Saturday 3^rd April 2010

I’m at the Gay Mother’s for Easter. Tuesday last was one of my chaotic dinners, pre-paschal/Passover, ten dining, crammed into my picturesque artisan’s cott in London’s North. Lord Arrowby couldn’t come; Robert Nevil couldn’t come. Anthony Mottram – we’re on speakers, but the rift isn’t healed. Will it be?

Inside I am suffering. Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clock mender, who dines, tells me that AM is borrowing his London flat over Easter and was in London last week.

But the divine Multis come in glory, with three bottles of Chateau Rare and Tres Grand Cost, the Blond in a new, tailor-made suit of sumptuous blue velvet, the Photographer furious with the Government: more regs bossing landlords about, he says. Insufferable.  This week they have probably bought six more flats to rent out. It’s hard to keep up. They had that lunch at Coutts Bank, by the way. I forgot to tell you. Funny little bare room with what looked like flexi-walls from the graphs.

Ralph Kitto, banker, owner of top-drawer contemporary art collection, mistakes Laura Malcolm for the widow of Joseph Ettedgui, of the Joseph shops, who dropped the other day. I just prevent him from hurling forward with emergency condolences. Laura has made a chocolate cake (total fat death in every delicious mouthful), wilfully not conceding to the nut allergy of Joshua Baring, the youngest guest, only 27, and new, very coming, has never dined before. Is Jewish, up to a point, hence the Passover aspect.  With the grandeur of the young, arrives by taxi, bringing costly and previously unheard of gifts – exceptional fringed tulips, resembling old-fashioned coconut icing, and chocs from one-off shop in Bayswater called Cocomaya. Absolutely superb. You must have them.

Joshua is highly wrought, very clever, very advanced in shopping, particular, rare, knows everything  but not  malicious, loves Britain’s Got Talent.  He has been at the gruesome London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival with Robert Nevil. We shall be hearing more.

But I am worried about his nut allergy, even though it’s very modern . I would have liked a bulance on hand throughout, rather like that fire engine that is always stationed outside Bayreuth during performances because the theatre is all-wood.

The dinner gets underway. The Multis are pleased by the roasted aubergine with oregano and coriander with tahini. In fact they say it is the best first course they’ve ever had.

Where would I be without them?

The meat main is the Ashkenazi alternative – stuffed shoulder of lamb. See Nigella’s Feast, chapter on the Passover. Untidy on the plate, quite a lot of fat, a great slick of which somehow gets all over my frockage. So I am martyred in the kitchen, as saucepans, cutlery, dishes, debris proliferate. The dining table, too, begins to heap with wrappings, bits of string, corks, Lord knows what. How nice, I think, to be Third World and not have any possessions. On the other hand, I could have gloved staff, lifting, clearing, sweeping, washing up (with the gloves off, presume), putting away. But then the guests would be cowed and we’d be eating catering food as if at Massivebury, the desolate get-a-hose-to-the-door-and-pump-in-a-million -pounds country seat of the Smallmeal/Limpneys, my absolute fuck-off and slam-down non-friends.

And it’s too expensive. Are guests either cowed or contemptuous?

As I scurry, hostessing, with my fat stigmata (right, though, for Holy Week), I catch snippets, the guests, as with the rubbish piling up on the table, growing wilder and wilder.

‘Massivebury!’

I can’t believe it. Does Ralph Kitto know the Smallmeal/Limpneys?  ‘We haven’t been invited,’ someone says. ‘Deadly,’ says someone else.

I fly past with the tea and coffee service. Fragments. Still the Smallmeal/Limpneys?

‘…someone who goes to the gym that much.’

‘…£30,000 on business-class flights to Ventimiglia…’

‘There are two things that make him totally demented…’

‘Someone had actually died…’

‘It’s worth £10 million.’

‘If he thinks people have got more money than him….’

‘He was never management…’

‘All that slapper said was, “The boyfriend will get all the money”’

‘Or if he thinks they’ve got better connections…’

‘Not even fit to push the toiletries trolley…’

Some time later. It doesn’t sound like the Smallmeal/Limpneys. I shunt back and forth. The coffee’s run out. The cups are fiddly.

‘I don’t think I’ve been privileged to see Carlos’s leather-gear.’

This is Laura Malcolm. I can tell, she being the only lady present. This is from the Ralph Kitto, Blond Multi end of the table. Carlos?  Is this the considerably younger, gym-expanded Carlos who is partner of multi-millionaire, Sol Weideinwar, reported by me the other day as being unhappy in luxury’s lap and wanting to go out to work? I cannot tell. But both Ralph  and Laura know Sol, as they might have discovered. Laura and I rather like Carlos. I strain to hear more but nothing further wings its way.

How do the young prosper when plucked from obscurity and pressed to the bosom of a doting, lavish multi? We must wait and see.

Exceptional Coconut-Icing Tulips Brought by Joshua Baring

Superb New Chocolate Source Revealed by Joshua Baring