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?

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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.’

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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‘The Impressionists: Works on Paper.’ I wasn’t going to bother. Paper. No thank you. Canvas only please. But then a private breakfast opportunity came up, thanks to Royston King – and like a fool I went.

Attendees were characterised by a loathing of Harry and Meghan and residence in the vicinity of Ennismore Gardens. There was news of Rosemary Lomax-Simpson who for many years was i/c the private gardens of Rutland Gate. Ruled with an iron rod. Not invited to the PB apparently. But coming in the following week.

Once in the galleries it was another story. Not so easy to hear the curator’s talk because all the old powers-that-be (or were) talked loudly throughout re: their important affairs.

For a start, forget about paper. You really wouldn’t have known. At first or even second glance, it looked like a full-colour show to me; not dreary drawings. The Impressionists, the curator, explained, were innovators, and seized advances in technology to pursue their ideal – which was working out of doors to capture the moment, the way the light was for a short time, the fleeting scene. Good quality paper at a reasonable price as well as crayons and conte in a range of strong colours came along at just the right moment.

So the Impressionists were underway, at their easels or even just standing or sitting with their sketch books in most weathers. The zinging results you can see at the Royal Academy until March 10th.

As you know I am rarely bowled away. The real blast of this show was the bomb put under K.Clark’s insistence that the Impressionists were light-weight and had no mastery of form. K said Monet made Rheims Cathedral look like melted ice cream and it was just typical that he thought haystacks could make a subject for a painting. I was explaining all this when I re-visited the exhib the following week with Royston King himself (who, as it turned out, was over-diarised and couldn’t come to the private breakfast) – or trying to, for Royston King said he couldn’t care less what K Clark thought. No, no, Royston King, I said. K’s thoughts are an important anchor in the history of critical thinking about the Impressionists and his being so wrong is itself illuminating.

So it was: no, no, no Royston King. And no, no, no K Clark.

Dear Precious K Clark. But form is of the essence for the Impressionists. Even Monet. And pushing all the time, towards abstraction, as the delightful curator pointed out. I mentioned before, many years ago, on that visit to the monumental Monet Exhibition in Paris at the Grand Palais, when we had to go in the middle of the night it was so booked – there’s more to Monet than meets the eye. His figures are disturbingly shadowy, subsumed in the landscape: those women at Deauville pinned into place by the wind, or that girl in the field of poppies almost a ghost.

Now at the Royal Academy we see the same thing: people as ‘characters’ disappearing, only to be glimpsed in passing or seen from behind.

We also took the Marina Abramovic Exhib at the Royal Academy, which closed on 1st January. I’d never heard of her. A performance artist. But the Maharajah met re: a book he’s doing on her and was thrilled.

I was slightly dreaders because modern and performance art. In the 70s Marina stood in a room and let people throw knives and such like at her for 72 minutes. After that she was never the same again.

Well, you wouldn’t be, would you?

Then she had a boyfriend who seemed to slap her. She walked from one end of the Great Wall of China and he walked from the other. When they met in the middle they would get married. But they decided not to. But at least they had the performance. Quite ordinary experiences are transformed.

I thought the exhib reasonably optimistic. Despite the violence. All the items were superbly made and the photography flawless. There were some live nudes lying down in one room with guards to stop any assault. On top of them were skeletons which were removed by attendants in a ritualistic way. You could be a work of art yourself by standing on an exquisite piece of stone sticking out of the wall. You could even be a Crucifixion.

The climax of the show was an installation taking up an entire room – a bland archetypal re-creation of someone’s living quarters – a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen but raised up high. A woman was sitting stock still in the kitchen. She’d been there 10 days apparently. On the wall was a list of rules of what she was allowed to do. No food. Only water.

So it was just someone living really, going to bed, getting up, sitting. Just a completely ordinary life turned into an art work. Quite encouraging. Except if you were the woman stuck there for ten days with nothing to eat.

The only odd thing was a label in one of the rooms which said the boyfriend had ‘passed away after a battle with cancer.’ PASSED AWAY. Surely not? BATTLE WITH CANCER.

Almost the whole impact of the exhib was destroyed by these cliches. But it wasn’t.

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Saturday 30th December 2023

Before boarding for the Gay Mother’s the Thursday before Christmas, I was suddenly afflicted with horrible sinus pain. Really I’ve not been right the whole of December. There was nothing for it but spend, spend, spend, like Keynesian economics. At dear darling Super Drug I racked up (or is it ‘wracked’?) £47.83. The chemist warned me not to take two of the remedies at once. Within three days I was recovered.

The Gay Mother has bought online a set of four little wooden plates made of olive wood – to help the Palestinians. She found out from one of the internet outlets she consults regularly how to do this. ‘I hope nobody is going to attempt singing “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”,’ she said. We switch on the carols from King’s as always at 3pm on Christmas Eve. ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’ is the second carol.

My Christmas ‘post’, as I’m sure you noticed, did not this year take place. You may remember the saddest notice ever that appeared in The Times in November 1982. It said: ‘Monaco National Day: Monaco National Day, usually celebrated on November 19th, will not this year take place.’ This was because dear, darling Grace Monaco had ‘passed away’ tragically in September of that year in a motor accident.

With waning powers and constant scurrying for the Gay Mother who, although online and seditious, is nevertheless two months short of one hundred years old, I haven’t the posting thrust I once had. I can’t keep it up.

One of the challenges is to maintain style and decor – cushions plumped, furniture polished, damp repelled from the home – because the Gay Mother hasn’t the strength to keep neat her piles of the Church Times and the Tablet. I removed a great heap of them to an outlying armchair in the drawing room in the hope that they might be considered to be on their way to the recycling bin but no, the next morning they had been firmly reversed into the drawing room’s core – where they will remain possibly for months.

There is strength remaining and this is how it is deployed.

Christmas is a weight that pulls the year down to its end. The weight is carding, gifting, functions, being happy and joyous, shopping your Christmas needs, pre-Christmas commercial intensity, what are called ‘meals’, choccies and cake… gloomy carol music, lonely winter scenes. On Christmas Day itself, I drove out with the Gay Mother for a series of visits: it was pouring with rain, some sheep and ponies were just stood stock still on the moor, getting wetter and wetter, nobody on the roads. Death. Lockheap – I was suddenly stuck. Lockheap and Christmas have more in common than you might think. Lockheap prepared us for all the Christmases to come and our eventual descent into the Care Home.

Once Christmas is over, the days begin to lengthen, Spring grows nearer: the weight lifts.

Christmas is also incredibly rude. I never noticed this before. There’s that carol that goes ‘…abhors not the Virgin’s womb’…then God says to Adam, ‘Who toldest thee that thou was naked?’ – setting aside Why hadn’t Adam noticed for himself? You’d have thought he would, it’s always the youngest person that has to read this bit in any ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols’. Really quite disgusting. But unforgivably explicit are the Virgin’s words (and really, ‘the virgin’) to the Angel Gabriel who tells her she will bear forth a child: ‘How can this be, seeing as I know not a man?’ I mean, one is speechless. At least in Are you Being Served? it’s all euphemism. But this is pure pornography. To think that children have been listening to this filth for generations. It’s too ghastly.

Did you notice that the precious darling King said ‘meal’ in his Christmas broadcast? Mind you, Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother said ‘meal’ as well. She filmed strolling in her garden at Royal Lodge in an unfailing Royal outfit. When she came across that little house given by the people of Wales to the Little Princesses she said, ‘One has had some rather frightful meals prepared in there – children, you know.’

On Wednesday of this week, Christmas was over. I can’t have known the strain for the sense of relief was a surprise. I’m sure that sinus pain was psychosomatic.

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Monday 18th December 2023

There is joy at Christmas. What is its source? Supremely invitations. To be on the list, ideally several lists at once. Out every night. The run-up to Christmas. Such a busy time. Buffets. Drinks. Canapes.

Already I’ve sung ‘Oh Come all ye faithful’ twice. I’d hoped never to sing it again. The Lord Jesus isn’t even born yet. The Advent hymns are superior. But mulled wine I have avoided. Every where you look people are having fun. On the underground train, they banter in gangs – about how they went to Egypt and got clamped to the lavvie or the travails of Argos. Young men and women evidently not well acquainted but delirious as they run up to Christmas. Knocking about together, possibly recipients of ‘beers’. Presumably congress in on the cards, if not obligatory. Meanwhile, how they banter and roar because of the fun they are having.

I’ve taken the Community Garden Christmas songalong, the annual Ed Jasper (the bed-linen expert) and Roland Mainflower’s ballet outing followed by champagne reception, Winter Wonderland of course but Royston King and I found ourselves too old for almost all of the rides.

Laura Malcolm lunched last week with Arianna Nuclopoulos; just three ladies lunching, dainty with only three bottles consumed between us. Laura said her run-up to Christmas was staying in with the Netflix. I tend to agree: as dear, precious Larkin said, ‘I could spend my evenings canted over some bitch/Who’s read nothing but Which?‘ Cruel. Maybe the synapses begin to wear thin: I must sit down. I must be able to hear. I don’t like being asked what I do. I say I’m a relic of another age.

Significant events elsewhere: Robert Nevill has gone to India with the Maharajah, where they belong of course. At Shimla, a monkey made off with RN’s glasses. I was worried he’d be put in an ashram with a view to confinement to the pyre (what is the use of a blind older man, especially a white one?) but fortunately he was spared that fate. As for that monkey – what could it possibly want with a pair of glasses?

I dined privately with Patrick Lockyer, who is still youthful despite endless strain and worry in the Courts. When I fished his Christmas card out of my bag, horror… a yoghurt outrage within. I’d forgotten to take a cartoon out and the pressure of a bottle of NYE Timber had caused it to explode. Recalling the ‘explosion of a temperance beverage during the upset of the Gower Street omnibus – how I’ve missed it all these years’. Luckily Patrick Lockyer’s card was unscathed but Joshua Baring’s (he lives nearby PL and I planned to hand deliver) had been penetrated by yoghurt ooze. I couldn’t let him have it lest it went bad and the smell wrecked his Christmas. He could have ended up having to re-do his entire house. BUT after a few days, the card dried out and was odourless. So I decided to give it to him but with another one that had never known yoghurt in any way. As I pointed out, the whole exercise was madly expensive. But at least no cards were wasted.

I look the Messiah at San Paulo di Londra. My friend Miss Vivian, who sings in the choir and supplies the tickets which are worth their weight in gold, is now 86. ‘The doctor says I’ve got two types of cancer,’ she said cheerfully. She’s got pills and won’t have it discussed. ‘This could be my last Messiah.’ What will we do without her? Royston King came too. The fourth person was new: a gut-specialist, neighbour of Miss Vivian’s, writing a book. Royston was horrid about my singing and said I’m too mannered for TV. Which is odd because I’m on it the entire time. The public will just have to put up with me as I am – as they do.

At dinner at Laura Malcolm’s (not to be confused with the ladies’ lunch last week, which was held in my home)…. Frankie Doreen went off her head and said Eton should be condemned as a failing school because of having produced Borish Johnson, who was Prime Minister and also David Cameron, who was also Prime Minister. Seems a bit harsh. Joshua Baring and the Ducal Nephew were at Eton. So was the Prince of Wales. They’re all perfectly charming. Borish was surely an aberration in Eton terms. His masters didn’t care for him. Eton teaches a life of service and courtesy, never to look down on others. Eton never encouraged a barking devious show-off with few friends.

I went to a party in an antique shop as I always do. There I met someone who is going for Christmas to the glorious stately where Royston and I dined two nights in a row in the summer – because she’s a cousin. I said, ‘I hope it will be warm.’

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