Lunch at Al Hamra, the infinitely reliable Pakistani place across the road: lamb korma (it was halal meat, Salome, so humanely killed… yeah, yeah) with garlic naan and masala chai. They’ve just started giving out masala chai free with any meal, and it’s the real thing, strong black tea boiled in milk with sugar and potent spices. Oh, mmm.

As good a place as any to read Bernard Lewis on The Middle East and to think, and think, and think. Lewis went to Istanbul in 1950 and fell hard for Turkey and the Kemalist legacy. Fifty-odd years later I have done the same thing, aided in no small part by an extremely intelligent and persuasive tour guide very aptly named Mustafa Kemal.

Subtly, pervasively, Lewis makes the Turks the hero-saviours of the Middle East, and the Arabs its backward peasants. “Between the fourth and the sixth centuries, Arabia seems to have sunk back into a sort of dark age, a time of impoverishment and a bedouinization; that is to say, a decline in such cultivation as existed, of such sedentary centres as had been established, and a consequent establishment of camel nomadism.”

Look how innocuously those value judgments creep in: impoverishment, decline. Look how cultivation -implicitly, of thoughts as well as crops – is equated with sedentary centres, nomadism with ignorance. Look at that horrible neologism ‘bedouinization’. You wouldn’t think the bedouin were, you know, people, with problems and love affairs and kids to raise. No, if they’re not contributing towards the great evolution of human culture that climaxed in Bernard Lewis, they’re degenerate.

I’m not pushing a pro-Arab line here; I’m just beginning to appreciate the complexity of elsewhere and its history and culture, and am being reminded again of the limitations of my monoglottal research and my white imagination. Lewis, you see, is the standard Western brief history of over there. I’m trying to filter out his prejudice and argument and see beyond it to whatever actually is. But all I can perceive are shadow-people and their camel trains, moving slow thighs across an unknowable desert of the mind.

This is what it is to be a Westerner.

Well, last week was full of unpleasant surprises, no? You’ll be overjoyed to hear that Jack had a great week. He was ecstatic over the Red Sox, Juliette stopped being broody and Sprint gave him a wonderful new phone.

“Uh, Jack, doesn’t the Red Sox win mean the world is coming to an end?”

“Yeah, but it was so great!”

“I’m so glad you used up everyone else’s luck. You do realize this is all your fault, right?”

Last night we had an impromptu dinner party for ten. Jeremy made an immense and yummy ratatouille. Claire and Ada competed for control of the toys, Claire using brute force, Ada using sneakiness. Quinn and I exchanged pots and perspectives on Abu Ghraib, anal fissures and the impending collapse of the dollar. Ian and Jack held forth loudly on various matters. Salome and Ellen sipped alma cay and muscat.

Kat, in a corner, brooded over her newfound sense of political alienation and nihilistic despair. Girl’s come a long way since Anderson Consulting.

Turkey was splendid and full of stories and will be treated at length in future. Air France poisoned me on the way to Toulouse, so Villerouge is a bit of a blur, but I recovered in time for a couple of excellent meals: quails with juniper berries, a good salmon steak, a fine meringue.

The weather in London is perfect, sunny and cool and autumnal. Claire loves Hyde Park more than ever. She calls the squirrels “gato” and the horses “eh-heh-heh-heh.” We’ve been eating very well here too, and not just Indian; nice Thai and a fabulous pub lunch yesterday in Greenwich, roast lamb with parsnips and carrots and cabbage and Yorkshire pud. Lots and lots of catching up: David, Sophie, Sam, Theo, Grant, Kirsty, Mia, Jo, Helene, Becca, Marcus, Julian, Donna, Nick, Christine, Mark, Jess. Much talk of houses and lovers and babies and software and movies and conferences and books.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again. No, as a matter of fact I dreamed Jeremy was John Kerry’s running mate. We were backstage at the Democratic National Convention and I was trying to suck up to Kerry’s womenfolk. Sexy Alexandra and I were getting on well enough, but Teresa kept giving me snide glares a la Cruella de Vil.

Even so, I was pleased and proud. In spite of his manifest lack of, let’s see: experience; qualifications; appropriate attire; ability to suffer fools without rolling his eyes and sighing audibly; and indeed shred of interest in being vice-president; the Democratic Party had recognized that Jeremy was by far the best man for the job.

Vote Kerry-Fitzhardinge 04!

I’m reading VS Naipaul’s Among the Believers. His prose style is exquisite, cool and dry and precise. This doesn’t quite obscure the fact that his politics are deeply unsettling. Wikipedia puts it very well: “Edward Said has argued that he “allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution”, promoting “colonial mythologies about wogs and darkies”. However, his works are considered plausible, even by many in the third world…”

There’s a great scene where Naipaul goes to Qom to meet Khomeini’s hanging judge, the Ayatollah Khalkhalli. He’s built up as this mythical, severe Wahhabist, and then he arrives, short and portly and jolly, cracking jokes about how he ordered the execution of the Shah’s Prime Minister. Santa Claus with an assault rifle and a copy of the Koran.

Sometimes the most frightening thing about monotheists is how merry they are.

Worth a thousand words.

All bookstores should have a cat. All science fiction bookstores should have a sphynx…

Claire and I disgraced ourselves at Seth’s birthday party. First, she threw herself off her booster seat and roared the restaurant down; next I accidentally shut her fingers in a window; finally, she pushed the mosquito screen all the way out and into the flowerpots beyond, causing an immense clatter. We feigned nonchalance, but not well. Still, I had a wonderful time because so many of Seth’s friends are great fun to talk to, despite being supergeniuses who are half my age. Claire had a wonderful time because that’s just the kind of gal she is.

It wasn’t all being intimidated by the highly evolved youth of today; in fact I had a mama-fu moment as I was on the way out of the apartment. I had all the bags packed and Claire dressed in candy-colours under one arm, and at the bottom of the stairs I leaned down and slung the stroller over the other shoulder in a single graceful swoop. Whee! as Claire would say.

(Jeremy has a new camera.)

So I finished the Roth. Actually, I skipped a lot of it. Longtime readers will know of, if not actually care about, my unease with the American masters Bellow, Roth and Updike – ie, my suspicion that they suck. I thought The Dean’s December must have been an embarrasingly inferior Bellow until someone told me it was his masterpiece.

American Pastoral has long, long passages on bewildered grief and frustration so precisely tuned to my current underlying mood that I could have underlined them and written in the margins “It’s so true!” if the previous owner of the book hadn’t already done that for me, at least for the first five chapters. Trouble is, I don’t really see this as artful. The word that comes to mind is lugubrious: woeful to the point of ridiculousness. The phrase that comes to mind is Yeah, and so?

On the one hand I could argue that I want my fiction to be transcendent: shot through with wit and irreverence and embodying the ability to distance oneself from the grey muck of despair, not to wallow in it. On the other hand I remember Professor Brown disagreeing with my preference for Paul Muldoon over Seamus Heaney: “I like Muldoon very much,” he said, “but compared with Heaney he’s just clever for cleverness’s sake.”

Professor Brown made a lot of unshowy but very deep comments like that, to my lasting benefit, and I now think he was absolutely right about Muldoon and Heaney. But Heaney still has wit and transcendence in abundance, especially compared to Roth; it’s just used in the service of the work, not as the point of it. Heaney lets the gesture speak for itself. Roth spells every damn thing out, leaves nothing to the imagination, suggests nothing, hints at nothing, leaves absolutely nothing unsaid. I feel bludgeoned.

I think my favourite moment in American fiction is still that scene in Nabokov where Pnin is doing the washing up and thinks he has broken his crystal bowl, but he hasn’t. Although I like Alex’s favourite moment too, in White Noise, where the father sees his little daughter whispering in her sleep, and leans close to hear what she’s saying, and it is “Toyota Corolla”, and his heart breaks with love.

Another one of these lazy Indian-summer weekends where we do lots and lots of cool stuff and hang out with friends. Moved furniture all Friday afternoon with Carole; had wickedly delicious Cambodian that night with Shannon, Cian, Morrisa, Miranda, Salome and Milodora in utero; it’s so cool that Salome wants to hang out with our mom’s-club now.

Saturday we kept Rowan all day to find out what it would like to have twins. Answer: exhausting. Ten thousand cheers and commiserations for all parents of twins. Matters improved greatly when we zoomed across the bay to see Jonathan and Re and Knoa and Avi and the neighbors and the neighbors’ kids Jack and Daphne. The toddlers ran around the Jaffe-Tsang mansion and ate dip by the fistful and fought over toys and plotted against one another and danced to electronic music and generally had a high old time of it. Us old folk sat in the sun and drank beer and tequila and argued over which was woollier, Episcopalianism or Unitarianism, and laughed a lot. It was jolly nice.

Sunday I yearned for fried plaintains, so we summoned Kat and hiked down to a particularly nice Honduran hole-in-the-wall that I can never remember the name of, where the plaintains are crisp as toffee and the hot chocolate is a poem. I spent three hours at 826 reading American Pastoral and waiting in vain for someone to tutor, picked up groceries on the way home, summoned Kat once again and roasted a chicken with bread-and-parsley stuffing and caramelized potatoes and carrots: mmm. Tonight, leftovers. And pie!

Kat: Oh, and the other thing I did this morning was spray-paint my ugg boots silver.

Carole’s art opening was the sort of party where we had conversations like “Oh, you’re that Gail, we’ve already talked on the phone about Bernal Heights history!” and “Of course you must know Barney at NASA then…” “Yes, Barney, of course!”

Carole’s paintings looked spectacular; the zabaglione was to die for. When we got home Claire opened her package, which turned out to contain two gorgeous sweaters my mother had knitted for her in beautiful pale green wool.

Another good night, then.

Oh, and the third and very best piece of good news from back in July was this adorable little tadpole for Salome and Jack.

On Friday I rode a little bay Crabbet- and Polish-bred Arabian on a fire trail under eucalyptus trees, and felt like I was thirteen again. When I got home Salome proved the old adage: friends drive you crazy, but real friends drive you to your psychologist. Shannon and Cian brought dinner, and Carole and Rowan brought chocolate eclairs from Tartine for dessert.

Brunch on Saturday with Peter the rocket scientist, who is moving back to Sydney to work at NICTA and who will be sorely missed. We discussed anaerobic digestive systems for household waste disposal and biogas generation at the Bernal sustainable homes.

Roy, Courtney, Kat, Salome and Jack came over for dinner. Jeremy made rack of lamb with coriander and cumin; grouper fillets in chili, ginger and soy; sprouts a la Jeremy, which he prefers to call Bernal spheres; brown rice in coconut milk and steamed broccoli. It was a sensational meal. We drank a couple of bottles of the Honig sauvignon blanc, watched the Murgisteads’ first home video, built a crystal set radio and told endless jokes about turtles and pie.

On Sunday we had all three kids swarming through Claire’s toys. Shannon and I abandoned the boys and got manicures and spa pedicures together. I’ve always been painfully self-conscious about my feet; it turns out, to my surprise, that with shiny purple nail polish, they’re actually quite pretty. Off to 826 Valencia for tutoring with a side-trip for coffee from Tartine, where there were two babies in the Rolls-Royce of strollers, the Bugaboo Frog; home for an afternoon fling with Jeremy while Claire napped; delicious leftovers for dinner; and so to bed.

Me (winding up a phone call): Okay, I have to go now. Hey Claire, do you want to get out of the bath, and eat the brussels sprouts Daddy cooked, and watch Simon Schama’s History of Britain? Because Mummy and Daddy are total nerds?

Other end of phone: much laughter

Brussels sprouts a la Jeremy

Cut cross-sections in ends of sprouts. Blanche for eight minutes in salted water. Allow to dry in single layer on paper towel. Saute in peanut oil with the juice of a lemon and a dash of nutmeg.

Unbelievably good.

(many thanks to Julia Ellingson)

(oh, and many happy returns to my darling Dad)

I’ve installed an RSS reader on Firefox at work. Last night I was dreaming about it, clicking and clicking on my mouse to check for updates on my favourite blogs. As I clicked, I felt a fang like a dagger-point press against the skin on my hand.

I woke up. Curled up next to me in bed, my savage little cat was giving me a very polite warning not to click on her any more.

Kusia took me riding at Bay Laurel Arabians in Tilden Park. I planned it really badly, only allowed myself a couple of hours, skipped breakfast and chose the hottest day of summer so far. As we were saddling up I said to Kusia:

“So, this horse walks into a bar and the barman says, ‘Why the long face?'”

We both fell about laughing and then – this is true – my horse, Bey Shadow BL, turned around and bit me.

After that things went reasonably well, by which I mean I didn’t fall off. Quite apart from being as pretty as a summer sunrise and a Top Ten finisher in the Tevis last year, Shadow’s amazing to ride, strong and forward with all his power surging up through his hindquarters. Kusia rode Bartali, the exquisite bay gelding that she started under saddle. Kusia’s fighting fit and supple, and she rides like a centaur. I’m not at all envious, okay maybe a little, especially since today I rode like an elderly sack of potatoes held to the saddle with twine. Sigh.

We rode right up to the Seaview Trail and saw the breadth of the bay from Vallejo to the Golden Gate. Champagne sun, seaspray sky, red-tailed hawks. It looked very familiar, and sure enough Jeremy, Claire and I hiked to the exact same place on Mother’s Day last year. Despite my potato-sackitude and Shadow’s hunger for my flesh, Kusia seemed willing to take me out again in a couple of weeks. We talked about doing a Lake Anza ride. Jeremy, Claire and I had a fun picnic there with Salome and Jack last year. Tilden, which once seemed a mapless wilderness to me, is filling up with happy memories.

Anyway, the bite is coming up brilliantly. You can see Shadow’s teethmarks outlined in amethyst bruise. I told Shannon:

“You can push the double stroller today. I got bit by a horse.”

“That’s going to get old real fast,” she said.

Maybe for grownups. The kids loved it; any time Cian or Claire started to grumble or argue, I’d say:

“You guys want to see my bite?”

And they’d nod and gather round.

Great big family dinner at Angkor Borei, where they always seem pleased to see us in spite of our many toddlers. Cian, Rowan and Claire pointed out the carved dragon to each other, and danced a dragon dance. The sticky rice with mango at Angkor is out of this world.

And so to bed.

Date night. I’m drunk on a single glass of sangria. We pick up Claire from the Moores and stagger home along Precita. Jeremy is telling me the story of Singularity Sky:

J: And they have logic gates that work backwards in time…

R: NOT! HAHAHAHA!

We get home and I check my messages.

A: Hi, it’s Alain, just calling to let you know I’m out of hospital and okay.

J: Your brother was in hospital?

I’m dialling already; he answers.

R: So… you were in hospital?

Hell of a way to sober up.

…that I was not allowed to get excited about is now another land-related done deal. At some unspecified future time, Byran, Shannon, Cian, Jamey, Carole and Rowan will be moving here:

All they have to do now is tear down that house (it is quietly rotting, which is why the realtors opted not to provide a photograph) and replace it with two of these:

As you can see, the new house is rendered, rather than drawn, and in colour, rather than black and white. Which is a vast improvement.

I want to do the new bio course at UCB Extension, but I’m already working on the second draft of Breeding and the first draft of something else, traveling to Turkey and Europe, volunteering at 826, helping out on the Bernal Sustainable Homes Project and iLife Workshops, learning Spanish, holding down my job and raising Miss Claire. Oh, and I’d like to get back into horses.

It is awfully tempting, though.