Monday 9^th August 2010

We came out on Saturday from London.

This summer the villa is in Umbria. Not Tuscany. And self-paid by me and Prince Dmitri Hersov, to return the Multis’ provision of a Tuscan palace last summer.

Worrying.

Umbria not the best, its landscape not necessarily at the centre of things (I mean history, great art) – where Poor Little Rich Gays like to be.

Also, in the brochure, a monstrous pool table affair lowering in the villa drawing room – how would we get it craned out? What would the Multis, Marcus Cargill and Hamish McCory, who are coming next week, think? The Multis, by the way, have always got a crane round, hauling in to or out of the penthouse a piano or artwork.

We drove up, up, up, two miles of dirt track, at the end –  the villa. Utter glory! Completely thrilled with it. So rare to be satisfied. Huge, well-restored, no hint of Ikea, the pool table of no significance, far better than anything ever offered in those villa holiday days by loathed Robin Smallmeal, head of landfill in this country. And, as you know, I only skirmish in the foothills of money.

Best of all are the views. We have complete command of a massive valley. The Umbrians have done the landscape with mixed woodland punctuated by pasture. In the evenings they place sheep in contrasting browner, drier fields.

It’s superbly varied, rich, enchanting and silent. I’ve never known such an absence of humans. We’re permanently at a private view for just  the four of us in this week’s villa party;  the woods and hills and fields don’t seem to know we’re watching. As well as the noble Prince, one of the few Poor Little Rich Gays to see beyond this world to a better place, Robert Nevil, old friend from university days, writer, former drag artist, is here and his close friend, Arjan Bose, an exquisite Maharajah-type, glowing, even glinting, with the air of being carried round on a cushion but in fact a doctor who has just completed a six-month stint doctoring in the clap clinic. There the Gays didn’t show up in fine weather.

Our Superb View from PLRG Umbrian Villa

Pasture and Woodland as Styled in Umbria

Excellent Umbrian Landscape as Seen by Arjan Bose