Tuesday 6^th September 2011

I’m plagued by laziness which is not a Poor Little Rich Gay trait (pronounced ‘tray’). It was promised for yesterday and now it’s today. But I’ve been reading The Woman in Black. Do you know it? She’s one of the judges of the Man Booker Prize. Susan Hill, I mean, who wrote it.

Great wrong has been done to Poor Little Rich Gays in ways you don’t know about in the matter of this now silly prize. Today a mistaken shortlist has appeared.

I’m rather developing my own theories as to who the Woman in Black actually is, overlooking the especially malevolent ghost of the book who’s got it in for babies.

Stella Rimington is the head judge: I suppose in the dreary afternoons of spying she dipped into a novelette.

But Harry Rollo yachted: we must cheer ourselves up. We’ll have it in ses mots lui-meme: yes, readers, these are the actual words of Harry Rollo, world figure, perf artist and impressario. See how they shimmer! He often has words, self-done, in his perfs. And informative too: several recipes slipped in and really all you need to know re: setting up your own yacht:

‘My new goal is a yacht. I have never quite liked total stability. From the moment one sets sail, forging through dolphins and whales, all trouble falls away. No crowds, no problèmes.

Mine will be registered in a tax haven, St Kitts probably. But all the world will be my home. (Except Somalia.)

You need a full-time staff of four. They live on board, permanently, at the front, down below. Your apartments are at the back. (Prow and stern.)

The whole thing is varnished teak and chrome polished to a blinding sheen every morning by a handsome blond Israeli First Mate, in shorts.

All meals and drinks brought to you by the Stewardess. Immaculate martinis, fayne waynes of Fornia, pagne from pagne.

The chef, tiny, barely seen, spends all day below in the galley and almost never emerges on deck. Six guests, apart from myself gay Californians, therefore all have impossible diets: two pescatarian (fish-only), one no fish; two gluten-free. Chef dealt with all this in his teeny space with one good hob. Meals were refinements of American classiques. I learned a new American dish, always served before steak: wedge. Wedge is a surprising salad, iceberg lettuce with blue cheese, onions, toes, dressing and bacon. Completely delicious, unknown beyond these shores.

Breakfasts were berries, berries, berries, melons, nectarines, granola (gluten-free), bacon and eggs, proper machine coffee and le climaxe smoked salmon with bagels, with cream cheese, diced red onion and capers served in their tiny individual bowls. By the time one had finished all that the bed was made, clothes laundered and folded and room tidied.

I shared with the host a large double room with two beds and individual bathrooms. A double en-suite. Two bathrooms off one room. I think never before seen by me.

Emerge to the Pacific Ocean on one side and a deserted island cove on the other. Handsome boys wave from their kayaks.

I wish I could find a flaw with this weekend but I’ve searched and there was none. Please no pity for me.
Perhaps I got slightly too burnt – or nero as they say in Italy.’

Yachting off the Coast of Californication