Wednesday 15th July 2026

I should be vac-ing the dining room at the Gay Mother’s, menu-ing for Glyndebourne , putting water-bags around the hydrangeas .. will the work never cease? Without eight full-time staff… even then one would only scratch the surface of everything that needs to be done.

I’m wracked with guilt: yesterday at tea one of the saucers wasn’t matching. I pretended it wasn’t happening. In London a pollen stain failed to come out of a pillow case. I passed it through for ironing, hoping for the best.

It’s the beginning of the end. People call it ‘living with it’. But it isn’t. It’s certain death. Letting go. Giving up. Until the ultimate gesture of Not Being Bothered, the descent into the Grave itself.

I carried out engagements in Usk. Usk is in Wales. It’s another country. The Lairds brilliantly designed a weekend melding both the private and the national dimensions. In an open garden at Usk Open Gardens the owner asked ferociously: ‘Are you English?’ The Laird who isn’t Welsh described his special access to a great Welsh performer. He is, by greatness of presence, a burger of Usk. In another open garden, there was precious Dr Az Hakim. Such a surprise. Usk is his home. Who knew? Dr Az Hakim assumed that the Laird and I are united in matrimony. There are serious obstacles to the Union, not least that the Laird is already married with great success to the Lairdess whom is an undoubted lady. More finally, I severely doubt that the people of Usk would accept me, Adrian Edge, of the English Landed Gentry, as the consort of the Laird, although they love a Gay of course.

Privately the Laird staged a gourmet self-made fining dining dinner. The detail! The work! The absolute completeness. The printed menu card with the full background story of each of the cheeses, all made by women. Three or was it four amuse bouche, then the reductions, the crumb, the jus, the purees, the sourcing, not to mention the styling onto the plates of the six or seven elements of each course.

A mere human would have buckled under the strain, the weight of detail. The Laird, assisted by the Lairdess, rather as darling Monica so helped Hughie Green on that TV Quiz Show, forged on unperturbed.

The next day, we took a final garden, although it was a wood really. A solicitor to some knitting Aristocracy had bought the wood many years ago and set about turning it into a secret fantasy place, a kind of playground with a theatre (yet to be built), a huge red wooden bird that can be made to fly by pulling on ropes, a Lapland-style chapel and a tower with look-out that only very small people can climb into. There were other installations all over the site – too many to list.

What a contribution this solicitor has made, far better than grinding away at solicitor-ing.

Our visit culminated in a Karl Jenkins Concert at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, at the heart of Welsh National Life. It was a huge event, with the composer, over 80, conducting, massed choirs, orchestra, a South American percussion specialist and a great lady singer. Karl Jenkins is a hero of Wales as the world’s most popular classical composer although his music is Inca, Islamic, ‘World Music’ as well as European classical and calls for peace and an end to wrong and oppression.

The Millennium Centre in Cardiff was absolutely packed with Welsh people for this great national event and the reception was tremendous.