Wednesday 7th July 2010

Tomorrow I board for Toulon and thence by bus (taxis slashed out in the crunch) to Virgil Grayson’s villa near Le Lavandou. He is the architect of numerous museum extensions, known here and throughout the world,  first known to me thirty years ago when he was younger than I am now. Bruce MacBain, my own architect, and architect supreme to the Poor Little Rich Gays (Reggie Cresswell, Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, Frankie-Doreen Gunn, Rufus Pitman, Anthony Mottram, Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer – we’ve all had him, but only I keep him at my side all the time. Just this morning he was advising me re: razors in hand luggage – read on) was nurtured in Virgil’s office originally.

Jetting from villa to villa might sound a life of creamy luxury, but there’s a price to pay. Here is the Poor Little Rich Gay burden at this time of year:

Intense pressure at the London end: so many summer parties to be packed in before departing the capital. Robert Nevil had six invitations on Tuesday night. Next week, when I regain from France’s South, is Lord Arrowby’s party. That means outfits. Lord Arrowby has talked of nothing else, if he talks at all which to me is rarely (he is my intermittent love-object, when I remember, which explains…..) but what he is going to wear at his function. This is unusual in one who stalks the very highest corridors of power in some mysterious capacity or other, I would have thought.Last night the Photographer Multi was at a dinner for 200 at Trenton’s gallery (see graph below), alone since the Blond Multi is incarcerated in Australia (I haven’t mentioned that the BM is awfully dashing and Brideshead so could very well be taken into specialist sex slavery while far from home, should he fall in with a bad lot – let’s hope and pray for his safe return). Peter Doig and Grayson Perry were there. The PM encouraged me to crash. He said it was an informal barbie. I think I had a narrow escape, don’t you?

Which leads to the next point – you’ve got your final raid on the sales to fit in, Poor Little Rich Gays. You should now be on your sixth or seventh visit, ready to claw up the items you’ve been  backing for further massive reductions. I pounded to The Library this morning to get my final piece – a grey silk/cotton gauze shirt for Lord Arrowby’s party at £70. Had I waited until my return next week, it would have been too late.

Pre-boarding tension, exacerbated by multiple boardings. Robert Nevil regained from Menton last week, boards on Monday for Bulgaria to visit the orphans (you remember them from last year? I’m being kept in Abu Graiub by Anthony Mottram so not going), then boards again for Italy with me in the second week of August. But what if moth sets in while you’re away. Have you proofed? Have you trimmed and tidied for your return – nothing more ghastly than coming back to a wrong home?

Now I have a further problem. You have to pay £40 to check in a case on Ryan now. I’m not having that. So hand-luggage only. But no liquids above 100 ml. What is 100ml? What about moisturiser, bronzer, face-wash?  I went barely able to breathe to Space NK this morning and bought a travelling set by Skeen for £62 plus, from Harrods, a lovely 30ml comfort bottle of Jo Malone Black Pomegranate cologne (£32) to cradle on the journey and spray on and have some vaporous link with a better place. Bruce MacBain tells me no razors allowed but he visited Virgil in the South of France last weekend and left behind some disposable ones.

Ghastly but what can you do?

All the same, thank God for one’s architect.

Now I must dash to pack a skeleton wardrobe into one carry-on bag measuring no more than 55 centimetres across.

Dinner for 200 at Trenton's Art Gallery Attended by the Photographer Multi