Sunday 11th October 2009
Last Thursday Mottram telephones: ‘I’m at King’s Cross. Why aren’t you here to meet me?’ This is typical. No warning. No previous call to alert. As you know, he is normally to be found in Prague.
Not a few days before, I suddenly had a window for a Kiehl’s Rare Earth Facial Cleansing Masque. This is one of my favourite products but I just never have the time to apply it. I go up to my bathroom. I open the pot. What do I find? Scraped clean! Barely a smear left! Mottram’s had the lot – on a previous visit, I assume.
And this is one who claims to loathe and despise products and all who believe in them.
It’s a love/hate relationship, of course. But all the best relationships are. If you’re not driven mad by your loved ones, you’re not telling the truth. You may remember, Mottram is a great supporter of the young, to the extent of having them living with him. At present he is involved with Vladimir from the Ukraine. I can see the romance of it. The young are all potential. It is easy to forgive them. They may turn out better. As Wilde said (or rather it is Lord Illingworth in The Woman of No Importance) ‘Youth is the Lord of Life.’ But the young are too tragic, too much at the centre of their own lives; they have not mellowed. I would give anything not to be young again. Lord Illingworth’s remark is in fact incomplete. What he goes on to say is: ‘Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile, like most kings.’ Which is exactly what the young do not understand.
Beloved Mottram popped round from King’s Cross (it’s an adored London railway terminus if you’re in foreign or the US) on the way back to Prague to use my lav. I am failing to convey my pleasure and joy at the visit. He lay on the floor in order to more effectively execute his imitation of his Aunt Gerry dead – her demise, if you remember, the reason for his being in England.
Now, readers, do not be shocked. Do not for one minute think that Mottram is callous or unfeeling. We Gays in our fifties, we have known Death. It stalked us too early, when we were in our twenties, in the form of AIDS. Those early HIV tests, you know, when there was no cure, were quite an ordeal. Besides, people render themselves ridiculous by dying. If they were alive we would not hesitate to say so. So why let death stand in the way? There’s a brutality too in the triumph of the survivors.
Mottram only tells the truth. This is his great glory.
Mottram's Outrage
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Well, it looked awfully like liver pate, and didn’t taste too bad. Edge’s fault, in any case, for putting it on the breakfast trolley.
I agree entirely with Edge on the subject of friendship. Love without hate is dull, and so straight.
I am not in the least shocked or surprised by Mottram’s imitation of his recently deceased relative. The very first time I met him, he and Adrian were discussing with a distinctly gay precision of decorative detail – ‘Like this parchment lampshade?’ ‘No, more of a green tinge’ – the exact colour of the late Granny Edge who had died during (though not I think as a result of) their visit to her house a few weeks before.
What a shame, incidentally, that Mottram was not of our company on that previously mentioned long-ago “homesteading” holiday in France. I’d have been interested to know how the taste of the Kiehl’s facial masque compared with that of the ill-fated lettuce purée.
Sadly, our grief-stricken efforts to channel the Gay Granny were ultimately a failure. In any case they were trumped by Nevil’s own imitation of a decapitated kitchen. It’s said that he still does this, usually after a second bottle, and if you ask him nicely.
Incidentally, does anyone remember Nevil’s antics as Mrs O’Reilly, mother of sturdy daughter, Immaculata?
What are Edge’s views on cross dressing?
I fondly remember Nevil’s Mrs O’Reilly, but the mother of all impersonations remains Adrian Edge’s superb portrayal of a roast chicken – trussed up and lying sideways on the floor
Laura, you are confusing the ‘roast kitchen’ and the ‘side of beef’. The kitchen is trussed and crouches forwards. The side of beef is rolled and positioned on its side.
of course, Anthony. How silly of me. The confusion can only have arisen from Adrian’s habit of referring to any bit of oven-ready meat as a ‘bird’, even if it comes from a cow.