As you might have gleaned, I am a very tidy person. I actually like to clean, as I find it soothing. But I have gone a bit above and beyond during lockdown. The other day, it occurred to me that I might be able to strap a vacuum to my back like a leaf blower so that it could be with me at all times. Not a good sign.
8:45 a.m. GMT
Felicity and I do an online workout with a friend of ours who is a Pilates teacher. The night before we asked one of the older children to come down this morning and babysit. Seconds before the class begins, the bleary-eyed designee emerges, face still swollen from sleep, and grunts a “Good morning” as we flee to the living room for a fitness-filled escape from reality. During this time I think about what we might cook that evening for eight people yet again.
9:45 a.m. GMT
When the session ends, Felicity and I go over what food items need to be restocked. With four people between the ages of eighteen and twenty, the amount of food, beer, and wine that is consumed is staggering. If there is a shortage of avocados at the local stores, it’s because we’ve eaten them all. If there is no Kerrygold butter left in the UK, it’s because either it’s in our freezer or we ate it. All of it. Just fucking ate it. Probably without even spreading it on anything. I saw a neighbor hungrily eyeing our cat yesterday and it occurred to me that the woman probably hadn’t eaten meat in a week because my gluttonous family devoured all of the beef, lamb, veal, chicken, oxtail, pork, rabbit, and game in southwest London. Still gasping for breath from an unnecessarily grueling workout, I rummage through the fridge.
Given our short supplies, I decide to make something simple tonight: pasta alla Norma and sautéed lamb chops. I reckon that these two dishes should satisfy everyone’s palate and nutritional needs, although I know that my eighteen-year-old daughter will only eat the pasta dish as she is now a vegetarian. What timing.
Pasta alla Norma
— SERVES 4 —
2 large garlic cloves, halved
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 large eggplants, diced
Kosher salt
5 cups marinara sauce
1 pound pasta （rigatoni, ziti, or a thick spaghetti）
A handful of basil, roughly chopped
A handful of grated ricotta salata or Pecorino
In a very large frying pan, fry the garlic in a glug of oil over low heat for about 2 minutes. Add the eggplants, raise the heat to medium, and cook for about 15 minutes, until slightly golden. Salt to taste.
Add the marinara sauce and cook for about 5 minutes more.
Cook the pasta and drain, reserving ? cup of the water.
Stir the reserved pasta water into the pan mixture and sprinkle with the basil. Measure 4 cups of the sauce and put it in a serving bowl. Add the drained pasta to the pan with the remainder of the sauce and gently stir it all together. Sprinkle with grated ricotta salata or Pecorino and serve with the extra sauce on the side.
10:30 a.m. GMT
After doing some homeschooling with the five-year-old, Felicity heads upstairs to shower and begin her remote workday from our bedroom. She is a literary agent and carries out her endless meetings via Zoom. With the exception of finishing voiceover work remotely from my studio for a CNN series I recently completed, I have very little to do these days, as film and TV production have shut down. As far as I know, this has never happened since somebody first called, “Action!” over one hundred years ago.
So, I do the laundry and play with the kids, often made-up games like “Mean King,” where I affect a very posh British accent and they come to me to “pay their taxes” and then “steal” them back when I “take a nap.” I like this game because I get to sit on my “throne,” an Eero Saarinen womb chair, the most comfortable seating device ever designed. I try to drag the game out for as long as possible so I don’t have to get up, but the two-year-old is beginning to reek and I realize I have been neglectful in my nappy-changing duties.
When this wrestling match has ended and she has accused everyone in the house of pooping besides herself, I change both children out of their pajamas and into the outfit of the day. Although the five-year-old can dress himself, today he insists he is incapable of doing so. I therefore talk him through each stage while the two-year-old hurtles through the room screaming with laughter and jeering at me. I finally catch her, body-slam her to the sofa, and stuff her into her first of many outfits of the day, like sausage meat into a casing. My glasses are nowhere to be found and therefore I can’t see well enough to work the minuscule buttons on children’s clothing, so I leave part of her outfit undone, hoping Felicity won’t notice. （She doesn’t. But I do and it plagues me for the rest of the day.）