To London again, for my youngest’s 25th birthday celebrations. He has been travelling for six months in the Far East, and his request for a present is that I cook him a roast dinner. He suggests beef. It is more than flattering that he wants me to cook it. I would rustle up a Sunday roast for him and his siblings every fortnight when they came to stay, and the cooking must have been good enough. He does not care a row of buttons that it is high summer and the country is having a heatwave. He wants a roast and he is getting one.
I order a giant rib of beef – we will be eight at table – from Stenton’s, the family butcher in Hammersmith. And on the hottest day of the year so far, I set off from Brighton. On my top half, I am wearing a T-shirt, a shirt, a waistcoat and a tweed jacket. That is because in Brighton we have a cooling sea breeze. In London, I discover that this breeze has failed to clear the South Downs.
I arrange to meet the youngest at the pub next to Stenton’s. At the butcher’s, Mr Stenton and I have a joyous reunion. I have been going there since I moved into the area some, what, 35 years ago? And even post-separation, Stenton’s is where I go to pick up the ingredients for the Christmas meal. It really is a family-run butcher, and a damn good job he makes of it. There is a Ginger Pig not too far from him, but they’re poncey. (For some reason, their branch in Marylebone is less poncey.)
Mr S removes a giant slab of prime rib from his walk-in cooler – nothing is on display in the shop; it’s too hot – and asks me how much I want, his knife poised above the ribs. This much, or this much? I go for this much, because I want to have enough for everyone. The joint ends up weighing 11 pounds, or, in the new money, just shy of five kilos. It is a mile from there to the family home. Oh, and the beef cost £125.
The youngest and I sit outside the pub and sip our pints. He is deeply impressed by his dinner. “How much did this cost?” he asks.
“Have a guess.”
“Thirty pounds?” Oh, you sweet summer child, I think.
“Anyway, you’re taking this home on your bike,” I say. “I’ll walk.”
“I’m not carrying that on my bike! It’s a health and safety disaster.”
In the end he volunteers to get me an Uber, an offer I gladly accept, and soon enough I am in a sweltering kitchen, stripped to my T-shirt. Here I am in my element. One day I will do this standing on my head, just to show I can.
The meal is indeed a triumph, and full of hilarity. All the children now have partners, one of whom is seeing Lezards in captivity for the first time; I hope it is not too overwhelming for her. We are a boisterous bunch, conversationally speaking, and make jokes other families tend not to. For once, we do not stay up until the small hours, drinking whisky, and by midnight I am tucked up under a thin sheet on the living-room sofa. It has been a lovely but long day.
The next morning I negotiate a lift to the station from the mother of our children. Our divorce papers have finally come through, after almost exactly 18 years of separation. “I can change,” I used to joke, but I can’t really. I might be nicer than I was, but it’s hard to be sure, and I don’t want to ask. Although I am getting more forgetful. The day before I confessed this to the ex.
“It’s getting worse,” I say. “I mean, come on: actress, used to be MP for Hampstead. Can’t remember her name for the life of me, and I’m not googling it.”
“Glenda Jackson,” she says, and I wonder how I could have forgotten that. And yet there is something in the way this information is slotted back into the brain that makes me uneasy: it isn’t as if an old datum has been retrieved; it is almost as if it is new. That can’t be good.
Before we leave, I am rebuked for not restoring the sofa to its status quo ante.
“Not even the children would do that,” she says. As I put the cushions back, I say, with quiet sulkiness, “I don’t even have a sofa,” and we both feel bad.
When we pull up at the Tube station I realise I’ve left my jacket behind. Is this because I am losing my mind, or because, subconsciously, I want to squeeze in an extra few minutes of company with the woman I once married? Or is it because it’s even hotter than yesterday and my brain has melted? It’s certainly a scorcher, and on the Tube to St Pancras I am nearly sick, which is unusual for me: I’m pretty good at tolerating heat.
I recover in the end – although for some reason, back in the Hove-l, I can manage only half the bottle of Pilsner I had thought would refresh me. But I look out to the sea from my little den, and even though I do not have a sofa, I do not feel sorry for myself. This might be hard to comprehend, but I feel as if I have plenty.
[See also: Stop taking Glastonbury so seriously]
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This article appears in the 09 Jul 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Harbinger
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