Tuesday 4th January 2021

Well, the New Year often gets off to a slow start. I turned on all my graphs and feeds with great trepidation yesterday after an interval of not being able to face them. As I might have known, rates of increase slowing or actually declining, as always, the herald to that word that must not be spoken.

Even to say it is to collude. You can hear it in people’s voices, the way it’s tossed off, rolled in with other words as if it were completely normal. That’s giving in. That’s why we’ve got it.

Prince Dmitri texted in despair. I put on Nixon in China. I’m having nothing more to do with it. If anybody reads to me from ‘The Book’, I’ll cut them off for good. Or for the time being, at least. ‘It’s in THE BOOK, THE BOOK, THE BOOK….’, Madame Mao screeches in Nixon in China. She’s deranged.

We did have a Christmas treat. It was an evening concert at Glyndebourniana with limited afternoon tea beforehand. Sir Mark Elder, excerpts from Fidelio, plus overture, then Ibramova playing the Brahms violin concerto. She had no shoes on. No interval. 500 audience members, clamped in terror, eyes darting above the cloth restraints. Not one single cough was emitted throughout. Royston King accompanied me. He was thrilled with it. Ibramova was sensational. I think she didn’t wear shoes because she stamps about while playing – so to reduce noise. But really it won’t do. The noble gesture is much appreciated. I can’t bear it for the artists. All the same, I won’t return to the halls and houses until the audience and performers are complete and free.

We practised Royston’s forthcoming interview for a huge position. I hope he gets it. He’ll have so much money and power.  We decided Royston’s strong points are that he actually knows about the heritage, gardens and parks. He won’t be a professional Chair brought in from the suitcase world, unlike some others that could be mentioned. It was important that the panel felt they could get a word in edgeways though, that he listened to their questions and answered them. Apparently Herbert Morrison had said the same, although less nicely no doubt.

Royston mentioned to Robert Nevil in my drawing room before we departed that Steve McQueen didn’t like him and he didn’t like Steve McQueen. ‘Top black people often don’t like each other,’ he explained. We’d been talking about the TV series Small Axe which I’d been watching with the Gay Mother since Black Lives Matter is her main theme at the moment, along with the awfulness of the Arch of Canterbury. Royston didn’t appear to have watched Small Axe, but from what I told him he thought little of it. Too arty and the Mangrove was seething with drugs apparently. I think that’s what he said. I hope so because I don’t want to make false accusations, although, really does it matter? So what if it was. If only the Gay Mother and I had gone to the Mangrove when I lived so near it until 1996. Nowadays we would, of course, and been incredibly friendly and maybe had drugs although I’m not keen. But then, it was too frightening. Don’t ask why. It just was.