Dear Jim,

I’m writing this to you with a new pair of sunglasses on before the guests arrive. You see, last week was the anniversary of Joan Crawford’s death and tonight we’ll be watching Mildred Pierce on the beamer in the lounge drinking gin and tonics. The last time I saw Mildred P was the day before I left Melbourne with Maddy. I thought it was the most gratuitous farewell party anyone could throw – we drew the curtains to the heat outside and the sound of cars parking in the residents’ car porch below and drank gin and tonics in glasses from Target. I’d put together a weepy double bill of Mildred P and Imitation of Life, so by sunset we were all snotty from bawling our eyes out at the sight of Larna Turner’s hearse. There’s something so forbidden about sitting on a textile sofa in hot weather, with the curtains closed and the TV on. Sebastian and I only have a leather couch (of course) and no curtains, so it’s a feeling I don’t often have a chance to recreate.

Yesterday I finally managed to speak to my mother on the phone without my father being in the room, because she’s back in Nigeria. When she picked up she said: Oh, I was just thinking about you. I asked her what she was up to. She said she was sitting on the sofa in their lounge wondering when to start the ironing before the power cuts out (they turn the generators off between 5 and 7). She said that the moment she arrived back in Lagos, her hip started hurting again for the simple fact that the roads are so bumpy that she needs to take pain killers just to take a drive in the car to buy groceries. My mother’s just come back from South Africa. When she was young she hated South Africa when she used to visit it from Zimbabwe, because being Chinese, she was classified as a ‘coloured’ and had to wait for the white women to be served first whenever she went into shops to buy anything. Now she says she loves it. She says the roads are a dream and the traffic lights work and everyone drives facing the right way.

Anyway, I know I’ve been terribly slack about this blog, but I’ve had one deadline after another and am trying to earn enough money to see my mother this year, so am saying yes to everything. But really there’s no excuse... except that the guests will be here in an hour and I need to get the eggplants ready. I’m doing Japanese eggplants for starters. Maybe you’ve had them, they’re halved, and then baked with a sweet miso/mirin coating. Delicious – another thing I first tasted in Melbourne, in a small Japanese place opposite the library on Swanston. I wonder if it’s still there.

Here’s a link:

http://www.joancrawfordbest.com/ferncliff08.htm

It’s for a Joan Crawford fan website where my friend Ollie donated flowers for her grave on my behalf as well. You can see my name in a close-up of the pink roses. Ollie’s from the Rhineland and his grandfather was a member of the Nazi party in Cologne. He’s the first German to say his family were Nazis. Anyway, he’s obsessive about Joan Crawford. I’ll tell you more about him later. And by the way Jim, I’m not going to call you Jimmy, because I don’t want you to get too hot, especially when you might have a few guests round of your own and who knows what they might find in the salad if you get too aroused while cooking nakisch.

Lots of love,

L