Wednesday 2nd February 2011

That Paris weekend, ten days ago, produced such a rich harvest but you’ll be wondering what I’ve been doing since.

Well, that emergency-purchase shaving cream from Space NK (their own brand) isn’t working out. It smells first of all of pineapple and then of boiled-down fish bones. A back-up Moroccan Neroli Shaving Serum from A­esop has arrived.

Now – back to Paris. Oh those shimmering days!  In the garden (little hedges and gravel) of the Hôtel de Sully in the Marais, there was a Russian olive tree so arranged that its lower branches made a strikingly straight edge where they stopped above the path.  ‘It’s been chopped so the bus can get by,’ Prince Dmitri said. An odd idea: it would have been a very small bus, barely six feet high, and a very short route, from one side of the walled garden of the Hôtel de Sully to the other.

Don’t mistake Prince Dmitri Hersov for your routine blue-chip accountant. He has the Russian grand vision, the endless Steppe rolling away, not empty, but in decline, everything falling apart, fickleness and lack of endurance all around. Still he collects art and furniture, roars in the Porsche from one vinyl record shop to another in search of rare bands, and places excellently pointless remarks.

‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ That’s probably mis-quoted and not quite applying to Prince Dmitri who has hope of a better life on another shore.

I said to Bruce MacBain, my architect, also with in Paris: ‘What did you talk about when you were with the ballet dancer?’ Bruce started in the top, you know, not five minutes in London from Scotland and he was cooped up in the Covent Garden apartment now used on weekdays by Marcus Cargill, England’s leading clockmender, with a household name, an internationally-known ballet dancer. That was thirty years ago. ‘Well, it depended who we were with. If it was Angela Lansbury, we talked about Death on the Nile.’

Angela Lansbury! A great favourite of Robert Nevil and Eddie Sedgewick in the 70s for her role in Black Flowers for the Bride. When they showed her the design for her wedding dress, she mini-ed it instantly by slashing a great black line miles above the knee.

On the Sunday morning, we revolved a subject dear to the hearts of Poor Little Rich Gays and a source of some racking: what sway should be given to material things? Will a superb linen cupboard, onyx flooring and Prada frockage barr the spiritual path?

You can have a spiritual path, you know, even if you are not a believer. Bruce MacBain pointed out that the Christian message has been conveyed often through the sensual medium of art. We pondered the rich interiors of churches and their altar candlesticks.

It was some comfort.

Very straight Edge of Tree, for the Bus to Pass Under, According to Prince Dmitri Hersov

Interior at the Hotel de Sevigne, Condemned by Bruce MacBain: 'Like a bedsit'