Monday 6th July 2009

I was going to tell you about the frenzy of excitements in store for the poor little rich gays of London at the moment but I’ve just heard that Anthony Mottram has gone down with Swine flu while staying at The Vases in Gloucestershire with Leon de Veer and Miles Kent.

At least he says it’s Swine flu and not serious. I don’t believe him. He always downplays illness to get the better of it. I expect a call in the middle of the night to say he is sinking fast.

I might succumb too, since he was staying with me last week.

Next week we are supposed to be going to Bulgaria to visit an orphanage – enough of an ordeal in itself you’d have thought for those used to certain standards. Anthony has an immense enthusiasm for the young. The orphans are staging a drama event sponsored by his business. Robert Nevill, my second oldest friend, is coming too. But what if we are both struck down with Swine flu miles from a BUPA hospital?

Anthony is not well enough to return to Prague and resume his activities as ‘consultant’ and possible spy. He is in line for a knighthood, you know.

Oh dear, I have a sense of those few hairs of time that might separate a triumphant exit from the Prada shop emblazoned with carrier bags and the catastrophic thump of a not-seen passing car.

Anthony and I have been bickering away for the last forty years, ever since we met in 1970 at Mr Carpenter Jacobs’ tea party for new boys. But there’s never been any sex, as far as I can recall.

Tomorrow I am going to Glyndebourne – all being well. There was so much I wanted to tell you. I’m invited twice this week to the Riverside Multis (that’s multi-millionaires) who live in a marble-lined riverside penthouse and then on Saturday it’s Lord Arrowby’s summer party (yes, he really is a lord – something huge in administration, advising the Government – although you wouldn’t think it to look him). On top of all that, there’s the sales, which this year with the Credit Crunch and so many of them starting early and nearly catching me out have been more than usually terrifying as well as thrilling of course.

You see, being a poor little rich gay does not necessarily mean having any money. Anthony’s and my friend, Val (short for Valentine) has always been a poor little rich gay despite, owing to advanced alcoholism, often being troubled for the tube fare home.
So the sales are the one and only chance to seize certain essential items, mainly of clothing.

Maybe this Swine flu is punishment for spending too much money in the sales. And for throwing away perfectly good clothes that have gone out of style. Only last week Anthony was saying how the orphans would be thrilled to wear my old Prada.
That was before he got ill. I do hope he’ll be all right. He is so careless with his health. He has insisted that his private Czech doctors declare him not overweight. Once, he and his employees underwent some kind of personality test. His result showed him to be highly controlling. So he cancelled the tests across the board.

But he won’t be able to cancel Swine flu.

I think my only hope is a little consoling, distracting nip to the shops in the hope that a surprise end-of-sale bargain will fall my way. There is comfort – I was going to say in lesser things but that won’t quite do.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know if I was blessed in the shops. And we’ll have news of Anthony. And I’ll go to Glyndebourne. And so it will go on in all its usual glory and horror.