Tuesday 15th September 2026

Abraham Rosings took a chateau near Bordeaux for the entire month of August. Has anyone done this since the War? He was dealing with spreadsheets of arrivals and departures for months beforehand. Luckily his touch is immaculate and the arrangements were faultless.

What a range he assembled. I was there for four days. I did a Vit Ton for the Feast of the Assumption. The day before I went into the village to interview the butcher as to cut and availability thereof. This required speaking French. Looking back I don’t know how I got through it all. Vit Ton for 9 or 10, people largely unknown to one. I used Anna del Conte’s recipe.

The youngest guest was Pernod Sealyham. Very coming. He’d been brought up by ladies who were exceptionally dainty in their ways. Their tea-trays were fully doilied. His father also: he would undertake to paint the neighbour’s house as well, rather than endure a grubby facade next door. ‘Was your father also homosexual?’ the Hon Gerald Bourne enquired laconically, with tremendous gravelly Madeira voice.

The Hon Gerald and Edward Vine met at St Magnus the Martyr in Lower Thames Street fifty years ago when one of them was sixteen and the other eighteen. They’ve never looked back. They lunch with their banker. A charitable foundation is planned. They went into Norfolk for ten years and saved a mansion. Now they’re doing a residence in London. Their Polish builders were acquired from some other grand gays who wanted them back. But the builders prefer to stay put. The Hon Gerald and Edward Vine have a separate designated premises for their builders. There was a lot of concern about the whereabouts of their wine cellar. Their foundation garments turned out to be in immaculate condition, as emerged in poolside pre-emersion preparations, unless you were thinking otherwise.

There was no nonsense of that kind in the chateau.

The Prince and Princess Voltova arrived by railway from London. They lunched in Paris on the way. The Prince Voltova was at Winchesterford and is now a massive brain-box in the City, the Princess was a bridesmaid at the age of 2 at a Royal Wedding. Their courtliness and grace are outstanding – even with each other. I was reminded of that time Cecil Beaton stayed with the Yugos at Dover one summer. Ex-Queen Olga left the table. When she came back, Cecil and ex-King Paul carried on talking. She said, ‘But I am standing.’ Whereupon the ex-King rose to his feet and said, ‘I do beg your pardon, madame.’ Cecil remarked that they could not adapt to no longer being Reigning Monarchs.

I was enchanted to drive the Prince and Princess to the local town. It was not entirely clear whether they had ever been in a supermarket before despite their astonishing ability to locate items on the shelves. The Prince showed the steel concealed in the velvet glove though, the steel from Winchesterford which is how he became what he afterwards became, for suddenly he said, ‘We need to get out of here.’

Not the entire party went into Bordeaux on the final night. Edward Vine said he’d never encountered such a cheap restaurant. But he was able to locate presentable wines from the list. The newly arrived KC and his wife, who is named after a Cornish pasty, were delighted with the restaurant. She did a huge amount of gilding in the 80s. He is a leading KC but as a hobby is a fully qualified garage mechanic.

Bordeaux turned out to be on a massive scale. Almost like St Petersburg. I had no idea. Huge river, full of water, palatial buildings on its banks, incredible 18th and 19th century grandeur.

Tuesday 8th September 2026

Two weeks abroad… I don’t like to let down this beloved country. But pressure of engagements was such: one August week in the glorious Norman Fastness as per; then a new feature, a Bordeaux Chateau that almost didn’t happen because of those fires. But they were put out.

A lot of worry, of course. Never again will we be able to enjoy the summer because of fear and the end of the world being certain.

Darling Kelm Driver has a son now – aged 3. At one point he and his wife were required by the child to crawl into the world’s smallest tent. It was like Alice in Wonderland. They were in it but how?

We visited a petting farm as a children’s outing. Disgruntled ornamental rabbits, hares and parrots lined up in cages. One dove was so frilly – as if a paper shredder had somehow been involved. How could it have got like that?

Laura Malcolm and I soon lost patience and began to groan: not another rare cow! Unlike all the tots who remained enchanted.

Matt Driver stayed behind at the Chateau Fragment, which is yet again being aggrandised. There’s a new shower room to be tiled in the new wing. Measuring and pencil work going on, tiny, faint pencil marks, templates, exactitude: this is the mind that once shaped the taste and purchasing options of millions.

The precious grandchild, known as General Pinochet for his imperial manner, is an enthusiast for the trolley. But Matt Driver still habours a smouldering resentment. Everything he holds dear as to precision, sense of purpose, usefulness and visual appeal (and how it was that he shaped the taste of millions in his time) is offended. As you may remember, it was part of a job-lot in an auction at Nottingham. The card table for Fergus Strachan and the nest of tables (eventually) have been a success. The trolley still weighs in the balance. It’s true that it’s difficult to get it across the lawn to the outdoor dining area without everything falling off it, particularly when propelled by General Pinochet. But, as the Laird suggested, why not build a monorail along which, tram-like, it could run?

The Laird, by the way, is now qualified to check the electrics. He’s certified. If you want to use your liquidiser or ice cream maker in the village hall, he’ll carry out the procedures and approve your item – or not. There’s even a sticker to be applied where the stringent requirements have been met. Those that have failed receive no mark of condemnation.

Almost as shattering was Moira McMatron’s gigantic revelation. It was in her tabloid days. She befriended the wife. It was the only way of getting in. Finally, finally, as the wife’s friend, and accompanying her, she was admitted to a cell. In which was the Ripper himself. She gazed into the heart of darkness. From which nothing was forthcoming because the wife kept intervening.

Laura Malcolm’s Norman shifts – how to put this politely? This is a two-propertied woman of means. But her summer shifts, although pure white, have worn so thin, particularly in the projecting areas. The bosom. The embonpoint. Matt Driver said that if she went down to the village there would be outrage.

The Laird staged not one but two, great events. Not just the traditional summer quiz; also there was an ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue’ tribute evening. Has anybody, anywhere gone to the lengths of re-creating, in their own drawing room, an entire episode of ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue’ with sound effects, double entendres, cazoos and swanee whistles for each participant ? The effort, the hours it must have taken. My role was to sing ‘Home Sweet Home’ to the Crimond. I practised for days. But when it came to it, the cazoo was the great breakthrough. What a superb instrument. I took to it, I really did. I gave The Ring on kazoo, and many hymns.

As if there was not incident enough in the Norman Fastness, what about the failure of Laura Malcolm’s oven (her cooking oven, that is) and the delivery of a replacement? All morning the delivery was tracked. 84 minutes away… then 63. But why so long at the 46 minute stage? Was impropriety taking place? Then 34 minutes… then only 10… the phone doing the tracking featured at the luncheon table. All were glued. The final agony was almost too much. The risk that they would miss the obscure turning into the lane. That oven would recede, the delivery men a distant dream. But no, the van approached. Two youths emerged. They were not glaringly from the Love Island catalogue. Besides it was now deadly. Could they wire in the oven? No they couldn’t.

So it was that Lamprey de Hautbois was summoned for the next day at 9.30. He arrived with his tools.

Tuesday 25th August 2026

Like all high-level Socialists, Herbert Morrison enjoys access to the best houses. Egalitarian instincts dissolve instantly if the Quality are at hand.

Our first visit was to a large house and grounds outside a town. Not quite Rosings… more like Hartfield. Money purred quietly in the background, its source and quantity unproclaimed. There was an exhibition of ceramics in the ground floor rooms. As you know, I don’t like anything modern but these were exquisite – ghostly impressions of specialist Japanese rope work, strange flora rendered in ceramic and so on.

We toured the grounds. Repton thought to have had a hand. Grand lake and trees. The lake had an island. ‘Is that where you’ll be buried?’ I inquired of the lady owner. Royston King later condemned this approach to conversation. But I was well-pleased. The intention was to recall the opening episode of Coronation Street, the soap opera in which Ena Sharples says to the shop-keeper, ‘Where you bein’ buried?’ The reply: ‘I hadn’t rightly thought…’ ‘Well, you should… ‘

We went on privately to Wolterton Hall, a mansion built for Horatio Walpole, Sir Robert Walpole’s brother. Purely by coincidence I was later to meet the couple who restored this house from 2016 at Abraham Rosings’ spectacular Bordeaux chateau for August. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s a small world when you’re at the top.

For some reason, members of the public were at the Hall.. but we’ll overlook that. I was dripping with excitement on arrival because I realised I’d seen this Hall on Instagram looking superb as to contents and restored interior. But it was disappointing: dead. A display of horrible modern sculpture installed. The couple from 2016 sold up in 2023 to a local businessman. Something has gone wrong.

The Glory was the outside: by Thomas Ripley, of the early 18th century. What a mansion. What a block. Squares, rectangles and triangles: that’s all it takes. And four urns. Only the Coat of Arms in the pediment swirls. The stone arcade at the lower level was added later. Probably it shouldn’t have been.

The setting is one of those as-far-as-the-eye-can-see sweeping all before sweeping statements of ownership – with a lake.

Sunday August 9th 2026

Priceless Sandringham once again beckoned. There was to be a Private Reception for the Flower Show in the Ballroom followed by a private tour of the Gardens and Show.

They were in residence so all the ground floor blinds were thrown up. One room was a bedroom of great brown gloom, being turned out by the housekeeper, the furniture heaped and the bedding in upheaval. Another appeared to be an office with huge TV screen. An outdoor seating area had been established. Incredible white cloth on the table. To think they actually sat there.

But the King had gone to London to swear in Privy Councillors under the new Prime Minister. So the Reception did not take place in the Presence. Lord Dannant was most impressed with Herbert Morrison’s questions about Putin. The same millionaires as had been at Badminton were at Sandringham only more so.

In the garden Herbert Morrison, with whom we were putting up at Cromer, was mysteriously syphoned off into Group B – so missed the private garden Tour with the Head Gardener, in the midst of which I suddenly saw a blonde figure stumping along with a dog on a remote path. It was Her. In a blue slacks dog walking outfit.

Somehow poignant. When you think of the Royalties that have roamed those paths, seeking outdoor experiences of a limited kind – small dogs, box brownies, walking attire little suited to walking, pines, rhododendrons, huge cedars and the melancholy lakeside scene. The King has striven to cheer Sandringham up. The house is not just hideous but deranged. Associated buildings are at once recognisable as belonging – pebbledash, Arts and Crafts, black-painted facings. The whole place might as well be frozen in the 1880s. That was the heyday of monarchies. Never were there so many absolute regimes, grand duchies, princely states, Emperors – and all related to each other and all at one time or another, at Sandringham.

Yet, a shadow is cast. Is it their Fate? The Empress Dagmar must have preceded Her Present Majesty on that careful path through the grounds – in the 1920s, visiting her sister, Queen Alexandra living in seclusion at Sandringham, her own son, poor Nicky Russia and his entire family murdered and dumped down a mine shaft.

The actual Show was a lighter relief. Just a corner of the louring mansion could be seen and a vista swept in the other direction to darling West Newton church where is the WI Hall that Queen Elizabeth 11 attended every January as President of the local WI.

The King had had a hand in an absolutely superb show garden. Her Majesty did appear at the Show towards evening, accompanied by Alan Titchmarsh. But I missed it because a parishioner was busy keeping me out of Sandringham Church.

Back at Cromer Herbert Morrison said he was going to wash the raspberries. Royston King backed him up. So bedint. I just couldn’t believe it.

The rest of the time was devoted to Herbert Morrison’s great campaign to care for young people with ADHD and other syndromes.

Thursday 6th August 2026

I’ve always craved Badminton and everything to do with it. Her Late Majesty Queen Mary was there during the War. It’s not open to the public. So naturally I’ve been screaming to get in.

Royston King had special entré to the Flower Show and a reception in the North Entrance Hall. Not even attendance in Intensive Care, had I been in Intensive Care, would have kept me away.

Arriving by motor vehicle, even 10 miles from the house you enter a distinct domain. There’s nothing you could put your finger on but an elusive uniformity, a certain sweep to the fields and the placing of trees can only mean one thing: single private ownership; a great estate.

The Flower Show was placed on a vast plain before a lake. In the remote distance was the house. However were we to trek to it for the reception? Although classical, the mansion lours like a fortress, unassailable ducal greatness never to be dislodged. Although right, a mere Landed Gentry, such as me, Adrian Edge, cannot but feel a certain menace.

My dread was that we would never gain the mansion. The reception in the North Entrance Hall would come and go without us. For Royston insisted on ten minutes at each stall of the Flower Show, to welcome and congratulate, then he had private needs, then we ran into one of Britain’s greatest philanthropists on her own private motorised buggy and a suite in attendance. She was buying geraniums for a balcony. She said that Royston had been right after all re: their dispute many years before. Or maybe she said that she’d been right. Her jewellery was lavish and only might have been costume.

After all that there were only ten minutes before the reception and easily it would be 40 minutes across the blazing parched plain to the North Entrance Hall. I could see that North Entrance Hall slipping further and further away into eternity, never to be seen by me. Royston had no patience with my middle-class outlook. He must have Kings in his ancestry.

Then a miracle: a buggy appeared, driven by an important RHS executive. I was whirled to the door in seconds. Royston was left behind, looking for his handbag, lost during the encounter with the world-class philanthropist.

At last I was in the North Entrance Hall. It has been much photographed. The rest of the house has not. But you never know… once in… other doors might open. I’m sorry to say the North Entrance Hall was rather a plunge. I would have re-done it. Royston King when he finally arrived, also by buggy, thought my outlook common. He was, a few days later, to be a private guest in the house and saw it all.

The North Entrance Hall – well, it is rather bashed about, shall we say? Doors off were open. But all you could see where piles of junk heaped up in the rooms beyond. The Duke and Duchess made an entrance from another door. There was a stir for their arrival, without doubt. I was not the only one who had come to be in the presence. Later the Ducal pair were en fumeur which was highly unusual and the imported staff, not of the house, were trying to extinguish them.

One ploy was to seek the facilities – which meant you could get into a passageway which was like a corridor in a school with stark white paint and pipes showing. At once the Butler materialised though – jacket and tie with trainers, all the better for covering vast distances indoors as he supervises.

A surprise in the corridor was a well-known youthful editor of a magazine for those advanced in years. He said the Duchess is his cousin. He had been involved with the mansion’s swimming pool.

Important people, speeches – then we went back to the Show. In reality it was 20 minutes to walk. More drinks on the Show Garden, more millionaires, trustees, major execs: projects, funding, projections, budgets, movement of personnel, webs being woven, comments dropped with possible effect. This is how things are done.

It was very late when we rejoined the car for the return to the capital but pleasant to wend through lanes to the charging station. It would have been a classic English summer evening as we once enjoyed in our youth but now of course wracked with worry about drought and everything dying. At the charging station the woman running the Co-op outlet donated two cottage pies which we planned to put in our freezers.

Sunday 26th July 2026

I closed Glyndebourniana last Saturday. A great relief. Of all the engagements one undertakes, is any more gruelling? The entire panoply of human experience is encompassed: travel, frockage, dining and perf attendance. Really only gardening and bed linen is omitted. For Glyndebourne, of course, only the highest level will do.

Glyndebourniana never lets you down. I took Tosca, Billy Budd and Orfeo this year.

All tip-top. As operas. Singing, staging. You couldn’t fault. Remarkably, given the huff and puff of the audience, daring, new, innovative and well-judged. Where else do you get this? So often a novel approach means silliness.

But I don’t like Billy Budd. It became apparent I’d seen it before. Exactly the same production. Then I recalled another at Covent Garden. It seems to have made no impact. The story doesn’t register. I’m not sure why. It’s more than that one doesn’t care for nautical and a ‘crew’ and no frocks. Of course a country house mis-en-scene is preferable, with bonnets, afternoon tea and pleasant walks. The difficulty perhaps is that Billy Budd as a person is rather too good to be true. The anguish of Captain Whoever is compelling. But there’s about 25 minutes more after that’s all over of the death of Billy Budd which is a bit of a slog and dragging it out.

Aunt Lavinia, who took Orfeo, agitated to sit on the grass, as she’d done of yore. I said, ‘We’ve got too old for crouching’ which she did concede. I’m 68 and she’s 94. It’s true, though, that we always thought a picnic table and chairs common although now we’re sitting at them.

Aunt Lavinia still pushes against good silver being brought to Glyndebourne and having 3 courses.

Speaking of common, the frockage at Glyndebourne! I don’t think I saw one single dress that had been built for its wearer. The old evening days are going. The favoured rig was a flimsy frock that looked as if had been acquired from the main shopping drag at Bodrum for £11.99.

One lady was done up though. A fluffy tube frock in fuchsia, knees, the form well baked, straw-coloured heavy tresses pinned with jewelled pins behind the ear then flowing thence to the shoulder. Frankly a moll or doll look. I wondered if a caravan park fortune lurked in the background.

Of course it’s marvellous that Glyndebourniana is available for all now. This is what we’ve always craved. That everybody should have pearls, furs and a really good handbag.

Now we’ve got it.

Wednesday 15th July 2026

I should be vac-ing the dining room at the Gay Mother’s, menu-ing for Glyndebourne , putting water-bags around the hydrangeas .. will the work never cease? Without eight full-time staff… even then one would only scratch the surface of everything that needs to be done.

I’m wracked with guilt: yesterday at tea one of the saucers wasn’t matching. I pretended it wasn’t happening. In London a pollen stain failed to come out of a pillow case. I passed it through for ironing, hoping for the best.

It’s the beginning of the end. People call it ‘living with it’. But it isn’t. It’s certain death. Letting go. Giving up. Until the ultimate gesture of Not Being Bothered, the descent into the Grave itself.

I carried out engagements in Usk. Usk is in Wales. It’s another country. The Lairds brilliantly designed a weekend melding both the private and the national dimensions. In an open garden at Usk Open Gardens the owner asked ferociously: ‘Are you English?’ The Laird who isn’t Welsh described his special access to a great Welsh performer. He is, by greatness of presence, a burger of Usk. In another open garden, there was precious Dr Az Hakim. Such a surprise. Usk is his home. Who knew? Dr Az Hakim assumed that the Laird and I are united in matrimony. There are serious obstacles to the Union, not least that the Laird is already married with great success to the Lairdess whom is an undoubted lady. More finally, I severely doubt that the people of Usk would accept me, Adrian Edge, of the English Landed Gentry, as the consort of the Laird, although they love a Gay of course.

Privately the Laird staged a gourmet self-made fining dining dinner. The detail! The work! The absolute completeness. The printed menu card with the full background story of each of the cheeses, all made by women. Three or was it four amuse bouche, then the reductions, the crumb, the jus, the purees, the sourcing, not to mention the styling onto the plates of the six or seven elements of each course.

A mere human would have buckled under the strain, the weight of detail. The Laird, assisted by the Lairdess, rather as darling Monica so helped Hughie Green on that TV Quiz Show, forged on unperturbed.

The next day, we took a final garden, although it was a wood really. A solicitor to some knitting Aristocracy had bought the wood many years ago and set about turning it into a secret fantasy place, a kind of playground with a theatre (yet to be built), a huge red wooden bird that can be made to fly by pulling on ropes, a Lapland-style chapel and a tower with look-out that only very small people can climb into. There were other installations all over the site – too many to list.

What a contribution this solicitor has made, far better than grinding away at solicitor-ing.

Our visit culminated in a Karl Jenkins Concert at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, at the heart of Welsh National Life. It was a huge event, with the composer, over 80, conducting, massed choirs, orchestra, a South American percussion specialist and a great lady singer. Karl Jenkins is a hero of Wales as the world’s most popular classical composer although his music is Inca, Islamic, ‘World Music’ as well as European classical and calls for peace and an end to wrong and oppression.

The Millennium Centre in Cardiff was absolutely packed with Welsh people for this great national event and the reception was tremendous.

Saturday 4th July 2026

How quickly the threads unravel if not promptly bound in.

We had the garden opening on Sunday 21st June. In my poor mind it was more the house this year. I was determined that all the plastic light switches should be replaced with heritage brass in time for the opening, plus the front door re-painted, and the steps, chips to the interior woodwork touched up and, of course, the kitchen floor right at last. The windows were cleaned the day before. Nothing lifts the home and gives an air of wealth better than sparkling windows.

My hope was that visitors would see a better life that they, setting aside class hatred and bitterness, could reach for. Chandeliers, mahogany, gilt, silver and carpets could be theirs too, just with a reasonable application of the shoulder to the wheel.

Great thrill: at the last minute the Palace added Harry Rollo, Mercury Mr Kitten AND the Harry Rollo Official Mother to the list of private luncheon guests. So the drawing room was teaming with World Figures, Influencers, Chairs and Trustees.

At 2pm our great machinery of the Maharajah, Robert Nevil, Prince Dmitri and the Baroness Thockmorton roared into action and the Public were admitted. Somehow 11 lunched, 147 of the Public were received and 8 took a formal seated tea, the home remaining poised and styled all the while. This year I didn’t hire an extra pair of hands because the Maharajah didn’t like it and wished to perform at the sink himself – with the Baroness.

On Tuesday 16th June I attended the Chairman’s Annual Garden Party at Fulham Palace. Darling Matthew Bonfam was present with his consort, Kismet Sarawak. Their frockage is intensely floral and unfailing. I don’t know how they do it without a maid. Royston King was saying they should buy a home not rent. We really will have to see about an endowment for them.

At the Gay Mother’s I staged a luncheon at which I was not present, owing to having to be in our mine with miners, all of us in hard hats and hi-viz cap a ped. The styling and final presentation was left therefore to Cousin Hilaria. I did get back for the tail end and effectively lunched with the party. I couldn’t understand why there were lemon wedges on the plates. It turned out that the Gay Mother had wickedly added smoked salmon to the menu. Which was all very well, except the only bread was from the day before.

When it came to the serving of the pudding, there were scenes recalling the great contretemps over luncheon at Braemar Mansions. Who now remembers those Braemar Mansions days, when Ivy said to Margaret Jourdain at luncheon: ‘But it was agreed at breakfast that you would finish the bottle of Cydrax that is already opened rather than start on a new one.’

In this case, the Gay Mother wanted the blackcurrant puree, which she had made herself from her own blackcurrants, styled by me with the ice-cream to the side, not poured over. Then it turned out she meant more at 11 o’clock or maybe 10 o’clock. It was getting ridiculous. In the end, I flatly refused her commands.

Not such luck with the Allium Karatavienese though. The bulb company sent me 12 of these for free last autumn. You do rather wish they wouldn’t reward large orders in this way. You’ve already got more bulbs than you can manage. I’ve never liked Allium Karatavienese but as it turned out they are quite architectural. Three were left over and I put them in the stone trough outside the Gay Mother’s back door, with some pinks. Returning from shopping one day, she said, ‘I don’t like them.’ She advanced on the trough: ‘You won’t mind, will you? I’m going to … ‘ and she pulled them out and flung them to the ground.

Wednesday 17th June 2026

Just for one moment, after Flavio had re-painted the kitchen cupboards worst affected by being under the sink. The colour is Imperial Chinese Yellow: half a day to go to Papers and Paints in Fulham to buy the paint … before that, in April, Joshua Baring’s paint specialist came. You may remember last summer I tried 14 times to match some floorboards in my kitchen. Finally I gave up, thought it would do. But at the Garden Opening last year, Joshua Baring condemned the new colour.

At least he had a paint specialist in mind. But I thought: no paint specialist will undertake 4 floorboards. On the other hand, money is no object, when it comes to something like that. In one of those crashes of sudden raving to get the home right, I contacted the paint specialist. It was arranged for him to visit. What I hadn’t reckoned with was that he would have little pots of colour about his person. He set to, and within 40 minutes the floor was right. It was done by fiddling about with shading, adding bits of worn through paint by dabbling terracotta on to look like it had worn through.

And nothing to pay! Normally he works for oligarchs … marbling entire mansions for millions… I sensed though that he was deeply sympathetic to somebody who wanted 4 floorboards exactly right.

I’ve been meaning to send a case of champagne in thanks.

The next stage was having the horrible LED downlights removed and replaced with vintage heritage glass coolie shades. Then Flavio, via Royston King, came to stop up the holes where the downlights had been and repaint the kitchen cupboards partially.

When he had finished and I was clearing up, just for one moment, all the strain and worry lifted, all the agony and torment. The home purred, as Sandringham must do, fully maided, teams of maids working round the clock, maintenance staff summoned within minutes, conservation specialists, polishers, re-touchers, gilders… just for one moment, my home was right. Until I saw that some Polyfillering around one of the new light switches was pitted and I was plunged back.

All the same, we do not give up. We fight on, surging ever forward as we lurch always backward.

Monday 1st June 2026

I’ve always wondered why the Gay Mother’s dusters are so superior. Whatever I order from Amazon isn’t the same… thin and tiny. Like trying to dust with a pocket hanky, provoking of dusting injuries, bruised, knocked fingers.

The Gay Mother’s dusters have always been the mink of dusting… unused by her, of course.

‘We’ve got plenty of dusters,’ she says when I explain what’s in the latest Amazon parcel.

‘Yes, but they seem to be disappearing. I’m trying to find ones as thick and spacious to replace and re-build..’

‘I get them from Givans,’ the Gay Mother says. She means she used to because she hasn’t ordered any for at least ten years.

But Givans … the Gay Mother has been on this Earth of 102 years and I never knew she ordered dusters from Givans.. Givans… they used to be in the King’s Road. Now online… Irish linen. Double damask table napkins. A tea towel is £27. And dusters. £1.99 each. I checked.

So, at last, a luxury outlet for dusters.

Last year the Gay Mother baulked somewhat at asparagus in April and May. I said, ‘You’ve got to have it. There’s nothing else. And it’s incredibly sought after and desirable.’

This year the Gay Mother has suddenly embraced fully the asparagus mono-culture of Spring and early Summer. She ordered a large quantity from Brown and Forrest and, in person, purchased and self-cooked a bunch from Tesco’s.

Last week I did my annual Navarin Printaner. The market in the Far West even had small turnips and carrots. There was a large quantity of the lamb casserole in the end. While we were making the first assault on it, the Gay Mother was telephoning round the neighbourhood: ‘Do you think Colin Partridge would like some?’ Colin Partridge is recently widowed. His lady wife was sadly took in April.

‘It’s meant to do for tomorrow as well,’ I protested.

‘I think I might prefer something else tomorrow,’ the Gay Mother announced grandly, as if she were the Queen Mother at Clarence House.

Such as what, I’m thinking. At a pinch I could menu oeufs au sorrel.

As it happened Colin Partridge sent his son to fetch a portion of the Navarin the next day. There was still a lot left and the Gay Mother changed her mind about it being served to her again in the evening. At least we were spared oeufs au sorrel.

Except that during the second Navarin experience she kept worrying that I hadn’t given Colin Partridge and his son enough. I said, ‘They were lucky to get anything at all,’ which didn’t please . ‘That’s not the right attitude,’ the Gay Mother snapped.

‘What other plans do you have for Colin Partridge’s menus?’ I said somewhat bitterly. ‘You could do him a lasagne.’

It’s well known that any new widower’s driveway is blocked by enthusiastic ladies bearing wholesome re-heatable main courses over which they have slaved. Or indeed food that they might have eaten themselves but have determined to sacrifice instead.

Years ago we knew of such a one who had so many lasagnes he had to set aside a whole room in his house for their storage.