CINCO FLAMENCO

 

Blenheim Palace

Pinky's fifth year was an emotional roller coaster.  I reluctantly agreed to move back to New York, just as I was finding my groove in London.  I had learned to laugh quietly (a big deal as all heads had turned in my direction when I used my loud belly laugh), leave "like" out of my sentences, shoot down the anti-American remarks in a seemingly gentle way but not actually, and learned to appreciate the courteous behavior that kept everything running smoothly.  I also found that when an Englishman finally lets you into his life you get his loyalty forever.  This is probably why it takes so long, they are careful in their commitments.  I am flattered that I passed their tests and love my English friends with all my heart.

During the spring we had taken a trip to the south of Spain; Marbella, Granada, Sevilla and Cordoba.  Pinky had seen a performance of flamenco before we left and loved it.  When she actually got to be up close in little restaurants with spontaneous performances she became obsessed with the dance.  This became pretty amusing.  We would sit down to eat, a guitarist would start a gypsy melody and Pinky would spring up from the table and join him, doing her version of the traditional art.  In her mind she was the flash and drama of a maestra, in reality it resembled a strange clogging dance with a lot of windmilling arm action. We are incredibly grateful to the Spanish people for loving children.   She had a real moment of glory when we took her to the café of a flamenco school in Granada.  The students performed, then during the breaks the younger sisters of the students would hop onto the stage and free form.  When Pinky saw this she grabbed my large floral scarf, wrapped it around herself as a skirt (very clever) and joined in.  Pure bliss.  This dissertation will make sense later.

The move home was wrenching.  

Supergirl in Action at Blenheim

England was home for Pinky.  She loved her school.  Eric, her best friend, came to play every afternoon and they had a very serious fantasy going on as Superman and Supergirl.  They used any large rectangular cloth object  to fashion a cape and rushed around "flying" and fighting crime.  Her legions of relatives doted on her and she on them.  I knew she would be making a big adjustment.  

                                                              NEW YORK

My solution to this was to enroll her in flamenco classes at the 14th St Y.  One of my old friends, Shauna, was an accomplished dancer and taught children's flamenco classes there.  Not only was she a wonderful teacher but my insider track let Pinky be there a year earlier than was allowed.  She made some lovely friends (one had the prettiest name, Luna) as did I, and even though her moves were improvisational she did well.  We both learned to use the castanets which is a great tool for annoying people around you, I have discovered.

Class Recital Luna on Left

I am so glad that she had this little life jacket because the adjustment was indeed difficult.  She had an English accent, English manners, and English clothes.  Because of the English no-nonsense educational system she was way ahead of her age group academically.  NY schools had stopped putting advanced students ahead of their grade, instead were holding strugglers back.  This meant that she had to spend a year in nursery school with many students a year older than she before getting a real education.  Instead of reading, math, science, music, French, and homework she had blocks, sandbox, finger paint and picture books.  The children and teachers made fun of her English accent and vocabulary; because she was polite she would let other children go ahead of her to the block area and never got a chance to play there.  This led to a low mark from the teachers.  The worst moment of all came when the teachers decided she needed to know that Superman and Supergirl weren't real and took it upon themselves to enlighten her with the entire class chiming in.  I hated that school and was so happy when she got to move on to her K-12 school.

The flamenco class was definitely the brightest moment in the week, and she gradually made friends at the nursery school so things lightened up.  The year progressed and I learned that you had to invite the entire class to the birthday party.  I was whining about this to Shauna and she volunteered to dance as the exciting entertainment.  What a genius idea!  It would combine Pinky's two worlds and show the nursery school crowd something new and exotic.

Shauna made the plan, said she would bring a guitarist and a dance partner.  She made Pinky a beautiful dress as her birthday present, and I included  her dance buddies in the party.  This theme set me on fire and I used the polka dots that are common to Spanish traditional dress to dictate the party decorations.  It looked great!  


                                                                                             

Fabulous Shauna

I got a pinata, a cake decorated with a dancer, lemonade and cool party bags.  Twenty-five children said yes and I knew I was actually ready with a perfect party plan.  I figured the dance performance would take about an hour, then cake and ice cream, pinata, and Pass the Parcel would finish off my two hour time frame. I was very pleased with myself.

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE DESTRUCTION

All were assembled and silent as the fantastic stomping, swirling performance started.  This was a revelation for the five year olds - that there was actually an approved of  exercise that required banging, stamping, chattering castanets and drama.  It was a great start, then Shauna and her friends had Pinky join them, the guitarist played a gypsy version of Happy Birthday to You and the trio danced enthusiastically to much applause.  The ensemble gave a group bow and melted into the crowd.  I cantered happily into the kitchen to start food prep and glanced at the digital clock on the stove.

It was a scene from a Hitchcock film.  The clock got bigger and bigger as I realized the performance had taken 15 minutes.  I had asked the crowd to come from two to four.  I had to fill in forty-five empty minutes!!!!  I hustled the food to the tables praying for twenty minutes of grazing, God gave me five.  As we cleared that production up the twenty-five children started to get restive.  My husband rushed out with the pinata.  As everyone else knows, the pinata is virtually indestructible.  I didn't know that.  I hadn't seen one since childhood when they made them from plaster of paris and shattered easily. The party-ers took turns beating and beating and beating it with no results.  Children were getting a little savage, also my frail parents in-law were within whacking distance.  My husband didn't notice that he had positioned the action a mere two feet from the sofa they lounged on.  They trustingly watched the bat get closer and closer (more Hitchcock, more cocktails)....thank goodness an intelligent friend jumped in and slammed the stuffed donkey to the floor creating a lunatic fight for candy.  I NEVER did that again.  And guess what?  that took about five minutes.  They played Pass the Parcel, maybe seven minutes.  

There was still an hour left, so I did the Forbidden For a Reason last ditch plan: opening presents in front of guests.  I managed to retrieve some more time but not enough.  They went crazy, it was Lord of the Flies.  The few adults looked at me like I would take care of it and poured themselves festive alcoholic beverages.  The little demons were everywhere in the tiny apartment.  The boys were standing on the swaying rocking horse, the girls arguing over the presents. I started praying to new gods and finally one of them heard me.  I was sent a pair of type A get there early parents who rang the doorbell and took over the crazy.  At long last they all left.  

I thought ten hours had gone by but it was only two;  I poured myself that festive beverage,
size XXXL.  

Lesson Learned:  Don't make any party longer than an hour and a half until they are over twenty-one.
I love opening the presents after the guests leave.  There's no awful moment of envy or shame for not bringing something grand, no distress about re-gifting or duplication, and it gives the receiver the opportunity to learn how to write a thank you note.  All good.  

Vodka tastes very good with pink lemonade. 

Pass the Parcel is a version of Hot Potato and you have to be watchful so that every child is guaranteed a prize, or else.

Old Fashioned Plaster Piñata directions

Pass the Parcel in Action

BIG FOUR

Four was indeed a big year for Pinky.  She graduated from being a Pink underclassman at Eaton Square School, and became a full day Blue student.  She loved it and so did I.  This was not just babysitting, but a full curriculum of English, Math, Science, Art, Music (they played recorders so learned musical notation), Sports, Dance, and, I kid you not, silver polishing.  She was already reading chapter books and showing early signs of her twisted sense of humor and writing skills.

We had attended many posh children's parties, but none compared to Boodle Lowe's.  My best mom friend, Jane Massey, mother of Pinky's best friend, Eric, and I decided we would impose ourselves on the event as there seemed to be a select cadre of mothers drinking champagne.  Usually you were dismissed at drop off and we ignored that. We wanted to be there in order to snoop on the house, a classical mansion on the outside converted to an Italian Villa on the inside complete with interior courtyard.  Pretty amazing in a 90's excess way.  We didn't know anyone else, so we stayed together and made envious and snide comments, hopefully unheard.
There were long tables in the courtyard set up with a fantastic feast, and the nannies stood behind their charge's chairs like footmen.  Topiary were in limestone pots and saturated colors on the walls to evoke Tuscany.

An Important Piece of Information

Many Americans believe that the English do everything better than we do, are paragons of political correctness, and that we are ignorant peasants in their august presence.  This is absolutely not true.  We are way ahead of them in a multitude of ways.  While we lived there only one beach in the British Isles was open for swimming, all the rest polluted and closed.  Lead free gas wasn't introduced until the 90's, we had it in the 70's.  Healthy eating was accidental; if possible the English would eat dessert for every meal.

Usually there would be a moderate and random amount of sweets at a birthday but Boodle's was fit for a prince and his court.  Before we even saw the cake there were dishes of jello, little sausages, many flavors of potato chips, big candy bars, coca cola or Ribena, and fairy cakes, the Brit version of a cupcake.  Then the ice cream arrived and on it's heels the splendid Cake Decorated in an Ornate Zoo Theme.  Nannies kept order and the tiny gluttons feasted and feasted.  Just before the sugar coma took effect children and nannies were ushered to one of the formal rooms where they watched a fantastic puppet show which included Punch & Judy.
  
We did not invent excess.  My Puritan forefathers were screaming in my head, 

What are they doing??? Unbelievable waste and indulgence!!!   When you think of the children starving around the world!!! They will be sick, ruined forevermore....

And they LOVED IT!!!  The party bag was equally extraordinary with a Liberty House beanie animal and even more candy.

Jane and I were fit to be tied.  No moment of schadenfreude to make us feel better, just a new impossibly high bar to live up to. Dang.

 

A Pale Shadow of Boodle's

This is why I caved in and hired a much less grand and less expensive caterer to do the fourth birthday party.  And I LOVED it! 

I didn't have to be the police, Beano the Bear did that as well as lead the well behaved children in games and songs.  The theme was Teddy Bear's Picnic and every child brought their favorite bear.  The bears sat at their own tea table and looked on as Pinky and her gang sat down to their charming individual boxed meal.  It was in a white pastry box tied with a red bow and when opened, in a checkered napkin nest, was an orange peel basket filled with raspberry jello, little tea sandwiches cut out in bear shapes, cookies and crisps.  It may not have been a royal feast but it was an entrancing one.  And the cake was wonderful.  A square table with bears all around and tiny cups and saucers all made of marzipan.  A really nice thing about England is the pride the artisans take in their products and they have an audience that recognizes quality.  Consequently it's possible to have some pretty wonderful things without breaking the bank.

 
I learned from this party not to do everything myself and most of the time I follow that rule.  In my case it has a habit of liberating me to be crazier and more complicated which might have backfired now and then.


 Special note:

Childhood friends Isobel and Phoebe Waller-Bridge have distinguished themselves as young adults  with their incredible talents.

L to R, Phoebe, Isobel, Pinky

Phoebe Now

Wow

Iso Now

Wow

AdDressing Halloween

Because I like to do the unexpected I have never given a Halloween party, not for anyone, adults or children.  The rest of the world has that covered.  But there have been plenty of non-Halloween parties requiring costumes, or as the English say, fancy dress, a great nom de fete.

I was a mildly tyrannical mother about Pinky's clothing (thank goodness for school uniforms) and rarely let her have free will outside of school.  Maybe that's not mild?  I'm a visual fuss budget and have spent my life in the worlds of art and design. It would have been unbearable for me to buy clothing that wasn't in perfect taste, especially when I had such an unusually beautiful child.  Fortunately for me we had to shop in French stores because Pinky had such a slender build that nothing boxy and American would fit her, bummer.  Although as a child she was peeved about her wardrobe, now I think she's glad that there are wonderful pictures of her, even though she always looks a little irritated.

  

WHY?

(Actually the first time Pinky wore a costume was on her way home from the hospital, a bunny-eared onesie.  I guess I was setting her up from the beginning. Hold it - at 6 months I dressed her in a mini tuxedo and posed her in a pumpkin shaped tureen for a picture, I have no idea why)

Halloween was the holiday where I could let my creativity go wild in costumery.  I almost always made the outfits and really believe that the best costumes are the ones you throw together with household stuff and visits to the thrift store.

Until she wrested it from my control she was dressed as:


Carrot, age 2

Rag Doll, age 3  (no Halloween in England so this is the Christmas Pageant)

Benazir Bhutto, age 4 ( I liked that her nickname was Pinky too)

Marie Antoinette, age 5 (the exceptionally correct white hair was actually a $10 Dolly Parton wig, and yes, I made that dress!)





Victorian Pierrot, age 6  (I didn't make this, but found it in a textile sale at Christies So. Kensington;  I thought it was magical)

19th c. Equestrienne, age 7 (I made a horse to go with it. Pinky corrupted the pretty veiled hat with a Jack Nicholson as the Joker mask - truly creepy and giving me an award winning photo))




Dead Bride, age 8  (I re-used the circa 1820 dress I had made for the bride's birthday party, and recycled the Dolly Parton wig)

Picnic Table, Age 9 ( so bad I can't describe it, it was a genius idea gone way off the rails)

Gypsy, age 10 (polka dot flamenco dress made by her flamenco teacher and black wig, involved a horse somehow) 

Heidi, age 11 (This took place at her horse barn.  She wore a dirndl and dressed her pony as a cow)

50's Housewife, Age 12 (the most normal and made more fun by our French friends, one of whom was a stylist and really made Pinky and her pals glamorous, daughter Tina now a French Idol alum and wonderful singer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1t-Oh29SXo)

TINA TICTONE FAR RIGHT

While the fathers took the girls trick or treating we Moms stayed behind and tested fine wines, talking about the stealth raids we would perform on the bags of candy and hoping that no little goblins would ring the bell so that we could eat the generous amount we had bought for them.  When I was a child people still had homemade treats and occasionally there would be a disappointing apple, nowadays it's role is played by the small box of raisins, forever rejected.  But hurray! someone would make popcorn balls and they were the best!  Sticky sweet, crunchy and salty all in one, absolutely wonderful.  Here's a recipe I borrowed from localfoods.com

Freshly popped corn and some sugar syrup make delicious Popcorn Balls easy enough for kids to help make them. Add a drop or two of food coloring to the sugar mixture for colored Popcorn Balls - just be sure to wear latex gloves when you form them to avoid several days of dyed hands!

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 – 2 Tbsp. vegetable, canola, or other neutral tasting oil
• 1/2 cup popcorn
• 1/2 cup dark corn syrup
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• Up to 1 cup nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, red hots, little candies, or other tiny items of tastiness you’d like to add to your popcorn balls
• Butter or spray oil

Preparation:

1. Heat a large pot over high heat. Add the oil and let that heat up for about 30 seconds. Add the popcorn, shake pot to coat the corn with oil, cover, and shake the pot every few seconds until you hear that first kernel pop. Reduce the heat to medium and shake intermittently as the corn pops. When the kernels slow down and there are a few seconds between each pop, take off the heat and set the lid ajar. Let sit until corn stops popping.
2. Heat the corn syrup, sugar, and salt in a saucepan over medium high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, and cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves completely. (Add a drop or two of food coloring at this point if you want colored balls.) Pour the syrup over the popcorn, add nuts or raisins or whatever if that’s your style, and stir to coat popcorn as completely as possible.
3. Coat your hands with butter or spray oil, grab a handful of popcorn and press it into a ball. This will be more difficult than you may think. You will need to squish it much more and much harder than you think you should. Once you have a ball, you can add more popcorn, again pressing it on much firmer than seems right, to make a bigger popcorn ball, if you like. There is a sweet spot, when the popcorn has cooled just a bit but isn't quite room temperature yet when they stick together the easiest.

Makes 10 – 12 handful-size Popcorn Balls.

 

Beautiful Tourettes-sur-Loup

When Pinky was two and a half, September, she was allowed to start nursery school.  Besides paying for the privilege of attending, the only requirement was that she be completely toilet trained.  We had been a little lazy on this issue.  There were so many changes in our lives - new country, finding an apartment, big girl bed - that it got pushed off.  We decided the answer, as suggested by many Authoritative English Mothers, was that when we went on our three week holiday to the South of France she would spend her days naked in the sun and the lack of diapers would make her wish to use a toilet instead of putting diapers back on.  
Why did I believe that?  
Here's why:  English people can make you believe anything when they speak with emphatic authority.  It took me many wrong turns to wake up to this.  My father-in-law persuaded my mother-in-law (a member of the prestigious New Canaan Garden Club) that a gigantic sycamore tree was dead despite the fact that he didn't know that it was a sycamore. I caught him out again when he was telling a self glamorizing story about being a spy in Italy in WW2;  he reminisced about drifting through the olive groves in romantic golden light and occasionally popping olives from the trees into his mouth for a delicious afternoon snack.  AHA!  I am from California, awash in olive trees and a rite of passage for any adventurous child with inattentive parents is to do exactly that - drift through the trees in the golden sun and pop an olive in your mouth EXCEPT that when you do this the uncured olive is in a category of sourness that has no adequately descriptive word.  The moment you bite into it your entire mouth contracts in spasms of bitter/sour/acrid flavor,it dries up and puckers at the same time and there is nothing to make it stop.  It takes way more than water to get rid of it and you will NEVER try it again!  Maybe it's why the martini was invented - only something as strong as gin could get that vile flavor out. Hmmm....

Lester Dester

Well, back to Tourettes-sur-Loup; Pinky spent the flowery sunny days nude, except for her Lester Lanin hat which she never took off and called Lester Dester.  When it was bedtime the diapers came back and it seemed like it was working.  The missing feature here is the bathroom.  She wee'ed freely in the bushes and never learned about this alternative.  This became clear when we tried her out on a small trip to the Fondation Maeght, a beautiful art museum in Saint Paul de Vence; she went into the bushes in the sculpture garden and came back wet and stinky.  Instead of training her we had turned her into l'enfant sauvage. 
 As soon as we got back to London we had a week to put it right.  Potty Boot Camp started and she seemed to get the hang of it within the allotted time.  Number 2 was a tricky issue.  Because it was an emergency I gave up on obeying the scolds who said that candy as a reward would set her up for a lifetime of obesity and presented to her a single M&M in a tiny box when she got it right.  This worked immediately and I never listened to that kind of advice again.  In the 1990's it included never say no, the negativity will scar them, no fat ever in anything, wooden toys are best, and No Barbies because they are self esteem killers.  
If you never say no you end up with a tiny tyrant.  
It was discovered by the medical community that you need fat when you're a baby in order to properly connect synapses and without it the brain will be unwired.  

Pinky has plenty to say about wooden toys and No Barbies.  After my single friend Tracey got her the first Barbie (I was really upset, what a dork) I paid attention to the way Barbie is played with and changed my mind.  Barbie isn't a doll that you nurture, she's a fashion doll and exists so you can put cool outfits on her.  She gets no respect.  Many closets have a box of naked Barbies with terrible haircuts, tribal markings from Sharpies, and in Pinky's case, feet chewed off into nubs by her friend Adelaide.  

I will climb down from my soapbox and take you back to England.

The Blues

The first day of school arrived.  I dressed her in black tights and a chic Agnes B dress with black and gray stripes, edgy red high top sneakers on her feet.  She looked great, all Paris - NY,  ha girls in pretty smocked dresses.  The day went from 12:30 to 4:30.  I missed her, worried about her day, was excited for her and in the back of my mind was a little mantra - remember the toilet remember the toilet remember the toilet.

I was there early and got to meet the other mothers, some of whom became lifelong friends.  As the sweet assistant teachers brought the children out to be collected I looked and looked but didn't see Pinky.  Finally I had to ask a teacher where she was and when I followed her gesture who I saw was mini Princess Margaret.   Pinky appeared to have on a pink Chanel suit with matching tweed coat, white stockings and the same red kicks now very weird with her haughty lady look.  My memory wants to put a hat and gloves on her but I know this can't be possible.  She had had an accident, her wet, edgy clothing was in a bag in her hands and the teachers had dressed her in an incredibly fancy habille from the lost and found.  Apologetic and mortified we slunk off and I spent the rest of the day drilling her on bathroom etiquette. I  invested in a family size bag of M&M's and gratefully ended my day with a Katastroma Martini & three large olives or onions.

The recipe for the Katastroma Martini was given to me and fellow Katastroma Club members while we were in a meeting at the Algonquin Bar trying to find a signature club drink.  The only thing we agreed on was that it should be transparent.  Suddenly a waiter appeared with another round and pointed to a handsome man at the bar.  We invited him to join us and told him of our quest.  He said "I, Juan Mateus, will give you the Juan Mateus Martini!"  Here's the 411:
Put ice into a cocktail shaker then pour vermouth over the ice.  Swirl it, strain and throw away the vermouth (love that, so decadent).  Next add one jigger of vodka, one jigger of gin. Shake, strain into a martini glass and add olives or onions.  I have grown to love cocktail onions possibly because olives have become too complicated with jalapenos, almonds, garlic cloves, blue cheese, tuna - you know what I mean.
This drink tastes like a chilly cloud of fragrant spirits.  It is very helpful in reducing inhibitions and on one occasion after two of these lovely beverages I hid my friend Jeanine's shoes in a potted palm far, far away.  
You've been warned.

Poor Use of Underpants

Potty, not Party

When Pinky was two and a half, September, she was allowed to start nursery school.  Besides paying for the privilege of attending, the only requirement was that she be completely toilet trained.  We had been a little lazy on this issue.  There were so many changes in our lives - new country, finding an apartment, big girl bed - that it got pushed off.  We decided the answer, as suggested by many Authoritative English Mothers, was that when we went on our three week holiday to the South of France she would spend her days naked in the sun and the lack of diapers would make her wish to use a toilet instead of putting diapers back on.  
Why did I believe that?  
Here's why:  English people can make you believe anything when they speak with emphatic authority.  It took me many wrong turns to wake up to this.  My father-in-law persuaded my mother-in-law (a member of the prestigious New Canaan Garden Club) that a gigantic sycamore tree was dead despite the fact that he didn't know that it was a sycamore. I caught him out again when he was telling a self glamorizing story about being a spy in Italy in WW2;  he reminisced about drifting through the olive groves in romantic golden light and occasionally popping olives from the trees into his mouth for a delicious afternoon snack.  AHA!  I am from California, awash in olive trees and a rite of passage for any adventurous child with inattentive parents is to do exactly that - drift through the trees in the golden sun and pop an olive in your mouth EXCEPT that when you do this the uncured olive is in a category of sourness that has no adequately descriptive word.  The moment you bite into it your entire mouth contracts in spasms of bitter/sour/acrid flavor,it dries up and puckers at the same time and there is nothing to make it stop.  It takes way more than water to get rid of it and you will NEVER try it again!  Maybe it's why the martini was invented - only something as strong as gin could get that vile flavor out. Hmmm....

Lester Dester

Well, back to Tourettes-sur-Loup; Pinky spent the flowery sunny days nude, except for her Lester Lanin hat which she never took off and called Lester Dester.  When it was bedtime the diapers came back and it seemed like it was working.  The missing feature here is the bathroom.  She wee'ed freely in the bushes and never learned about this alternative.  This became clear when we tried her out on a small trip to the Fondation Maeght, a beautiful art museum in Saint Paul de Vence; she went into the bushes in the sculpture garden and came back wet and stinky.  Instead of training her we had turned her into l'enfant sauvage. 
 As soon as we got back to London we had a week to put it right.  Potty Boot Camp started and she seemed to get the hang of it within the allotted time.  Number 2 was a tricky issue.  Because it was an emergency I gave up on obeying the scolds who said that candy as a reward would set her up for a lifetime of obesity and presented to her a single M&M in a tiny box when she got it right.  This worked immediately and I never listened to that kind of advice again.  In the 1990's it included never say no, the negativity will scar them, no fat ever in anything, wooden toys are best, and No Barbies because they are self esteem killers.  
If you never say no you end up with a tiny tyrant.  
It was discovered by the medical community that you need fat when you're a baby in order to properly connect synapses and without it the brain will be unwired.  
Pinky has plenty to say about wooden toys and No Barbies.  After my single friend Tracey got her the first Barbie (I was really upset, what a dork) I paid attention to the way Barbie is played with and changed my mind.  Barbie isn't a doll that you nurture, she's a fashion doll and exists so you can put cool outfits on her.  She gets no respect.  Many closets have a box of naked Barbies with terrible haircuts, tribalistic markings from Sharpies, and in Pinky's case feet chewed off into nubs by her friend Adelaide.  I will climb down from my soapbox and take you back to England.

The first day of school arrived.  I dressed her in black tights and a chic Agnes B dress with black and gray stripes, edgy red high top sneakers on her feet.  She looked great, all Paris - NY,  ha girls in pretty smocked dresses.  The day went from 12:30 to 4:30.  I missed her, worried about her day, was excited for her and in the back of my mind was a little mantra - remember the toilet remember the toilet remember the toilet.
I was there early and got to meet the other mothers, some of whom became lifelong friends.  As the sweet assistant teachers brought the children out to be collected I looked and looked but didn't see Pinky.  Finally I had to ask a teacher where she was and when I followed her gesture who I saw was mini Princess Margaret.   Pinky appeared to have on a pink Chanel suit with matching tweed coat, white stockings and the same red kicks now very weird with her haughty lady look.  My memory wants to put a hat and gloves on her but I know this can't be possible.  She had had an accident, her wet, edgy clothing was in a bag in her hands and the teachers had dressed her in an incredibly fancy habille from the lost and found.  Apologetic and mortified we slunk off and I spent the rest of the day drilling her on bathroom etiquette. I  invested in a family size bag of M&M's and gratefully ended my day with a Katastroma Martini & three large olives.

The recipe for the Katastroma Martini was given to me and fellow Katastroma Club members while we were in a meeting at the Algonquin Bar trying to find a signature club drink.  The only thing we agreed on was that it should be transparent.  Suddenly a waiter appeared with another round and pointed to a handsome man at the bar.  We invited him to join us and told him of our quest.  He said "I, Juan Mateus, will give you the Juan Mateus Martini!"  Here's the 411:
Put ice into a cocktail shaker then pour vermouth over the ice.  Swirl it, strain and throw away the vermouth (love that, so decadent).  Next add one jigger of vodka, one jigger of gin. Shake, strain into a martini glass and add olives or onions.  I have grown to love cocktail onions possibly because olives have become too complicated with jalapenos, almonds, garlic cloves, blue cheese, tuna - you know what I mean.
This drink tastes like a chilly cloud of fragrant spirits.  It is very helpful in reducing inhibitions and on one occasion after two of these lovely beverages I hid my friend Jeanine's shoes in a potted palm far, far away.  
You've been warned.

Poor Use of Underpants