Where to Begin «

Where to Begin

Saturday 23rd October 2021

Words can’t describe Harry Rollo’s latest perf. Miss Lamore Cellina was accused of hyperbole re: her remarks. But no hyperbole could ever reach its glory. Light work might be instantly popular. But never before in the history of the world has a perf instantly spoken but not been light. Completely new but at once known. The minute it was over, one longed and longed for it to begin all over again. As it will, for ever more.

Royston King was so enthralled he stayed on to dinner. The entire restaurant bowed down. Harry orchestrated there too. That which had been closed was opened up again, that was which open was commanded not to close. And so it was.

Last night I popped up to the greengrocer to get blueberries for breakfast (at weekends I have a different breakfast). There on the pavement’s edge were Genevieve Suzy and Merle Barr in important evening coats and make-up. At once I was whirled into the Maitre d’ world. This one is called Bear, actual name. Thank Goodness I’d scrubbed the stain out of my exercise wear earlier. Keeping to the shadows I just about passed in this wood-panelled club-restaurant richly staffed clamorous evening world. Genevieve said, ‘The Maitre d’ is flirting with you. But you’re not noticing.’ With Genevieve you’re at the core: All the papers knew that she was at the King Edward VII, she said, but they vowed to keep mum. Then the Sun broke ranks… Murdoch is anti-monarchy. Awful.

My big challenge at the moment is to find THIN bleach. None to be had anywhere. Another torment: my washing machine is making black marks in rows on the bedlinen. I’m minded to order a new machine at once but I can’t bear it. Merle said the black marks will never come out.

Last weekend I took Hastings and stayed two nights with Angus and Fergus. There was also visiting as Val has been admitted with chest malfunction. I wasn’t briefed. I didn’t even know it was Hastings Bonfire Night, a sinister event I’ve attended before, let alone that I was to be whirled to late fish-pie and 14 bottles of wine with Merle who was house-sitting at Genevieve Suzy’s Hastings branch. The Tudor House, which is on the route of the Bonfire procession, was flung open, or as flung as it can be given that the front door is only 5 feet high. Once you’ve ducked in, you become fully Tudor, although nobody has as yet manifested a full Tudor gable headdress with side flaps. Everybody was there, many of them quite unknown to Angus, flitting about in the shadows, fully Tudorised, intermittent, their previous London hard-bastard core flashing rarely, their present portfolio existence looming in the Tudor candle-lit gloom. Mrs Green and Blacks was thought to have been present. The big new arrival in Hastings is Errol Brachnoviz, that great hero and enigma of the Gay 1980s. There he was, sitting in Angus’s Tudor fireplace, a triumph for Angus. ‘The last time I saw you,’ I said, ‘was in 1988 when you suffered a catastrophic allergic reaction to Ariel, the washing powder.’ Then as now, Errol is in flight. He seemed to remember one – or did he? He appeared to recall the Ariel episode, possibly is still avoiding it. Or maybe not. Then there was a gay man with tattoos, unmistakable. ‘Yes, I’m he now,’ he said. Was this the ultimate Tudorisation? I thought. But Angus had known this person as ‘she’. Being ‘he’ was new for him.