Monday 23rd January 2012

Lord Arrowby, my part-time love interest, newly re-kindled,  has regained these shores from India whence the Multis board on Friday (five weeks away) but I’m seething with accounts: did the Gay Mother pay for the hedge-trimming or was it Cousin Phoebe?

And there’s Lady Carmichael – mother of the Blond Multi – her luncheon the Sunday before last. And the Arrowby concession, the astonishing chink in the armour, the sudden earth-shattering semantic re-alignment: ‘if we marry, it’ll have to be separate residences.’ All that to come.

Well, of course, I’d never imagined anything else – separate residences, I mean.  Decor differences have wrecked many a Poor Little Rich Gay alliance.  You see, Lord Arrowby’s a tremendous romantic in a peculiar sort of way. He imagines, and avoids, a vast engulfment, a terrifying wipe-out of togetherness.

But that wasn’t my direction. Last night, Val, still on crutches, nibbling precariously at a bottle of port, having fallen in September while sauced, having sipped, and I took an amateur giving of ‘Saul’ by Handel in a church. It was inspiring to see rich retired people, not decor-driven, good people, raising for charity, and the expressive choral women, having music in their lives. I wrongly sneer. We enjoyed the perf. Val, by birth a Catholic, homed straight in on the shrine to the Virgin at the back of the church although it was C of E. Then he sang a Catholic hymn as follows:

Soul of my Savior sanctify my breast,
Body of Christ, be thou my saving guest,
Blood of my Savior, bathe me in thy tide,
wash me with waters gushing from thy side.

Perfectly revolting.

After that, he told a cautionary tale, recently heard. A woman began by giving up coffee; then she became a vegetarian, before ascending to veganhood. Finally she was a Lesbian prostitute with a heroin addiction.

Here’s a picture of the Multis’ evening bill:

The Multis Under Pressure at La Pont This Evening: They've Got to Get All the Menu Options, Not to Mention Wine Selections, Tasted for The Blond Multi's 50th There in March and They Board for India on Friday, Not to be Seen in This Country Again for Five Weeks