It’s been a difficult morning. I’m in a tangle. No clean pants. This is the root of it. With all these entertainments recently I’ve got behind with the washing. And now I’m dashing for Grayson Perry’s talk about his Walthamstow Tapestry (Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer, former residents of Walthumbria – will they be in it?) at 3pm and can’t remember if I wore my suede jacket the last time at that gallery and Trenton, the gorgeous, massively pec-ed, four trainers-a -week mega A gay, might be there so I’d better watch out.
What else have I got to wear?
Until about 30 mins ago I was unable to eleve (is that the French for ‘get dressed’? I don’t think so). Finally I forced a pair of pants dry with the iron. As you know I had a rotten time at the summer sales. Very few pants slashed in price and of those that were I bought the wrong size. That’s why I ran out. I’ve hatched a plan to go to TK Maxx (have you heard of it? Will they have Calvin Klein red waistband or pink? For nothing?).
When you have no money, there’s always always a way of getting hold of required goods. Only problem – no idea where TK Maxx is.
But last night low temps were announced and I had to drag my colocasias in from the upstairs terrace. Only place to put them my upstairs bathroom. Too much effort to drag them four flights downstairs where they can be stored properly. Result virtually impossible to get in (see below). They’re huge plants, you see, known as elephants’ ears, and terribly tender. Slightest little chill, they die.
So maybe it was – bathroom full of leaves – couldn’t gain access for shower – no pants – morning unravels.
Plus, tomorrow Anthony Mottram comes on a visit. First time in three months apart from last week’s lightening appearance. Isn’t it extraordinary, by the way, him eating my Kiehl’s Rare Earth Facial Masque? There must be something wrong with him.
Now he only comments on the home if there’s something not right. So, having dragged the colocasias out of my bathroom and heaved them down four floors to the ‘lower ground floor’ (plastic sheeting fetched out of the cellar to put them on etc. All in my dressing gown) and finally got into the shower,what do I see? Yes, that’s right. STAINED GROUTING. Mottram will have a fit. I should have followed Bruce McBain’s advice and had grey grouting which always looks all right – so he said. But I don’t like grey grouting.
So it’s down to the other bathroom to fetch the mould removing spray and the special toothbrush. To clean my shower you have to be in it, so there I am, with nothing on, wielding the spray which is nasty stuff, mainly bleach. Hate, hate anything to do with grout. There’s always a bit missed. And I’m sensitive about bathrooms. In my old place (don’t tell anyone) I had an avocado bathroom. An AVOCADO bathroom, never refurb. One day, Frankie-Doreen Gunn, the dynamo, said: ‘You know your bathroom stinks. We think it’s because of all that washing you keep in there.’ Evidently she and Giles Ulverston, her husband, talked of little else when alone. These days, Robert Nevil never misses a chance to point out the promixity of my downstairs bathroom to my dining room because I once said that you can hear a lav flushing in his drawing room (yes, drawing room, not sitting room. Pretentious. Don’t care. I started saying it and the wind changed. Too bad). Last night I sent him a photo of the colocasias in the upstairs bathroom. He replied, ‘I see you’ve removed the dining chairs,’ cruelly and deliberately confusing my bathrooms.
At least I’ve got two bathrooms, Robert Nevil.
Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer have always had the classic top gay attitude to decor and the home – i.e. we know best.
But my downstairs bathroom in this house I do hate. I fear it smells of damp and there’s always stained grouting. If they get that mine going the first thing I’ll do is take a sledge hammer to it.
The gay bathroom should be indistinguishable from a hotel bathroom. Mottram’s guest bathroom in Prague is known as ‘the hotel bathroom’. As with hotels, the gay bathroom should be re-built annually.
But, I was saying – I’m spraying the mould with the mould spray in my shower. It gets on my feet. What will Grayson Perry think if I smell of bleach? Somehow I’ve taken the old towels downstairs and not brought up new. So I wash my feet and dry with kitchen paper (yes, kept in the bathroom for cleaning). Back downstairs to get towels with idea of washing feet more thoroughly. Then decide not to use towels in case they get immediately dirty from the feet. So repeat previous washing procedure. Piece of kitc paper lands in the loo.
Despite all this I’ve not cleaned my teeth and it’s Grayson Perry in twenty minutes.
Good-bye!
Colocasias Choke my Bathroom
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All this nonsense about underwear is a discreet form of boasting. It’s well known that Edge must source his underpants from the Outsize Shop. Calvin Klein don’t do an XXXXXL.
I see from the photo you’ve got the same wall-hung bog as me. As preferred by Bruce McBain.
Re fussing about what to wear, you might heed my mother’s sensible protestant response to any outfit anxiety: ‘who’s going to look at you?’
No, Mottram, no. As it happens today is the first day in a long time I’ve not been swollen and bloated in the stomach. Unless you refer to something else, in which case, since we are not physically intimate as we understand is usual in long-term gay relationships, how can you possibly know?
Laura Malcolm – can we overlook the Protestant view?
TK Maxx is on Kensington High Street near Urban Outfitters and opposite the Wholefoods market
TK has a fierce “no returns” policy on all Calvin underfrockage, as I found out when making the same pantaloon error. However, so cheap that the bus fare there costs more.
Readers might find a floor plan helpful. I am struggling with the elephant plant coming downstairs to the upstairs bathroom, and then this hated downstairs bathroom which you say is near a dining room. Is that a bathroom in the US sense? Or is it a real bathroom with a bath? If so, why is it downstairs at all? Who let that happen?
I see the confusion. The elephant plants were on the upstairs roof terrace, you see. I had to get them indoors in a hurry, so shoved them into the upstairs bathroom, it having a hard floor so wouldn’t matter if it got wet from the pots. The downstairs bathroom is right at the bottom of the house, four storeys down. It’s in an extension, stuck on to the house after the War. Before that , no bathroom at all, I suppose.
That is very helpful. Thank you so much.
Floor plans notwithstanding, very much feel trips to TK Maxx (what with the double x? Only establishments of choicest nature – such as, naturally, my husband, can get away with double x, oh and Mottram’s underwear) not to be encouraged. There was a moment, brief, when in the interiors world it was known poor Kelly Hoppen – she of faux PLRG aspirations – stocked her Kensingtin shop entirely from TK. This is not a recommendation. TK way only madness, if not disaster, lies. But should poor Edge be tipped that way, we wish him the best of luck and also recommend, of course, Bromley’s superior stocking to Kensington… Better run of ill-gelled hair assistants too…
O to only have some TK Max in Athens – here we only have designers and rubish.
I think Frankie-Doreen Gunn may have a point re the bathroom in Edge’s last home. Those of us who visited in the late ’80s recall a distinct musty smell and for some time Edge talked of little else. Of course now all gay homes feature Bruce McBain bathrooms damp is a thing of the past.
All the same, you must air and air and never rest