Monday 12th May 2025

In a moment of madness I booked the Garden Museum Exclusive Tour of Sandringham with the Head Gardener. There would have been a ticket for Royston King but he wasn’t quick enough – held up in meetings in the upper corridors of power. The tour sold out at once. So he said the Head Gardener could be dispensed with, only the King would do .. why bother with Sandringham?

I over-nighted with Herbert Morrison and St Anselm at Cromer. They did 3 courses. There were no outrages. Herbert Morrison has acquired some kind of mechanical violin, called a Nyckleharpa, from Glasgow at great expense. I undertook to fetch it from Ladywell whence it had been brought by another friend from Scotland. From there I motored it to Cromer. St Anselm said now he faced the horror of it being played which began at once. Otherwise the talk was of aged relatives and their carry-on.

The next morning arrival at Sandringham took place at 9.30. Glorious sunshine. Tour members elderly, some gays, deeply anonymous. No self-introducing. It would all have been different if Royston King had been there. I lack the killer instinct. One lady claimed to know what the weather is going to be all summer. We went through the wall into Sandringham demesne. The last time I was there ( seven or eight years ago) this was an experience almost of terror, a sudden plunge back to 1880, the hideous house lowering over a vast lawn, an aura of conifers and rhododendrons, a sinister lake where a recently drowned governess might have haunted had there been a recently drowned governess.

Now all transformed. Sensational. The lawn turned into a rough meadow, huge bulb planting and masses of acers (both Japanese and other). The ugly house blotted out, a wonderful verdant scene, enclosed by the existing trees, the essence of what a country house should be, where the outside world is shut out and within is a better place.

We went on the topiary garden right in front of the house. I’d no idea it would be so huge. One acre. Next to it is a sunken maze . The King at the last minute said, ‘ How about a stepped bank?’ Or rather he used a technical term which the Head Gardener had to pretend to understand. Making the stepped bank on three sides of a kind of basin in which the maze sits turned out to be quite complicated. They had to get their set-squares and slide-rules out.

Then we were shown a rockery that had sprung into being in the past ten days.

Well, it’s a great kingly scheme. Only a king could have done it – and all within 3 years. But poignant. Lilibet rather pushed out of the way. She’d never have spent millions on a topiary garden. The King must have been waiting to pounce. Now, though, we have important new horticulture, the most important new garden design likely to occur in the Kingdom for some time.

Luncheon was given in a Women’s Institute type hall. There was some banter. Those who’d been annoying on the tour with their attention-seeking non-questions turned out to be bearable. A man retired from banking told one of those stories in which somebody like Mark Carney or Keir Starmer had been a tea-boy when first encountered by him or somebody he knew millennia ago. It might have been true. Gays slightly gravitated and more so during the tour of the house. Now there’s a jigsaw puzzle Their Majesties are supposedly in medias res with laid out in the saloon (which is really the hall). In the darling drawing room I said to the apparent kitchen (or perhaps son) of a man in his 50s, ‘It’s all so unbelievably granny and bedroom.’ He had on a frock-type outfit in black and was more than up to my remark. We agreed that the panelling needed to be picked out in different shades, not just flat slamming cream.

In the dining room the guide said he thought the King was going to strip off all Queen Mary’s green paint (also flat, the panelling not picked out) and go back to the oak. We agreed that the nightmare of Nitromors didn’t bear thinking about. It’s possible that the King thinks so too. Two tables have been stripped but no more.

In the old reign such free and easy talk about paint finishes would never have been allowed. All Lilibet’s hard-wearing upholstery from John Lewis has been abolished.

Outside on the entrance front there’s some really frightful public park planting and new peculiar garden seats in odd colours. The husband or father of the young man in the partial frock was depressed by them. His theme of not liking gathered momentum, careered rather, until he was saying, ‘What’s the point of Sandringham? It’s time to get rid of it.’

It was a moment of madness.

Leave the first comment ▶

Friday 9th May 2025

I was honoured to accompany Rufus Pitman to the Sandringham Exhibition at the King’s Gallery… which for some reason is wrongly announced as the ‘Edwardian Exhibition’. The sight of the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland produced in us a great deal of noise. Had there been the opportunity we’d surely have dropped to the floor in a dead faint. The tiara element was staggering – like a rare sacred showing, the Queen Alexandra Koloshnik and the Delhi Durbar tiara also blazing forth.

Those who have been in the presence, upon whom those diamond rays have shone, must for sure be elevated above other humans in ways yet to be known.

So many photographs of the family. Queen Alexandra had a box brownie. All their little vital bibelots (what is a bibelot?), the Fabergé must-haves ranked in glass cases. Outstanding was what I call a boudoir cupboard, curly and Frenchified, painted and gilded, glass panels. Obvs so plain and dreary there was nothing for it but to surmount with a porcelain monkey orchestra in many colours.

Rufus Pitman made two important remarks. I mentioned that I have always been mystified by the attribution of great beauty to Alexandra as Princess of Wales and later Queen. To me, she seems bug-eyed. Rufus said that whoever is Princess of Wales is a great beauty and that’s that. Which is so true. His other remark concerned a former Vicar or whoever of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge who unfortunately referred to his back bottie as an entrance. The doctor he was consulting at the time said, ‘Most people would call it an exit.’ The vicar once entered the pulpit on a Holy HIgh day and began his sermon: ‘Do you like what I’ve got on? ‘ He then gave fashion notes at some length.

Afterwards we lunched at Rufus’s club which can’t be mentioned of course. There were two very old men there who were identical twins but only one had a cough. The coffee room is a hundred metres long. Rufus talked of Ivy and her descendants. His dress on this occasion was not glaringly German but firmly anchored in the German tradition.

Some days later it emerged that Robert Nevil had also been at the exhibition for the purposes of condemning it in Joshua Baring’s publication. There must have been a moment of madness in the editorial mind. I am Sandringham. But Robert Nevil is a big name, especially now with his compendium of toilet stories in the post-War era. Robert Nevil didn’t even like the Tuxen – Queen Victoria and her Family in the Green Drawing at Windsor – which is adored and the artist only recently revealed to the public as existing at all and immediately adored.

In the next episode I go in person to actual Sandringham, although it’s hardily as if I, Adrian Edge, need to prove what is well-known: Sandringham, C’est moi, Ich bien Sandringham, Sandringham, sono io

Leave the first comment ▶

Wednesday 30th April 2025

Few have died but lived to tell the tale.

But I, Adrian Edge, was wiped out by a ‘hacker’ in April 2024.

Grim nerds who were supposed to have the back-up with self-righteous pride failed to produce it. Then, one day, they did.

It wouldn’t work. The cold hand of the grave tightened. Even those attendant upon me and loyal could do nothing. Sinking, my comfort was that could I but live another ten years the legacy would be sufficient. Truly, though where was even the bare blog to be filled in?

It was the Maharajah who tamed death and then destroyed it. Of course, only somebody from the Sub-continent could have done it. They think differently there and better. I telephoned at once to the King to see about the Koh-i-Noor being returned in India. He’s mad keen, of course, but others stand in his way.

The Gay Mother suddenly said recently that she’d seen Mr Gandhi once from the top of a bus in Knightsbridge. ‘He seemed to have a rather dirty cloth wrapped around him.’ It was his self-spun cloth of course. Funny – she’s never mentioned seeing Mr Gandhi before.

What has happened to Poor Little Rich Gays in the meantime? There have been more elevations. Now there are two Poor Little Rich Gays who must be curtsey-ed to. Nobody has died, yet, or lost their money entirely. But Eddie Sedgwick – his sister, sadly, was took. Robert Nevil and I went to the pompes at Golders Green.

I now curtsey routinely to everybody I meet. Royston King is dead against it. At Chelsea Flower Show last year we were in the Royal Party. Royston suggested to the Duch of Glou that they stop on the way out to look at the small gardens at the back. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘we can’t. We’re under a blue light.’

Now it’s almost time for the next Chelsea – and more Royalty.

Robert Nevil has had a huge success with a monumental work on the underground life of Gays in the post-War period. Much of it is unmentionable. Thank goodness Mr and Mrs Nevil, his parents, were spared being alive for the publication. He has toured the Kingdom, giving discussions, as has Reggie Cresswell. RC, in fact, has visited every town in Great Britain, with international engagements yet to come.

Laura Malcolm, also, has produced a work of fact disguised as fiction. I don’t know yet whether it contains the usual unflattering portrait of her own husband, Matt Driver. He, by the way, is now I/C the residents’ committee for the Common where they live and losing sleep over one of the other members who is a troll and makes insinuations. To think, he once shaped world taste.

No Poor Little Rich Gays have been confined to a Twilight Home. But Anthony Mottram, ‘consultant’ of Prague (oh, but he sold the business for £££££££££ or rather €€€€€€€€€€€ ) has coined a ‘hashtag’ – #beginningtofail .

It’s not as if nothing has happened. The Gay Mother is now 101. There were two functions for her birthday in February. Robert Nevil and the Maharajah came to help me and join in. In the kitchen we made disparaging remarks about the guests sotto voce. You notice how the elderly fall upon any food with a particular kind of fury. Actually the guests were all right. They loved the Maharajah. Whispering about them behind their backs was just a way of relieving the strain of having guests.

It’s harder and harder not being Royal or at least worth £150 million with a retinue. Standards go up and up. As I’m always saying to the Gay Mother, who finds it quite difficult to leave her chair in the kitchen, we must always think of how things are done at Sandringham or Balmoral, not just indoors but outdoors as well. Standards go up and up, but more and more one has to rest in a chair before the next task.

2 comments so far, add yours ▶

Tuesday 16th April 2024

The Hurlings have become waterborne. It’s so unlikely. They said to go the Lidl at Limehouse. Dinner at 7.30. So I did that. There was the canal below, but no access from the Lidl carpark. What were you supposed to do? Jump off and somehow they would materialise?

Boats were in view but unoccupied. One looked terribly unprepossessing. I managed to get down onto the towpath. A vessel further along showed signs of life, indeed a puce and cerise combination was in view – it could only be Charlie Hurling lui-meme. But on the other side. How to get across? I thought perhaps if I launched into a sea-shanty, they would send out a barque.

The nautical world, the life of the ocean waves.

Well, it turned out there was a secret bell you had to ring to be admitted to the private quay, once you had found a bridge and crossed over. So at last I was on board! Such a relief. I was beginning to succumb to abandonment anxiety.

The great feature is the toilet arrangements. You have to be induced in how to use. The most likely consequence is you’ll do anything rather than ‘go’. Luckily I was spared. Charlie and Mr Blue Cassidy said toilet discussion was tremendous amongst boat-owners. Really there was nothing else worth mentioning.

You may remember that when we visited for a weekend the Hurling cottage in Norfolk about six years ago, I snapped the toilet flush lever off and the other toilet wasn’t working.

They’d done a 70s menu. Only trifle was missing. Prawn Cocktail – enchanting. Chilli con Carne with garnishes. Charlie Hurling said hot chilli often loses its power. He’d gone to Lidl to get more and only used half of it. Perhaps the Lidl product is especially nuclear. Guests were as good as blasted back to from whence they had come only by a mouthful. Evem Miss Miracle commented and she, as we know, is exceptionally adventurous. She’d met a man in Lidl but he was no good. Not the same branch as the chilli came from though.

Who knew Lidl could give so much? There was talk of a very old friend who had sadly passed. Terrific hiss and spit at the funeral followed by slamming of funeral car doors for some reason. Another guest who I had never met before explained how his sister had helped herself to the entire inheritance of their parents so he never got his share.

A cheese board with grapes was followed by mini-Twix bars. Some present got confused as to whether they’d had one or not. Merle Barr was only just back from Japan. But I hardly spoke to her. We dined off our laps because the table was occupied by Charlie Hurling’s penis jigsaw, which is proving a nightmare to complete. So many areas of vague shading. All you have to do to get a penis jigsaw is send a picture of a penis to a jigsaw-maker. Everybody must try it.

Olive Wildish was fresh from Henley, where she is winding up her late mother’s affairs. Three hundred pieces of Spode, once of value. The Cranberry glass collection has already gone. Mr Cassidy and I were ears-pricked – possessions! Spode! Olive had a photographic catalogue. ‘The last thing you need is any more things,’ she said to Mr Cassidy. How they cram onto that boat I’ll never know. They’ll hoping to consolidate all their residences into one mansion. Still the lock-ups all over the place, packed with items. Just like Angus Willis and the Multis.

‘Can you drive the boat?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes,’ they said, ‘We’ve been as far as Cheshunt. That’s in Hertfordshire. It took two days to get there and two days back again.’

Who would have thought it?

Leave the first comment ▶

Wednesday 10th April 2024

Poor Little Rich Gays don’t get any younger. They don’t get any older either. The Photo Multi looked radiant but was battling with entrance agonies. I couldn’t remember how to penetrate the block at all but somehow I ascended in the lift to the penthouse eerie commanding all of London. ‘People keep going up that outside staircase and trying to get in from there,’ the Photo said. The topic was deeply triggering, clearly. By the Aga he poured forth torrents such as are usually reserved for socialists and the like. Total demolition of the entire block was on the cards. Then he rallied sufficiently to select wines. Perhaps there’s a case for living on the ground floor.

When Cesar Kaiser and Connor Cadoux ‘buzzed up’ things went more smoothly – up to a point. It turned out Fergus Strachan was coming too – but delayed. A card game was to be attempted after an elegant supper during which Cesar Kaiser kept trying to throw food from his plate onto mine.

There was conversation but really when the Photo Multi said, ‘I won’t be told what to do’ there was little to add. At the card table, Fergus Strachan pronounced the chart of instructions for the game too complicated and declined to read it. The Photo Multi said he wouldn’t be invited again. Play was interrupted by attempts to explain the rules to Fergus who is a novice although delighted not to listen. Before long we’d all been told we wouldn’t be invited again. Cesar Kaiser lobbed insults at his husband, Connor Cadoux, with the clockwork regularity of the guns going off in Hyde Park. At one point, when Fergus was being particularly argumentative, I said, ‘You’d better watch out for the Photo Multi – he bites quite badly.’ Which was very wrong because the Photo has never bitten anybody.

In the middle of one particular stretch of cacophony, Angus Willis rang up from Hastings in a fury. He and Fergus aren’t married but ought to be, so much do they tear at each other’s throats. Anyway, Angus slammed down – except these days you just press the red button. The drama is the same, though.

Really it was thrilling. This is the way to live. On departure, Cesar Kaiser said to his husband: ‘I’m going through the door first.’

Leave the first comment ▶

Monday 25th March 2024

The second event was in the former gathering place of the followers of Our Lady of Prompt Succour, now re-purposed for village use. The Gay Mother conceived an enthusiasm for the function and commanded that 80 should be invited. A boy I was at Primary with these days is a water diviner. Well I remember when he broke his leg. Now he is a strange pagan presence.

The central table was heaped from the bakers – sausage rolls, vegetable pasties, scones with cream and jam, brownies, jam tarts… But the cake was almost forgotten. Goodly ladies managed the whole thing. Except the cutting of the cake. I did a little fear transgression. What to do with the excess? Could it be given to the Poor? I said. No – because laid out for over two hours. Nevertheless tremendous cling-filming was underway at the conclusion. A man even was recruited for cling-filming and suffered one of those terrible cling-film crises where his sheet got twisted then he didn’t make a clean break and couldn’t start again because a narrow strip had rolled round the roll and the cling-film roll wouldn’t roll out but tore diagonally across.

Never mind! All that extra food was spirited away and never heard of again. What a mercy!

The wife of the man from the water board helped me hack and fling round the cake, though. How awful if it had been forgotten and never served.

We took the best silver tray for the donations to be placed on. But really in the village we’re just in the village. Our ownership is elsewhere and not mentioned. Royston King attended from London. His arrival was by 1st Class train, paid for by the Royal Family to all intents and purposes. Others who go to London were present, but some have never been.

Royston was recognised. ‘I know that voice,’ they said. ‘TV,’ I said. But the stir was also curiosity that the Gay Mother should have a diverse aspect. Otherwise, unfortunately, diversity was reduced to zero, although not deliberately.

Terrific banter. Royston set to and made a sensation. The village had never know such liveliness, such exhortation and dispute.

We didn’t leave until 7.30. ‘Who were you talking to?’ the Gay Mother said afterwards. I must have been doing something for 3 and half hours. There wasn’t a dull moment. The Gay Mother was initially rather ranged in a row with other elderly people round the walls. Gifts were bestowed but from whom? Later she worked the room and ate nothing. Only at the very end did she say, ‘Suddenly I fancy a jam tart.’

There was worry that the only rellies attending wouldn’t fit in. I managed to introduce Cousin Willoughby to the KC – I thought they’d form a legal corner, especially when the wife of a High Court Judge was added. But they didn’t. They formed a dog corner. How they roared re: dogs.

Royston was everywhere. Affairs, history, Cressida Dick… what topics. And answering back too. Oh yes, don’t think that just because they’re rural, they don’t have opinions. Far from it. The gamekeeper was there – although to look at indistinguishable from the poacher. At times the Gay Mother has been borderline no-speaks with him on account of the pheasants. But now she found out he is from Wiltshire – not the North as supposed. So quite a different view.

The only people who weren’t present were the Aristocracy – otherwise the complete spectrum, all of village life. The Vicar turned out to be a big strapping fellow with two sons under ten who couldn’t believe their luck with the tea table. If only they’d brought their friends. They said that they were always being told by their father that they were about to leave then not leaving. Their existence was hanging about, waiting, having left themselves. Oddly they were called Kelm and Ivo, like Laura Malcolm’s offspring – but the wrong way round as to age.

Royston made a point of them; they must have had one of the first important conversations of their lives. What an amazing ‘My day yesterday’ they would have had the next day in their Primary – ‘We went to an 100th birthday tea party and met a diverse person who is incredibly matey with the King and Alan Titchmarsh.’

That Primary would have been stunned to silence. Those boys will grow up to be elevated to the Lords now.

Royston said it was very wrong to refer to the Poor re: giving away the extra food. The Gay Mother said many of the guests she had not recognised, their hair had turned white, in the interim of her having last seen them.

This was later when we got home and had a casserole. What a function. I was laid out with having got through it all in one piece

I forgot to mention the astonishing DIY episode when Robert Nevil and the Maharaja got so deeply involved with the cupboard door coming off in the Gay Mother’s kitchen. Who’d have thought those brain-boxes from the literary and Insta world would have had a DIY aspect? But there they were, calling for more screw-drivers. They were at it for 40 minutes easily – all in vain alas.

After her other 100th birthday party, the Gay Mother said, ‘I’m sure I saw Aunt Ida’s teapot going about.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You did indeed.’ There were further silver teapots that couldn’t be put to use on account of preciousness. Aunt Ida was one of the Gay Mother’s great-aunts.

No more silver teapots now. Thank the merciful we’re now safely on the post-100th birthday pathway, whatever that might be.

Leave the first comment ▶

Wednesday 13th March 2024

Before a recent response we’ve never have been wracked that a cough could wipe out an event. But since the authorities took the path of State Terror, those of us with bad nerves will crouch all our days in fear.

Only Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother gave a precedent for an 100th birthday on any scale. Her condition frankly did not equal the Gay Mother’s, who was nevertheless most unkeen to plan. But two teas were diarised, against the tide as it were.

For six months, every time the functions had to be discussed, I, Adrian Edge, fell over a precipice. Not just the usual styling agonies, the lists, the counting… but would the Gay Mother get a cough. Death would be simpler. That at least would be definite situation. But what about if she were just unwell, or refused at the last minute to attend? People were flying in from Cosa Rica. And Orlando, Florida.

All that styling wiped out. As you know, I can’t bear plans to be disrupted. But now we live forever in trauma’s vale.

So nerves were dreadful. But I had to go on. We also had house parties. Once launched in that sea, though, there was no going back. I was like the poor little Gypsy Moth rounding the Horn.

Also speechifying had to be faced.

The first function was at our family ancestral home – so flowers and styling. Caterers were engaged but I drew the line at caterers’ porcelain. So teapots and teacups to be packed. But the great silver teapots are too precious to be used. Granny deployed them every day. Anything other than a silver teapot, even in the study, was unthinkable.

We are at least a family that can produce 60 tea cups. And banquets of flowers from our gardens. But bouquets started pouring in anyway, from cousins, the accountants, neighbours, friends and the conservation department of the water board.

The Royal card arrived a day in advance. You could tell that it was from Buckingham Palace because the postmark said Buckingham Palace.

Anthony Mottram announced that cups and saucers are a waste of time. He arrived by train with Robert Nevil and the Maharajah, whose scarf was lost on board. He had the Great Western Railway turned upside down. But it was never found.

The great worry was the Tarte Tatin. I got it ready the day before for the pre-birthday dinner for the house party. The Maharajah is not only vegetarian but very particular and vocal if the food isn’t right. It was a potato and tomato tarte tatin but still with the caramelised element. Except it didn’t caramelise, it turned to lumps of toffee. So all through the night I was tormented: what would happen when it was cooked? If only I’d paid more attention in science lessons at school… would the entire tart go up in flames, or develop hard burnt lumps?

Great miracle or miracles – it was all right… when the tart was turned out for service it was normal – the toffee had melted away.

So that was a good start. The actual day dawned. The Gay Mother gained a 100 years. Such an event. From 9am, while we were still at breakfast, people came to pay court. The attendance! Soon the drawing room was a floral parlour; only a funeral would provoke more bouquets.

The Royal Card – how we curtsied. They’d actually written their names in their own hands. The gold tassle is the masterstroke. How well everything is done at Buckingham Palace.

After luncheon (the Maharajah liked the chutney), we motored over to the ancestral. The family and catering staff poured out of the front door. Nobody has ever seen anyone of a 100. As Cousin Smidge said to the Gay Mother, ‘I’ve never met anyone of 100 before.’ To which the Gay Mother replied, ‘Neither have I.’

Cousin Monica made a speech. She said the Gay Mother will live another ten years. There seemed to be little doubt about it. My own speech was supposed to have as its centrepiece that persons of fame often peak after only ten or twelve years. Then they’ve had their time and become dull…. So after a hundred years of the same person, you’d think everybody would have had more than enough… but no! The Gay Mother is in her prime, how she sparkles and campaigns for Palestine ..

If you count modern history as starting with 1066, then the Gay Mother has been alive for one tenth of it. Really time is short.

As the sun set on the ancestral home, the drawing room did glow with gilt. Anthony Mottram, Frankie Doreen and Giles Urquart played their trio by Haydn for a second time. The assumption was that Haydn had visited the house – or at least known of it. The Gay Mother was enchanted with the music. She said, music would have been played in that room in the very early 19th century and hasn’t been much since – really only piano and singing.

So if you can go back 100 years for real, it’s nothing to reach back another hundred years to Haydn’s day.

There was the cutting of the cake, the singing of happy birthday, the departure of the guests or some of them .. only the Gay Mother would not depart. She was there for her own 100th birthday. So few are. It took almost two hours to reach the front door because of the conversations. It was almost 8pm when departure was finally achieived.

It was a great day of days for sure.

2 comments so far, add yours ▶

Saturday 10th February 2024

Ed Jasper, the bed linen expert, gave a dinner for people in their 40s and younger. Fascinating.

They live in couples, with Wills, bank accounts, and filing systems. They have portfolio careers, no employer, freelance, various enterprises. Or they’re doctors.

The workplace not as bad as we’ve been led to believe. The very youngest diner, only 29, had had quite a set to with a colleague who had adopted a gay persona. ‘I don’t like it,’ he’d said. ‘You’re not Gay. You’re stealing my identity.’

I was under the impression that that kind of talk was impossible.

But the revelation was the leisure activities. ‘Sex on the premises is very popular now,’ the doctor said matter-of-factly. He was from the North, as was his husband. Enchanting. Not hardened into London claws. ‘Because of prep.’

So they go to premises with names like Trough, Pit, Slam and Roast. It’s an incredible leisure experience apparently for men in prime gym condition. Ed Jasper and I were agog. Roland Mainflower, Ed’s husband, make no comment at all.

The styling of the dinner was superb. In the French manner – the 1st course was the charcuterie board with cipolle balsamico from the epicerie counter and other dainties. Then there was the cooked chicken with potatoes. Ed had self-made a delightful tahini cream to accompany and lift. Then the cheese board. Finally the tarte aux pommes.

Not even Ed Jasper and Roland Mainflower have staff in the evening. The dining room is panelled and groaning with silver ware.

Leave the first comment ▶

Thursday 8th February 2024

Engagements have been limited because I’m mostly at home fighting to save the Monarchy. But every time I complete a gigantic piece to camera, one of them is admitted or found to be riddled. Luckily my series is now ended. So perhaps they’ll be spared any more agony.

The only upside: it shows how much we need them. And there’ll be a massive surge of sympathy.

Limited engagements means more room for surprises. Except they’re not really surprises because when you’re at the top, it’s not really a surprise that you should see the Head of the National Garden Scheme walking his dog in the street or encounter Marmion Beaufleasance, recently retired from one of the great offices of State, by the trolleys outside Waitrose. There we were, picking over the Royal Household, the Lying-in-State of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen (at which I was his plus one with special admission, no queuing with the general), the Gay Mother’s timespan, how she knew people who’d known people who’d been at Waterloo (just), what could be the matter with the King, how he, Marmion, had begun at the Investiture in 1969 (seating plans) and gone on until very recently, precedence, processional order, state occasions, ranking of knights, folding of banners, raising of banners, correct titling, dress, ceremonial – when a woman butted in: ‘Can I get a trolley, do you think?’

Had she but known how near the Throne she’d come, how so nearly touched with gold.

Within Waitrose a bizarre incident occurred. For some reason there was a large party of visiting Chinese. They were at the meat counter returning their purchases, and elsewhere. At the self-checkout, a man temporarily abandoned his machine mid-checkout. I don’t know why. One of the Chinese women, thinking it was vacant, scanned her sea-bass. She even scanned her sea bass twice, for good measure – so it was added to that man’s total. £7.46 x 2. Then he came back and there was much screaming and jollity re: what had happened. They had to have teacher over to remove the sea-bass from the account. But at his culmination, the man couldn’t get his phone to pay as it supposed to. So I said, ‘Why don’t you get that woman who scanned her sea-bass to pay?’

How we roared. Such banter and fun.

Leave the first comment ▶

Tuesday 30th January 2024

Various commands are being issued. There are to be no presents for the 100th birthday. But she will be cross if she gets no presents. She usually gets presents on her birthday.

With the pork tenderloin the Gay Mother ordered a sage and onion stuffing. ‘It’s a bit gluey,’ I said. ‘I agree,’ the Gay Mother said. ‘Too much water,’ I said. She didn’t say straightaway. It trickled out gradually: it’s not supposed to have water. An egg should bind it. ‘I thought you knew how to make sage and onion stuffing,’ the Gay Mother said after about 24 hours, during which time the subject had been mentioned at regular intervals.

On Tuesday morning the Gay Mother dictated the email addresses of further people to be invited to her second 100th birthday party. I thought it would never end. When it did I had a breakdown and raved while vac-ing. I could never have been Viceroy of India. Administration, in me, induces breakdown. Can’t bear charts and graphs and lists. So worried will miss something out. Catastrophe.

Then I visited the venue for the second party. The Gay Mother has been there and spoke well of it. That’s why I selected it. Was greeted by one of the trustees of the venue whose wife is the Baroness who told Royston King at the National Garden Scheme dinner in November 2022 that he should be elevated to the Peerage like her and how to go about it.

What a coincidence!

My God, the venue has damp patches! I felt like saying to the Trustee: ‘How much do you need?’ Then I would have stalked back to my limousine leaving a secretary to write the cheque. But that better life hasn’t come.

Somehow the venue will have to be draped, flowers put and air currents encouraged for fragance… we’re encouraging donations instead of not wanted presents. Maybe the Gay Mother will top up to the required amount.

Val phoned from Moscova. He seems to have got in an awful muddle with his marmalade. I fear he’s passed the setting point and will be left with horrid glue.

Glue quite a theme in cooking failure this January.

You can’t bring your marm to the boil then decide you need to go to bed, so switch it off and begin again the next morning.

Once boiling has commenced, you must strive ever onwards, on to the bitter end.

Robert Nevil’s gone to India again! There’s been a terrible drama and the family are going to the jungle to recover. But there could be tigers. Expect to hear even worse news.

Royston King has surpassed himself. We were supposed to dine at the Wolseley after the Royal book launch (the creme de la creme of Royal correspondents and Royal Household members). As I approached Hatchards bookshop for the event, I received a communiciation from the august personage himself: ‘Running late. Please ensure Lady Airlie is helped to the lift. I’m invited by the author to dine in the Goldhawk Road afterwards but will go to the Wolseley if you prefer.’

Quite frankly, the slash in budget costs (no Wolseley) was welcome. As it turned out, far from dining alone in an Indian street food dive near my official home, I was ushered into the Royal Suite at the London Clinic where the Princess of Wales was offering a light menu. We were joined by the Princess Royal and the Queen came down from Birkhall specially when she heard I was going to be there.

At least that’s what I told Royston King. His ripost was that the PoW had told him she was nil by mouth. Which couldn’t possibly have been true.

Returning from the Gay Mother’s , where should I happen to find myself but in the Goldhawk Road. So I graphed the restaurant where Royston dined with the Royal author and sent it to him with a note saying, ‘Quite a contrast with the Royal Suite at the London Clinic.’

Royston then performed a classic Establishment manoeuvre: he made out his phone was choked by the photo and it had to be deleted.. i.e I’m not receiving this petition. I know nothing of it.

It’s the ultimate Establishment blank out – rather as the former Prince of Wales ordered that Mrs Frieda Dudley Ward was not to be put through when she telephoned.

I omitted to mention that Lady Airlie never materialised at the book launch. She was a terrific friend of Her Late Majesty.

Leave the first comment ▶