Saturday 5th December 2020

Thank God it’s 5th December. One is just blowing away the days. I look at the calendar until March and think of that time to be chipped away at. A comfort is to cast back. So we’ve managed to come this far from 1st September. Now until March is the same. January is a long month. But February is shortest.

Although in fact the schedule is near normal, apart from mass gatherings, such as the Royal Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall. I returned from Madeira on Monday 23rd November by air and gained the Gay Mother’s on Tuesday 1st December. Robert Nevill and Sebastian Archer are staying at my London home. They’ve got builders into their own home and have suffered the abolition of their bathroom. They use mugs and can actually do the questions on Only Connect. Brainy or what.

The best comment on the current ghastiness is made by Professor Francois Balloux, of University College, London: ‘It feels at times as if the enlightenment age never happened. In many ways, our response to Covid 19 seems to me not that different from our ancestors’ reaction to the Black Death, with its toxic mix of superstition, millenarianism, dogma, fear, anger and ostracism.’

Quite so. It doesn’t matter how many graphs a person has looked at, everyone’s view of the pandemic is just a reflection of their personality, whether conformist, wanting to belong, difficult, maverick, not toeing the line, won’t be told what to do, goody-goody, afraid, loving to look down on others etc. I said early on that everybody has got their own little rituals for warding off the microbe. At the re-opening of the Garden Museum in July, I’m pleased to say that the Opera Critic of the Graph, run into there, said exactly the same thing, expressing horror at the masks.

If the Opera Critic of the Graph said it…

I’ve got 4 serious cases at the moment, 3 of cancer, 2 bad, one bad but more hopeful, the 4th with a mystery neurological disorder. There’s also a prominent Poor Little Rich Gay down with Covid. But I’m afraid cer is the scourge at our time of life. Walking past the undertakers last Sunday with Robert Nevill, I said, ‘I could be in their fridge by this time next week.’ You just never know.

In Madeira Anthony Mottram called the drink he’d had in a bar Instant Whisky, which would be on the same lines as Instant Coffee.  We spent a lot of time thinking of Ways with Wire Wool. In recipes, I mean. Perhaps nests of wire wool for quail’s eggs or a Baked Alaska with a Wire Wool Surprise at the centre.

Anthony Mottram has a hotel breakfast even if not in an hotel. It takes about 40 mins to assemble: the mixed cold meats, the smoked fishes, the eggs, the cereal selection from the Harvest Table (the Harvest Table was once offered to Godfrey Twirly-Wurly in early hotel days and he had to leave the Breakfast Room with convulsions), the jams, honeys, dips, vegetable plates, fruit plates, breads, pastries, toasts and various juices and beverages. When over, one morning, Anthony Mottram put the remaining beetroot slices on a plate with the other vegetables. The staining!

Did I mention that in Madeira the roads all have swirly patterns picked out in mosaic? Funny, because otherwise the architecture is plain, old-sea-dog mariner and Atlantic-facing, with sash-windows as in England but one pane wider than ours. You can just imagine the old sea-dogs looking out of them and growling in that way they do in the films, growling to be riding the ocean waves once again.

I think that’s why they made the windows like that.

Poor Little Rich Gays, here and throughout the World, know what their calling is.

Madeira: Wavy Patterns

Anthony Mottram Mixed Plate: Beetroot Staining Nightmare