Tuesday 18^th October 2011

I’ve gained Florence with the Gay Mother. The apartemento, off via Tournaboni, in fact right above Gucci, does not smell as much of money as I would like.

I’ve ordered intense vac-ing, beating and shaking out. So far, nothing’s happened.

But my back-log is so drastic, I’ve reached Florence only in fact.

Last week, Robert Nevil and I took a trip down memory lane. We went back to our old London Uni where Reggie Cresswell gave a discussion about his ceramic. Joshua Baring, who is to be cured of asymmetrical rheumatoid arthritis in the foot, but still only 27, we took as ballast against complete engulfment in the former times.

Young friends keep you young, you hope.

Reggie’s ceramic is about the past and how it evaporates but remains.

I expect you’re surprised I ever went near a uni. Well, I did. But never again, I’d say. The scholarly life not for me. Awfully drear.  I can’t bear to spend more than ten minutes in consideration…

In a corridor we met a present student from the Sudan who was lost. ‘Follow us,’ we said. ‘We were here 35 years ago. We know the way.’

And we did.

After the lecture we were entertained in the department Common Room. I pointed out the spot where Doctor Mun had stood before all the students and condemned Virginia Woolf, causing an outrage amongst the women. His manner from his 40s was death-bed with rare devastating utterances issuing there from. It was his Memorial Lecture that Reggie gave.

It was quite different in those days. We fraternised wickedly with the dons. Now we could sue. I used to go round to Dr Mun’s flat and Windolene his Hockney. Robert Nevil became intensely intimate.

One thing though – I always thought our uni was second-rate, even dismal. But it appears that all the time it was top-ranked in the world and has been ever since.

To end on an even cheerier note, there were a few old friends of Dr Mun’s there whom I could have sworn were dead.

But they weren’t!

To come: how at last, after 30 years, I gave a dinner not riven with nerves; I meditate on the toad,work; Eddie Sedgewick showed artwork in a highly-wrought jacket; and there’ll be Florence, with the Gay Mother.

We’ve been here a day