Tuesday 19^th October 2010

Yesterday was the 25^th Birthday of Joshua Baring, Poor Little Rich Gay of the future.

My words yesterday, on the other hand, (see posting:‘The World’s Most Uncompromising Poor Little Rich Gay Interior – Latest’) failed to re-create Angus Willis’s smoky party at his Tudor House in Hastings on Saturday. Poor Little Rich Gays dread whimsy. But the Tudor House feels old. It has an ancient air. You think the Tudors are there. It’s inescapable.  Fergus Strachan, Angus’s moisturising lawyer partner (update on his Dermarolla treatment soon), looked at the roaring open fire. ‘Imagine being burned alive in that,’ he said, remembering the punishment that previous occupants might have feared or met. It was a brilliant idea of Angus’s to have everything post-Tudor as it would have been when first installed except in its present reclaimed state – so round brown Bakelite light switches, terrible old Victorian lavs, tin baths, wheezy taps, bashed up blue enamel gas cooker – but this alone does not account for the powerful atmosphere of the house.

I stayed in a boutique B and B in Hastings, the Old Queen Glass Walking Stick or Old Glass Walking Stick Queen. Queens are responsible. ‘Did they say anything about me?’ Angus asked. He does not approve. ‘There was a very slight jolt of fear or resistance when I dropped your name,’ I said. He thinks they’re too draped and swagged or else impure and they probably don’t care for his tin baths. All the queens of Hastings are in competition to be First in Decor and Provision of Style including Food to the public on a paying basis. Angus will soon be opening a shop in the High Street.

It is true that in my room at the Old Queen Glass Walking Stick I was involved, as I had never thought to be again, with a tasselled curtain and its tasselled silk rope-tie. The lamp made out of an antler caught in my frockage and crashed to the floor. Angus wouldn’t stand for any knick-knackery like that. I showed him my room key which was also lavishly tasselled. ‘Let’s re-style it,’ he said, producing an ancient kitchen knife he had bought in a car boot sale. It was two foot long. ‘We could replace the tassel with the knife. The Old Glass Walking Stick Queens would love it.’

Tassel from Old Glass Walking Stick for the Chop to be Replaced by Knife