Saturday 19th July 2025

June was Glyndebourniana twice. Before Parsifal I nearly died with the strain. A Wagner picnic is something else, like the normal Glyndebourniana agony x 6.

Then I left my tablecloth behind and still they can’t find it. It must have got mixed up with the ones the ‘dining team’ provide. I suppose nobody is left alive who can tell the difference between double damask and shiny polyester.

The Marriage of Figaro went off more smoothly. I did go to Ottolenghi for the main course – damp, cold salmon with a vague curry aura.

For The Merry Widow at Holland Park Opera I did Tom Parker Bowles’s Royal Chicken Salad, regularly gobbled by Queen Victoria apparently. Quite nice.

There’s been my National Garden Scheme Garden Opening – 10 lunched in the drawing room and 6 took a seated tea in the dining room. Joshua Baring couldn’t stay. 124 members of the public were admitted to the garden with Robert Nevil and the Maharajah on the door and Joshua Baring kettling in the kitchen. Royston King was also present in the drawing room.

The Ragged School staged their piano festival again with those heroes of the pandemic response (i.e. giving concerts), Samson Tsoy, Pavel Kolesnikov and Elisabeth Leonskaja. Samson and Pavel have taken to having huge flounced frockage. It was a Schubert evening.

At the Royal Academy, the private breakfast was for the Summer Exhibition. Dame Anna Ford was present. She said she was going to write to the Pope; the Herbarium at Kew she’s had enough of, although by all accounts it will not move to Reading. Previously Royston King had attended a dinner at Kew. At the mention of Dame Anna Ford the whole place blew up.

I’m come to the content of these events another time.

Trooping the Colour though… Royston King got VIP seats. We were seated with the Minister of Defence, the Head of the Italian Airforce, the Head of the French Army, the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police and other Greatnesses. The Royal Family were sublime. Her Majesty is now a shape, as the late Queen was. You’d know it was her from miles away. Royston King didn’t think much of her having to hold onto her hat in the wind. But she must have an enormous hat. The King was totally the King. Driving up in his carriage, he was a ringer for George 111.

It had rained the night before. The scene was radiant. The best bit is when the horses canter round the parade ground at break-neck speed and how they play their instruments while mounted and keep time.

Afterwards the husband of the Chief Constable of British Transport Police, a detective, launched into a blow-by-blow of the Hampstead Rapist which ought to have had a trigger warning.

In the background, I nearly forgot to say, all the time has been the re-colouring of the kitchen floor. Four boards needed to be sanded and start again. I thought I would surely be able to match the colour which I mixed myself 30 years ago. After 14 goes, I thought it would just have to do. But at the garden opening, Joshua Baring said the old colour was excellent and the new one not. Luckily he knows a colour expert. I can see it’s going to cost £££££.