Tuesday 18th May 2010

Just back.Val’s Birthday completed. He showed, not re-bottled, and, it turned out, had made pastry.

The exhibition at Lambeth Palace wasn’t copes. It was books.  Numerous grey woolly heads bending over glass cases in the library there, apparently listening to telephones – actually audio-guides. I thought: ‘an interest in ecclesiastical affairs which is often a prelude to insanity.’ That’s Decline and Fall by E. Waugh. But it was fascinating, if tiny things to look at: Queen Elizabeth’s prayer book, coloured in, pictures of herself at prayer, gospels illuminated by Eric Gill, document authorising the building of St Paul’s Cathedral and so on.

We nipped round to the Museum of Garden History for Christopher Lloyd exhib. He was an important gardener, if you don’t know. But this strictly for devotees only. His old shoes, Letts Engagement Diaries, father’s spade, notes scribbled on the back of packaging to his minions; highlight was substantial display of ancient, profoundly inedible bottled fruit with corroded lids.

Val said: ‘It’s the Museum of Catering and Commerce in Budapest all over again.’ Absolutely Val’s favourite on visits to Anthony Mottram in the early 90s, before he, Mottram, moved to Prague. Intoxicating display of saucepans and colanders. That put us in mind of the Museum of Paprika at Szeged that never was. Or never found by us despite full effort. ‘There is no museum of Paprika on the road to Szeged,’ Val proclaimed. ‘What am I echoing?’ I was blank. ‘Jewel’s Crown! You must remember. Edwina Crane, Barbie’s friend at the Mission. The one who dressed as a Hindu and self-immolated in her garden shed. She said: ‘There is no God upon the road to Dibrapur.’

But it’s before your day, isn’t it? Jewel in the Crown. Massive TV drama, about 1981. Never seen the like since.

We took an overland train to Val’s flat. He’s been upholstering, using Swedish tablecloths; he’s removed the ostrich egg lampshade from its fluted, curlicued and self-gilded stand and replaced it with something more ordinary that gives better light. Nearby is the immaculate box-shaped shade he made himself from a silk scarf I bought back for him from Zimbawe. We had an elegant early supper. Val had attempted shortcrust, for the first time in fifteen years, and triumphed. It was a baked cheesecake, superbly precise and French, as is all Val’s patisserie. He hasn’t lost his pastry hands. For lunch on Sunday, he told me,  he made a cauliflower salad, not the Antioch version though but the Balkan.

So Val is glorious. Next week, it’s possible he might be moved to come over to me and finish re-covering that chair, which last had a fitting in January.

For a while I forgot my under-tow.

But we’ll come to that tomorrow.

Christopher Lloyd's Old Bottled Fruit

Christopher Lloyd's Shoes

Gas Fog Horn Used by Christopher Lloyd When Immobile in Old Age to Attract Attention