Saturday 9th January 2021

Many tiers ago I took tea with Rufus Pitman and Raj Zoraster. It was a superb tea in the Bangla style raging with decoration, a little patterned table, a tea-strainer that might have been a holy item and English biscuits. They were so bouncy and full of Christmas. I really think now the carriages could be ordered for the Service of National Thanksgiving at San Paolo di Londra for their deliverance from the Affliction. Raj dangled a profoundly unsuitable brown doll – really – made of knitting, plain at that. Somehow it was a Christmas piece. The wow-factor was the thong, that could be pulled away to reveal a knitted man part, which, even though knitting, looked a bit sharp and nasty, like an apple pip that had been weaponised. I got sight direct of the famous mermen that adorn their tree and which are known here and throughout the world, although rarely seen in person. They’re costly (about 30 euros each) and one is added each year. The upper half is muscular Tom of Finland with leather cap, the classic top class, sexual Gay; then there is the fishy lower half. As Berlioz, in The Shepherd’s Farewell, penetrated to the melancholy heart of Christmas, so Rufus and Raj have embodied its other heart, which is kitsch. They’d got other ornaments which are even worse.

‘We had such a common lunch,’ Rufus said. It was either egg and chips or egg, chips and fish fingers. ‘What foods will be common next?’ Rufus wondered. I was a bit stumped. I’m always trying to bring common eats back, like Birds Custard. ‘How about sumac?’ Rufus said. I’m sure this will come true. We’ll know for sure when a sumac shaker appears on the tables in that cafe in East Enders.

We talked of faraway places. Rufus said he wanted to go dancing. Apparently the road from Dhaka airport is lined with palatial curry houses named after the places where the funds from emigration were generated to build them.  So there’s the Dudley Curry House, the Brick Lane, the Royal Leamington Spa etc… This is the arrival in Bangladesh.

Raj mentioned Priti Patel. ‘Nasty Auntie,’ he said.