Friday 9^th October 2009

 Anthony Mottram turned up out of the blue yesterday, on his way back from a death. Behaved outrageously, but I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

 Today is Laura Malcolm’s Tuscany Reunion Dinner. Everyone who coincided with her at the Multis’ villa is to assemble. I’ve been to so many dinners recently, I’ve run through every possible outfit. The only hope is the ludicrous Prada slacklettes I bought in the summer but I’ve got so fat from the dinners, I can’t struggle into them.

 But that’s not my point.  What we need to inspect is the amazing display of arse and grandeur that ensued when Laura issued her invitation at the end of August. ‘September’s completely impossible,’they queened and shrieked.  ‘We’re wall-to-wall. Fully booked.’  Poor Laura was batting dates back and forth for an entire week. The photographer Multi remarked: ‘Funny thing. They were all available for dinner – and lunch – in Tuscany.’

 But, back to London and it’s out with the attitude.  

 In the end we did well to find a date only six weeks off.

 So we come to a matter at the heart of top gay life – availability or rather total absence of …

 Smallmeal, despite then being near the top of the landfill or whatever, hadn’t got the idea when I first knew him in the mid 90s. He once called me up at five in the afternoon to invite for dinner there and then. But he soon learned. Maybe he learned from Limpney. The final, as it turned out, invitations to Massivebury were issued three months in advance .  I once answered my phone at the end of October and there was Limpney, in his best Queen Massivebury voice, announcing: ‘15^th December – that’s the earliest I can see you.’  Given all this carry-on, it was rather strange that the only intelligible reason ever given for the abrupt termination of our friendship was that I’d made poor Limpney feel guilty about not seeing enough of me.

 But how could this be when it was him wielding the diary all the time?

 Which brings us to perhaps the most crucial implement of all in high gay life – yes, the diary. You must have one and you should always refer to it importantly as the diary. Once you’ve got it you must fill it up, especially if you’re feeling lonely or wondering if anyone really likes you. It’s not difficult. Just make a list of everyone you know and then make a rota for inviting them to dinner or even tea, if you’re cutting back. That way you can easily fill up your diary until at least next April. You could even include people you don’t know if necessary.

 The huge advantage of this method is that if anyone has the nerve to invite you at the last minute you can genuinely refuse rather than having to pretend you couldn’t possibly be free at such short notice. Even so, some gays do decline all invitations on the grounds that they can never be assumed to be free.

 The diary approach needs to be supplemented, should you actually meet anyone, by the deployment of certain phrases such as, ‘I’ll hope to see you before Easter’ (very effective if said just after Christmas). Finally you should acquire a large country house; then you’ll be relieved of the burden of at least three potentially worrying nights a week in London with only four left to fill. What’s more, your friends and even, oh joy, non-friends will be battering to get onto your rota for country house visits.