Malaysian railway crockery - as seen in Mottram boutique hotel

 Monday 11^th August 2009

 Can you digress before you’ve even begun?  I must just tell you, before I launch my main topic, that my spirits suddenly are restored.  I wonder why?  On the whole, as I get older, I grow more emotionally unbalanced. On Saturday I bought a boxed set of 4 Mozart operas for £8.99 and played the Queen of the Night’s aria about seventeen times. Sometimes simple things can give pleasure. On Sunday, lunch at the Multis; en plein air, roof terrace, glorious day (even for August with its white light), views such as enjoyed only by the very rich or very poor living in tower blocks. Of course on Saturday next we foregather at their Tuscan villa and get dug in versus the Smallmeal/Limpney holiday home at Rimini. I must remind the Multis to ask the Villa company to supply, as well as Wi-fi, a good stock of long range missiles. What are they called these days? Is it Mik-32s or was that years’ ago? One really ought to know.  I wonder if you can get them last minute.

 Val attended the Multis, just a little drunk on arrival, brilliant, hard, crystalline and full of the glories of Nicky Haslam’s Desert Island Discs, which I missed. But he is dreadfully thin and hardly ate a thing. This is a new development – worrying. It is sad. In the past we often holidayed together, Mottram, him and me. Now it would be impossible.

 But, thrilling news, I’ve actually had an e-mail from Lord Arrowby and a text message. I’ve also heard from Anthony Mottram in Malaysia. So bursting to tell you.  Lord A is not in Corfu with Lord Mandelbaum but on L’Ile de Re (it’s got an accent on the last ‘e’ but no idea how to put it). What on earth is it? I think it’s off the French coast, in the Atlantic. I have an idea my friend, Edward Jasper, the bed linen expert and multi-millionaire, goes there. He, unusually for a top gay, doesn’t like travelling and will only go to St Bart’s and, I think, this Il de Re place. So if it’s good enough for him…. Perhaps we should look into it. Lord Arrowby, of course, completely unforthcoming as to who with or how long staying or price of the hotel etc.

 But I shall find out.

 It is a shame Lord A is not better known to the public but his work is all behind the scenes, you see. He would be much more of a hit than Lord Mandelbaum. Did you see his (Lord M’s) boarding outfit today for his return from Corfu?  Less said the better. Now if that had been Lord A it would have been some kind of shimmering, sparkling athletic wear that would have caused a sensation and surely revived interest in the workings of government. It would have been that safety-pin dress all over again. What was she called, that girlfriend of Hugh Grant? Heather Mills? No… LIZ HURLEY… that’s right.

 As for Anthony Mottram in Malaysia, I rather wonder. It is the monsoon season and they do say the White Man can go mad in the rain. On arrival he claimed not to find Asia. He said it had been Bobsified. He referred to his father who concreted over any garden. Now he has removed to a lux resort beach complex. It looks perfectly normal, in the rich gay way of looking – seething with staff, railway-style crockery for sale from glass cabinets in the lobby, trails of white muslin everywhere for that tropical look – but he keeps insisting that a certain tent on the beach is named ‘The Limpney/Smallmeal Honeymoon Lunch Tent’. He says there is a plaque and that staff have fond memories etc…. but this can’t be true. Simon Limpney and Robin Smallmeal had their honeymoon on a canal boat in Wales. It was Simon’s idea. Often those of high birth think they might fancy such a thing. But the Elsan (that’s a chemical toilet) finished them off and they had to be helicoptered back from Llangollen (I’ve actually checked that spelling and I got it right) to Massivebury after 48 hours. 

 Here are some of Anthony Mottram’s holiday snaps:

The so-called Smallmeal/Limpney honeymoon lunch tent - Malaysia

Beach Freshening in Malaysia

Vladimir from the Ukraine - about to assume voluntary burka