Wednesday 10th April 2024

Poor Little Rich Gays don’t get any younger. They don’t get any older either. The Photo Multi looked radiant but was battling with entrance agonies. I couldn’t remember how to penetrate the block at all but somehow I ascended in the lift to the penthouse eerie commanding all of London. ‘People keep going up that outside staircase and trying to get in from there,’ the Photo said. The topic was deeply triggering, clearly. By the Aga he poured forth torrents such as are usually reserved for socialists and the like. Total demolition of the entire block was on the cards. Then he rallied sufficiently to select wines. Perhaps there’s a case for living on the ground floor.

When Cesar Kaiser and Connor Cadoux ‘buzzed up’ things went more smoothly – up to a point. It turned out Fergus Strachan was coming too – but delayed. A card game was to be attempted after an elegant supper during which Cesar Kaiser kept trying to throw food from his plate onto mine.

There was conversation but really when the Photo Multi said, ‘I won’t be told what to do’ there was little to add. At the card table, Fergus Strachan pronounced the chart of instructions for the game too complicated and declined to read it. The Photo Multi said he wouldn’t be invited again. Play was interrupted by attempts to explain the rules to Fergus who is a novice although delighted not to listen. Before long we’d all been told we wouldn’t be invited again. Cesar Kaiser lobbed insults at his husband, Connor Cadoux, with the clockwork regularity of the guns going off in Hyde Park. At one point, when Fergus was being particularly argumentative, I said, ‘You’d better watch out for the Photo Multi – he bites quite badly.’ Which was very wrong because the Photo has never bitten anybody.

In the middle of one particular stretch of cacophony, Angus Willis rang up from Hastings in a fury. He and Fergus aren’t married but ought to be, so much do they tear at each other’s throats. Anyway, Angus slammed down – except these days you just press the red button. The drama is the same, though.

Really it was thrilling. This is the way to live. On departure, Cesar Kaiser said to his husband: ‘I’m going through the door first.’