Sunday 27^th November 2011

Robert Nevil and I are just about to board for Sandringham St Kil.

Fen country – odd. Joshua Baring’s giving a lunch at his daring new weekend home there.

Twice this week my official car with Xenon driving lights gained Oxford – with me in it.

On Wednesday Robert Nevil and I took a student production of the play ‘Posh’, about the Bullingdon Club in all but name, given in the Debating Chamber of the Oxford Union. On Friday, the new galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia at the Ashmolean, after re-modelling by an internationally-known PLRG architect, were opened by Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minster.

The Multis also took ‘Posh’ on Friday. Its theme is how the frightful evil of money and class poisons every corner of society: rather hysterical and over-stated but bravura student production.

The exact placing of Oxford in Poor Little Rich Gay life is not yet known: many were ‘up’, of course. Val got friendly with a woman don, lodged with, and roasted, boned then boiled down the bones of, seventeen ducks for galantine de canard for 90. Our then friend, Paul ‘Honey’ Collingwood, who later married and became a theatre critic, said that the vapour of duck in the don’s flat was so strong he was sure the birds were about to re-materialise from the air.

Anthony Mottram, my oldest and closest friend, daily visited the covered market to look at the displays of travelling trunks and dog food.

Laura Malcolm still imitates the small talk of the lady dons at St Hugh’s: ‘You come from Essex, I believe. You must know Maldon. Of course The Battle of Maldon is one of the greatest works in Old English still extant.’

The Blond Multi took a degree in Latin at Oxford, a language of which he appears to have no knowledge whatsoever.

On the whole, university life is not for Poor Little Rich Gays – too much detail of the wrong kind.

Oh look! I’ve not finished. I’ve simply got to get some plants indoors before surging out for St Kil. There’s a frost expected tonight.

Come back later!  So much more – my behavior at the Ashmolean – not the best. Décor tips from Ancient Egypt. But an Egyptian chef got twinkly over Bruce McBain, my private architect, in a Loch Fyne Restaurant after the Ashmolean– it was all we could find.

The Galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia at the Ashmolean, Refurbished by a Poor Little Rich Gay, Opened on Friday

Ed Vaizey, Non-Poor Little Rich Gay, Opening the Poor-Little-Rich-Gay-Re-Modelled Galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia at the Ashmolean on Friday