Tuesday 2nd September 2025

Mostly, developments are not good. 

Back in March Royston King and I thought to have an outing to Windsor. When we got there, it was closed. Neither of us had thought to check in advance. 

Instead we lunched in a low-slung pub right by the top of the Long Walk. Royston was recognised and had a huge confab with the landlord about getting on in life from modest beginnings. Royston was pleased with his progress to being a landlord at 42. 

Then we set out to walk the entire length of the Long Walk, all the way to the statue of George 111. You can see it far in the distance from the start. 

George 111 was so darling, like a nice old farmer.  

It was marvellous. Hardly anybody was there. It might as well have been the 18^th century. Huge deer park with that burnished late winter look. For hours, that statue didn’t seem to get any nearer, until at last it creaked up on us and we were there. 

Some American students appeared. They had little idea where they were or why. Nor how lucky for them that they’d bumped into a world-class figure like Royston King. He boomed at them the nearness of London and the Royal influence. The landscape showed how England really is  – Windsor, then some trees which was Richmond, a Royal park, and up on a hill (maybe Harrow) where once some Royal regiments had been. 

They asked for guidance. Did we recommend Dover for their last day, which was the next day? The previous two days had been their first days. We did not recommend Dover. We thanked them for their loyalty in coming to Windsor despite the War of Independence and subsequent independence, all forgotten now. 

I had blisters from having fashion footwear for a 5-mile walk. 

More recently I bought a box of chalk on Amazon. The idea was to draw on the pavement outside my residence lively illustrations trying to stop dogs from lifting their legs right outside the home. A huge trough of chalk arrived, not the small pack intended. For a long  time I couldn’t think where to put it. Then I had a brainwave of startling brilliance for its storage. So brilliant that, when I came to look for it again, I couldn’t find it anywhere. 

I went through every cupboard and wardrobe, howling in mounting agony. I just could not believe it. I longed to die. The suffering was far worse that Ariadne’s on Naxos. I went away to the Gay Mother’s with the chalk unfound. Upon return, the whole thing started over again. I was facing the demolition of the house. Until, on the fourth day, I looked in the bottom of a wardrobe where I’d looked very thoroughly before. There it was – the box of chalk. 

I phoned Val in Moscova, Hastings. He said he had no conversation. But he had. He’s doing that Japanese thing where you draw attention to a repair. When porcelain is mended, you put gold along the crack. It’s got a name, like sushi, or origami or umani. But this is a sofa. A new piece is going to be let in to cover a bare patch. Val was wondering what glue to use, if any. We recalled the glues of our youth – darling Gloy, Copidex and Uhu. There was another that came in a pot with a spreader and smelled of almonds. But Val seemed never to have known of its existence. 

So there was conversation after all. 

In late July we went to Windsor to make up for the previous visit. This time it was open. We saw the tomb of Her Late Majesty, in a tiny sunken chapel of St George’s , with her mother and father and husband and Margaret. Already a place of veneration and pilgrimage, fully connected and subsumed into the tradition of other such places – the place of martyrdom of St Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, the vault at St Peter’s Rome where St Peter founded the Church and the sacred spot where the Virgin appeared at Lourdes. 

The state rooms we were just a wheeny bit bored by, knowing them so well. And the crimson and green drawing rooms still not open.  So we’ll have to go again in the autumn. In the café, Royston was not inclined to award OBEs to the staff. He insisted on walking to the Farm Shop which is about 40 miles away. Then on from there to some obscure train station. We were seen slogging along a busy road for miles and miles. Absolutely nobody else on foot. Luckily though not recognised. Or if recognised, nobody blabbed to the Daily Mail. The publicity would have been dreadful. 

What is utterly superb though is this new concept: a sugar kitchen. As you know, a kitchen is usually not self-funding. Which is rather the point. But it has come to our attention that, even if on another continent, a sugar kitchen is manifest. A privately rich kitchen not yet thirty. Also with high-paying employment and very handsome. What could be better? 

Poor Little Rich Gays nearing the grave can rest in peace at last.