Wednesday 1st November 2023

The Laird queered Usk with his repertoire.  This was last Saturday. When the Mayor (Gay, of course, with husband) left the hall in the middle of the perf, I assumed outrage. He couldn’t be associated with the goings-on.

But he came back.

The British Legion Hall was the scene: wine in that bottle size only seen on aeroplanes. A supper, all the courses on one plate: ‘Prison-style,’ quipped Beamish O’Halloran. But in fact an excellent vegetarian lasagne.

Then The Laird began, in his Scottish garb, although in Wales. ‘The slow train’. Dear precious Flanders and Swann might seem innocent enough. But harking back, even harking back – well, it could be banned soon. ‘You’ve had your turn,’ they’ll say. ‘Time to get back in your bin.’ The Laird had even found photos of the stations axed by Beeching. He was operating the slide show while singing, rather like in the Chinese Opera, where the lady sings and paints a picture of a paeony at the same time.

But the Laird plunged further: ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’, illustrated by photo-shopped pigeon with cap on for electrical experiments. What if pigeon-lovers were in the audience? They’d be harmed. I didn’t dare look around the British Legion Hall. It got worse. One of the songs was about a paedophile possibly, being chased by a man with a meat carver. The village gossips were busy in the song and also shown on the screen. More than likely they were actual residents of Usk.

All this before the interval. Resuming, Flanders and Swann were woven in. The Hippotamus song is all very well for a massed  singalong, so rousing. But in reality Hippopotamus are amongst the most dangerous creatures on earth. The Horn Song, even, is innocent enough. Or is it? Borderline barking, perhaps, for grown men to be making horn noises? Whatever, under this seemingly comfortable canopy, the Laird smuggled in an insatiable rapist bantam (that’s a kind of chicken), and a man who promised to be lah-di-dah to please his wife and avoid going mad at the awfulness of her relations. Reality of marriage. Lurking, dangerous, disturbing. What material. Superb.

In other news, Matt Driver has at last acquired upper body strength. It’s only been a 40-year wait. This man who once shaped world-taste, who manoeuvred to get more consumption at the Eurotunnel terminals, who caused the Head of Unilever to collapse weeping at the beauty of his Persil campaign (or was it Ariel?), is now preoccupied with moth-control in the wardrobe and scouring the Uniqlo website for good knits at reduced prices.

Which shows it’s never too late to discover what really matters.

On Tuesday Robert Nevil compered at our favourite museum: Some Queer Gardeners of Yesteryear. Sold out. Packed hall. Huge names pouring through the door: Joshua Baring, Her Late Majesty’s Head Gardener (deep, deep curtsey), the Greatest Living Short Story writer, Chelsea Gold Medal Winners, a Marquis, Genevieve Suzy, Chairs, Heads …. an endless vista.

Genevieve Suzy had a near miss: somehow she was funnelled into Lambeth Palace next door with some Dutch cyclists. An attendant was saying, ‘Hurry up. You’re late.’ She only just realised in time. She could have ended up having a very frugal cottage pie supper with the Arch of Cant.

Royston King was furious not to have been there. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he raged. But I thought he was in mourning. Also the event was publicised and he is a Friend of the Museum, so, come to think of it, I assumed he knew about it and had more important commitments, as is usually the case, such as chinwag with the King, or addressing an embassy.

Anyway, Robert Nevil compered: a distinguished panel talking about Cedric Morris, Reginald Farrell, and somebody called Waterfield. All sort of pre-War figures. What is Queer gardening? Robert Nevil posed. In the form of the event, Queer was rebelliously shading into meaning Gay Men. Apparently they called themselves that in the 1930s – queer, I mean. I never knew. But then it turned out that Waterfield wasn’t sexual at all. So Queer got back to being queer as it always was.

Farrell liked really difficult rockery plants which manifested his nightmare personality. He only wished people would tend to him as he tended to his alpines. But this was never going to happen because he was impossible. Waterfield had a whiff of dear, darling autism. Cedric was the only one with conventional man-on-man domestic arrangements but there was the usual side carry-on.

The speakers did well in pushing back firmly against their subjects being re-purposed for the modern age. They weren’t ‘gay’. They were of their time. They weren’t to be assessed for happiness and assumed to be ‘repressed’ and really in need of being alive today.

For next time, the question remains to be explored: what is queer gardening? Maybe get the audience to make a queer garden. Speaking of the audience, there was something the matter with this one. When it came to questions, there were none. The Maharajah, Genevieve Suzy and I were desperately scrabbling in the front row to think of one. But too shy.

Perhaps the audience was knocked out by all the knowledge from the panel. Too much to absorb. Afterwards I thought an interesting perspective to raise would have been gardening as going on in the general population in the 20th century and even into the 21st: i.e. almost entirely straight men, certainly all the various jobbing gardeners employed, allotments, dahlia collections, growing vegetables in rows…. By way of contrast could one arrive at Queer Gardening? What about women?

Fear of stereotyping of course.

Afterwards our dinner group bloomed with glory. Chaos in the restaurant. Staff hurling furniture. First of all we were two, then three and finally four. The Maharajah managed to get the last Lyonesse Tart slice. Joshua Baring, it turned out, when he said beforehand, ‘I’m going home afterwards’ meant he was staying. That young man knows how to be rare.

With all the thinking and fear and names, especially the Marquis, and restaurant excitement, I was thrilling but careering downhill very fast. ‘I need to lose weight,’ I shrieked. ‘Lick a raw chicken,’ Genevieve Suzy advised. ‘Or get cholera.’

She had cholera once, in Thailand.

The British Legion Hall, Usk, Scene of Wonder

Usk’s Mayor Addresses the Throng

The Gold Bag – Which was Finally Handed over to Genevieve Suzy – The Gold Bag is a Story in Itself. It was £6.45