Tuesday 29^th November 2011

The Autumn Budget! Oh No! If this goes on much longer the Poor Little Rich Gays will have to be disbanded on grounds of taste.

No, they won’t.

I was saying: Oxford, last Friday, the Ashmolean Opening of the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries. The gathering just a wheeny bit stuffington. Certain looks at my tiny suitette with satin binding, from Topman.

I thought to myself, I thought: you can huff and puff but where would you be without the Poor Little Rich Gays?

Minus the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries for a start. It was a Poor Little Rich Gay and his band of whippy young assistants with very particular glasses that only seem to be worn by architects who whirled up those galleries.

Can you imagine the scenes? The slamming of doors and ripping up of plans, the spiked calls to suppliers (some of whom were cowed into a corner at the opening), the agonizing late into the night – it must be absolutely right, right, right; no compromise, none whatsoever.

Smoke and steam curling under the door.

Poor Little Rich Gays did all that. Nobody else could.

At the Opening, I took to snoop graphing first of all one outstandingly tiny jackette, then I found another and then a third.  That was only three out of about three hundred. All the other jackets ought to have been hacked down with shearing scissors on the spot.

The mini-jackies, it turned out, were worn by persons in the architectural party from London and the designer of the place mats on sale in the museum shop.

I did not have conversation.

Afterwards, with Bruce McBain, my private architect, of course present, and his partner, Tancredo Viamare, who is actually Italian, I went to a Loch Fyne chain restaurant (everywhere else booked) where the display kitchen offered a fine view to the chefs. On the stairs returning from the loo I encountered a modern Egyptian youth in cook’s whites who whispered in chronically broken English… ‘You frien with thes glasses…’ and was then engulfed by giggles.

He referred to Bruce McBain, who is indeed rugged, handsome and beaming  and  who had no idea of the rapture he induced.

Coming soon: Ancient Egyptian décor tips.

Tomorrow I am at a Table Quiz in a Church Hall in Wanny. Saturday I board for Venice.

I've Got This Picture the Right Way Up! Ed Vaizey with the V-C

Tiny Jacket at the Ashmolean Opening No 1

Tiny Jacket at the Ashmolean Opening No 2: This Man Also Had Hair 'Up'

Tiny Jacket at the Ashmolean Opening No 3