Tuesday 14^th December 2010

Last year, you should remember, the Multis, those outstanding company-and-property-owning Poor Little Rich Gays, gave you a marvellous Christmas example, almost as good to follow as the Star of Bethlehem itself.

Give a lunch at a country pub for your friends and relations. Hire a limo or train to convey the London element. Invite thirty or so. Even with champagne you can bring it in for £1200 or less, so well within the grasp of even the poorest of Poor Little Rich Gays.

And a very good effect.

This year, the Multis scaled down a little. But oh the comfort and smoothness of the arrangements! First class self-paid train for the London party, consisting of Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, Beatrice Cantor, the artist, her rock-hewn husband, Seth Wright, the artist, their imperial daughter, Prince Dmitri Hersov, who was at the accounting school with the Multis, the Multis and me, Adrian Edge. At the destination, a mini-bus, then a short walk. The aspect of being in the country could almost be overlooked.

At the lunch, the Photo Multi’s mother, his sister and her daughter, his brother, the one who, when a small boy and asked to mow the lawn, hired someone else to do it. Beatrice and Elsa were talking about the British School in Rome. It’s strange, because back in the summer, at Virgil Grayson’s in the South of France (he a world architect), this subject surged and resurged with the persistence of the sea. One of the guests, a bitch so monumental you couldn’t but admire, had worked there and, still living in Rome, had all the latest: the Director had been throwing tea bags out of the window, the Director’s wife had upp-ed the canapé allowance outrageously. Beatrice said she knew this bitch. Apparently all couples going to the British School in Rome emerge re-configured. It suddenly stuck me: that’s exactly what happened to the Gay Mother’s best friend, Hilaria, in ’52. Her first husband was beneath contempt (‘mentally unstable’). At the British School in Rome she was re-aligned with the World Expert on Coloured Marbles and lived happily ever after on committees of the National Trust.

So things knit together in odd ways. Who’d have thought it. But nice for Poor Little Rich Gay who love shape.

The Photo Multi’s mother, who tends entirely in the opposite direction from Poor Little Rich Gay, moved seats to be near her glamorous son-in-law, the Blond Multi.  They were very thick together the entire afternoon.

Our Pendolino Service for the North

Inspiration - Styling for a Turkey Dinner

What You See in the Countryside at this Time of Year

Multi Footwear for a Day Out in the Country