Friday 19th May 2023

Rufus Pitman wanted an emergency lunch to pick over the Coronation. He’s recently been ennobled to a Club. It can’t be named and if graphed, it’s immediate expulsion. Let’s just say it’s like having one’s own total stately home in the middle of London. Coffee was taken in a Library so vast the coffee server at his coffee serving table was a distant speck from where we sat at the far end of the room. I always thought you had to be Archbishop to belong to this particular Club. I never thought I’d be within in my life.

Rufus is an Archbishop really… in all but name.

Mainly Rufus was concerned with the King’s Delay. Was He early? Or the Waleses late? It is known that the latter were at home filming themselves in their get-ups (or having themselves filmed) for Insta with the result that they were two minutes late. But the King’s Horses were too fast so He was six minutes early.

I went on to the Gay Mother who said, ‘Nobody wants a mad dentist.’ She was referring to a rellie, long gone, who came to a bad end on account of being a dentist and mad. We viewed ‘Blue Light’ on TV which prompted a history of swearing. ‘F wasn’t liked,’ the Gay Mother said. ‘The Land Girls didn’t like it. They said, ‘bloody’ and ‘bugger’. As did Charlie Clatworthy from the village. ‘But things have changed,’ the Gay Mother said.

I planned menus: hake with Venetian sauce (Rick), Smoked Haddock au creme with breadcrumb topping (Nigel). Finally moussaka (Jane, but I used only one egg and didn’t mix two tablespoons of the bechamel with egg and feta with the meat sauce: Jane’s gone out of date somewhat. Much of her drive was to make post-War ingredients taste of something by adding vinegar and sugar and so on. But now we don’t need that).

Fortunately the Gay Mother liked all the menus which was a mercy since she’s taken to not liking quite a few things in a big way in her 100th year. Of the moussaka she said, ‘It’s got Yorkshire pudding on top.’ Perhaps this is a post-Brexit view.

At my London home I’ve been doing up my private bathroom. It would have been quicker to build Chartres Cathedral. We imagine Michelangelo happily on his back painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, expressing away with abandon. I wonder how often he found he’d left the scraper down below. Or couldn’t get the lid off a paint pot. Or couldn’t remember where he’d put down a particular tool. Or didn’t realise he’d got brown paint on his hand and accidentally smeared it where it wasn’t wanted? Or got to the end of a section and found he’d missed a bit at the beginning. Or cut himself. Or had whole days feeling below parr and defeated by the task.

I’ve painted my bathroom Pegnoir. The young woman in the Farrow and Ball shop didn’t know it’s the French for dressing gown.