town, stay-at-home thing has more than run its course.

I am not entirely sure what is going to happen next, but to be honest, that is just how I like life. The predictability of Stepford is one of the things that got me down so badly. When I look back on my life as it was before marriage and kids, I used to wake up in the morning (I use the term ‘morning’ loosely) and think to myself happily that no matter how I started my day, by 10pm my whole entire life could be utterly different. And often it was.

That hasn’t happened much, if at all over the last 7 or 8 years, saving the days my children were born – those days were big changers, to be sure.

From this time here I will always be grateful for the beautiful, peaceful and safe surroundings in which I could raise two babies without the pressure of having to go to a job every day. The weather is mostly perfect, and I learned to appreciate routine and personal responsibility in a way that I never had before.  I am now fully capable of providing nutritious meals at regular intervals and they’re nearly always on time. I quite often eat them myself which is a big improvement on days of yore when I lived on Smarties and Coca-cola.
Another Stepford plus is that I always used to find the hours between 4pm and 7pm vaguely depressing, though I couldn’t tell you why. Since Stepford I have been either too busy feeding and caring for children or rushing out the door to a dance class to have time for any happy hour melancholia.
We’ve had amazing neighbours and our children have been happy and settled at their schools. I love flying out of the toy airport – it’s hilariously tiny and pretty and you never have to check in more than 1/2 an hour before a flight, even if you’re going across the world.

But this does not a life make.

I’m ready to go and we’re on our way.

Farewell, Stepford. It’s been real.

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I’m not terribly interested in Wills & Kate.

In fact, I have never been particularly interested in any royal wedding since Charles and Diana got married when I was still a little girl- I think I used up all available nuptially-related monarchist excitement over that one. Once I hit adolescence I was way too anti-establishment, and by my mid twenties Di had died in that awful crash. The lot of them just slipped off the radar for me and I really can’t see the point.

However, back in 1981 it was a different story.

My parents had been divorced for a couple of years by then and I was living with my mother in New Haven, Ct. This was not going very well. I was desperately, keenly homesick for England, homesick for my family-as-it-had-been, wishing desperately for context and comfort, all of which was pretty thin on the ground in my new circumstances. I hated being in America, I loathed being a foreigner and I felt that everything that was important and exciting was happening back in London while I was stuck in this horrid little university town against my will.

Hey! That sounds familiar. Bugger it, what have I DONE to myself?

On top of the usual longing to be back in Blighty, there was now another reason to want to be at home – a ROYAL WEDDING! I couldn’t believe I was missing this! I had fond memories of the street party we’d had for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee just a few years before and I had my mug safely in the cupboard. How could it be that I was not going to be there with my friends, playing in the road, eating too much cake, watching the new princess on the telly in her fairytale dress and generally celebrating my Britishness? Life was SO UNFAIR!
Instead of this, my mother had arranged to go on holiday to Cape Cod for a week with another divorced mother, her three kids and their granny . The only good thing about this is that I was friends with one of the twin daughters (and remain so to this day). The rest of it was going to be utter torture. I hated sand, I hated beaches, I hated the stupid house we were staying in that HAD NO TV,  I hated it not being a proper family holiday and most of all I hated it not being London and near the Royal Wedding. Even more gallingly, one of my American friends had gone to the UK for this week and was going to see what I should rightfully have seen.

I did quite a bit of moping. So did my friend, in a true act of loyalty.

Finally on the wedding day itself, the mothers (who had seemingly been cruelly ignoring our woes) suddenly rallied and announced that they would make sure that we got to see the wedding, no matter what.

But we didn’t have a TV. Nor did any of our neighbours.

This did not deter them.

They drove around trying to find somewhere we could watch it.

My friend’s younger brother suggested going to a motel. The mothers vetoed this on the grounds of not wanting to rent a room at great expense for a whole day just to watch an hour or two of TV. He ventured we might rent a room by the hour. This caused much mirth, including a great deal of superior, forced laughter from we elder girls to show him that we understood why this was inappropriate (we didn’t, but it was fun to torture him).

As the hours ticked by, we got more and more worried, and our options narrowed.

Finally, in desperation, the mothers pulled up outside a fairly rough looking roadside bar and we were instructed to remain in the car while they went inside, grim faced.   I am not sure exactly what transpired, but a few minutes later they emerged triumphant and all four children and granny were escorted into this serious dive of a place and the station was duly changed from sports to the wedding. None of us kids had ever been in a bar before (um, yes, because it was totally illegal) and even in my euphoria, I did note the acute discomfort of the bartender and whiskery, hardened morning-drinking patrons at the sight of three squealing little girls and one very small boy sitting on the edge of their barstools, squinting at a tiny colour TV showing a wedding on the other side of the planet. But they were no match for the determination of our mothers who, while they themselves couldn’t have cared less about Chas n Di, would not see their daughters disappointed.

Later that day my friend and I squabbled over who would get to keep the newspaper cuttings of the wedding, and the magical dress. I won out in the end – my mother having bought the paper, and I kept the cuttings for years and years.   I would come across them from time to time, and what I would remember is the bar on that hot day, the sticky vinyl beneath my bare thighs and the excitement, the nostalgia, the sadness, the sheer weight of emotion that the hour in the bar brought.

But what I hadn’t really thought about until very recently is what the mothers must have thought and felt about it. My mother wasn’t in the best shape of her life, and neither was my friend’s. They probably didn’t think it was the best fun they’d ever had to go on very hot holiday with four complaining kids in a house with no a/c or TV (!!!) , where money was tight and the enforced focus of the week for these recently divorced ladies was to find a way for their kids to watch a fairytale wedding on a set they didn’t have. But they made it happen anyway. They marched right into that bar, told a bunch of hard-drinking men to change the fucking channel, make way, our kids are going to WATCH THAT DAMN WEDDING IF IT KILLS US.

That was some kick-ass mothering.

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I seem to have lost the knack of writing anything entertaining or funny or poignant.

So today I will merely offer you a glimpse into my life with a confession of a shameful annual failing.

Today I bought the sixth bag of small chocolate eggs for the children in two days.

I ate the other five.

I also ate three Lindt chocolate bunnies which I have had to replace and I managed to down a fair number of jelly beans which I don’t even like, but once I started on the sugar rush I couldn’t stop.
I also know, after many years of what I’ve come to think of as ‘Easter Affliction’ that it’s pointless to try and limit myself until Monday morning when the shame and remorse will finally catch up with me (as well as a giant migraine) at which point I will be forced to eat only lettuce and water for a week.  It’s particularly galling as I had been feeling rather smug of late, having lost quite a bit of weight after my last feeding frenzy at Christmas and I have been prancing around in tiny jeans, waggling my pert bottom and lack of muffin top at Husband.  Not because  I am skinny and merciless and he fell off the diet wagon about 10 minutes after he got on it, of course not, no *cough* . I’ve been doing my wifely duty of trying to drive him wild with nuptial desire, innit? (please lower eyebrows, refrain from snorting).  I’m now slightly concerned my choco-craze is going to arrest my crowing fun.   At least I’m not setting a bad example for the children because I’m eating it in secret, pretending I’m going to put loads of laundry on and then scoffing it in the utility room while they’re happily playing elsewhere.

This doesn’t sound good, does it? It reminds me of my erstwhile spliffhead musician days. Husband never felt terribly comfortable with the amount of doobie that I managed to hoover up over the course of a day – he said that it made me ’emotionally unavailable’ (um, yeah! That’s the POINT!). I hated to upset him, but on the other hand, I also needed my mental space to have a think through whatever creative project I was working on so I used to “go up into the attic to sort through some boxes” then sit there happily skinning up and blowing smoke out the cracks in the roof.
Utterly adolescent. You’d never have believed I was thirty years old.. Well, perhaps I didn’t quite believe I was thirty years old either.

And I’m still sneaking SWEETIES in the laundry room.

Happy Easter

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I love sugar. I love it love it love it love it.

Unfortunately, according to the New York Times, it’s not only a wicked source of empty calories and a tooth rotter, it’s actually a cancer-inducing toxin, so that’s yet another thing to look forward to in my swiftly approaching dotage.

Speaking of ageing and sugar, the children’s birthdays are coming up in the next couple of months and I will be doing quite a bit of baking. As you may know if you are a regular reader, I love making cakes in whimsically shaped tins, and will probably find an excuse to buy a couple of new ones for this year.

I usually don’t have grownups to the kids’ parties, but as we’ll be leaving Stepford this summer I will probably combine them with a farewell party and let the big people come too. They shall also need sustenance, and to this end I have just found a glorious website:  myjelloamericans, which is devoted to making incredibly delicious jelly-shot cocktails – not like the ones we had back in our youth (disgusting) – but incredibly sophisticated and clever ones you’d be proud to share on your hostess trolley (I don’t have one of these but perhaps I need to purchase one?).  I can see the whole idea could become quite addictive. Do go over and have a look.

If you need me in late May I can be found giggling softly with my apron on under the table with some empty bottles and a packet of Knox gelatin.  It will probably be a good idea to make the cakes first.

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Husband, who goes away quite a lot for conferences, had felt rather sorry for himself this week as he flew off last Saturday to Pittsburg (which apparently really is the pits). We managed perfectly well here in Stepford on our own, as we do, managing to avoid any unnecessary bracing outdoor activity beyond a wander into the garden to pick a lemon or two and indulging in a fair amount of tea drinking and book reading. The house was incredibly tidy and orderly (amazing how that happens whenever he’s gone) and everything ticked and hummed at its proper pace until Tuesday afternoon when I fetched Six from school.

She seemed fine at first, but started complaining that she felt a bit funny as suppertime approached. I ignored this as it quite often just means she doesn’t particularly like what’s on the menu, but when she flatly refused to eat anything, saying she thought she might throw up, I callously told her to go and get into bed and put a bucket beside her in case she actually did, I’d check on her later. I honestly thought she just didn’t fancy chicken and baked potato and was itching to read her ghastly pony book (“Circus Pony”?”The Secret Pony”?”Killer Ponies from Mars”?) but then felt like a BAD MOTHER when a small, tremulous voice called down the stairs,

“Mummy? I’ve been a bit sick”

I went up to find the poor child had hurled a huge amount neatly into the bucket and was sitting wretchedly on her bed,  clutching her teddy looking pale, stringy haired and unloved.

Three came thundering up

“I want to see! I want to see! Eeeuw! It smells yucky! Lemme look!”

I sent him back down, stoically cleaned out the bucket, (trying not to barf myself),  settled her into bed in her nightie with a drink of ice water and sat down with Three so he would eat his food.  By the time he was finished and had brushed his teeth and was in his pyjamas, Six was fast asleep and he was happy to pop into bed so I set about the various tasks I’d been saving for that evening, aware I was fetching Husband from the airport at noon the next day and from that point on little would be achieved, plus we were all due to go away for the weekend on Friday.

I went to bed at 10pm.

At 3am I woke up with acute nausea. I pretended it wasn’t there and willed myself back to sleep.

At 3.30 I woke up again. My pretending trick did not work this time but I did manage for at least 30 seconds to will myself not to hurl (“I will not be sick, I will not be sick, I will not be…Oh crap!)

And then I spent the remainder of the night lying on the bath mat waiting for encores (I was not disappointed).

By the morning I felt horrendous, but as I was on my own with the kids I realised I had to get Three, who was still healthy and disgustingly cheerful, to nursery, and Six appeared to have bounced back with aplomb. I staggered them to school in my pj’s and a sweatshirt and came home to lie in bed like a sweating,groaning zombie.

Fortunately the vomiting had ceased. Unfortunately, the gastric bug had merely displaced its efforts so I spent a good part of the day in the bathroom anyway.

So not fun.

Husband returned from Pittsburg-its-the-pits around midday, promising to take care of everything and everyone and promptly disappeared to University. I fell mercifully asleep, only to be woken minutes later by the school asking me to fetch Six who had unwisely drunk some milk with her lunch and was feeling terrible again. Husband was not answering his office phone, his cell phone, responding to texts or emails.

He does that a lot. In his defence, after nearly 8 years of cellphone ownership he now does mostly remember to carry the phone around with him, but it’s not completely unheard of for him to switch off the ringer and not switch it on again, or to never actually listen to his voicemail, or to bury the phone deep in his backpack and choose the quietest, most unobtrusive ringtone on the lowest volume, later expressing astonishment that he didn’t hear the phone. He won’t actually tell you this but I believe that deep in his soul he resents being reachable on the phone. He only likes it that he can ring you when he wants to. Otherwise, it’s an intrusive annoyance.

Off to school I went, still in my pj’s with my bird’s-nest special hairdo and 2 day old mascara halfway down my cheeks (where it hadn’t settled into my undereye wrinkles). Still, I held my head high as I walked in and fetched Six who had dressed herself all in black and scraped her hair back that morning, and now looked, in her scrawny pallor, uncannily like Wednesday Addams. I wished I looked like Morticia, but really, I just looked ready for the mortician.

As soon as we came home she staged a miraculous recovery and I went into a steep decline, feverish and gut-aching. I sent her off with the iPad to watch as much Netflix as her little eyes could consume and I  had an equally entertaining afternoon of bizarre, terrifying nightmares. At some stage Husband returned with Three and I could vaguely hear the sounds of family life continuing around the house but I was off in some kind of netherworld, praying for deliverance.

And then, with dawn, a miracle! The fever broke, my stomach had stabilised. I felt a little weak, but still, I knew it had mostly passed. What a huge relief. I even managed a cup of tea.

Because I’m not completely better, but on my convalescing day, I thought it would be perfectly acceptable to lie in bed reading books on my Kindle and watching Netflix myself.
It is here that I should probably confess to my dirty little secret: On Netflix streaming I recently  came across “A Touch of Frost”, a UK detective series which almost all you Brits will know, but I, having not had a TV since the mid 90’s, was completely unaware of and would never have watched anyway. But for some inexplicable reason (middle age?) I became completely obsessed by and have watched relentlessly from its pilot right up to the final series without watching anything else inbetween. It’s amazing, and indeed terrifying, how quickly the actors age. My Frost issue has now gotten to the point where Husband asks me if I’m going out in the evening and sometimes I say “Yes, I’m going to Denton” , which is the fictional town where Inspector Frost lives and works.

Pathetic/worrying/cause for intervention?

I don’t know how I got off on the Frost tangent, but I thought I’d better tell someone. No doubt you all think less of me now. Husband and I giggle over the vernacular (so removed from the, like, Calispeak that we hear every day) and he now frequently says, apropos of nothing, in his very faint German accent ” I’ll have you BANG to rights”, and we both collapse in hysterics.

On my Kindle, if anyone is interested, I have recently read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (wonderful) Started Early, Took my Dog by Kate Atkinson (pretty good, the usual KA fayre) Still Alice by Lisa Genova (subject-interesting, writing-meh) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (great!, nonfiction) Trespass by Rose Tremain (one of her better ones).

I wish you all good health!

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