Tuscan Heaven

Saturday 22^nd August 2009

 So much to tell you, I don’t know where to begin.

 There’s more to these rich gays than money. But we must remember that the path of being rich is the one we have taken – at different levels of course, including that of Val who has at times bordered destitution.

 On Thursday an Italian friend of Prince Dmitri Hersov’s, Carolina, came down from Florence for the day.  I haven’t told you much about Prince Dmitri. When he laments the decay of the modern world, you sense the Russian Steppe rolling grandly away. I’ve no idea what the Russian Steppe looks like but there we are.  He has soul and is good. Carolina could have been pre-ordered for the villa. She said that, were she ever to leave her present job which is running 30 shops of a well-known designer, she would like to be a personal shopper for a princess. Apparently such people instruct as follows: this year, I will have two winter weddings, four summer weddings, two Spring funerals, three summers funerals etc. We thought the funerals diarised a year in advance priceless.

 I dashed up to Radda in Chianti to join Carolina, Prince Dmitri and the Multis for lunch. When I arrived the Multis were re-arranging the furniture on the terrace. On their last visit, they declared, they had re-arranged the entire terrace.  But the lunch was not liked, despite the re-arranging. Little else was spoken of, save its failings. I feared that one of the multis was on the verge of offering, to the waiter, a list of suggestions for improvement. This would have been done with superb, lethal neutrality.

 But in the evening joy broke out. Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver arrived from London. ‘It’s a het attack,’ Matt said. You remember him. He’s the advertising mogul solely responsible for the way deodorants are advertised to adolescent boys all over the world. He said his mission was to steal a Tuscan roof tile. I assumed this was some kind of challenge made by his het friends back home but it turned out he wanted to make a garden light.

 Well, I don’t know I’m sure.

 The Multis were divine, flitting in their pale suits, in the twilight, offering drinks. One of them arranged the table with candles.  It couldn’t have been more perfect. Angus Willis cooked some astonishing beef on the barbeque. It was a feast. Carolina returned from fetching her boyfriend from a motorway service station. She brought ice-cream. We seemed to be getting well-known in the neighbourhood.  There was also a tiramisu, made by Angus, utterly on a higher plane to any other ever tasted.

 What was said? Who was brilliant? I don’t really recall. At our end of the table there were inept attempts to speak in Italian with Carolina’s boyfriend. But there it is – at lunch the tide was out and we were on the mud flats, in the evening – magic.