Wednesday 19^th October 2011

This Florence apartemento is coming on. I’ve suggested adjustments. They’ve been in and sprayed the sofa to improve its smell. Just now, I shook the bedcover out the window over world-class shoppers in via Tornabuoni below – with some result.

But the Gay Mother, 87, insists all the designer shops are empty; she’s down on the Uffizi too. Nevertheless, miracles have occurred.

The other day, at the Gala for 25 years of La Pont de la Tour, Laura Malcolm announced that her son, Ivor Driver, has got a job. What a relief! In this climate. Ivor had appeared blasé and expressed an indifference to brand management work. His parents feared that this might have protruded at the interview. But it didn’t.  Now he will thrust forth and ascend to greatness and wealth, like his father before him.

I was slightly furious as well as relieved. What a mercy not to be 23 with the drear slope of work yet to climb. At the other end of the scale, as it were, we hear that the Blond Multi is to ‘step down’ from his post in the business which he richly sold a few years ago. Complete departure for a re-think at Christmas.

What will he do with the days? He might even be driven to resume piano lessons and attempt Grade 2.

Poor Little Rich Gays must have goals. My! how they work. I was going to say, while at the same time loathing it, but that would not quite be true. Poor Little Rich Gays are rewarded but not pompous. They do not forget the grave. But they crave relief from the burden while knowing that nothingness is the alternative.