The Big Sort: 5 - Janet
The V&A, London
2022.06
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A couple months ago, I went to London to see friends: childhood friends, occasionally-send-emojis-on-Instagram friends, soul friends, family friends. Until now, seeing friends never felt like a serious enough reason to go across the world. I’m certainly not the only one who has had a friendship awakening in recent years — the pandemic seems to have induced a collective reassessment of our relationships, but when a long term, slightly codependent relationship fell apart during peak covid, the fact that I hadn’t tended to a lot of mine came glaringly to the fore.
So I went for it. Once I booked my flight, Janet was one of the first people I scheduled with. She's a family friend, my mum's friend, and also my friend's mum.
Throughout my teens, I would often stay with two family friends in the suburbs: a Jewish Kiwi family in Stanmore at the northern end of the Jubilee line, and an Irish family of 5 in Dulwich, all the way on the opposite side of London. Stanmore was arcades, Priuses, trampolines, beige leather reclining sofas. Dulwich was more push chairs, lawns and gravel driveways.
I loved visiting Janet in Dulwich. It was peaceful. She'd prepare a bed for me in the guest room with fluffed pillows, creaseless sheets and perfect hospital corners that made me feel important. I'd splay my textbooks on their kitchen counter as I crammed for tests and struggled with trigonometry. I’m not sure if it was from staring into space as a form of procrastination, but I have a near photographic memory of their kitchen from that time.
In the fridge, they had semi-skimmed milk, Kerrygold butter, Tropicana orange juice with bits. On busy weekdays, there would be salmon and M&S ready-made meals. On Sundays — glass bottles of Stella Artois and leftover roast chicken. In the pantry: multi seed bread, Irish brown soda bread, Nutella, Cheerios, Kettle Chips, soba noodles, meringue.
When she had guests over for dinner, she’d study a recipe from a Nigel Slater cookbook, pop down to Tesco to gather ingredients, and follow the recipe to a T. I grew up on a lot of pre-made sauces, curry roux, yakisoba packages, and had never seen anyone prep and cook like that before.
After dinner, she’d make tea from thick round slices of ginger, and wash up with green Fairy liquid with iHeart radio playing in the background.
I still drink my tea like her.