The Swiss failed to euthanize Anthony Mottram (don’t joke about death; you’ll be sorry). So now he pops up on a cycling holiday in Sardinia with his friend Veronica whom he has known for years from when they were both on clarinet in a south London amateur orchestra.

 It will not be the usual sort of gay vacances – far from it.

 Vladimir from the Ukraine has been left behind. He has essays to hand in.

 This holiday is Mottram’s way of celebrating my birthday which occurs on Thursday. I’m having a small dinner at home for which the menu won’t come. Ottolenghi is the thing and I’ve been pouring over their book. But what are sumac and mograbiah? How will I know they’re not horrid?  I’ve had an awful time with the smoked paprika powder from the Moro cookbook which makes everything taste of sausages and then burnt plastic. Neurotically I go on using it – can’t bear waste, you see. Also hoping and hoping it might get nice.

 I don’t want to get saddled with any further  nasty, obscure ingredients.

  It’s a shame I can’t have more people to my dinner. But my home is a doll’s house and I fear too many guests could cause it to fall down – as when they celebrated the building of the 1000^TH council house in the Norman Wisdom film. The Lady Mayoress cut the ribbon and dignitaries swarmed in. Within minutes the crap building was flattened.

 The other astonishing development is that Lord Arrowby has consented to dine with the Multis. And there is to be a special function for Grayson Perry’s new carpet of which, as it happens, I’ve had a sneak preview – a thing of wonder. This man is becoming a major part of my life. It’ll be the fourth time I’ve seen him in as many months.

 But he hasn’t seen me, though

 Perhaps it’s time he did.

 Yesterday I went to Somerset House for what I thought was going to be another fashion show to do with London Fashion Week, now London Fashion Weekend. Tickets were got by a headmistress friend of mine, not often seen.

 The weather was glorious, as it was on Friday and again today. Three days of uninterrupted sun in London – mellow, melancholy, yellowy, the shadows deepening.

 But it turned out to be a vast kind of jumble sale of women’s clothes by various unknown designers. Seething hoards of young women shopping, themselves an amazing spectacle. My childhood was nothing but rummaging through Granny’s and the Gay Mother’s frock cupboards in wonder. I had a phase of actually wearing the clothes and Mrs Bone next door ran me up a little dress and jacket. My father wasn’t best pleased but the Gay Mother and Granny quite enthusiastic.

 In adult life indifferent. Have little grasp of what women have been wearing for the last 30 years. These ones had on everything – tights, boots, eight necklaces minimum, those little flimsy shifty things that aren’t a dress or a shirt, other unidentifiable garments on top or underneath, huge handbags with straps and buckles everywhere. Everything clashing. Frightful sight really, but rather wonderful. There they all were, en fete, having a whale of a time, I should say, parading.

 Better that than maundering beside Jade’s grave.

 Then, as I came away, a wedding was emerging from a well-known Wren church. It was late afternoon, the light less brilliant, more misty. A ghostly feel and the wedding a Platonic ideal of how weddings have always been – the young men ushers in morning suits earnest with unaccustomed responsibility, an aunt-figure in an old-fashioned print dress enlivened with a hat specially bought perhaps, more hats, shawls, shoes, the bride and groom emerging from the church, the groom looking very much the marrying type.

 And this glorious mother-of-the-bride ensemble. Just look at that silk coat and that hat!  Whether this actually is the mother-of-the-bride will never be known.

Outstanding possible Mother-of-the-Bride ensemble