Thursday 28^th April 2011

Once again my thoughts on the Farnese ceiling by Annable Carracci (I penetrate to the core of Poor Little Rich Gay life through the ceiling) are delayed, this time because of the greatness of events.

The Royal Wedding is upon us! This evening on the way back from Harrods I passed by the great throbbing, thronging heart of our nation, the Palazzo Buckingham and the Great West Door of the Abbey itself. A procession of Foreign Crowned Heads swept up Constitution Hill under police escort. People are encamped by the roadside, there’s a great crowd pressing against the railings of the Palazzo on the right-hand side. At the Abbey too, a festive attendance, many strolling in high holiday in the middle of the closed off roads, the mood quite unburdened by the 15-hour overnight wait ahead, orderly, a murmur of expectation as if the blaze of Royalty might occur at any moment, not all little awe, a sound never heard elsewhere.

Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, will be in the Abbey in the morning at the special invitation of Camellia Parker Bowles (as was). I wonder what he will be wearing. Last time I saw him he was astonishingly arrayed in a complex web of designer wear and jewellery.

At the time of the Royal Wedding, in 1981, I was in the care of pernicious mind-specialists: I was worried then about my outfit for the wedding. They said, ‘You think you’re the bride.’

Nothing wrong with that. We were born to aim high.

In the end I had a white shirt (or blouse more in those days) and trousers in royal purple sateen from that shop opposite where is now Osborne and Little. I can’t remember what I wore for the very second-rate Fergie wedding but my menu was Vitello Tonnato. This time it’s not been made easy by this sudden warm weather which isn’t as warm as it seems (and of course rushing into summer clothes not allowed), the new need for separates, the Photo-Multi’s Birthday Function, the additional forthcoming Wedding at Bath Abbey in June,  Easter, being away, not a minute for the shops.

But you can rest assured – I was saved by the late opening of Harrods (did you know you can shop there every day until eight?) even though H Nicks are being bitch about taking back those Balenciaga slacks that ripped. So no nice base mulch of money to fund non-sale purchases.

If you want to know what’s in my Wedding shopping bags, you’ll have to come back. I expect you’re also dying to hear whether my champagne cardy got through its wash.

At 9.30 in the morning I leave for Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer’s where I will view the Wedding on their enormous council house TV. They are polishing up a silver salver and will be offering suitable morning drinks, such as Madeira, Sloe Gin (but not the Bullace horror gathered by Robert Nevil from Midland hedgerows) or Harvey’s Bristol Cream, accompanied by dry biscuits. For the viewing, I’m going to repeat my Easter Day separates outfit but the shirt will be  my shimmering silky grey Paulo Pecora with the celebration ribboning over the buttons. I might continue that ensemble for the Photo Multi’s birthday shed dinner in Bermondsey in the evening.

Once you’ve got new clothes, there’s no need to wear them. They revive the existing wardrobe quite wonderfully.

By the way, that Head of an Oxford College on Sunday evening ! You remember the Gay Mother and I were bidden by her neighbour at the last minute: high-minded musical display to be provided by the Oxford College’s Head after dinner. Well, you wouldn’t believe it! We Googled him afterwards – or rather I did. 85, strings and strings of trusteeships, high up in the law, all the Inns of Court, Harvard, not just Oxford.  In person he combined fearful distinction and grace with not being at all well-behaved. Said nobody would want to listen to classical music, surely people knew Noël Coward. Launched into ‘Nina from Argentina’ and ‘A Bar on the Piccola Marina’, accompanying self on piano. Really ought to have been preserved for posterity as a cult feature. Can never have been anything like it before. Voice quite 85 years old, but tremendously musical, had the architecture and the line; then the sensational ambiguity of such a figure singing such songs. His last number was ‘You’re Sensational’, his version more honed and rare, more donnish yet more beautiful,  than Sinatra’s.

What I’m most looking forward to tomorrow is the procession of Foreign Crowned Heads.

My Wedding Shopping Bags Seen Outside Buckingham Palace This Evening

The Scene at Palazzo Buckingham This Evening

Outside Westminster Abbey This Evening: In the Background the Queen Elizabeth 11 Conference Centre, Site of the old Westminster Hospital from where the Gay Mother Viewed the Coronation in 1937