Tuesday 29th September 2009

 No, he’s not dead. But he’s getting huge in Hindu circles. In East London.

 Hang on, I’ll tell you. As it happens, my menu for my birthday dinner on Thursday has come through – it arrived in my head all of a piece last night. This sounds mystical and ridiculous. But it’s sort of true. Already I’ve been in extensive confab with Ottolenghi itself re: figs and I’ve been to La Fromagerie. La Fromagerie!  Do you know it? Cheesery in Highbury, London. Special cold room in which cheese enshrined. Icy grandeur such as even top gays can hardly get through the door. La Michelson presides, boosted endlessly by Nigel, who lives nearby. I spent £22 but let myself down badly at the finish by failing to buy honey at £6.95 a jar.

 But it’s a vast subject – the gay dinner party. It’ll have to wait.

 I may have mentioned before that Robert Nevil has a passion for the sub-continent. Or perhaps not. Anyway he does. Along with Lord Arrowby, as a matter of fact, but not on the same scale. I’ve never visited and after that ghastly scene in Slumdog Millionaire when the little boy jumped in the poo, I never will. I know, narrow, narrow! For those that love India it is perhaps an escape from the endless struggle to get everything right in the sleek, relentless Western slipstream. And, curiously, the old-fashioned, underground gay life is an attraction, too.

 There’s something to think about.

 At any rate, it is a broadening of the horizons, something beyond the exquisite confines of art openings, frockage and boutique hotels.

 And Robert Nevil is forging ahead in the Isle of Dogs Hindu world, this being a former industrial zone of London where Dior does not apply.

 He was Guest of Honour at the Puja. Not the only one, it’s true, but all the same.  I’ve no idea what a Puja is, I’m afraid, but it’s got a front row, to which RN and the others were conducted, amidst applause.  There was food, of which they had first pick and their opinion sought as to merits of, further applause, speeches made in their honour, final applause as they departed. In between was, apparently, a religious event  – very loud drumming, frenetic dancing and prostrating of priests, hurling of flowers and swirling of incense. Much more agreeable than Fashion Week, Robert Nevil comments.

 Typical.