Monday 10th December 2012
I got waylaid and was going to continue Manchesterford…. I was saying about the flats there and the evidence of Poor Little Rich Gay life. Well, there’s no question – Gays get better flats. They’re lodged in the old wholesale warehouses, where cloth was once shown in great grandeur. Now they’re flats and named after their cloth: Velvet, Poplin, Jacquard, Damask, Moquette etc. The common parts might be chocolate wood, blue carpet with sprigs and peach rag-rolled walls but the flats are sleek and modern and one up. Not everyone could have one of those flats, you can be sure.
Gus gave a dinner (he’s got a home deep-fat frier for a restaurant effect in the home with home-tempura) and a glamorous gentleman came from the Royal Manchesterford Bathing Society (1 hr 50 mins twice a week of gruelling bathing). He’d been to Oldham. Astonishing tales. Complete absence of patisserie, sushi, latte or rocket. It’s either pie or ‘loose pie’. ‘Loose pie’ is the pie-filling sensa pastry.
Next day we teamed up with Horace who’s actually from Co Durham and was ‘partnered’ with Gus in the commune at Newcastle – in a manner of speaking. He’s now living in Manchesterford in a normal house with one who once hurdled for England and still has the lower body to prove it. There was much talk of the colourful crazies of yesteryear who owned all the gay bars in Manchesterford. Now everything belongs to Starbucks and the like. Still it is possible to support the Gay Community by going to the Designer Outlet Village at Salford.
Horace is in the Rochdale Ladies. It’s a drag ensemble which makes an appearance on Gay high days and holidays. Essentially they’re old bags. But much in demand. An image of the Rochdale Ladies was misused by a media outlet. Legal action was in the offing. ‘How was that?’ I asked. ‘Well, one of the Rochdale Ladies is a barrister,’ Horace explained.
So Poor Little Rich Gay. Not normal at all.
Otherwise we toured the buildings of Manchesterford which are hideous but marvellous.
Mrs Rylands: She Founded a Library in Mem of Her Husband Who was Over 40 When They Married. From His Statue Opposite, I Thought, ‘He’s Gay. She’s Grim.’ But , Damn, He was Married Before
Daddy Rylands whose Money Built the Library. What Do You Think? Gay?
Within the Rylands Library: Gothic Horror: Poor Little Rich Gays of My Generation were Brought up to Despise Victorian. Granny Couldn’t Bear It
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I don’t think that bearded benefactor was gay at all. Could you be confusing him by any chance with Dadie Rylands, a very grand old queen who resided for many years at King’s College Cambridge? He had rooms marvellously “done up” (i.e. daubed) by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and lived off the visits of hapless young literary folk who had to suck up to him in order to extract stories of old Bloomsbury days.
I once wrote to him to say I was visiting Cambridge and wondered whether I might quiz him about Virginia Woolf’s membership of the Rodmell Pony Club, but received a Dusty Answer (as his old chum Ros Lehmann might have put it): he would, alas, be ‘away’ When I went to King’s on other business, however, I spotted the mendacious old poof tottering across the Front Court. He nevertheless remained much loved by more snobbish PLRGs.
To paraphrase Tim Minchin, only a poof can call another poof a poof
Yes, dear, dear Dadie! What a cow!
And often do, regardless of all evidence to the contrary