Thursday 29^th July 2010

I am in a full family setting, a Poor Little Rich Gay in farmland, with my women friends and their total compliment of offspring, no more expected after 50.  Ivy Driver, 15, Laura Malcolm’s only daughter, inspects my products. Bronzer, microdermabrasion, Concentré Correcteur Anti-Age, escentric molecules – at last a mind-boggling broadening of the horizons. It is almost too much for her, I can tell.

But no husbands though. Matt Driver is in New York, saving the Johnson and Johnson account.  So I am the man about the house.

The others have gone for a cycle ride. I remain behind, owing to lack of suitable footwear. In Pied à Terre slip-ons with a high-gleam mahogany look including grain, I lie in a hammock under trees. Contentment threatens. Laura and Matt have a magnificent demesne. No other houses in sight or even ear-shot, roughish fields with cream cows swishing and chomping, their garden marked off by hedges, within, mature trees and some younger ones, no rare species, complex editing, lighting, water-features or planting schemes. All casual, what can be managed in the short time they spend here, without specialist nurseries nearby. I can see Poor Little Rich Gay reduced to a teaspoon and, only just visible, swirling down the sink.

No sign either of the blue mink cat.

Then Laura does mackerel with a celery, raisin, olive and honey salsa. Beforehand, when the menu was announced, Esmé Manning said she wanted pure Norman. She has asked me to mention, by the way, her sandwiches for the journey out – a choice of smoked salmon or cheese and ham, finely crafted, definitely a cut-above. She was involved in buttering on an industrial scale, despite only three takers, including herself, for her wiches.

But this mackerel was completely new. It was just about the newest dish I’ve ever had.  Ottolenghi, as it happens. Pure Poor Little Rich Gay.

In the end, there is no escape.

The Norman Hammock in which I Lay

Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver's Simple Norman Garden

Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver's Norman Demesne - Is this Enough?