Thursday 10th June 2021

So we’re having Life now. This is what we were preserved for.

Last night I did my garden opening – this was timed entry with glass of wine, unlike the Sunday afternoon opening I’ve done annually since 2012.

Liked it.

What I forgot to say was that the opening of Life was a dinner at Ralph Kitto’s on 21st May. He’s sold all the Damien Hirsts, you know. They’ve been turned into money. A lot of it. ‘Such a relief,’ Ralph said. The Medicine Cupboard oppressed him with its worth. There’d been a terrific renovation drama a few doors down from Ralph’s only a day or two before. A flatti was almost at the end of a terrific renovation. Gays, of course.  The final touches were a conservation product for the floors. Whoosh! The whole place went up in flames. Highly inflammable product. Luckily a passer-by called the Brigade before the entire block went up. The victim was one of the other guests, who looked incredibly fresh despite his ordeal and a minimum of six months to put it all right again, including the wiring which is wrecked.  Ludovico said he was a Russian billionaire but there was no sign of it. Only a secretary was mentioned, who is South African. He seemed to have insurance in the usual way and the usual perspective of the insurance company that they weren’t going to pay. There was no hint of a private army or a range of poisons that might be useful.

This Russian billionaire was charming in a friendly knit.

Tremendous talk at the table: secretaries, early check-in, villas abroad, to be rented or bought. A wonderful arc flung up, way above all the horror below. It’s been going on all the time but nobody knows about it. The great engines that really drive everything, the money houses, the schemes, the projections…. unstoppable. Nothing will stop them.

Val phoned from Moscova, Hastings this week. ‘I’ve begun my vaccine journey,’ he announced. It’s only the second part of the vaccine journey that’s an obstacle since journeying to Eastbourne is required. Val says it would ruin him to go to Eastbourne. Val said that one does not simply do things nowadays, one goes on a ‘journey’. Also friends and relations have been replaced by ‘Loved Ones’. We recalled that Evelyn Waugh wrote a book called ‘The Loved One’ which is a devastating laceration of the funeral business in Los Angeles. How did it get to be that we’ve all got Loved Ones in England? ‘Loved Ones’ is a ghastly marketing expression from American funeral brochures.