It’s been filthy stinking hot in California for a couple of days but tonight the weather has changed; I can smell the rain coming in on a cool wind through the wide-open bay windows.

The children are asleep. Even though it began with taking Jeremy to the airport for yet another business trip, we had a wonderful day: Talbot’s Toys and Martha’s birthday party.

I feel dislocated, as if my roots go no more than an inch into California soil. I miss my Londoners sorely. And yet the jacaranda we had left for dead is covered in green foliage and flower buds. Hope hurts after such a long absence, like the ache of a muscle long out of use.

C: What are the meds for?

R: For the CRAZY.

C: Is that true?

R: Yup.

C: What does the crazy look like?

R: You can’t see it. It’s something you feel.

C: What does it feel like?

R: It feels like the dark.

C: It feels like the duck?

R: No! Like darkness.

C: Like duckness?

Cambridge already seems like a dream.

The only proofs that we were ever there are my new bras from Marks and Spencers. They are excellent, and improve my posture. So well do they lift and separate that I have nicknamed my boobs Church and State.

The children were perfectly behaved on the flight home; Julia slept on my lap for four hours. The house is much smaller than I remembered. The cat is frenetically overjoyed to see us. Jetlag’s a little bit easier to deal with when you’re flying west and it’s staying up late rather than going to bed early.

I dreamed Veronica Mars had murdered someone and covered it up brilliantly. An odd, depressing dream, set in Oxford.

I’m reading a biography of Rosebery. Little thrills me more than cracking the spine of a new book about a Victorian liberal. Because I am an old coot.

I wonder sometimes where Counting My Blessings shades into outright confabulation. There’s a whole other version of this morning, where Claire had a full-blown tantrum when I turned off the TV to take the girls to the park. I was furious and undercaffeinated and hungry and headachey, so I handled it as badly as you can possibly handle an angry five-year-old. Claire’s tantrum and my fury lasted all the way down the street, until I threw everyone onto an opportunistic number 7 bus into the middle of Cambridge, which is how we came to have coffee at my favourite cafe.

On the bus I held Claire’s hand and we apologized to each other, and then the morning turned into the one described below. All I’m saying is, that first comma there is glossing over rather a lot.

Packed, had coffee at my favourite cafe, walked through Cambridge where these guys were busking; had to stop, arrested by the utter beauty of their singing. Walked to the playground in Jesus Green, where Jeremy met us. Played. Walked home, saying goodbye to the playground, the Green, the ducks, the river, the bridge, the locks, Cambridge. We’ll have to come back, and for longer.

What the trip has taught me: home is my pack now, Jeremy and the girls. We can make a good life for ourselves wherever we happen to be. Makes the future a little less scary. Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again.

dsc_6795.jpg

Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

…and how was your day?

R: I know this is very nerdy, but I love the end of Diaspora where the Yatima character is relieved that there aren’t going to be any more adventures, so it can get on with teaching itself maths. That’s what I want to do when the girls are off to college. Learn maths properly.

J: Yeah, we can do it together.

On the grounds that if I don’t write this all down, I will probably forget it. Also you are interested in my tiny life! Yes you are.

Our place here is schweet. It’s one of six flats in a newish building on a cul-de-sac. We’re one of two flats on the top level, and we have two floors. Downstairs there’s a twin bedroom, perfect for the girls, with a bathroom next door. Both open onto the hall-and-staircase, which because we leave shoes there and go barefoot in the house Claire calls “the shoe room”.

The hall also opens onto a kitchen/living room/dining room with two big east-facing windows. We’ve festooned the windows with the girls’ drawings and paper dolls. Two sofas in the lounge area mean we can all curl up and read or watch TV or dink. (Dinking is Jeremy’s term of art for noodling around on the Intarwebs.) The kitchen is elaborate enough that we’ve managed two- and three-course meals. There’s a heavy emphasis on sausages (because, yum), white rice (we have a rice cooker), salad and fruit.

The really nice part, though, is upstairs, where the master bedroom occupies most of the garret. Skylights in the angled walls let in masses of light and air. Just like home! We have our own bathroom, very civilized, and there’s a corner where I can work. So yes, I am in Europe, writing in a garret. It’s software industry research, not novels, and Cambridge not Paris, but let’s not split hairs.

Primrose joins Victoria Road next to a farm shop (Radmore, whence the sausages – yum!) There’s also a good co-op grocery two blocks down at Mitcham’s Corner. The fresh produce is a bonus because eating out has been iffy; I haven’t even been specially impressed with the nearby Indian and Bangla places.

A rough thing about traveling is that you lose your knowledge of short cuts to places and the best things to order in cafes. I’ve been enjoying Cambridge more as I have figured things out. So from Primrose and Victoria you cross the street and take a footpath down through housing projects to Carlyle, where there’s a very nice park and playground. Turn left on Carlyle and you get to Chesterton, which runs along the river Cam. Two buses run along here, or you can cross the bridge over the lock to Jesus Green. That sounds far but it’s about thirty seconds from our front door.

Jesus Green has really been the center of our Cambridge world. It’s on the way to everywhere, and the girls go to its playground every day. If you follow the river to the right you get to Quayside and a couple of decent restaurants. And a place to hire punts. If you strike out overland you hit the back of the city center, and can take cunning shortcuts through to the pedestrian zone. The time I haven’t spent sitting in my attic writing, I have spent in the basement of Starbucks on Market Square. Yeah, I know. I am here now. I find splitting my Cambridge days between Starbucks and home makes me slightly less stir crazy than if I did not. What?

Two days a week I go down to London. I prefer it, but the days are very long, and the kids are nearly asleep before I get back. I catch a bus on Victoria which takes me to the station, and then I get an off-peak ticket and take the 10.15 express to Kings Cross. It’s a brisk 15-minute walk from Kings Cross to the office but it really isn’t worth getting on the Tube to Goodge Street; would probably take longer. Not a bad walk anyway since I found the back way past St Pancras and around Gordon and Tavistock Squares.

Our office is in a basement on Gower Street, in the same row of Georgian brick houses that Spike stayed in on his London trip. If we lived here I’d love to live somewhere in Bloomsbury. It’s probably hideously expensive, but I do like the squares and being close to the British Museum. Filmlight, where Jo, Kirsty and Christopher work, used to be practically next door on Bedford Square. It’s moved a little further away but it’s still really easy to meet them for lunch.

My level of happiness was greatly improved by the discovery of Paradiso on Store Street, around the corner from work. They make their own pasta. A hot lunch makes a 12-hour London day much more bearable. The days are so long because the off-peak tickets mean I can’t catch the train before the 7.15 back to Cambridge. Gets in at 8.06, narrowly missing the 8.05 bus home, and leaving me to wait till 8.35 for the next bus. Home by 9. Into bed, catatonic, at ten.

See? You hung on every word! You SO did.

We left Jeremy’s camera in a cab again, and got it returned to us, again. That makes four times now. The kindness of strangers, let me show you it.

Jeremy’s green card arrived today. A billion thanks to Kathy for FedExing it over, and to our awesome attorneys Minette and Sheryl for working on this for five-and-a-half years.

We had our first meeting with Minette when Claire was six weeks old and snoozing peaceably in her sling. Claire woke up about ten minutes in and gurgled graphically. We apologized, but Minette said not to worry:

“Those are perfectly legitimate noises.”

So! We have it under legal advice.

LATER the same evening they watch a DOCUMENTARY, in which rutting UNGULATES SMEAR themselves with mud.

J: Would you respect me more if I smeared myself with mud?

R: Lasts forever.

C: Where are we?

R: Stevenage. Jane Austen was born here.

C: Who is Jane Austen?

R (mimes being stabbed in the HEART): What a cruel thing to say to your mother! Jane Austen was the best writer ever. She wrote the best books. All six of them.

C: Did she write any kid books?

R: No, she didn’t really get time. She died when she was only 38. She did write a funny history of England, which you might like. I have it at home in California.

C: Why do people die?

R: Some people get sick. Some get old. Some die in accidents. Or do you mean why do we all die? Nothing lasts forever. Not even stars. They get old and die.

C (looks EMO)

R: It’s okay really. If you’re lucky you get to die when you’re really old, and those people sometimes say it’s like going to sleep when you’re tired.

C: I can tell you one thing that lasts forever.

R: What’s that?

C: …mud.

[16:55] ian_envivio: have you seen the healthy but creepy M&S grocery shop where everything is prepackaged in plastic tubs
[16:56] mizchalmers: i obtain my food units from there every day
[16:56] ian_envivio: it looks like a hippy/western healthy version of a japanese inner city supermarket
[16:57] mizchalmers: the british and the japanese have a lot in common
[16:57] mizchalmers: tea, war
[16:57] ian_envivio: love of the monarchy
[16:57] mizchalmers: crazitude

Happy birthday Salome. Wendy, I still miss you. Wish you’d got to grow up and have adventures and babies too.

Dad asked the fair question of why I didn’t mention Dublin in my big England-confuses-me post. Thing is I don’t really associate Trinity with Oxbridge any more. It wasn’t a consolation prize and I can’t believe I ever thought it was. It was a miraculous escape and the beginning of my adult life. I learned vi there, for God’s sake! I spent the night of the Ireland-Norway world cup match reading the first copy of Wired magazine I had ever seen! Rathmines, the Long Room, Ha’penny Bridge, the Winding Stair, Ormond Quay, Newgrange: all mine. Ireland made me. I am listening to the Pogues as I write.

Spike counters, brilliantly, with Patrick White. To which Alex replies:

And for that matter, Jack White:

(Uptempo)

Oh well, they gonna make me king
Oh well they gonna make me king now
I pulled a sword out of a thing
They made me kiss the bishop’s ring
And now they gonna make me king now

So Lance is sleepin’ with the queen
My Lance is sleepin’ with the queen now
And though I think it kind of mean
I just don’t wanna make a scene
Cause I do love my wife the queen now

I wish that I could talk to Merlin
I wish that I could talk to Merlin
The night is dark, the world is whirlin’
My son the traitor’s flag’s unfurlin’
And I could really use you, Merlin

Me, I am working on Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Melbourne.

Email with Alex, reposted here for Spike and Francis:

My children are endlessly hilarious. Claire saw Jeremy reading my copy of T. H. White’s The Age of Scandal and asked “Is that the same author who wrote Stuart Little?” I said “That’s E. B. White but you know what? We’re going to keep you.”

It might have been interesting had they written each other’s books..

(from ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by T.H. White):

‘But how am I to be SOME PIG, Charlotte?’ asked Wilbur. ‘I don’t even think I’m much of a pig now.’

The spider rolled up her struggling prey, a small fruit fly, and meditatively injected it with paralysing venom.

‘You must root, Wilbur,’ she answered, her voice slightly muffled, as the fruit fly thrashed with decreasing vigour. ‘Root, dig and furrow, for it is in your nature to find the deepest and the most buried things. That, at least, is the wisdom as recorded by the best authorities. Spiders kill; pigs root. Excuse me just a moment.’

Charlotte dug her fangs into the fruit fly’s abdomen and sucked the liquefying flesh into her thorax. The fruit fly’s struggles ended, and its many-faceted eyes went a dull slate colour. Charlotte extracted her mandibles and smacked her lips.

‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘I always like a little snack before Vespers. In the meantime, however, I think we need a new word for you.’

‘I wish I could do that,’ said Wilbur wistfully, watching Charlotte dispose of the brittle husk of the fruit fly…

I would do a version of The Once and Future King as if by E.B. White but he’s just not imitable enough. Not by me, anyway.

Wart spent his long afternoons in the wood with his brother Kay, where they fished and fought and listened to the goshawks crying “Cree, cree!” and the frogs in the reeds remarking “Sweet, sweet interlude; sweet interlude.” For it is in the nature of boys in the summer to seek the earth and growing things; to watch the shoots unfurl as the manhood is unfurling within those bony chests. Such summers come but once and are soon over.

‘Well,’ said Templeton, twitching his whiskers, ‘sword or no sword, I’ll be gold-darned if HE’s gonna be king of England.’

Permission to blog this exchange?

Granted.