A Slightly Chaotic Catch-Up

Right. I’ve been neglecting this. I know. In my defence, the months between February and May have been somewhat full, and every time I sat down to write a proper post I found I’d either done too much to cover in one go or I was too tired to do any of it justice. So instead I did what any reasonable person does in that situation, which is: nothing, and then felt guilty about it.

So here is the catch-up version. Shorter sections. Roughly chronological. No promises about the photos.

Richmond Park: Deer, Mud, and Richard’s Surprising Patience

Sunday afternoon out to Richmond Park in March, because the weather was almost acceptable and we’d been inside for approximately seven consecutive weekends. Richmond Park is one of the genuinely wonderful things about London that I forget about until I’m actually in it — eight hundred acres, deer wandering about like they pay rates, the whole city somehow audible and also completely absent.  I have decided not to mention the cyclists.

I attempted some photography. The deer were largely unimpressed. Richard walked about five paces behind me for most of it with the patient expression he adopts when I’m doing something he considers sub-optimal but has learned not to comment on directly. I got one genuinely good shot of a stag standing in the mist about fifty metres away and have already used it as my phone screensaver, which I feel justifies the entire afternoon.

There’s something about Richmond that gives you the temporary but persuasive impression that you have your life completely under control. Fresh air. Green space. Nobody needing anything from you for two hours. Highly recommended. Repeat prescription required.

Cambridge: Excellent City, Inadvisable Passenger

A day trip to Cambridge in early April with Gemma, who had a study day and whom I had optimistically suggested might enjoy the Fitzwilliam Museum. She did enjoy the Fitzwilliam Museum, as it turns out, and then spent forty-five minutes in the gift shop weighing up two postcards, and then announced on the way out that she was hungry.

We had a very good lunch. We wandered through the colleges. We stood on the bridge over the Cam and watched the punts navigate each other with varying degrees of competence, which is a spectator sport nobody talks about enough.

The return journey included a ‘constructive exchange of views’ about my motorway driving, delivered by Gemma from the passenger seat with the unsolicited authority of someone who has held a provisional licence for approximately four months and has therefore mastered the theory completely. I drove us safely home. She fell asleep somewhere around the M11 junction, which I’m choosing to interpret as a vote of confidence.

Barcelona: Food, Sun, and a Firm Decision About Queues

Richard and I went to Barcelona for a long weekend in late April and I have one thing to say before anything else: the food. The actual, extraordinary, why-isn’t-everything-this-good food. The seafood at a bar on the harbour at one in the afternoon with a glass of something cold and fizzy. The padron peppers. The jamón. A pa amb tomàquet so simple and so precisely right that I thought about it for the entire flight home.

We went to Park Güell, which was the right call — elevated, extraordinary, worth the walk up. We did not go to the Sagrada Familia. We stood outside the Sagrada Familia, looked at the queue, looked at each other, and went for another coffee. I understand this is controversial. I have made my peace with it. The building is magnificent from the outside, the morning light was good, and I am forty years old and I’m not queuing for ninety minutes for anything that doesn’t involve a boarding gate.

Barcelona has the very specific and very pleasant quality of a city that doesn’t feel like it needs you to enjoy it. It’s just getting on with being excellent and you can join in if you want. We joined in enthusiastically. We’ll go back. The Sagrada Familia will still be there.

The Mosel Valley: An Education in German Wine

A long weekend in the Mosel Valley in early May, which came about because Richard had two days in Frankfurt and I had Thursday and Friday annual leave to use and the Mosel is about an hour from Frankfurt and I am, at this point, fairly good at building a trip around Richard’s schedule.

I had not given much thought to German wine before this. I am now giving it considerable thought. The Mosel wines — Riesling, mostly, off incredibly steep slate slopes that look like they should be impossible to farm — are delicate and precise and completely unlike what I’d expected. We did two tastings at small family estates, both in ancient cellars that smelled of stone and old wood, both presided over by people who clearly found our enthusiasm for things they’d grown up surrounded by endearing in a slightly baffled way.

The valley itself is spectacular. The river bends between vine-covered hills in a way that looks implausible from the road above, like a landscape someone designed rather than one that just happened. We stayed in a small hotel in Bernkastel-Kues, walked along the river in the evenings, and ate well. I came home with six bottles I’m being careful about, a new appreciation for Riesling, and the slightly smug feeling of someone who has added something to their knowledge. The wine cellar in my head — the imaginary one I have been furnishing for about fifteen years — has a Mosel section now.

Afternoon Tea: A Thing I’m Now Qualified to Have Opinions About

My parents came up to London for a weekend in late April and we did afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason, which my mother had been wanting to do since approximately 1987 and which I kept finding reasons to defer until I finally just booked it and discovered that the reason I kept deferring it was that I was worried it wouldn’t be as good as her expectation.

It was as good as her expectation. It was possibly better. Tiny sandwiches cut with the precision of someone who takes geometry seriously. Scones that were exactly right in every dimension. A vast and slightly intimidating selection of teas. Waitstaff who had the gift of being impeccably attentive without making you feel watched.

My mother held a small finger sandwich and looked around the room and said: “Well. This is lovely, isn’t it.” She was, in that moment, the happiest I have seen her in years. I have since upgraded afternoon tea from ‘thing I do for other people’ to ‘thing I actually want to do again.’ We all live and learn.

Social Sports Day: A Field in Richmond and My Daughter

The agency entered a team in a social sports day in Richmond in early May — tag rugby, netball, mixed hockey, all running simultaneously across a series of pitches, the kind of event that is ostensibly about sport and is actually about post-match drinks and whether your firm has better bibs than the firm from the next pitch.

I played tag rugby. I am forty and I have not really attempted to play any variety of ball sport since university, and my hamstrings registered a formal complaint around the third game that they are still processing. I had a good time. Our team came second in the group, which I’m counting as a triumph of enthusiasm over fitness.

The main event, however, was Gemma.

She’d come along for the day because the alternative was a Saturday at home, and she’d clocked the mixed hockey tournament with the focused interest of someone who played hockey for eight years and was quite good at it and knows it. She put her name down. The organiser, who was pairing people across firms, put her in a team. She played three games.

I will not overstate this. She was genuinely, effortlessly, almost absurdly good. There is a particular quality to watching someone doing something they were trained to do from the age of five, in a context where nobody around them has the same grounding, and that quality is a kind of ease that reads as something close to inevitability. She didn’t try hard. She just… played. The people on her team gradually understood what they had, and started finding her, and the games became very straightforward. 

On the Tube home she said, with perfect casualness, that it had been “pretty fun.” As a parent, you want your children to genuinely enjoy their hobbies. She’s sixteen and she’s been playing hockey since before she could reliably spell it, and ‘pretty fun’ is exactly what she’s supposed to say.  I said nothing, but inwardly it was a very proud Mum moment.     

And that’s roughly where we are. A spring of little trips and some genuinely excellent food and Gemma being increasingly competent at sport (which she has inherited from Richard, not me). The recruitment job continues — the market has picked up, the placements are coming, the commission is less lumpy than it was. There is something brewing on the professional front that I’m not ready to write about yet, but will. Soon.

Next post will be a proper one. With structure and everything.